Monday, 28th March, 2005

On Being a Mum

I'm becoming increasingly worried about George. Everyone who has been around to visit recently has commented on how thin he looks, I have noticed myself, but when you're with someone (or in this case, a cat) every day, you tend not to notice gradual changes.

What's worrying me is that he seems not to be eating.

A few weeks ago, I decided it would be an idea to put him on special older-cat food — he was having a period of constant throwing up, and I reasoned that maybe the usual cat food was too rich for him.

For the first few days, it was OK — but then he stopped eating that stuff.

So what I did last week was to go out and get some Kitty Smack (Whiskas pouches), but "senior" Kitty Smack.

Sure enough, I put it down in front of him and he started lapping it up. I have a constant battle with Tish and Biscuit to keep them away from it though.

But last night, I noticed something a bit worrying. You see, after five minutes of me frantically trying to hold Tish and Biscuit off the food, George would stop eating, and because I hate the thought of wet food going off and yukky, I'd let one of the other two finish it off. But last night, I noticed that George wasn't actually eating the food — he was just licking the gravy off.

You're probably wondering at the moment why I haven't taken him to the vet yet. Well, and this might seem a little crap, but I have a mental block on the vet. It's got something to do with Cabbage — something to do with the idea that it was the vet that was responsible for her being put down, and I still can't quite forgive myself for that.

So what I'm going to do today, is hope that the supermarket is open again (silly holidays) and buy Georgie some fish. Kath's been saying to me that fish is probably the best thing for him at the moment.

If he doesn't start eating it, then I'll take him to the vet.

Personally, I think he's just getting old. One of my colleagues who lives over in Harrogate has a very old cat called Reg — he's about 20 I think. He's very similar to George in the way that he moves, and he's just as skinny and his fur is ust as mottled.

Look, we'll see OK?

No, I disagree — I think he's just being a picky sod. I just gave them a tin of tuna between them — and he's polished it off.

See?

I've got them a piece of haddock for tea — I've never cooked fish before (can't stand it personally ) so I think I'm just going to grill it and then feed them chunks

In Your Face, Araucaria

Ha! 1.58pm and I've just finished The Guardian Easter Holiday Crossword Unfortunately, Kath is not around for me to gloat and jump up in the air going "I am so clever, I am so clever" — which is why I thought I'd take the opportunity to share it with everyone else

Do please ignore me

Because, my dear, I'm not particularly fond of people who tell me to "get a life" then go through everything I've ever written pointing out spelling mistakes.

I'm not, as regular readers will know, afraid of debate, or constructive comments — I've even been known to put my troll-feeding outfit on and go on a mission. But sometimes I can't be bothered, and the joy of running your own server means that you can shut people out with a few tweaks to .htaccess when you don't feel up to taking hassle.

If it wasn't you who said "get a life" earlier, then I apologise — but you and he(?) share the same IP address, so I doubt it. Anyway, whatever, I've commented out the .htaccess lines. Help yourself. Just remember that this is my house — and I get to chose who comes in, and when to shut the door.

...

Ian, could well be honey — it wouldn't be the first time George has had tooth problems. Like his mother, he's had all his wisdom teeth out already. I'll keep an eye on that Thanks

A Quick Note of Frustration

Sorry, I just want to volcalise this...

So right, I'm browsing my way through Mr Tom Coates's plasticbag.org, and I spot yet another mention of Warwick University's 'innovative' blog experiment.

I find that frustrating — on two levels.

(1) I'm doing a very similar thing with our students, but I don't feel I can give it the publicity it deserves because I've had to make the whole thing private — because of a paranoid approach to trusting students to be responsible when posting stuff on the net.

(2) I'd love to be able to go into great lengths with the students about what you can achieve with a weblog — and the most obvious example to show them would be mine. But, I can't.

...

There was no actual point to mentioning that BTW, I just wanted to get it off my chest.

Hmm, I'll try and explain sometime Rachel...

...in the meantime:

Channel Four, 7.05 — 8.30pm: Thunderpants. Only worth mentioning because of the Radio Times's wonderfully acerbic review ... "this pathetic British embarrassment is, quite frankly, pants"

Hmm, I just thought of something really cool I could do ...

Yeah, OK. I'll take him to the vet this week. I'm still not happy about it though.

Incidently, the fish? I poached the haddock in milk with a knob of butter ... but even Biscuit wouldn't touch it. George ate a little, but there are still three full bowls of fish down there.

One good thing came of it though — I thought the fish tasted quite good. I might have to try doing some for me and Kath.

I've always hated fish — except the sort that comes in fingers and from the chippy. Dunno what it is — I remember once walking into my mother's kitchen when she was cooking fish, and I fainted ... no idea why. Maybe the smell.

But I think also, it's got something to do with fish being quite a delicate taste — my tastebuds are shot to hell from smoking all these years. I need great big meaty flavours otherwise I can't taste anything.

(and before anyone says it, no. I'm not about to give up. There is absolutely nothing you could possibly say to me that would make me give up. I will one day, but only when I want to. Either that or I'll do it just to piss everyone off who thinks I won't )

Rrrrrrrrrockkkkkk!

