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CatWithNoName

In the beginning, there was Elsie the beautiful little dog, who I think might have been a mottled brown Staffordshire Terrier. She had a boydog partner who arranged for her to have a litter of little babydogs. Much cuteness ensues, but the big boydog got aggressive and had to move home, never to be seen again.

Then came two kittens, one pure black, and one black and white. I have told the story of the black and white little girl before. She was not loved, and was so hungry she would sneak into our house regularly to steal food and slept in the neighbours’ bin. She got a temporary home at my mother in law’s house, but did not get on with the dog, so had to move on too. Hopefully now she’s happy, being cat number 5 in a very catty household.

Before the beautiful black and white girlcat left, another doggie appeared, in Alsatian form. She’s big enough to ride and very friendly. Most of the time we see her in a cage though the neighbour’s door, and I’ve never seen her with a lead on to go for a walk. I’ve not seen Elsie go for a walk either.

Yesterday, I had fun sitting outside and *trying* to take Folksy photos – but spending quite a lot of time stroking the lovely little black boycat, who had assigned himself to “helping the humans” duty. We like each other well enough that he assertively plopped down on my lap a couple of times and began to purr, as well as just generally getting in the way as cutely as possible.

Before little black and white girlcat left us we noticed she had started growing faster than the boycat. This mostly meant she was catching him up in size, since she’d been a hungry cat up ’til then. Now we’ve figured out why boycat isn’t growing too fast. I saw some gross squirmy white worms dangling from his rear today. :( I wish that next door’s version of care didn’t involve mostly having animals about and feeding them occasionally. What about vaccinations, regular health treatments (yes, I mean worming pills or drops!), flea treatments (this was a problem with black and white girlcat – she gave our cats fleas…) and so on? If you take an animal in, aren’t you supposed to *care* for it?

I has a sad :( buying deworming drops for my monsters in case they’ve picked anything up from him, and I’ll try to gently mention it to the neighbours if I see them, but I don’t think it’s likely much’ll be done about the worms… How can he grow to full catly size without being able to absorb the food he eats because parasites get it instead?

I’ve been a fan of Queen pretty much all my life – the very first music album I bought myself was Queen’s Day at the Races (or possibly Night at the Opera! I can’t believe memory fails me…). They have a lot of obscure songs that I never really considered the meanings of too much. Some are obvious, like Death on Two Legs. The song is clearly about their hate of someone, who was the ex-band manager…..

A couple of years ago I was astounded to find out that one of my many favourite songs had far more background than I knew… Neil Gaiman posted about a painting called the fairy feller’s master stroke. Previously I’d only known the phrase as the title of a Queen song, so I had great fun listening to the song whilst looking at the painting and trying to identify which painted characters they were singing about. I also felt a bit like an uncultured philistine for not knowing where the original references came from…. It seems akin to someone mentioning Romeo and Juliet and me saying “oh yeah, I’ve seen that film….”

Today I came across another one with more meaning than I knew: ’39. I love the sound of the song, but never *quite* got it. The lyrics seemed to be about colonisation, but the uneven ageing didn’t make much sense. I sort of assumed it was some sort of strange magic, since there are a lot of Queen songs that are fantasy based (not usually the ones that made it into the hits though). Think Ogre Battle, The Prophet’s Song (this song MUST be listened to in Stereo or even Surround sound), and My Fairy King. Anyway, today I was browsing for space-themed songs (not entirely sure why, but I started to put a playlist of space songs together) and came across a post on io9 where ’39 was mentioned in the comms as a relativistic space/time travel song. All of a sudden, ’39′s lyrics clicked into place.

For so many years have gone
Though I’m older but a year
Your mother’s eyes from your eyes cry to me.
~ Lyrics from: LyricsFreak

That paragraph makes so much sense now.

So, if this interests anyone but Benyamin I shall be surprised… but I shall have to make a note to look into Queen lyrics more carefully from now on. Also, I should really complete my album set. I only have A Day at the Races, A Night at the Opera, Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Kind of Magic, Made In Heaven, and some various Greatest Hits.

