Monkeying about

Proof, if it were needed, that small children are like monkeys. Mother has just walked past the local primary where playtime was in full swing.  One child was swinging from the railings and sticking his arm through them. It took all Mother’s self restraint not to offer him a banana…….

Home Sweet Home

Granny has swapped the confines of her hospital prison, where the torture caused by the incessant wailing of her neighbour should be adopted by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay in order to extract the terror agenda. She is now in a nursing home, with her own room. Is she happy?  Is she heck……

Sulking worthy of a three year old is resulting in her eating hardly anything. Mother thinks that the aim is to eventually evaporate into the ether. 

Today an SOS has gone out from the staff to say that Granny ‘urgently needs trousers’. Mother says that she ‘urgently’ needs to win the Lottery, but she’s sure that she’ll live if this doesn’t happen. Just like Granny will survive if she has to wear a skirt. 

Unless the cure for all of Granny’s ailments can be found in a pair of jogging bottoms. What a miracle that would be………

Shredded Wheat??

There has been a strange noise emanating from the back bedroom. Rather like an intermittent, demented bee. Yes, Mother has been shredding…..

I thought she’d finished with this lark when she retired and all traces of past employment with the NHS went the way of the blades. Apart from the very important pension documents of course. You have to save the evidence of pounds and pence. 

She had to stop when the shredder blew its gasket. Just how much unnecessary paperwork did we have in this house?? 

On another topic. On the news just, Andy Donald, from Cannock and Staffordshire Clinical Commisioning Groups has been talking about the demise of the Staffordshire Cancer Care Contract. They wanted this agreement to include the diagnosis of more cases of cancer (amongst other things) and the bidders have told them to stuff off.  

Now I may be just a cat, but isn’t that reliant upon how many cases of cancer there actually are?  Or are hospitals expected to go round making stuff up just to fulfil a target?………

Now that never happens does it?……

Top of the World, Ma

I think I am in the doghouse. Doing my best Jimmy Cagney impression whilst standing on top of the kitchen roof has not enamoured me to Mother, who no doubt thought that I’d either break my neck attempting to get off or that she’d have to ring the fire brigade to get me down safely. 

What she didn’t know at the time was that I have a secret way of getting off there which involves being on next door’s kitchen roof, lowering myself onto their garage roof and finally onto our wall. From which it is a hop, skip and a jump into our garden. 

What does she expect from me?  I’m not one to content myself with flat, horizontal surfaces. A pitched roof is much more fun. 

I’ll tell you summat though. There is some rubbish in our guttering which she’d do well to get rid off. But she’d have to climb steps to do it. And she don’t like heights……

I suppose she could train me to do it………

Sad kitty

This week has been a bit traumatic as Granny, who went in hospital unable to walk because of a bad back, has now been diagnosed with end stage heart failure. She s now on the fast track end of life pathway (although ‘pathway’ is a bit of a dirty word since the Liverpool Care Pathway debacle). 

Mother has known this for a few days, but it wasn’t until today that the very lovely doctor broached the subject with Granny,  who is quite philosophical about it. She spent the beginning of this afternoon’s visit telling Mother where she might find the hidden stash of cash throughout the house. Mother can’t help but wonder if, when all the money has been accounted for, Granny’s king size bed might suddenly become a futon……

Granny hasn’t eaten much over the past few days, but when she does, she is still able to raise a titter. Last evening, she said she’d had soup. ‘What sort?’ asked Mother. ‘Mushroom’ announced Granny. ‘You don’t like mushroom soup’ said Mother. ‘I do now’ replied Granny. 

Well I suppose when your life drawing to its close,  you have to grab every new experience where you can get it…..

You won’t win

Once again, my blog has been overshadowed by the act of terrorism which took place in London yesterday. 

My big brother, Archie, used to write that he could not understand humans who set out to kill in ways such as this. He wondered why, if you wanted to pick a fight, you didn’t just have a scrap in the playground with the person you had a grievance with rather than indiscriminately murder innocents. A bit like having two champions, one for each side, who knock the hell out of each other. Then the rest of us can go about our business in safety. 

