So when exactly did they take over?

I've just spent ten minutes trying to get a catnip
mouse out of the vacuum cleaner hose.

While I struggled with unjamming the stupid
thing, I stopped and wondered, just how exactly

had these cats so cleverly taken over this house?

The bed's not made because Fat Poo's not
feeling the best and has decided to sleep in
ALL day.

The sliding glass door is NEVER clean below
knee height because they all insist on paw
painting with mud whenever they can see
through it.

The toys are always left in just the right place
so you nearly break your neck at night on the
way to the loo.

If you venture into the kitchen to make a cup of
coffee you can't actually get the fridge door
open to get the milk out unless you feed
everyone AGAIN.

In order to get close to the fire to put that extra
log on you have to shuffle cats out of the way
with your feet and pretend you don't see their
looks of annoyance.

Apparently it's quite fun to bring the mice
INSIDE and then let them go for later!
Popping the dead ones inside a shoe always
gets a good response too.

Of course they're house trained but seems
there's a rule about the dog's bed NOT actually
being part of the house. You can pee in it if
absolutely necessary.

You HAVE to jump on Mum's knee just as
she's about to have a slurp of coffee. Head
butting the elbow on the way up gets good
results.

Cover EVERYTHING with hair. Food, clothes,
furniture, carpet. When you hear the vacuum
cleaner stop and you know she's just put it all
away, scratch furiously and leave lumps of fluff
all over the house.

Yup I guess they have control of this house......
I just wish they'd all help out with the mortgage.

Grandma's house

My Grandma's house was always a nice
place to visit.

Apples before bed and that tiny glow in
the dark doll......
The dining room table seemed so huge
and when I could read, just a little scary.

The text over the table read......

"Christ is the Head of this House,
the Unseen Guest at every meal,
the Silent Listener to every conversation."

and I spent many meals trying to figure out exactly where the heck He was hiding!

The huge dining room clock and Christ watched silently to the family's to-ing and fro-ing around that table.

My Grandma would pour tea from the 'flower pot' (the china tea pot with flowers on it!) and added sugar to the cups from the bowl that had the magic lid. It opened when you moved the handle to one side.

Blackcurrant jam made in little jars especially for you. She would write your name on the label and that made it all yours.

Sunlight soap in the concrete laundry tub where you stood on tip toes to wash your hands after reaching up to pull that long chain that made the high copper toilet cistern flush.

Strange things the mind of a child remembers!

Special Grandma house memories....
the doll, the clock, the text, the teapot and the sugar bowl are all still with me. The copper toilet cistern is long gone, just a memory now!

And Grandad......

my Grandad who was so special because he drove a big red bus.


The buttons on his uniform were shiny and to me he was as famous and as important as those men that went to the moon.

My Grandad could do anything and he proved it with those big shiny clippers that he would use on my uncle's hair. Short back and sides at the dining table,
with Christ watching silently over the goings on and the falling hair.

When you were really good he would let you look at the coins that he and my uncle collected. Shiny and all labelled with little spidery writing, kept safe in little plastic pockets..... they were worth zillions of money.

My Grandad was rich and clever and famous enough to drive a bus, and I often thought he must really have known where Christ was hiding at dinner time because it never seemed to worry him that there was a spy about.

ramblings of a pessimist

The nicest part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or being pleasantly surprised.

As a pessimist I have to win. I can only ever be proved right when things do in fact turn to crap. And if by chance things don't, I am then happily surprised.

I am getting rather sick of being so incredibly right all the time. It's tiring and I truly believe it's time I was proved wrong.

My cats love me .....

they think I am a good cook because I can use a can opener! If only they knew the truth. In reality I'm a dreadful cook and thus for many years have been banned from using the kitchen for anything more than using said can opener to feed the famished felines.

I am abandoned. I am 'home alone' and have been left to either fend for myself, slowly starve to death or, horror of horrors, survive somehow on a menu of Weight Watchers TV dinners. I cannot understand how these meals can be produced not only to look nothing like the photograph on the box, but also to somehow all taste the same. A taste which closely resembles something like gloppy cardboard! Yuck!

I have begun to take my first tentative steps back into the kitchen and the slow cooker now sits proudly on the stove top in all its new shining glory. The inventor of this amazing gadget is in my mind far superior to they who blasted rockets into outer space and landed men on the moon. I can now feed myself, which to my mind is a way more productive accomplishment than space travel.

I do have one small complaint. Those little packets of powdered ingredients that you add to the meat, onion and other 'bits' that go into producing a meal, need to have bigger writing.

For 'first timers' like me, telling me to chuck the frozen peas in during the last part of the cooking time is enough to send me into a blind panic! If the writing had been bigger I would have read that bit before the peas went in at the beginning!

So the question is, do you spend the next half an hour fishing every blasted pea out of the pot or not?

Flo's Flowers

This is a story about a garden.

It was full of all types of colourful flowers. Great big tall ones that swayed in the breeze. Little star shaped ones all in different shades of blue. There were roses that climbed over the fences, red and white and all the colours in between, and daffodils that burst into beautiful yellows at the first touch of spring. Lavenders and honeysuckle grew there, and big fat bumbly bumble bees played in them all summer long, blundering in and out of the sweet smelling flowers.

At the bottom of this garden was a little pond where three fat goldfish swam in the cool water beneath the lily pads. Sometimes the tabby cat would sit on the side and doze in the sun. She was far too polite to try and catch the fish for dinner, and anyway, she didn't like getting her paws wet. She'd settle herself all comfy-like on the edge of the pond where she had a wonderful view of the castle nearby.

