Wild horses......

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Wild horses!

......they are of course not wild but for me they might as well be. They live on the land that is where my back garden would be if I had one and they belong to the stables adjoining the fields. There are perhaps twenty or so and day in and day out they potter around, graze and take paying customers for riding lessons. These are most definitely not wild horses, wild horses do not take five year old children out for riding lessons! There are of course one or two that are somewhat more 'spirited' and reserved for riding by the proprietor and those who's horse handling skills are more advanced. And there is the rub.

As a child of maybe 12 years old I learnt to ride, not well but I could generally persuade a horse to go in the direction I wished and at the speed I dictated. All was well until one December morning, girth not suitably tight and feet not yet placed in stirrups, some joker decided to crop the rear of my mount.....who immediately took off like the wind. Perched as I was, saddle slipping, feet flailing and reins dragging, it was only the strength in my then gymnastically trained legs that kept me vaguely seated That was until a fence was reached, the horse stopped dead and I was most un-ceremoniously catapulted, at high velocity, from loose saddle into a field full of cows and the associate 'muck'!

With bruised and shaken pride and butt, I gathered my sore self up, went home and never sat on a horse again! I meant many times to re-learn, it still has appeal to me. I now have a good riding school not 500 yards away and horses I kinda know but hell, they are just so goddamn big!. I may have ridden large, powerful bikes but I was in control, bikes can't dig their heels in, they don't have a mind of their own!

I was never really aware of horse personalities until I lived here watching them day in and day out. I love to see them roll over and over on their backs, race up and down the hills making snorting, happy noises, most obviously full of glee and fun. They always make me smile but the sound echoing around me and the earth vibrating under my feet, as 24 or so hooves thunder over hard ground, has an uncanny knack of reminding me just how big and heavy these beautiful creatures are........ and somehow I never quite make it to the other side of the fence or the riding lesson!

Another Friday the 13th!

Suffering as I am with the dreaded PMS, blundering around, my limbs seemingly beyond my control and my mind away with the fairies it is only within the last couple of hours that I realised this is another Friday the 13th!

Thankfully, unlike the last few, my car has not ground to a halt, PG has suffered no injury, indeed none of the usual disasters have befallen either of us. I have none the less had the day from hell, in a normal day to day sense.

I feel like crap, I have finished nothing I started, I am hot, bothered, bad tempered and liable at any moment to either blow a gasket or disintegrate into a grizzling heap at the slightest thing.....oh, and I managed to upset and apparently insult someone completely unintentionally!!

There was one high spot, my car passed it's MOT test, I have been lucky enough not have a vehicle old enough to require one for years and I was rather holding my breath in anticipation of something major needing repair, it was not so, all is well for once on the car front! Amazing, particularly considering the date.

tomorrow is my early Saturday at work, a 5am start, something else that is not helping my demeanor right now......how I wish right now that I were two years old and could lie on the floor and throw a tantrum, arms and legs flailing and screaming the at the top of my lungs. What a pity we don't remember when we could do that.....it must have been so therapeutic! Instead I will shuffle off and lick my hormonally imagined wounds, eat some chocolate and try to forget my horrible day.

Gah! If I get a 'next life' I'm gonna be a man!

Friday's feast (47)

Appetizer
Whose intelligence do you find intimidating?
Anyone who I feel is way out of my league intellectually! Notice an impressive level of confidence there? heh.

Soup
Name something you've done that surprised yourself.
Moving to Scotland.

Salad
List 3 people whom you have only "met" online, but consider good friends.
Lisa
Maggie
Retroguy

Main Course
Where is the dirtiest place you've ever been?
The cinema in a town I once lived in (Hyde in Cheshire) probably makes the top spot.

Dessert
What is the best example of "perfection" that you can think of?
A flawless diamond.

What....you don't talk to plants too?

As is well documented I have a passion for all things 'natural history' ....a specific, though only in a very small way, is bonsai trees. many moons ago it concerned me a little that those twisted branches and trunks, forced by wire, would be kinda 'painful' for the tree but I decided that thought was a little excessive and given that they seem to grow well regardless, they must be happy with their lot in life!

It seems though that I never get a perfect specimen, over the years I have 'rescued' three or four from certain death, that I have come by via strange routes or by others handing them on out of frustration. The last had it's trunk snapped almost in two, I bound it and cared for it until it healed and it now resides with a friend.

