Sunday 3 April
We are once again catless.
Our dear cat Rosie died in July 2003 and we missed her terribly. (We still do.) But we soon noticed that one good thing about having no cats in the house was that we didn't have to keep shutting doors all the time. Our stair carpet is irresistible to cats, who use it as a scratching post. But it has a loop pile with rather loose threads, and cats only have to touch it to reduce it to a state of mangy disrepair. So we always had to be careful to keep our cats corralled to one side of the house. You wouldn't believe how liberating it felt, once we were cat-free, to be able to leave all the doors open and to move freely around the house without opening and closing them all the time.
We only had a couple of months of catlessness, however. In September 2003 Liz broke up with her boyfriend and came home to live with us, bringing her cat Tiffin with her. She promised us at the time that she would only be here for a few months, and that Tiffin would move to Bristol with her by Christmas. But Christmas 2003 came and went, and so did Christmas 2004. The problem was that Liz was totally unable to find any accommodation where they would allow her to keep pets. So she had to move to Bristol on her own, leaving Tiffin with us, and once again we had to get used to a regime of continually shutting doors, and chasing the cat when she escaped into the hallway.
Liz is still living in Bristol, but she has recently moved into a house that she is renting together with an ex-boyfriend (not the same boyfriend she left in 2003 – this one goes back a good deal further than that). They are still good friends and she seems very happy with the arrangement. In the new house pets are allowed, and there is even a cat flap. Liz came to stay with us for a few days over Easter, and she has now (at last, after 18 months!) taken Tiffin back to live with her. We're not entirely sorry to see Tiffin go. She is an unresponsive cat, not very affectionate, and she scratched all the carpets, not just the stair carpet. We're not going to get any more cats – we are both slightly allergic to them, and in any case we want to be free to travel without having to pay for cat-sitters.
When Tiffin left, I told Mary it would only be a few days before she adopted another cat. Sure enough, a couple of days later, she noticed a cat hovering near the back door, looking famished, with an unkempt coat and big pleading eyes. Mary said that she had seen this animal wandering round the neighbourhood previously and she suspected it must be a stray. She put down a saucer of milk and a plate of food (some roast duck left over from our Easter dinner, no less) outside the back door. The cat was very nervous and ran away when it saw Mary, but it reappeared as soon as she came indoors, and it soon wolfed down the food and drink. Then it ran off again. I had a nasty feeling that it would be coming back every evening, and would find its way into the house before long. But Mary thought that there must be another neighbour who regularly feeds it and perhaps had gone away for a few days at Easter. It seems she was right. At any rate, we haven't seen this scavenging cat since then, so presumably it has found someone who feeds it with something more appetising than roast duck, if such a thing is possible.
Instead of a stray cat, Mary has found a human waif to adopt. A couple of weeks ago she was in the post office and got talking to a Spanish girl who wanted directions to the local library. It turned out that this girl came from Gran Canaria, and had travelled on the same flight as us when we returned to Leeds a month ago. She is working as an au pair with a local family who are treating her disgracefully. I won't go into the details, but Laura has taken to spending time at our house in order to escape from this family. She is a very nice girl and it has been a pleasure to get to know her. On Friday we took her for an excursion to see something of the Yorkshire countryside, which is looking at its best at this time of year. Laura is very appreciative of everything that we do for her, but she is embarrassed at accepting our hospitality all the time. We explained to her that we have always been overwhelmed by the kindness that people have shown to us when we have lived abroad (especially during our years in Philadelphia). We were never able to repay these good people, but what we can do is to pass on that hospitality to people who come our way. We told Laura that when she is a successful journalist (which is her ambition) she will be able to do the same to others.
Laura was supposed to work as an au pair with this nightmare family for six months, and her aim was to improve her English sufficiently to pass the qualifying exam for her journalism course. But since these people never speak to her at all except to criticise her work, she has decided to leave them next month and go to stay with a friend of hers in Dublin. Until then, we'll keep open house for her to find refuge whenever she needs to escape from them.
Saturday 9 April Wedding Anniversary
We were married on 9 April 1966, making today our 39th anniversary. We don't take these things too seriously these days, so apart from sending each other anniversary cards, we have not done anything in the way of celebrations (except for a bit of reminiscing and wondering where the years disappeared to). Next year will be different. A 40th anniversary is too significant to let pass without ceremony. But the ceremony will not take the form of a family gathering. We tried that for our 25th anniversary in 1991, and it was not a success.
