Misty's diary: snow and misplaced faith in a domestic

Another entry from Misty’s diary. In which he records his disappointment at the limitations on the magical abilities of one of the domestics.

February 2015

Domestic number 2 thinks I’m pretty dumb. And he’s not entirely wrong: the problem is that I keep underestimating just how incompetent he is. Despite my repeated experience, I nurse expectations of him. Massively unrealistic expectations.

This came to a head the other day when we got that ghastly white stuff falling out of the sky. Domestic number 1 always gets excited about these terrible moments.

“At last,” she cries out, “snow. We can get the skis out again.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Getting the skis out? They did that a couple of years ago. It was frankly embarrassing. They came up the street on skis, making complete berks of themselves. Who on earth skis in a town? If you have to do that kind of bloody silly thing, do it somewhere way out in the country. Somewhere nobody sensible can see you.

As for me, I loathe that miserable cold stuff. I work on my paws. I keep them clean, I keep them neat. Snow? Half a dozen steps and all my efforts are for nothing. What it does to fur, my dear, has to be seen to be believed. It really shouldn’t be allowed.

Cold. Wet. Miserable. And wreaks havoc on the paws

Well, the other day had been tough and I simply hadn’t noticed the snow. 

So when I saw Domestic number 2 by the door I trotted over quite optimistically. I’ve got him trained to spot when I want to go out, though it took some extra effort to get him to cut out the sarky comments. You know, quips like:

“What, too lazy to go out of the cat flap and climb the fence?”

Even when he used to make that kind of remark, he’d still open the door. However, I can frankly do without that kind of crack. So sadly it escalated into one of those teeth and tongue things: my teeth teaching control of his tongue.

But when I got to the door the other day, ready to dash out, what did I see? Bloody white stuff all over the place.

No joke.

So I shot back inside before he could push me out. Not that he usually dares – that’s a Domestic number 1 trick – but you never know when he might decide to try it on and risk the consequences.

Of course, he laughed. “Ah, not so keen now, then, are we? A bit cold on the delicate little paws?”

Like he goes out barefoot in the snow…

But, and this is a habit of his, it wasn’t long before he was back at the door.

He takes rubbish out a lot. You know, he’ll go out with a couple of cardboard boxes, walking straight past the empty plastic bottle. Then he’ll see the plastic bottle, and take that out. And then – oh, yes, the yoghurt carton he’d carefully left near the door so as not to forget it. You have to wonder whether he enjoys his little visits to the bins.

Still, I’m not complaining. It’s a chance to get out by the front door each time. And I treasure them.

So I went over to be let out again.

“What, really, you think the snow will have gone? In ten minutes?” 

It hadn’t and he enjoyed having a good snigger at my expense. Smug git.

But I wasn’t so stupid as to think it would just have gone of its own accord. My mistake was putting too much faith in him. Again. He’s the character who can conjure meat out of a tin, without even hunting. I mistakenly imagined getting rid of some nasty cold wet stuff would be child’s play. And I reckoned he’d have done it by then.

Seems not. Magicking food out of the fridge? No problem, apparently. But getting rid of cold wet stuff? Beyond his power. Like putting in cat flaps.

Ah well. I fall for it every time. I expect him to amaze me and, sadly, disappointingly, he always does. Leaving me looking a fool.

But all through his own incompetence.

A tough day. spent minding my own business.
And not noticing the snow

The call of the wild: not always irresistible

The great outdoors is a challenging place. Misty, always an outdoor cat, has had particular cause to make that observation recently.

He has, as I’ve pointed out before, become much more affectionate recently, even on a few occasions coming to lie on my legs while I’m watching Boardwalk Empire, for instance, a huge improvement over his earlier inclination to limit all interaction with me to the occasional scratch when he wanted my attention, followed up with a bite if I didn’t respond quickly enough.

He’s even taken to sleeping on our bed at night again, not something he ever used to do, regarding it as a waste of time when he could have been out terrorising — usually briefly and horrifically — the local population of small rodents. But it’s clear that this tendency to curl up with us may not be entirely motivated by affection.

In his new mild-mannered persona, Misty no longer nips my ankles when he wants to go out. These days he just sits quietly and patiently by the back door until we wake up to his needs and slide the door open. The other day, though, when the blast of cold air hit him he started back, took a look at the treacherously gentle white blanket on the ground, turned and fled.

He hadn’t altogether understood the situation though. A few minutes later I found him by the front door. Presumably his thinking was that if leaving by the back door only led him into this unpleasant snow stuff, which had insolently turned up without so much as a by your leave, he’d try a different door in the hope that on that side of the house the world had a more benign aspect. 

Imagine his disappointment when he found this wasn’t the case. He gave me a filthy look, as though to say he’d expected more of me. ‘This is no better than the other side, you poor fool,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘did you think I’d put up with this kind of behaviour at the front of the house having already rejected it at the back?’ Fortunately, in his new mild incarnation he didn’t resort to violence to express his displeasure as he most certainly would have done a few months ago.

Instead, with unwonted gentleness he resigned himself to becoming, temporarily at least, a house cat. 

