Black Doggerel

Bournemouth Hospital's on a virus alert and has banned visitors. That puts me at a loose end for the day, and I am very much not reassured to hear that Mum had diarrhoea and was vomiting yesterday.

Sister T had labour pains from Saturday night through to Sunday afternoon, but they didn't become frequent enough to go to hospital and then they stopped. Mum says - I wouldn't know this stuff - that's an awfully long time for false labour pains. No news since yesterday.

Sister E came and took Maisie away yesterday afternoon. Apparently she yowled and crapped in the cat carrier all the way to London, immediately dived behind the cooker on arrival and hasn't come out yet. That's about what I expected. I'll be surprised if E sees her this side of Wednesday, but she really didn't like being on her own and Mum looks like being in hospital at least another two weeks. I still think we did the right thing.

Mum wants me to carry on going to Grimmauld Place every day and tidy. I don't think I'm being unreasonable and selfish refusing to do it for at least the next few days.

I love it when I see the first hedgehog of the summer and it hasn't been run over. Squish loved it too. We walked past it twice on the round trip to Grimmauld Place and he pointed it beautifully the second time.

the first time - well, he certainly showed me where to look but I don't believe a classic point is meant to involve quite so much bouncing and yapping and getting your nose pricked.

also, a shout out to the Castlepoint night crew. I love you guys.

Fucking hell, my mother's cat is trying to kill me.

( More whining. More angst. Believe me, I know this is getting tedious. )

well, I was gonna stay at Grimmauld Place, but no one had told me Mum had cancelled both the broadband and the cable TV. So no Internet, and I couldn't even get Channel 5 (which was showing House and Grey's Anatomy, both of which I would have liked to see). I ended up watching fuckin' Big Brother and doing the washing-up and then came home because I was scared my brain might melt.

makes sense, because she never uses either, but still!

been to hospital, seen her. so small and frail and yellow. they're doing tests. I keep thinking of things I could and should have done before things got this bad. She's scared she has cancer; it runs in our family. The only one of Mum's family who didn't die of cancer was her youngest sister who passed out drunk and choked on her own vomit when she was my age (substance abuse runs in our family too). I don't think she does because she had a complete health check a few months back and I think they'd have found it then. I think she just pushed her liver too far. But we'll see.

my cat was all pleased to see me and spent nearly two hours sitting in my lap :)

( cat in lap! )

It's dark, it's pissing with rain, I have two loads of laundry and a bag of books and shopping. Too much to walk home with and Mum's fallen asleep, so a lift doesn't look likely.

Besides, I haven't hoovered yet, there are likely to be fireworks again tonight, I'm immensely enjoying reconnecting with my huge stash of DS9 episodes on videotape and Mum has about a pound of chocolate left over from Hallowe'en.

Extreme laziness is hereditary, yes... I'd download Gaim while I'm here but I'm afraid if I do that I may never leave.

(oh yeah - still horny. It's one of those more-you-get the more-you-want things, evidently...)

I haven't been home, which is why I'm not on IM... am currently at my mother's. I was right, Spike is much, much less upset by the bangs here. There are carpets and curtains to absorb some of the noise, the windows are smaller, there's one less outside wall, and there's my mother - she's one of those people that children and animals automatically love and trust. I've made good use of this many times over the years with hawks and ferrets and squirrels and all sorts, and where Spike is concerned she's as good as a DAP diffuser. He's still not very happy about all the bangs, but he's finding them more annoying than terrifying.

As for me - it's been a very good 24 hours, and I have some pics for you, but that'll have to wait till I'm home tomorrow - watch this space!

You scored as General Jeb Stuart. One of the poster boys of the Civil War, you're almost like a son to General Lee. Then you screw up at Gettysburg and eventually die in battle. Easy come, easy go... </td> William T. Sherman 85% General Nathan Bedford Forrest 85% General Jeb Stuart 85% General James Longstreet 70% U.S. Grant 65% General Ambrose Burnside 65% Robert E. Lee 60% General George McClellan 40% Stonewall Jackson 30% General Phillip Sheridan 25% Which American Civil War General are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Nicked from zogblog. Seems obscurely appropriate. I've never really heard of him. Maybe I'll look it up when I'm feeling less apathetic.

