Wednesday 13 August 2008

The distinctive sound of squelching pussy

No idea; 7.5 units of alcohol yesterday; 1,271; on the Motorway of Life approaching the Disorientated Pensioner of Doom, driving his mobility scooter erratically along the fast lane in the wrong direction.

Why do cats eat in the night? If we park that fascinating zoological query for a while, and just accept that cats do eat in the night, why would you place their food dishes adjacent to your bed, so that the sound of them slurping like a lot of superannuated Orientals at a soup-eating contest would be guaranteed to wake you up? Well, maybe not you personally so much as your elderly boyfriend, who is only a light sleeper at the best of times and has been suffering from chronic indigestion as a result of eating two large meals the previous day, the second one of which was preceded and followed by stressful experiences on the road.

When she had finished moaning about the long walk back to the car from the restaurant last night, the LTCB announced that she was going to take us home by a short cut she knew. Then she drove off in a direction which even a blind man who had just been made to revolve on the spot for half an hour as part of a cruel and unusual disorientating torture could have told her was completely the wrong way.

Eventually she pretended that she had done it deliberately because she wanted to show me a really interesting country pub. No wonder she likes my Border terrier so much. They have the same breed characteristic of never admitting to a mistake. In the days when we had proper winters, one of the highlights for me was always watching a Border terrier falling flat on its face on a patch of ice, in the sure and certain knowledge that it would rise to its feet and put on a dignified face with an expression which clearly conveyed “I meant to do that.”

Then she performed a U-turn, mercifully in a reasonably safe location after she had correctly interpreted my high-pitched scream as an attempt to veto her first bright idea of performing a three-point turn in the middle of a blind bend on a busy stretch of road.

Anyway, back to my questions. I have an unfair advantage here because I already know the answer to the second one, namely that the cats cannot be fed in their usual place downstairs because of the presence of the dog I have brought with me. Knowing that I would be one step ahead in this quiz afforded me some consolation when I was woken for perhaps the third time tonight at 5 a.m., as one of our feline chums tucked into a little something to keep its strength up for the important work of half-killing birds and spreading hairs around the furniture.

Still, at least it provided me with an excuse to take a long look at the sleeping LTCB, and remind myself why it is well worth putting up with really quite a lot of such incidental inconveniences. I drove home in the afternoon and returned to my old Bloke in the North existence, huddled by a log fire reading The Daily Telegraph. No wonder I am so much less miserable since I diversified into the Cheshire market.

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