It's safer indoors. 
Though I’m not sure I'd look for comfort where he does

And I’ve discovered that it wasn’t just a white threat he was avoiding, but a black one too: his nemesis, the black cat that roams this neighbourhood, has been giving him a bad time. Misty is one of the largest cats it has been my pleasure to know, but size isn’t everything, and the black is, sadly, more than a match for him. The other day Misty came back badly clawed and bitten under his jaw. 

Such is his dominance over me that I didn’t even think ‘ha! a touch of your own medicine, my lad. May it be a lesson to you.’ Oh no. I immediately agreed with Danielle that veterinary treatment was a must, and urgent, with no expense spared. The antibiotics and painkillers have done a wonderful job apparently, even causing him twice to vomit on newly changed bedclothes, but hey, that's all part of the delight of cat ownership.

These days he goes outside rarely, sometimes only when we push him out (I don’t know why I saw ‘we’: Danielle’s the only one with the courage to treat him that way, the only one who has inspired enough respect in him that he doesn’t treat her with the highly effective viciousness he would inflict on me if I tried that kind of thing). Or occasionally he goes out with Janka: nothing like a dog, Misty seems to feel, to make good tracks to step in through the snow. 

To say nothing of how effective a large black protector is at at keeping a vile black interloper at bay.

Misty's protector. But she likes the snow

Luton: winter sports centre

I’ve often quoted that great line from The West Wing about economists having been put on Earth to make astrologists look good. 

My own variation on that theme is that it is the role of weather forecasters to make the economists feel good about themselves.

So when the English meteorologists announced snow for this weekend, I was absolutely confident that the weather would be clear and cold, or wet and muggy; alternatively, we might have snow last Wednesday or next Wednesday, but certainly not at the weekend.

Instead, though, the forecasters gave economists and astrologers renewed cause for optimism. They got it bang on: it snowed on Saturday night and by this morning we had 5 centimetres on the ground, just the depth predicted. 

Why, this won’t just do good to the astrologers, it might even give rapture prophets hope again.

Last year when the snow came we regretted not having our cross-country skis with us, having left them in our cellar in Kehl, less than an hour from the Black Forest slopes. So Danielle brought them over when she went out there a few months ago and, given we’d seen no previous snow this season, we went out at once this morning. Skiing through the streets of a town had all the charm of an unfamiliar pleasure, only heightened by the fact that these were Luton streets that we knew well from travelling along them by car or on foot so often in the past.

Our pleasure was shared by the people we met, whose most common comment was a variant of ‘brilliant idea! that’s just what you need to get around in these conditions.’

Cross-country skiing in the lesser-known
Luton end of the Black Forest

Once in the park, the world was transformed. We might have been back in Black Forest: wide expanses of undisturbed snow between trees dripping quietly under their white coats. And then, round the corner, we found the children in their dozens, out on their sleds, making the most of the Bedfordshire winter sports centre. It may not be the world's best known or most frequented, but it was obviously capable of giving as much enjoyment as any of them.

Luton's kids show the way to enjoy the conditions

Prayer, miracles and wonders

It never snows but it pours. All of last week we were wondering when the snow would finally reach Lake Tahoe. In the end, with our departure due the next day, we travelled up to the ski slopes on Friday to take our chances on the man-made snow, since the natural variety just wasn’t showing up. No sooner had we got there, though, than the real kind started to fall, so we had our day’s skiing under grey skies and with tiny, wet snowflakes stinging our faces as we struggled through the wind. 

We were even told, in the café on the slopes where we stopped for lunch, that we’d ‘timed that pretty damn’ well’, as they were going to shut immediately after our orders, having just been told that the ski-lift was closing down. One of the ski patrol people did tell us, with a charming smile (the friendliness and warmth of everyone we met was in stark contrast to the bitterness of the weather), ‘sure, you’ve got the time to eat your sandwiches, but don’t hang around, and if you look like being the last out, make a move for the door’.

By then the blizzard had got well under way, and all we could do was leap on the lift just before it shut and ski back down to the main station. It was a great day all the same, but truncated. Which made me think with wry amusement of the sign, we’d seen in the café where we had our lunch: ‘pray for snow’.

Faith invoked to overcome the drought

By next morning, the prayer had been miraculously answered, and the place was under a good blanket of snow, right down to the lakeside. We even had to fit chains to be able to drive away. Of course, for us, a day earlier would have been no bad thing. Timing is so important, isn’t it? A day’s skiing on fresh snow would have been a delight; instead we got to drive through it, which is much less fun.

Even so, I’m not complaining. We had a great time, however difficult the conditions and however short the day. And it was a relief to see some snow whenever it came, after so long when it looked like there’d be none. I even have to admit that, despite the lousy performance of most weather forecasters, who just kept pushing their prediction of snow back by a day each day, making me feel justified in thinking that one might just as well flip a coin, the local crowd did really well: right from the beginning of the week they said the snow would come on Friday, and they were bang on. They at least got the riming right. And showed me up for maligning them so mercilessly as I usually do (and no doubt will again).

