A little of what you like often comes at a price

A little of what you like does you good, they say. Sometimes, doing yourself a little good also seems to involve what you don’t like much.

Pilates is a case in point. Danielle has persuaded me to join her there twice now. Two weeks in a row. But it takes a while to get the hang of it. Take the scoring system. I mean, how do you know when you’ve won?

Well, I’ve discovered now and, let me tell you, it’s perverse. You win in Pilates when your muscles really ache. When it hurts, preferably intensely, you’re doing it well.

You read that right. It’s a sport where it’s supposed to hurt and you do it for pleasure. Talk about organised masochism. What’s more, the worse it hurts, the more good it’s doing you.

To take another example, there’s heading off on holiday. Leaving grey wet England for somewhere that ought to be warmer and brighter. Without appointments and deadlines. In pursuit of pure relaxation. But that comes at a price: the stress of making sure that everything that needs doing is done before one puts the out-of-office message up and shuts down the laptop. A painful rush. It means that once you finally get to go on holiday, you really need one.

The worst of it was that there weren’t only work tasks to complete before departure. I had a responsible domestic job too: putting a new clasp for a padlock on the gate to the garden. This was principally needed because of Toffee. She mostly behaves quite well but provoked, say by the passage of a cat, she could be tempted to rush straight through an open gate and into the road, whether a car was bearing down on her or not.

Toffee (on the right) with her friend Luci
The picture of innocence. Until she gets into trouble (again)

It was brought home to me just how carefully she needs protecting when I was on a walk with her in one of our local parks the other day. She slipped through the railings around the lake, because she’s still small enough. When I saw what she’d done, I called her over, thinking that she’d go back out by the way she’d got in, and come around to me. After all, between her and me was a tongue of lake water, with a drop of a metre or more down to it. 

She surely wouldn’t come straight towards me, ignoring the deep drop into a drop of deep water? I had barely time to think the thought and notice that she was looking straight at me and ignoring the hazard in front of her, before she came trotting in my direction, all innocent obedience, and went straight off the edge and, with a plop, into the freezing water.

Fortunately, Luton Council in its wisdom and kindness had set a steel ladder in the wall on my side of the water. I was over the fence in a second and down the bottom of the ladder calling to her as she swam round and round, looking far from comfortable with her impromptu dip. She was a little confused, swimming towards me and then away – well, who can blame her? She’d just tried coming to my call and look where that had got her – but eventually she came close enough for me to grab her collar and pull her out and on to dry land.

A wet cold poodle on cold dry land.

With a dog like that, who wouldn’t be afraid to leave her with a garden – accessible through her dog flap – not properly sealed from the road?

The clasp had to go up. But that involved doing things with screws and screwdrivers. On a wooden gate full of knots. This is not a skill in which I particularly shine. I had trouble getting more than half the screws more than half the way in.

Even with a power drill, the screwdriver bits just spun on the screw heads, driving them in not one jot. Since the failure of this exercise couldn’t possibly be attributed to the workman, I had to blame the tools. Naturally. So I ordered a new set of screw bits for the drill.

Just wonderful. They arrived the following day. And by that afternoon the clasp had been mounted, thus proving that I had no trouble getting the job done once the proper tools had arrived.

Having the right tools is crucial for a good job
Though having an actual building worker around's even better

Coincidentally, a building worker was in the house that morning, finishing off the last job outstanding on the work we started in the autumn (what a relief: finally done). It’s true that he happened to have his own power drill and screwdriver bits. It’s equally true that he has some skill with driving screws into ancient wood made hard by its knots. But that’s not the point: the job needed doing and by the afternoon it had been done.

Surely that was the extent of my responsibility, wasn’t it?

I now feel I can dedicate myself to holiday mood, with a clear conscience.

A sorry Kindle story. And a joke to sharpen the irony

There are times when going on holiday isn’t a luxury, but a vital necessity.

Getting back to work, after an involuntary nearly eight-month break last year, is a bit of a shock to the system. Especially as it involves commuting into London, a joy I’d been deprived of for the previous four years. Especially as that involves frequent 5:15 a.m. starts to the day.

The worst effect of tiredness, I find, is to undermine judgement. I make mistakes, try to fix them and end up compounding them with worse errors still.

The other day I left for work a little later than I usually do. The trouble is that while it’s a luxury to be a little more leisurely about getting ready to go, and the dog gets a slightly longer walk, there’s a price to pay which rather kills the pleasure: I don’t get a seat on the later trains.

That was my first misjudgement.

I’m an enthusiastic convert to the Kindle. Never, since I’ve had a Kindle, have I had a suitcase that’s overweight for air travel. And yet now I travel with dozens, potentially hundreds, of books where in the past I would take just a handful – but that would be enough to tip the scales into eye-watering excess baggage charges.

