Please Note - Day 4

You don't need a scarf to keep you warm, Bobby - I'll do it for you.

Please Note - Day 3

Bobby as Bigfoot.

Otter folly

I have often shown, I think, that I am a great fan of otters. These iconic creatures more or less disappeared completely from our waterways because of pollution and persecution, and it has only been since we cleaned our rivers up that they have spread back across the country. So I was bemused by a small news item in yesterday's i newspaper that a man contacted police after several koi carp valued at thousands of pounds had disappeared from his garden pond.

Police ascertained that it was not a human that had stolen them, but an animal, most likely an otter. That'll teach him not to secure his pond properly.

However, another person put his oar in, and though he was named, his role or position vis-a-vis the matter was not elaborated on. But his ridiculous words inspired me to write to the paper, and I was fortunate enough to get my letter published today:

I was horrified to read that some poor person's valuable koi carp had been taken from his unprotected pond, not by a human thief for profit, but by an otter. Someone called Hugh Miles was quoted as saying, "Some conservationists think they are cuddly, playful creatures, but they are killers". Unlike humans, apparently, who wait for animals to drop dead naturally before eating them. Clearly taking carp for profit is better than killing them for food. Isn't this the kind of thinking that helped exterminate otters from our polluted rivers and trout streams in the past?

I'm proud!

Please Note - Day 2

Breakfast with Bobby - another dream come true.

Please Note - Day 1

In the dark with the beautiful Bobby - every woman's dream.

Er....

Clipping from Saturday's "i" newspaper:
   
    Lack of cleaning endangers health
    People are putting their health at risk by not cleaning kitchen cupboards out properly,
      an Asda survey has suggested.  The report claims that the insides of the oven and the
      fridge are also likely to go unscrubbed. It's also been claimed that 600,000 homes are
      cleaned only at Christmas.

Oh dear. As often as that?

I will clean my kitchen cupboards out one day. It was only replaced 12 years ago. The oven is hardly ever used, and the fridge is just two years old.

Cut us some slack, Asda. You know you're just trying to get us to buy more cleaning products. Mine last for ages. Some even came from Safeway.

How many years ago did that shut down?

And for those of you who think I'm kidding...sorry :-(

Cats Conversing

JoJo's inspired me again! Most of you have probably seen the talking cats before. The original is getting quite hard to find, but here it is:

And here's the first ever translation. There are lots more now from people who had nothing better to do with their time (no I didn't do one, I don't have the technical expertise, er sorry, time).

Purgatory - Day 16

Joy short-lived.

Purgatory - Day 15

Proud moment.

I Fort So

As so often happens, one of JoJo's posts has inspired me to revisit a time from my earlier life. This time it was some slimey rocks in one of her beach photos.

When I was a child, we holidayed a couple of times at a place called Reculver, on the Kent coast. It was situated on top of a cliff from which large lumps had fallen on to the beach below over the years - actually, as it turned out, over the centuries. Near the cliff edge were the remains of a 12th century church, which had been moved inland early in the 18th century. Much of the stone was robbed out, but the towers remained, which always suggested to me that they'd been a bit premature in their removal of the church.

Behind the towers there were the remains of a Roman fort. It was great for a child to explore these ruins and climb all over them. I doubt you can do that today. Health and safety, you know.

The lumps of cliff on the beach became covered in seaweed and were very slippery and slimey. If you lifted them, there were little crabs and other sealife in the pools underneath.

A postcard from the 1930s shows that for some time there were makeshift wooden spires atop the towers. These were long gone by the time I visited in the early 1960s.

In the summer of 1999 my mother was in a care home run by the Salvation Army, and they took their residents on a trip to the nearest town of Herne Bay. I went with her. We used to spend at least one day there when we were at Reculver, but on this trip I saw something I'd never noticed before - a fort, not from Roman times, but from World War II, its legs firmly planted in the sea.

That very weekend there was an article about these forts in a Sunday newspaper magazine. Quite a coincidence. Wish I'd kept it.

Just as a footnote, to get from Reculver, which is not easily accessible, to Herne Bay or, indeed, anywhere else, you have to go through the village with (I think) the prettiest name in the English language - Beltinge.

Purgatory - Day 14

After all that, a tongue-lashing from eames.