mysterioso?

Disappearance of one of Granny's best - guest - pillowcases off the line. Why?

Local linen-thief? Blown off by wind? Beloved removed it? 'No of course not," says Beloved. So why did it turn up 24 hours later mixed-up with his clean washing?

Hour-long power-cut last night?

Overload here? No, whole island as seen out of window is black too. Inefficiency by electricity company? Of course not, heaven forfend... Except this is August and all utilities short-staffed. So: go figure.

Why are curtains suddenly all too short?

Mysterious clipper? Granny's eyesight? No, much too economical to use prohibitively priced cleaner, she washed them all; in cold water of course, very carefully. But.

Cats totally disappeared and/or making even more ridiculous noise than usual?

Cats kidnapped/unfed/growing ever more Siamese and neurotic? No: she has managed to teach them to use the cat door/ neglected to fill their water/food bowl/started cutting up fish on a surface above their heads.

Mysterious sounds of London police sirens echoing round her house?

Migration of London police cars to Lanzarote? Mysterious waves from outer space wafting London sounds down across the Atlantic? - no, though this is a bit more like it, thanks to Telefonica ADSL (broadband to you.) But all it really signifies is that Granny wastes too much of her time these days checking on the Trafalgar Square plinth online and feeling a little home-sick. Beloved never wastes his time like that: but that's Beloved for you.

So you see: Granny is hard-pressed for real drama. This is August after all on her island - when everything and everyone goes to sleep -or goes camping, though, due to recession, there are far less of them doing that this year. While all she does - apart from scolding Beloved and Mr Handsome for upping the water bills by doing ridiculous amounts of watering, rather than waiting to plant when the rains come like everyone else (they are beginning to listen: good) is wash/sort linen, sort jams/chutneys in date order, wash curtains, teach cats to negotiate cat-flap, tolerate dogs and manage without their cat tray -do you want to hear about all this any more than she wants to do it? OF COURSE NOT.

You are quite free to go elsewhere, even if she can't.

Roll on September.

PS. Life not so bad really if a trifle boring. Right now, here comes the sun... doesn't it? Or maybe not.

Old Macdonald....

Singing Old Macdonald over and over again to Beloved Baby ('with a wuff wuff here and a bleat bleat there') reminds Granny all over again what noisy places farms are. Not that she needs reminding. Since she arrived back on the island, she and Beloved have acquired 2 new goats, 2 new cats and several new chickens. And all of them are vocal. This is not to mention the fact that the grape harvest is in full swing and the trudging of local growers back and forth on the other side of the wall sets the Beautiful Wimp into frenzies of barking, especially at weekends when the picking goes on still more. This is also not to mention that the politics/relationships of all 3 types of acquisition -within their own species and in regard to previously existing animals - eg dogs and other chickens - requires careful monitoring and constant negotiation. And generates still more noise.

The two goats are very pretty and much friendlier than previous ones (when the Beautiful Wimp is not barking at them that is, as he did at first). And also much more vocal. Both appear to be pregnant. But the smaller, older and black one - meet Caprine Elloise - has asserted authority over the brown and white and most friendly and most vocal - continuously vocal one- meet Caprine Harry - and given that Caprine E has some formidable horns and that Caprine H doesn't, Caprine E has to be carefully watched to see she does no damage.

The young chicks also have among them a bully - one that pecks her fellows at every turn. She's such a bully that one poor chick couldn't take it and died. Another was only just rescued from a similar fate. The bully was removed at the same time and both are now separated from the remaining two chicks- in due course, somehow, they will all have to be reunited but it's not quite clear how. Nasty creatures chickens. A bit like little girls - sometimes - when they're not being kind to each other. Older chicks despite it all can make a really rather nice noise talking among themselves; not just cheep cheep but something more like a melodious warble (granny thought a new species of bird had landed on the back patio until she realised it was the chicks.) The same cannot always be said of quarrelling little girls. Granny has had recent experience of that.

Nor would melodious be the word she would use to describe the voices of the two new cats: meet Feline Milou and her son, Feline Pink Floyd: both acquired ready-named from the local animal rescue place with a little help from the quarreling girls. Looking at the mother cat and hearing her son's name, Granny should have twigged, she really should. The blue-eyed mother looks and is half Siamese; her equally pretty son is a green-eyed marmalade cat, not at all Siamese looking. But what he has inherited from his quarter Siamese ancestry is the Siamese voice. Or rather yowl. Employed at full volume whenever (often) something doesn't please him: as when he's been fed the wrong kind of biscuit - or not fed any biscuit - or is on the wrong side (he thinks) of any door. Hence Floyd. Pink. Ouch. (Not a rock group Granny dislikes actually. But.)

Granny knows about oriental cats: she had Abyssinians for years - but has retreated more recently - with relief - to less demanding, more relaxed moggies. So what is she doing with these semi-Siamese felines - in place of the nice, half-grown moggy kittens she was intending to acquire? Pity that's what: silly old woman her. They were not doing well these two among the less aristocratic moggies at the animal shelter. Feline Milou was even wounded. Would Granny please take pity, was the import. More fool Granny she did: charmed too by how pretty both cats were -this was before she heard them - she took them home.

Compared to this farm with its yowling Siamese, cheeping chicks, bleating goats, barking dogs (at the cats among other things) and sometimes grumpy Beloved, Old Macdonald's farm sounds peaceful Granny thinks. Unless Old McD was grumpy too. Probably.

Family Holiday

Well it went as these things always go. One parent got sick the day after arriving, the other the day before leaving. The two stepdaughters (10 and 12) fought endlessly. The baby has developed a mind of her own, part of which involved crying 'mummy' piteously sometimes when left with her ungranny - otherwise known as Grannyp. The two new cats yowled unceasingly, the two new goats bleated, ditto. The first week was intolerably hot, the second too cloudy, the wind never stopped blowing any more than Grannyp and Beloved ever stopped cooking- or in Grannyp's case child-minding. They are now EXHAUSTED.

In spite of which it was all WONDERFUL. Of course.


And now Granny is missing the thieves of herself like crazy; even though her house has today returned to normal and she's got her head and body back - why do they always go AWOL at such times, during such visits? -she more than half wishes they hadn't been returned to her, that the robbers were here still: but they aren't.

Hullo head. Hullo body. Hullo mind. Goodbye everyone else: goodbye Beloved Baby - turned little person these days - especially.

Hullo door-left open freezer breeding icicles - hullo strange things lurking within de-frosting freezer which have to be dealt with... real life has reappeared with a vengeance, the way it does.

(New cats? New goats? She'll get back to them next post.)