What happened then was that we laid on a party for the family. All went well until the conversation turned to the sad story of my great-uncle Stephen who was eaten by a lion. Some of Mary's relatives had not heard this story, so we had to tell them the gory details. My mother's Uncle Stephen died at the age of 23, on 14 August 1904, in a jungle somewhere near Nairobi. He had gone to Kenya on a big-game hunt and was camping in the forest before going to look for lions to shoot the following day. But the lion got its retaliation in first and attacked Uncle Stephen's tent during the night. Frankly, it's hard to feel much sympathy for this victim of poetic justice, and I have always thought of this story as being a bit of a joke. At the party, we were making fun of Uncle Stephen's sad ending, and Mary's sister-in-law Marion, who hadn't heard the story before, thought it was hilarious. But my mother's sister, Auntie Flo, suddenly got very upset. She turned on Marion and said furiously "Well I don't know why you're laughing, he was my uncle and I don't think it's funny at all." I was surprised at this outburst because Auntie Flo was not born until 1911 so she could never have known her Uncle Stephen. But she was the only member of her generation still alive at the time of the party, and I think it was a rather sad occasion for her. She was probably thinking of all the other relatives who were no longer alive.
At any rate, this incident rather spoiled the atmosphere of the party. Mary was very embarrassed that Marion had been shouted at, and she has always said that she never again wants a family party. Personally, I think she is over-reacting, but since I don't much like parties anyway, I'm happy enough to do without them.
What all this means is that for our 40th anniversary next year, we'll be doing something other than having a party. Since we both love travelling, we are thinking in terms of a major trip abroad, probably to South Africa, and maybe including a wildlife safari. But we won't be intending to shoot any jungle beasts except with cameras, and we'll hope that the lions will leave us alone at night.
Footnote. This entry is being posted late, because the server that I use is down. This is the first time in four years that FatCow has let me down, so I suppose I can't complain too much. Needless to say, if you can read this it means that the server is up and running again.
Thursday 14 April
A brief follow-up to the footnote at the end of the previous entry: Four years ago I decided to move my web site from GeoCities and to get my own domain name lobo-solo.com. I looked round for a suitable domain hosting service and settled on FatCow, which seemed to offer a very adequate service for $99/year. Since then I have had nothing but praise for them. They provide a rock-solid reliable service which has never once let me down (until last weekend), fast and straightforward both to upload and to download. So it came as a nasty shock when I tried to upload last Saturday's entry and found that the site was inaccessible. I was also unable to get at my email.
After a bit of research I found a news item announcing that FatCow had been taken over a few days previously by an outfit called Endurance International, which is itself a subsidiary of the Audax Group. I then discovered that neither FatCow's home page nor Endurance International's was functioning. Further research revealed that FatCow's servers (in Albuquerque, NM) were being relocated chez Endurance International in Burlington, MA. It seems as though this move resulted in some kind of disaster, because the whole of the FatCow and Endurance International operations were offline from about 3:45pm on 9 April until 7:00pm the following day. In the past, FatCow have been scrupulously careful to warn their customers about any impending maintenance work or possible interruption of service, but this time there was no prior warning or information of any kind.
Normal service now seems to have been resumed, and Endurance International have said that they will maintain the FatCow brand and personnel. If so, I'll be happy to stick with them, but if there are any more fiascos like last weekend's then I'll be looking for another hosting service.
When we lived in Philadelphia in 1971–72 we were invited to join a book reading group. I liked the discipline of being encouraged to read a book that I might not otherwise have thought of reading each month, and the opportunity to discuss it with a bunch of other people. Ever since then I have thought that I would like to join a similar group, but I have never had the time for it. But that's the great thing about retirement – it gives you the time to do the things you always wanted to do if only you had the time. (Well, maybe not all the things you wanted to do, but at any rate some of them.) I found out that the wife of a colleague belongs a local reading group which she enjoys, and I sounded her out as to whether I could join it. She was a bit dubious, because the group is popular and has a limit on the number of members. But recently one of the members left the group and I was invited to join.
