2007 — 17 November: misty moisty Saturday
I'm trying something else new today. I think I shall call it "getting organised".1 We all have to do it sooner or later, I suspect. I've been reading Cathy's book on Natural Death (not in the least morbid, despite the title) and it has some great ideas in it.
Meanwhile, here's a picture of one of yesterday's pigs taken within an hour of my eating2 bacon, I confess, and cropped to exclude all traces of the (plentiful) evidence of a variety of working digestive systems3 in the immediate vicinity. Sorry, Mrs Pig. (Love your high heels!):
Next pleasant experience
Will be Junior's safe arrival here, I hope, later today. He called me in the early afternoon to say he was "surfacing", and had a couple of hours of stuff to do in town before setting off.
Next unpleasant experience
In fact, frankly appalling. You may remember our neighbour's good-looking cat, Casper from back in May? Christa had called to me to take some pictures of him as he sat on another neighbour's car. He's been missing since Wednesday evening.
Earlier this afternoon, I discovered his body, drowned in the water butt in our back garden. He must have dislodged its lid, and fallen in. It is surely a ghastly Koestlerian coincidence that I took the pictures of Casper in May on the very day that said water butt was delivered to our house? I don't know when he fell in. I've been tending to avoid the garden as a) it's been fairly nasty weather, b) I've been rather pre-occupied, and c) — very likely the real reason — it was very much Christa's domain — don't tell me that's stupid; I'm fully aware of it. (When She was well, I liked few things better than sitting quietly on the garden bench chair with Her, holding Her hand, and admiring the results of Her hard work as She talked me through Her latest triumphs. Latterly, of course, Her pain made it impossible even for Her to sit with me. Loathsome disease.)
I've gained a greater understanding, recently, of the predeliction of our friends in the medical profession to exhibit rather a black humour. As Ernest Bramah's creation, Kai Lung, puts it: "Should a person in returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier, before it is too late; for evil never travels alone."
I've drained out the water butt, and inverted it. Casper has been taken for burial in my neighbour's garden. Thank goodness I was at least able to offer Richard and Yvette copies of the dozen or so photos I took of him that day. Jesus wept. I hardly dare contemplate what else can possibly happen this week.