A bit naive I know, but we’re cats. We have simple ideas, mostly about eating and sleeping.  I do wonder whether it’s a bonus having a smaller brain though. Less room for the horrible, nasty thoughts which can go on in a human cranium. 

So, thank you to all the emergency services and anybody else who rushed to assist the dying and  injured yesterday. And to the nasty terrorists, a message:-

Grow up and give up. You won’t win………

Mirror image

Day 9 in the land of the car with one wing mirror and we finally have a resolution to the problem, thanks to the valiant efforts of the perpetrator ‘s insurance company. A very nice chap came to the house today bringing the gift of a brand new mirror which he simply plugged in, having unscrewed the old one. Mother is chuffed to bits. 

It would seem that the slippery sod who knocked the old mirror off has been ignoring his insurers for the past week by refusing to answer the phone. They have chosen the sensible path and settled the issue without talking to him. Mother is sure that his insurance premium will increase considerably next time he renews, but knows that he’ll probably continue to drive without it which is what these irresponsible little eejits are prone to do. 

Back in hospitalville, Granny has finally begun to wake up having been virtually comatose for 2 days. This is largely due to the fact that Mother has asked them to stop the 30mg tablets of codeine they’d put Granny on. A mere whiff of the old narcotic turns Granny into a zombie. Mother has announced this on several occasions but they’ve taken no notice of her. How quickly the kudos of being a nurse prescriber wears off……….

And so the balancing act continues. Treat the heart failure, knacker the kidneys. Treat the kidneys, wait for the legs to swell up again. Treat the pain, induce the stupor. Treat the drowsiness, there’s bugger all hope of Granny moving. 

The joys of getting old, eh……

Battery powered

Yesterday, Mother rattled off an email to the elves at OVO to ask them to provide the passcode for the energy monitoring device. This was sent in her usual flippant style announcing the fact that the engineer forgot to put the batteries in. 

Imagine her dismay, then, when a return email suggested that if she didn’t know which batteries she needed, she could  take the device to a battery shop where, if she was very lucky, they would also put the batteries in for her. 

How old or thick or incapable do they think she is?  She is perfectly capable of telling your AA from your AAA batteries. She says that she is a woman of higher than average intelligence (!!!?). Nine of her fingers actually work (one is buggered after an accident and isn’t much use). She has already managed to insert some batteries she found in our Ever Ready drawer. She just needs a passcode. 

If OVO had been billed for the amount of energy she has already expended on this problem, they would owe us at least 20 quid. 

Good news is we have a plan to reset the bugger. And we’ll use it for at least a week before we get fed up and switch the thing off

Ain’t technology grand………

Clever dick

Today we have had a smart meter fitted. No longer is Mother going to be shoving her head through a small hole in an attempt to get her head at just the right angle to read the gas meter (ain’t varifocals a bitch?) No longer is she going to be searching for a torch which is just small enough to fit into the hole at the same time as her head. That’s right. We’ve gone headless….

Our meter readings are beaming their way through the ether to our energy provider. Which is great as long as we don’t get charged £47,000 for 20 pence worth of electricity. 

We also have a device which tells us how much it’s costing us to boil a kettle. Well we would have if the engineer had put the back up batteries in it. Mother had to unplug it and now it needs a passcode to reconnect. Which we haven’t got. She’s tried 1234, 1111 and 0000. With 147 million other possibilities she’s given up. 

Not so smart after all then…..

Up the Pole

Mother is watching morning TV while eating a biscuit and pondering how she is going to get Granny to stop behaving like a child. Big G is being arsy about taking her pills and is refusing to eat. 

Anyway. Back to the serious intellectual business of daytime programming. Police have just caught an illegal immigrant Polish guy, who the Poles are desperate to get back as he’s been a very naughty boy. Off he goes to court for an offence committed in this country, the Judge grants bail and guess what?? 

He ran off and can no longer be found…..

Can’t blame him really. It’s a bit like me being faced with an unlocked cat flap. If someone is daft enough to leave the door open, don’t be surprised if we walk through it. 

Although one would have thought that a Judge, whose brain is so jam packed full of clever stuff it’s a wonder it can still fit in his skull, wouldn’t be stupid enough to open the fire exit…….