For my first meeting, a few days ago, the assigned text was the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, just the sort of book that I would never have dreamt of reading but which turned out to be very enjoyable. I was a bit apprehensive before the meeting, knowing that several of the members were English teachers with a vastly greater knowledge of literature than me. My colleague (the one whose wife introduced me to the group) tried to wind me up by emphasising how intellectually cutthroat they were, and adding that I would probably be (a) the only male in the group and (b) the youngest by many years. But they were all very friendly and there was an interesting discussion which I was able to join in without feeling too inferior. There are 15 people in the group, including three other men, and several who are certainly no older than me.
I think I'm going to enjoy this monthly event. The reading list for the rest of the year is quite varied. Next month's assignment is Edward Said's autobiography Out of Place, another book that I would never have read on my own initiative. I haven't started it yet, so I don't know whether I will like it. I think I won't usually comment on the book group choices in this journal. I prefer to reserve reviews here for books that I have actually chosen myself. Maybe I'll occasionally mention one if I think it's especially worth recommending.
Saturday 16 April
If you're eligible to vote in the general election on 5 May (or even if you're not), here's an interesting test to see which party best represents your views. It's fairly clear which way I should be voting.
Who should I vote for?
Your expected outcome:
Liberal Democrat
Your actual outcome:
| |  Labour 2 |
Conservative −56  |
| | Liberal Democrat 64 |
| UK Independence Party −23 |
| | Green 1 |
You should vote: Liberal Democrat
The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.
Take the test at Who Should You Vote For.
Sunday 24 April
Earlier this month I mentioned Mary's tendency to adopt stray cats and girls. Things have moved on a bit since then.
To take the cat first, the nervous, mangy grey cat that was loitering near our back door has become a regular visitor. Mary has stocked up on cat food, and the cat appears very regularly at breakfast and again at dinner time for a plate of food and a saucer of water. But it is still just as shy and mistrustful of humans as it was at first. It runs away as soon as Mary opens the door and peeps out from behind the garage as she puts down the food. Then when she closes the door behind her it immediately comes back to eat, but always warily, looking up at the window to see if there's anyone watching, but avoiding eye contact. Mary contacted the local vets to ask if anyone had reported a missing cat. There were two possible leads but they both proved negative. She is coming to the conclusion that the animal must be feral, because she has never known a domestic cat that would be so suspicious of her. She invariably succeeds in getting any cat to nuzzle round her in a very short time. So now we are going to phone the RSPCA and see if they will send someone to catch this animal (and we won't ask too many questions about what they then do with it). Even sentimental cat-loving Mary reckons that it's not a good thing to have feral cats on the neighbourhood, especially if they start hunting the birds that she likes to feed. The RSPCA can be trusted to deal with the cat in an appropriate and humane way, whatever that might be.
The situation with the girl is more interesting. Laura is a very sweet-natured, innocent Spanish girl, from Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. She is in her mid-twenties but looks and acts like a teenager. She came to Leeds to work as an au pair for a single mother with a ten year old daughter. We have not met this woman, but from the way she treated Laura we believe that she must be quite mentally disturbed. Mary calls her la pirada (Spanish for the nutcase). Anyone less patient and demure than Laura would have walked out within a couple of days, but she stayed for four weeks in a tiny two-bedroom flat, looking after the daughter, doing the housework and being constantly criticised and yelled at by la pirada. She often came round to spend the evenings with us rather than stay in the flat, where she had to share a bedroom with the daughter and was expected to go to bed at the same time as the girl. Yes, la pirada actually expected this young woman to go to bed at 8pm every evening. Things came to a head when la pirada started accusing Laura of abusing the daughter in some unspecified way. She decided that it was no longer possible for her to stay in that place, and since then she has been staying with us.
I suppose it's a slightly odd situation for us to have an au pair living with us, when we don't have any young kids for her to look after. But she has been very helpful around the house. Her parents have sent her money for living expenses, and they insisted that she should pay us for board and lodging. We tried to refuse, and we certainly couldn't have taken as much money as she was proposing to give us. After a long argument between Mary and Laura, we agreed to accept enough money to cover the cost of her food, but no more. She has been staying with us for about ten days, and will be here until 11 May when she goes to stay with a friend in Dublin. We have enjoyed taking her out on excursions to see something of the local countryside, and she has been busy practising her English and teaching Mary some Spanish. She is very affectionate in an old-fashioned way, embracing and kissing us when she greets us each morning and when she goes up to bed at night.
If only she were a boy!
