Heat At Last!

Goodness, it has been cold this week. The ambient temperature may have been a lot higher than previous weeks, but the rayburn was broken and not running, so the house felt more and more like a refrigerator. The grate slider bar snapped and a grate bar had buckled so badly that it nearly formed a semi-circle instead of being straight and we'd had to let it go out anyway so the chimney sweep could do his stuff.

So, this week has been a week of wearing several layers of jumpers inside the house, huddling in the kitchen, where the little electric, oil-filled heater did it's best to keep Tom warm and thinking of ablutions with great shivering. Yesterday, Kim finally managed to replace the broken bits and fix in the infernal rayburn enough to light it and both Tom and I were ready to put out the bunting.

Only, it didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped - I woke up in the middle of last night and had to throw the covers off I was so hot. Today, I'm walking around in a T-shirt and the cat is throwing himself onto cold spots on the lino as he's overheated. It's not that I'm grumbling, but I realised that I had acclimatised amazingly well to having no heating.

I also know it was very cold as our freezer in the scullery stopped working; the fridge on top was working fine, so we knew the fuse hadn't gone, but the freezer just stopped being cold. We figured out why - the scullery, which we keep unheated, had got so cold that the coolant in the freezer had just about frozen, or had gone sludgy enough to stop working. Stupid huh? The scullery was colder than the inside of the freezer for several days and all our meat defrosted and had to be thrown away. Still, at least I know I can acclimatise!

Meanwhile, the cat puncture on my wrist has healed amazingly. V very kindly sent over a healing salve, and with the antibiotics and numerous applications of my calendula cream, you can barely see where Tom sank his fang into me. Lucky for Tom, I decided not to hold it against him - he has spent more time on my lap in the past week than in the last year - it seems I make an excellent paw warmer and human radiator - as I'm not fooling myself that it's love!

So, I'm about to retire into the sitting room, devoid of a fire in the hearth for the first time in weeks, as it's way too hot and I won't want to wilt, to start my weekend with a lazy evening in front of the life support machine (aka our television).

How To Deal With Cat Bites

Yesterday morning my cat bit me. This is not normal behaviour for Tom, even though he can be a cantankerous old feline. I was brushing his fur, as he has become so old and senile that he rarely grooms himself any more; normally Tom loves to be brushed, but not yesterday. As I ran the brush over him he bit my wrist - not a little nip, he sank his teeth in and hit bone. Amazingly, I didn't even yelp - I think I was so shocked that any sound failed me.

Dashing off to the bathroom, I washed the wound and doused it in tea tree essential oil, my panacea for all punctures, hoping that by acting so quickly it would prevent any problems. No such luck. I type this with a wrist that's so swollen I can barely flex it, with red tendrils spreading down my thumb and now starting to snake up my arm. The skin is so tender and stretched over the inflammation and pus that it's unbearable if my cuff touches it, so I'm roaming around with one sleeve rolled up.

My dear friend V sent me a healing salve by overnight post and as well as being deeply touched by her thoughtfulness, I am disappointed that I won't be able to test it out without interruption from alopathic medicine. Yup, it was a trip to the doctor this evening to get Co-Amoxiclav, which is on the 'don't use unless you have to' list of antibiotics. Thanks Tom.

Meanwhile, while I plot revenge and dream of skewering the vile old feline and rotisserie-ing him over an open fire, Kim is feeding him prawns and other treats. I'd say that the cat was getting a mixed message here, but short of taping Kim's hands to his sides, I can't do much. The moral here is that men and cats will happily gang up with each other.

In the meantime, if a cat sinks it's fang deep into your flesh, go to the doctor as soon as you can, because leaving it overnight, as I did, makes for a very sore wound indeed!

Israel: The New Nazis

It became glaringly obvious that Israel was about to invade Gaza when Condoleeza Rice announced she wasn't going to the Middle East, but it was still distressing to see the news tonight that the invasion had begun. How reminiscent of Warsaw. First softening up the populace with a week of shelling and now the troops roll in.

The Israelis bleat about their civilians, yet the death toll is currently running at over one hundred Palestinian lives for every Israeli life. It's a lesson they learned well from the days of the Reich, where retribution was terrible to discourage any rebellion or dissent. What the nation of Israel are doing is ethnic cleansing and genocide.

I have lived in Israel - it was a great place and I was too young to really understand the finer points of politics in those days, but it saddens me deeply that such a nation can perpetrate inhumanity with their recent history. Sadly, man rarely learns from history.

Meanwhile, our Government flaps it's wrists limply saying the invasion will cause "distress" - they don't say? So, what can we do? Well, for my part, I shall boycott Israeli goods and I shall write to my MP to express my disgust that we are not talking a stronger lead to rein in the warmongers. I don't know if there's anything else I can do, but as I think of it, I shall implement it.

No one is blameless in this affair, but bombing the Gazans off the map won't work on so many levels. It worries me deeply how other Arab nations will react - this could be the beginning of something bigger and altogether nastier. Goddess bring strength to those trying to broker a cease-fire and peace.

Hmmm, Was I supposed to be on holiday...?

Why do I have the perverse inclination to work when everyone else is on holiday?

It happens all the time - I get loads more done over weekends than I ever do during the week and I spent the day working. It wasn't toil or unpleasant - I built a nice little site for a local person - and puttering around at the kitchen table with my laptop, a mug of tea and something to occupy my mind other than the dross on TV was rather pleasing.

It's not like I can go and dig the allotment (I'm still waiting for Kim to take some pictures and make a start on that, sigh) or even pootle about in the local water meadows, so exercising my brain is the closest I can get to a workout.

It has been such a nice day and I might even do it all over again tomorrow, as there's always work to be done! In fact, I have a half-hatched scheme that I might embark upon... I was working with a client to set up a really funky eCommerce site and after doing lots of the graft, they suddenly had a panic attack and decided that they didn't want to be so bound to the business and that an eCommerce site would take what they did into realms they didn't want. So, they honourably paid me for the work I had done, but left me with a mostly built site and no opportunity to showcase it to anyone else in the way I'd like - what a waste. So, I have been toying with the idea of using the site to help someone I know get kick-started - I think I shall sleep on the idea tonight and then drop an email to her to see what she thinks about the idea.

See? That way, I shall have something to moan about again - loads of work, no leisure time and all that nonsense that I always go on about, but miss terribly when it's not there! It's sounding like a good plan to me.