Most recently I 'came by' a larger specimen when I noticed it leafless and lifeless in a store and offered the owner a minimal amount to remove it from his abuse worry. The poor thing had survived maybe 20 or more years to attain it's size and in the space of a few days of neglect was taking it's last bonsai breaths!

Home it went with me and after just four weeks TLC, the appropriate care and a stern talking too ......what, you don't talk to plants too? I give you, full of health and happiness again, one little tree! :o)


Alive and kicking!

I really must apologise.....

....for boring you with yet more sunsets but I just can't resist. It seems that each evening, as I stand clicking away on the balcony here at crimson skies, I promise myself I will ignore the next one.....but I never do. After a lifetime of city living I just find it unbelievable and incredible that this kind of sunset is here time after time..... and it's free!

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Another sunset.....



and again....



and again.

The best new band in town

Thanks to 'D', who is always loyally here but never comments so you would never know, for this link.

Stolen off another blog somewhere (sorry whoever you are) and well worth the thievery! If you are in need of cheering up or just fancy a hoot go have a look .......should you suffer a dialup connection as I do it will take a minute or two to download but it's worth the wait!

Room service!

A sunny spot.

So what of Poppy? Of late there has been much mention made of Ditto and her various antics while little has been said of Poppy, so this post will I hope rectify that situation.

The main cause of my not blogging on the subject of Poppy recently is that as age creeps up on here she does less and less, the other reason is that any 'Poppy progress' report is bound to include sad stuff that I try my best not to concentrate on.

So, I will dispense with the negatives first. Late on last year you may recall there was a kind of false alarm where her likely longevity was concerned but having got past that a sigh of relief was heard in Gemmak's-ville and things returned to normal. The fact remains though that she is a very old cat, she will be 18 later this year, and her diagnosed kidney failure is progressing ever forward. She really is beginning to look and behave her age at times and whilst it is entirely possible she may survive a while longer, we now live day to day with her and make the most of each one. Should she live a year I would not be surprised, she has rallied before but should we lose her tomorrow I would equally not be surprised.

Age is beginning to take it's toll on her ability to groom herself as much as she would like and consequently PG and I have taken over much of that duty for her....a situation against which she protests most strongly. She may only have one remaining tooth but she sure as hell can still inflict damage with it and given the appropriate motivation she is still able to muster a lightening fast response! She has all her life been opposed to human interference where her ablutions are concerned and age has not dimmed her memory of the purpose of brush and comb. What worries me now is that is seems to genuinely hurt her, despite our best attempts at gentleness but she hates, like all cats do, to be 'untidy' and so we have to persist with a 'little and often' strategy.

Her second problem is weight loss, again it is standard kidney failure stuff but try as we might we can barely prevent her from losing weight, let alone get her to gain any. The main principle of the long ago agreed with the vet, no medical intervention scheme, we are following with her is that what life she has left will be good. It is thust that she dines on all of her favourite foods. In an attempt to regulate her protein intake ( high protein is bad for poorly kidneys) she still has to eat a large proportion of ordinary cat food but she has that sussed. Old as she maybe she retains her stubborn streak and should she not fancy what is put infront of her, she will still turn her nose end up at it and staunchly ignore it. There is little point in our persisting in the battle of wills at this stage and she always gets her way!

The final proof, like I need any, of her declining health is her fluid intake which is steadily rising as anticipated.

On the positive side she has begun again, with the onset of spring, to enjoy a little potter around the field, though she has to be accompanied. Should another cat or a dog pick a fight with her she would be unable now to fight back, but she can still manage the stairs down from our access balcony unaided, if slowly, and sits happily grass chewing and getting some fresh air. She has of late even been very vocal about making her wish to go outside known and summoned us to the door on a number of occasions!

She is still the same old cat, she still struggles to jump on the bed with us, though nowadays not every night, she still adorns PG's lap at every opportunity, she can still purr with the best of them, she still has a passion for catnip, she would still kill for fresh chicken or tuna, she can still cuff Ditto about he ears should she over-step the mark and she still has us wrapped around her little paws! Her latest favourite treat is 'room service' (as illustrated below). Room service 'Poppy style' of course entails feeding her wherever she happens to be, just so long as it is out of the way of the ever greedy Ditto....even if she happens to be on the living room windowsill!

And so there you have it, a Poppy update, some negatives but some positives too, she is still a happy cat and for now that is the best we can hope for, the rest we try our best not to think of and just enjoy her while we can.