Great device, great book. A source of pride and joy
And just now a little embarrassment

The Kindle has become my newspaper too. So I was reading the Guardian on the way into work until the sheer discomfort of trying to keep my balance in a crowded aisle became unbearable, and I put my Kindle down on a table in front of me.

That was my second misjudgement.

Because when more people joined the train, I had to move further down the aisle and away from my Kindle. Out of sight, out of mind. A porous mind, at least. As a result, I left the train without the Kindle and didn’t even notice until I decided to read a little more of The Big Short at lunchtime. 

You don’t know The Big Short? It’s a must read. Watch this space for more about this brilliant insight into the sheer stupidity of the people who make the most money, but only for themselves, and lose the most money for the rest of us.

But, of course, I couldn’t read The Big Short that lunchtime. I’d lost my Kindle. Oh, the despair!

The depression over my stupidity was immense. Made worse by the tiredness. I felt driven to do something immediately, to try to remedy the loss. So I bit the bullet and ordered another one. It was a bitter bullet (a bit of a bitter bullet bitten?) as Amazon no longer had a special offer on and I had to pay full price.

That was my third misjudgement, the final error that compounded the others. Because the inevitable happened. The train company got in touch. Instead of being stolen, my Kindle had fallen into the hands of someone honest enough to hand it in, and I could go and collect it. Just, as it happens, as I received the new one.

So I now own two Kindles. Both capable of holding a regular library of books, far more than I could ever read or wish to read. An endless supply, for all practical purposes, which I can never exhaust. And each identical to the other.

That made me think. Firstly, that it was definitely time for a holiday, to get grounded again and have my judgement functioning once more. And secondly of an old Irish joke I’ve always enjoyed.

Seamus is offered three wishes by his fairy godmother. For the first, he asks for a bottle of Guinness that never runs out. She flicks her wand and there, in front of him, is the bottle. He pours out a glass and drinks it, and the bottle is full again.

“Why, that’s magical," he says.

“And what about your other two wishes?” she asks.

“Well, I liked that one so much, I think I’ll have two more of the same.”

At least I now know what it feels like to be Seamus.

Misty's Diary: I did try to be nice

Another entry from Misty’s diary, following our return from holiday.

April 2014

So the domestic staff’s back. Just as well. These jaunts to strange places are just disruptive and ought to be discouraged.

And what a strange place they went to this time! Tunisia. OK, so it’s practically nothing but coastline and the fish, I understand is good, but the cats are a mangy lot for the most part, leading a claw to jaw existence. You can trust me when I say that’s a lot worse than hand to mouth for both the perpetrator and the victim.

I don’t understand why the domestics don’t just settle down and enjoy life at home. After all, so much is just as it should be here. There’s a box full of food, and however much I eat of it, it keeps filling up again. OK, I have to remind the staff from time to time to move some from box to bowl, but domestic 2’s pretty smart about that if I remind him hard enough.

I did try to persuade them to take me with them. 
Just so they didn't get lonely. Personally, I prefer home

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about the service when they’re away. They get domestic 3 in when they clear off, and she’s fun. It’s true she tosses around in bed a lot, which is a pain in the backside, sometimes literally, and instead of learning to stop when I bite her feet, she just chucks me out, which feels like insult on top of injury. But mostly she’s fine: she knows who’s boss, and when I drive the bloody dog Janka off the sofa to reclaim my rightful place, she just laughs – a good, sensible reaction.

Even so, it’s nice to get 1 and 2 back. So nice in fact that the morning after they came home, I was my winsome best with domestic 2. Not so much cat as puss, if you get my meaning. Pretty damn adorable, if I say so myself.

Me being winsome to Domestic 2, in bed

Hamfisted stroking. 
I only let him get away with it because I was feeling winsome

But he’s hopeless. Clumsy oaf. Left my bowl empty all afternoon. Domestic 1 wouldn’t let me on her knees while we were watching TV so I had to use his lap and, honestly, the guy is hopeless. Fidgeting. Moving his right foot over his left foot, then his left foot over his right. Practically throwing me off by moving his knees apart, then nearly squishing my fine food-filled stomach when he remembered and moved them together again.

Putting up with the lap of Domestic 2
Only if the Head Domestic's not available

I had to go and lie next to him on the couch instead. And even then he came up with some silly comment about “don’t be so bad-tempered” when I drove the bloody dog off it. 

Bad-tempered? Does the dog honestly think she has the right to lie on the couch when I need it? What kind of entitled thinking is that?

Why, domestic 2’s lucky I let even him share the couch with me.

Then he tried to make good by stroking me. It was no use though. It was that cackhanded, hamfisted style of his, far too fast, far too clumsy. I’d let him get away with it in bed in the morning, but by the evening I’d had enough. And he’d made the mistake of wearing a short-sleeved shirt. A joy when you’ve got claws and jaws. Did I get him!

Don't get casual with me, mate. Or cast aspersions

Winsomeness? Forget it. A puss? That’s for the birds. I’m a cat. The birds are for me.

Normal service resumed, in other words.