Fuck me. It’s really nearly 20 years since Freddie died… :(

Mostly life has been difficult enough that I’ve been unable to do the blogging I’d have liked to do (blogging in my head doesn’t count…..) partially because things have been too sensitive, or study is needed, and quite often simply because I am spending a lot of time at Darren’s mum’s house, which is a dead zone for mobile phone internet, and doesn’t have anything like a work desk where I can sit and use my Eee without straining my already miserable wrists and fingers.

But, saying that: Life is settling down a bit now, I think.

• I don’t have any study for a few months. Woo! A break! But also poo, I want my degree faster! I’m no longer 10 and in need of summer holidays to run wild and free! (I just run wild and free whenever I can anyway).
• Darren and I have settled into a rough pattern of eating most meals at his mum’s house, except for sometimes when she comes around to ours.
• Hopefully I’ll be able to start Martial Arts up again next week. I trieeeeed to last week, texted Sensei, but found out classes were cancelled. In my head my body has become a giant exerciseless balloon after the hectic last few months, but I can’t be too bad really. I’ve managed to get out on my bike a few times for short and mediumish rides.
• I have a freaking car. I hate cars. The insurance cost me £900 which is just…. nasty. I have a year of no claims (and probably did the most driving!) but as I wasn’t the primary policyholder they don’t give a poopie about my lack of claims. So hopefully Darren’s mum will pass her test soon and I can get rid of the damn thing. Aren’t females supposed to get cheaper insurance? Urgh blurgh.
• I have a few domain names and interwebby projects that have been on hold for a few months. I intend to try and polish them some more, and get portfolioriffic. My new employers have made my job so brain numbing and full of dead end admin that I’m just waiting for the team redundancy announcement… I wanna do code for money!!
• Something embarrassingly girly that I’ll save for last: when D’s dad first went into hospital we were looking for things to do that weren’t normal things, because we didn’t want to assiciate shitty times with those activities. We stopped MMORPGing (LOTRO), table top gaming too….. bought bookshelves to make the attic even tidier, so on. At the time, I found some old beads I’d bought and an old flame flared up….. So I’ve spent FAR too much on beads, threads, cords, and findings recently. Buy some of it here, for yourself, for your friends, for your Significant Others… or just spread the word for me, to anyone you think might buy some. I’ll be grateful, and if I know you’re the spreader, I’ll give you free stuff… See the link:

My Folksy Store – crafty stuff, mostly jewellery, with a keychain and decorated USB flash drive as well.

I love the lonely misty land. Possibly more than sun. There’s something about a light rain that just makes me NEED to get out. (Yesterday the rain made me get off the train early to cycle along the canal for a few miles, and I got home feeling invigorated. Also, I was rather wet, but that’s ok… )

Route: Bamford – Win Hill – Hope.

The route was based around the Thornhill trail, a disused (and de-railed) railway. I knew it was nice and flat, and was there to check it out for access points. There are a surprising amount of wheelchair-accessible scenic walk routes, if you know where to look. Partway through down the path there’s an intersection with a road that provides wonderful access. We’ll hopefully go there with my parents in law in the next few weeks. I don’t want to go ASAP – I’d rather wait until there’s a bit more spring evident. I find it lovely but worry others might find it a tad bleak…

The highlights of the journey were probably the flora snaps I got:

All in all it was a pleasant albeit short walk. I had a funny time getting off the hill I’d ascended, involving slipping and sliding down a very muddy trail under the watchful eye of two hikers at the top who’d stopped for lunch. I was slipping so much I kept on cracking up at myself. I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t just clumsiness…

I took a relaxed pace the whole time (not surprising when I found out I’d taken 130 photos!!!). Just as I approached the train platform, about 100 metres away, I heard a squeal and saw a train braking at my platform. I was incredibly pleased to catch it (by running my legs off) sine I’d not been paying attention to the clock and had no idea what times the trains were running at. I got on and plonked my bag down on my knees only to find out that my playpus hose was slightly loose… but I didn’t notice until it’d leaked enough to make it look and feel like I’d peed myself (niiiice eh?). Luckily my trousers were designed for walking in the wet and dryed out pretty fast.

Side note: remember my mandarin duck? I saw him again yesterday. I love that little guy.

And the blog appears to be up, working, and faster besides. I have a happy :)

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