*sniffle*


Room service!

Blimey!

I posted five times yesterday, can you tell I had nothing to do?! Is that a personal record I wonder. Heh.

The British obsession

We Brits are of course infamous for one thing, our obsession with the weather! That said I intend to uphold the tradition again here and now.

The last few days in this corner of Scotland we have been subjected to everything from bright clear sunshine accompanied by beautiful blue skies, to howling winds and hail. Temperatures have fluctuated from around 14 degrees in the day to only 2 degrees at night. Most days the cloud has cleared by late afternoon and the resultant nighttime clear skies whilst causing the chill allow for evening sunsets and cloud formations that are a sight to behold.

My little camera and I can't really do the sight suitable justice, there are times when I could be...um.... tempted, very expensively to get 'into' photography again but until such time as I win the lottery these will have to suffice!

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All aglow.


Orange ripple.


Heavenly rays

Beautiful

Courtesy of Ditto, who while trundling around her friend and neighbours garden, snapped it off unceremoniously! One beautiful tulip, donated by it's original owner, as a gift from said small cat for my enjoyment.

I thought it might brighten your day too.

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Single and stunning.


Look into my eye.

Oh...the disappointment

As ever, a quick meander through my referrer lists this morning provided amusement. There is always one isn't there, the individual who ended up at your little patch of the blogosphere as a result of a nefarious search. You gotta laugh.

today's amusement was provided by some poor soul Googling 'knicker blogs'. I can only imagine the utter disappointment(heh) on the face of some hormonally charged teenager or socially challenged fetishist as they opened the page, only to find nothing more erotic than a cats nose and Ditto!(NO! Please don't even go there).

I googled the phrase myself only to find that in a list of 'knicker blogs' I am number seven, all rather worrying when you consider that the reason for my inclusion in this questionable search result was a post months ago regarding we women's fight for comfort over our mans preferences!

Sorry sunshine but whoever you were, there are no steamy pics to be had here, no raunchy narrative, nothing you can purchase in a plain brown envelope....just me and my cats!

....and doubtless now that I have included the word 'fetishist' this won't be the last incident of amusement.

Sorry guys......

....but it's too true amusing to resist!

Nominated as the best short joke this year:

A three-year-old boy was examining his testicles while taking a bath.
"Mum," he asked, "are these my brains?"
"Not yet," she replied.

Fiddle faddle and Firefox....again

Not to be beaten I have put my little 'cat noses' back in this template and hopefully I no longer have the text jumbled up and overlaying them now! As ever it was Firefox causing me difficulty, or at least that's all I thought it was, until a Mac user pointed out the same problem.

Well, with a little luck and a lot of fiddle faddle it is sorted, at least I know it is for Firefox but as I don't have a Mac and the associated software I can't judge how this looks for those users. So please, someone, anyone, using a Mac to view this, or indeed any other browser, or o/s..... it would be much appreciated if you would let me know if the main text is now un-jumbled from the 'noses'!

What a Sunday!

I would be most appreciative if those involved in making my Sunday the nightmare it was would note that I could bloody well do without another like it for a while!

Saturday was average but tiring, PG and I went to bed at a reasonable hour for once in an effort to be able to function on Sunday but regardless I woke up feeling like crap, bad head, bad tummy, bad everything. None the less I pottered off to work at the appointed hour, feeling very shivery and set about the days tasks.

From that point on my day degenerated badly. By 11.00 my patience with rude and arrogant customers was wearing thin, my boss it seems, had also fallen out of bed the wrong side and made our lives more difficult, pick, pick, pick, moan, moan, moan. A colleague had managed to beat me about the head almost poking my eye out in the process and further aggravating my sore head and I had the joy of a staff member who repeatedly would not do or be as I asked, despite my having 'words' on two occasions. Gah, the rest of us have rules and procedures to abide by, apparently this individual feels exempt and has the hide of a rhinoceros! FFS!

I plodded on close to boiling point for most of the day, biting my lip and counting to 100 as opposed to the normal 10, looking forward with glee to escaping home and doing something fun.

It was not to be, by the time I got home I was passed 'fun'. PG made dinner and we settled down to watch TV together. Within 10 minutes we were both asleep! We woke a while later, stiff and cold and crawled into bed for the night at 9.55....good God, I don't 'do' going to bed early but the next thing I knew it was 6.30 this morning and PG was leaving for work!

Hell-fire and damnation, I even missed coronation street! Pfffft.