9.04pm and Siobhan is making her way through "The Best Rock Anthems in the World EVER"

I've just sung my way through Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse Of The Heart and I'm halfway through Survivor's Eye of the Tiger.

Love it I can feel the testosterone course through my veins

Hello, what's this? Is that Temple of Love by the Sisters of Mercy further down my playlist...?

mwah ha har

Dear Angus Deaton

I have some predictions for you. How about "I will never work for Sky" — how about "I will present Have I Got News For You forever"? "I will never snort coke of the thigh of a prostitute"?

Crap TV. But you gotta love it.

I'm waiting for the IBM classic: "There will be demand for about five computers in the world" — totally taken out of context, but always good for a laugh. And in second place, Bill Gates with "Computers will never need more than 32K of RAM" ... which would be before Word came out yes?

Speaking of Mums...

My mother just called. Seems her and my Dad have been offered quite a good deal on their house. £260K to move out and a further £90K if the developer gets planning permission.

I have mixed views about this, as I've already said. If they go through with this, then it means that the house I grew up in is going to be demolished — the room where Siobhan first started to appear is going to crumble.

But then again, maybe I should just move on eh?

On the plus side, she's promised to save some of the horse chestnut seedlings so I can start regrowing the trees. You see, we have quite a few trees on our land — about 10 massive horse chestnuts and quite a few pine trees.

I remember as a kid, playing in those trees — if they are going to get cut down, then I need to grow a replacement.

...

One day, I'll write about little memories I have as a kid — playing in trees, exploring the river, stuff like that. But one day — obviously not today.

Why, Exactly, Should I Be Surprised...

When a programme on Rupert Murdoch's arse-wiping-fest of a channel Sky pisses me off?

I mean, c'mon ... Miriam

So yeah, my little rantages this evening have been directed towards "The Worst 50 Predictions Ever" on Sky One tonight. And, despite the overwhelming smugness of the whole tone of it all, one thing really pisses me off...

Of course the Millenium Bug didn't happen. But only because we all did something about it.

What irritates me is sceptical wankers who did nothing at the time, sitting back and pretending that they were right. Every time my Mac gets a glitch (no, it does happen ) and resets its clock to 1970, all hell breaks loose and it takes me ages to recover. So imagine what would happen if my server thought it was 1900.

Look, I'm sorry, I'm ranting for no great effect. It's just that it annoys me the complacency that some people have.

It would be like, a character in Armegeddon turning round after Bruce Willis saves the world and saying "See, I told you there was nothing to worry about"

pah

Of course, come 2040, we're all fucked.

No really

OK, I've made an appointment for him for 3.10pm today. Getting George to the vet is always easy — with his love of climbing in boxes, I just put the carrier in the living room and he gets straight in. Thank God it's not something wrong with Tish — the last time I had to take him it took two hours to get him in the bloody box.

Nah. It's more like you go to your doctor, and he takes the nurse behind the screen and says "Nurse, I've discovered that this patient, unless they have a jab, are going to get a nasty bout of flu. Will you tell them that for me".

And the nurse comes out and tells you that unless you have every medication under the sun not only will you get cancer and plague and lurgy, also planes will drop out of the sky.

As usual, I blame the media. There definately was a millenium bug — it's a simple thing surely? If you use 2 digits to represent the year (like a lot of software did) then when it goes from 99 to 00 it's going to cause all sorts of problems.

Granted, those problems are likely to just be a little bizarre — like people's ages getting messed up, and maybe bank accounts going weird — but that sort of thing doesn't sell newspapers.

So what the media do, is they talk to a few crack-pot computer scientists, who massively overblow the extent of the problem. I mean, can someone please explain to me how a calculation based on a date can cause an aircraft to fall from the sky?! Glitch for a second, maybe, but I can't see the pilot sat there saying "well, according to my instruments, flight hasn't been invented yet, so I'll be fucked if I'm taking over this thing".

So, and correct me if I'm wrong here, you've got countless people all over the planet beavering away making sure all the software is up to scratch and uses 4 digits for years, while the rest of the ignorant masses believe the hype that's being force-fed to them by the greedy press.

And then when things don't all go armageddon, instead of the papers saying "we were wrong" (which, as Piers Morgan found out, doesn't sell newspapers either), they turn round and find a much better story in rubbishing all the work that everyone did, and get to feel deeply smug about themselves by dredging up an obscure columnist who predited that there wouldn't be a big fuss.

That's why the tone of that programme annoyed me — because they were being smug, and it was only through hindsight (and finally listening to the non-crackpot computer scientists) that they realised that we didn't really need to stockpile food. And that it wasn't the end of the world.

But like I said, had they chose to run with the story "Geeks will have to work extra hard over the coming months" it wouldn't have sold half as many papers as "It's the End of the WORLD".

So, in a truely gargantuan piece of Irish neutrality, Becky, meh, you're both right — it just depends whose definition of the "millenium bug" you take: The computer scientists, or the media. Personally, I'll go with the scientists. After all, it was the media who predicted that the Internet would be the end of books