An answer to a prayer - and vindication for a forecaster

Postscript. I loved the sign in the ski station, at the stop for the shuttle back to town: ‘Shuttle Bus to Gondola’.

A miraculous metamorphosis that would have been a wonder to behold

Now that’s a transformation I’d have loved to have seen. Would the driver have turned into an Italian with a fine tenor voice? Would his wooly hat have turned into a straw boater? Would his fleece-lined coat have turned into a stripy shirt? He might have been horribly cold, in the conditions.

But I never found out. We were in a hurry to get away. Timing again, you see. I had to be satisfied with miracle of snow falling in answer to a prayer. The even more miraculous conversion of a bus into a gondola was a wonder I would simply be denied.

Post-postscript. When we got back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I was struck by a pair of road signs: to the left ‘Ex’pression College’, with that apostrophe, for which I can think of absolutely no meaning; to the right, the ‘National Holistic Institute’. 

‘Yes’, I thought, ‘we’re back in the San Francisco area.’ All it would have needed to complete the picture was a few chanting monks in saffron robes. 

That evening Danielle and I went out to Japantown, which we'd never previously visited, travelling as we have on every occasion in this visit, by cable car. At our age, behaving like complete tourists no longer embarrasses us, so we can just let ourselves go and enjoy the pleasure. As well as a pleasant Korean meal in Japantown (yes, yes, I know, we thought it was Japanese until we were inside), we were delighted by the many people we met on the way back, who were all heading for an Edwardian evening.

Wonders of the San Francisco streets

A wondrous sight, and just what one might hope for from that great city, it provided a good way of wrapping up Danielle's visit here. I stay on for another six days.

Words, meaning and train times

Words don’t mean just one thing. They cover an area of meaning, and the meaning is less and less closely associated with the word as you get to the edges where it starts to merge with the meaning of the next word. Somewhere yesterday’s charming young seducer turned into today’s dirty old man, or as I heard a US senator once say, sensuous senior citizen; the art of definition is to draw the line where the transition occurred.

Way back when I was studying all that kind of stuff (the stuff about words, I mean, not the stuff about dirty old men) I was fascinated by an illustration given by Ferdinand de Saussure, regarded as the father of linguistics. Basically, the example goes like this: the 8:05 train is still the 8:05 when it leaves at 8:10, even when it leaves at 8:15, but when it leaves at 8:20, the departure time of the next train, suddenly definition breaks down – we have ambiguity. Which of the trains is the 8:05, which the 8:20?



Ferdinand de Saussure: master of linguistics and of train timetabling?

What Saussure may not have realised, probably because he was Swiss and they handle this kind of thing better than the English, is that all it takes is a bit of snow and you can put this thinking to a practical test.

Yesterday I turned up at Kentish Town station in plenty of time to get the 17:46 home, only to discover that the train company had switched to an emergency timetable. The emergency was that there had been snow two or three days earlier and the rails were still a bit wet. In places. So the 17:46 was done away with, replaced by the 17:49. Which was now due to leave at 17:56. Or, as we were told two minutes later, at 17:58. Or shall we say, four minutes later, at 18:02? At 18:04, they stopped giving an estimated time of departure, and the display changed to the simple message ‘delayed’. At least that was honest.

Underneath it, the display proclaimed that the 18:19 was running on time. At 18:10, I began to wonder whether I was finally, thirty years on, going to experience a Saussure moment. At 18:15, the 17:49 pulled into the station.

Note the linguistic analogy: we’re getting close to the borderline where meanings merge, but there’s still no ambiguity. On a more pragmatic note, we could also tell, by using our eyes, that it was packed like a sardine can, containing not only the passengers for the 17:49 but also those for the cancelled 17:19. Not sure what Saussure would have made of that one. With no Japanese rail employees to push us into the carriages, I simply couldn’t board the train.

Then, oh height of Schadenfreude, a voice came over the public address system inside the train. ‘This is your driver speaking. This pile of shit just won’t get above a snail’s pace. I’m taking a couple of minutes to take a look at it to see if I can’t knock some sense into its sorry brain.’ I think he may have used different words, but you get the drift.

Those of us stuck on the platform tried to hide our smirks at satisfaction looking at the mass of humanity crammed inside the carriages. But we didn’t try too hard.

Then came the blessed voice of the public address system on the platform. ‘Passengers waiting for the 18:19 train should cross to platform 3 where it is about to come into the station.’ It wasn’t as claustrophobically packed as the other one had been, so with cries of glee we poured aboard, making it just as horribly uncomfortable.

And that was it! Pure Saussurian ambiguity. Both trains were in the station at the same time. So which was which? The passengers in each train curiously and narrowly observed the passengers on the other. Would we demote the 17:49 to 18:19 and take its place? Suspense never gets sharper than this. You see how exciting railway commuting can be?

You want to know the outcome? It could hardly avoid being an anti-climax after that build-up, but, since you ask, the 17:49 did indeed leave first, respecting the rules of definition. However, the driver hadn’t managed to fix it, so we crawled along behind it. Breathing down its neck, I like to think.