Made some good progress on the kitchen. I've filled two bin bags with ancient bottles of herbs and spices, ten year old bottles of vitamins, old wine-bottle corks, seasoning sachets from long-eaten ramen noodles, yellowed, brittle shopping lists and the like. Everything has a half-inch crust of sticky dust on it. What's hardest to shift are the fossilised splatters of ancient, sticky cooking oil that have hardened into something resembling smelly amber, but, like everything else, there's a secret - start by rubbing on some Cillit Bang (lifesaving stuff, that, even though you don't want to get it on your skin), leave to marinate for ten or so minutes and then scrub off with a Brillo pad.

Spike and Squish are being characteristically unhelpful. The hole in the middle of the lawn is bigger than ever, one of them keeps removing all the sheets from Mum's bed (how? why? who? No idea), and yesterday Spike trod in something foul and tracked it all up the stairs and onto Mum's underblanket (since the sheets had been removed) - so I had to wash both the underblanket and his feet, which he really didn't appreciate.

Cleaning usually makes me feel better. There's a grim satisfaction in defeating the hordes of filth minions, in drawing the line in the dirt and then wiping the dirt out.

Maybe I need to try harder.

Your Extroversion Profile:

Excitement Seeking: Very High

Assertiveness: High

Friendliness: High

Sociability: High

Cheerfulness: Medium

Activity Level: Low

urgh bleagh grllmp.

I don't like being here. It's soporific, it makes me even lazier than usual and the mess is making me depressed. I'm lounging around failing to get dressed, reading, playing with myself, watching TV, falling asleep every time I sit still for too long and not getting round to the cleaning.

Spike and Squish are enjoying it though - so much more opportunity for havoc and destruction. Spike is happy enough staring at the cat most of the day, with the odd dash-out-the-back-door-to-bark-at-nothing break, but Squish has already chewed up a scouring sponge he found in the bathroom and an unidentified plastic object (at least, it was unidentifiable by the time I found the pieces) and added a huge hole to the middle of what remains of Mum's lawn. He did this yesterday evening after it had been raining all day, too, so I looked out of the patio doors and saw his whole front half plastered with liquid mud... I had to pick him up and carry him to the bathroom and then shut the patio doors to stop Spike trying to swim in the hole.

We did go to the park yesterday, and since Squish has been improving and the long line is useless anyway if he has enough room to get speed up, I let him off the lead. He was doing really well - coming when called and everything - until Spike went into Evil Bugger mode and sharked the ball out from in front of his nose and broke his concentration. It was still something of an improvement, because all Squish did was run round the park ignoring me for five minutes and then come back without being called, but it wasn't quite what I'd wanted to happen.

Went shopping last night and also dropped back in at the flat for an hour to pick up some clothes and check on Charlotte and so forth. I WANNA GO HOOOOME!!!! Being here is like all the bad effects of smoking pot without any of the pleasant ones... I haven't had any for about four weeks now (mainly to save money for the London trip but also because it was just making me eat too much - taking a break from it seemed like a good plan) but it's so annoying being here that I'm starting to fancy some.

Except then I'd never get any cleaning done. So scratch that idea. Bleagh, bleagh, bleagh.

Edited to add: The one bright spot in the mess and squalor is Hollow Men. It may actually be exceeding expectations. And my expectations can be bloody high...

So, I'm back at Grimmauld Place.

Mum's away for a week, and I'm here catsitting. Maisie usually leaves the house in a raging sulk when Mum's away, but it's been pissing with rain here so she's lurking malevolently in her little den in Mum's wardrobe on the sock shelf, muttering rude remarks about me and the dogs and ungratefully eating everything I put in front of her. I'm also supposed to be cleaning. I haven't got very far yet, because the whole place is so crusty, disgusting and stuffed to the gills with crap and shite that I just don't know where to start.

Honestly, you wouldn't believe it if you didn't see it. It doesn't need a cleaner, it needs a fucking blowtorch and a wrecking ball. It's scary. I spent nine months living in an abandoned, burnt-out hotel once, with an itinerant collection of homeless junkies, whores, alkies and four dogs, and I swear to Dog even that wasn't as bad.

Well, maybe it was. But still. I had to clean the bathroom a little yesterday before I could bear to have a piss or a shower, then I had to throw away four bottles of body lotion (which I think used to belong to Auntie Sue, now dead these ten years) before I found one that wasn't too rancid to moisturise with.

How long do you have to keep Vaseline before it turns brown with age and smells funny? And wouldn't any normal person throw it away when it reached that point? There are tubes of stuff in the medicine cupboard that used to live in my grandmother's medicine cupboard, and she died seven-odd years ago... some of that shit is older than I am. I sympathise a little, because I inherited those pack rat genes myself - but this is bad even by my standards.

If I don't make any more entries after this, you'll know that the clotted hair in the bathroom sink was galvanised into life by the chemicals in the drain cleaner and crawled out and ate me. Either that, or Lord Lucan knocked me on the head when I surprised him hiding in the cupboard where the cleaning supplies live... because that sure as shit hasn't been opened for a while...

I am spending the night at Mum's, because Maisie has had an accident that may, possibly (worst case scenario) lead to her losing her leg and my poor mother is distraught and doesn't want to be alone, and we have another appointment at the vet at 0950 tomorrow morning. Which is why I'm not on MSN or Trillian today - I left it all logged on at home and they don't like being logged on in two places at once. And IM conversations are impossibly frustrating with this stupid retarded nasty keyboard Mum has here anyway.

I think Maisie's leg will probably be OK, actually. It's a lot better since we came back from the vet's and she's walking on it and moving it with only a little discomfort. I'll post the whole stupid story tomorrow when I have a functioning keyboard. Using this one is painful, and not in any sort of a good way.

You've all heard me bitching, pissing and moaning ad nauseam about how my entire social and sex life lives in the computer, right? So naturally, I turn to the computer once again to attempt to do something about it: look.

There's already been more response than the Trekkie site. And, in the meantime, I add another name to my list of fascinating men on the wrong continent, while all my UK contacts (so far) are either gay, strictly platonic, young enough to have been my sons, or in at least one case, all three. Perhaps it's the climate, or the Prophets (or whoever) telling me I ought to relocate.

After coming back from the vet's, I left Squish to snuggle with Mum and cheer her up while I decompressed by taking Spike to the park by himself for an hour. Poor Spike - I've been having to concentrate on Squish's issues so much lately that he's been shortchanged, purely because he's the one I don't have to worry about. We threw balls, we danced, he played with a terrier puppy that we've met a couple of times before, and we spent a good amount of time just sitting side by side in the grass loving each other. It was a jewel of a moment in a stinking dung heap of a day. My hero

Squish has added Creedence Clearwater Revival's Proud Mary to his playlist. On the other hand, he's learning to control the urge to sing at the top of his voice every single time he hears one of his songs - last night he slept through Black Dog - but he'll still sing out if I encourage him. I'll make a civilised dog out of the little monster yet...

I've realised exactly why I was far, far better at falconry than I'll ever be at dog training, and why my sister (who's a riding instructor and horse freak) never got on with hawks but can make my dogs behave better than I can with one look. Training a hawk is an essentially submissive process - you don't look the hawk in the eye, you indulge her every whim, and it's impossible to dominate or command a hawk to do anything, ever - you simply alienate her if you try. She does end up doing what you want her to do, yes, but the very core of successful hawk training is manipulating her to do what you want while she remains convinced it was all her idea in the first place. It's completely opposite in nature to working with a dog or a horse.

Even the old falconry terms reflect this. You don't "break" a hawk, you "man" her, "make" her and "serve" her. Although it's still the hawk that wears the leather cuffs and the leash, the whole dynamic of the relationship puts her in the dominant position - looking down on you from the sky or the top of a tree while you scurry around arranging the world to her liking.

Ted Hughes spotted this too, look:

Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed -
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark -
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began,
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.