If you happened to be walking in this garden you would see the flowers, the bumbly bees, the little lily pond with the fat fish, and the oh-so sleepy tabby cat called Flo. You would also see the little castle tucked into the sunny corner by the pond. If you stopped and took time to really look, you would see the little arched windows and the tiny little door, all covered in silky spiderwebs.

If you looked really, really carefully. I mean really, really, really hard. Maybe even squinting your eyes, nd stayed really, really still and quiet, you might just see a tiny little face at one of the windows. A tiny little face that maybe didn't quite look real.

If you listened as hard as you could, you might even hear the buzz of little wings. Not the big fat buzzy bee wings over in the honeysuckle, but a buzz that could almost be called music. More like a tinkle-buzz than a bumble-buzz. If you stayed even quieter and settled yourself down in that shady patch, over there beneath the tree, and kept watching, and if you really, truly believe in fairies, this is where you just might see one.

Her name is Pollen because her wings are yellow. She has a tiny yellow dress spun from spider's silk, just like the silk that drapes the castle. Her wings and her dress are exactly the same yellow as the pollen inside the garden flowers.

When it is quiet, and she thinks that you have gone, she'll come out and be busy doing her fairy work. She flits around and does the important work that keeps the garden full of colour. Pollen's job is to paint the colours onto the baby flowers.

Flo watches sometimes, so she knows how the flowers get their different colours. Just as they are opening Pollen flits out of her castle with her little pots of flower paint and quickly brushes the colour onto the new baby petals.

One day Pollen had to paint the new petunias. Pink and purple were the petunia colours and Pollen had been busy with the pink and purple delphiniums all week. Delphiniums are big, tall flowers. The sort that like to sway in the breeze.

Well, poor Pollen had been so busy with the delphiniums, flitting from flower to flower giving their baby petals their new colours, she had used up most of her pink and purple paint. Now the petunias were opening and she wouldn't have enough paint to colour them all. What was she going to do?

She couldn't do just half of them because that would be breaking a very important fairy-folk rule.

"Always do your job well and always, always complete what you start"

No ..... Painting only half of the flowers would never do. It would be a job half done and Pollen always did her very best. Anyway, if she didn't paint the baby petals they wouldn't be able to open and then they would die before they even saw the sun.

Poor, poor Pollen. She checked all her paint pots. There was lots of yellow for the marigolds, and lots more red for the late roses, but no matter how hard she searched, she could find no more pink or purple. She would have to watch the petunia flowers die because she couldn't do her job. She sat and looked out of one of the little arched windows. Tiny fairy tears splashed onto the sill as she looked at the little white petunia buds that were getting ready to open at any moment.

The tabby cat Flo, gave a great big yawn and stretched in the sun. Pollen watched as Flo settled herself down again and licked lazily at one of her tabby striped legs.

That was it! Pollen jumped up and buzzed her wings excitedly. There was enough pink and purple after all, and every single baby petal would be able to open.

The next day Flo came ambling down the path, past the castle draped in spiderwebs and settled herself down in the sun at the edge of the pond where she watched the fish for awhile. Then she gazed around the garden. Her eyes opened wide. Big and round and very surprised. The petunias were open. All of them. Every single petal was painted and reaching up to the sun. They looked like pink and purple tabby cats because Pollen had painted them all with tabby stripes!

Ever since then, Pollen always paints stripes on the petunias in her garden. And sometimes on the geraniums as well.

Wobblin' Goblins

Are you snuggled right down, are you comfortable? I’ll tell you a story about the goblins that live high up in the trees.

Wobblin’ Goblins have long pointy ears and always wear hats made of leaves. A Goblin of course, is not at all like a Troll. Trolls are just grumpy old things, full of contempt and ohh, such a lot of greed. Still, I guess if we had to live in a dingy hole we’d be grumpy too, just like an old troll.

Wobblin’ Goblins are happy little things always laughing and singing, and they just love living in trees. Sometimes you might see them. If you look up, really high, right at the top of the tree, there’ll be a goblin. If it’s sunny you may have to squint up your eyes a bit, or even shade them with your hand, but they’ll be up there, using their tickly long fingers to stir up the wind wisps so they can hang on to the tippy top branches, and laugh as they take rides in the breeze.

The Wisps and the Goblins have so much fun. You can hear them playing all summer. ‘Whooooosh’ call the wind wisps as they rush through the leaves and the goblins hang on tight to their hats as they ride.

Deep in their holes the grumpy old Trolls start to grumble. They are tired of the sunshine and they just want to sleep.

“Enough of the Whooshing, we’ll permit no more fun.

It’s time for the winter, it’s time it begun!”

So the Wisps and the Goblins start to say goodbye and as it gets darker you may hear the Trolls getting grumpier. Their grumbles get louder. They are getting colder and they need to go to their beds.

The Goblins start tickling with their long tickly fingers and stir up the wind wisps who blow cold through the branches turning the green leaves to orange and brown and the Goblins start wobblin’ making them fall, all wrinkled and dry. Beneath the trees Trolls wait with big bags to collect them and drag them down into their holes.

Winter has come and the Wobblin’ Goblins have gone inside their houses to eat crumpets by the fire. Now all you can hear is the sound of Trolls snoring, asleep under great piles of leaves.

A wizard called Woad

There’s a wizard called Woad
who, don’t you know,
Lives way down at the end of the road.

He wears a blue pointy hat,
a long velvet robe and,
magic boots with a hole in the toe.

In his creepy old home
he lives all alone
except for Griselda his cat.

Griselda is big,
she is fluffy and black
and has an extremely long tail.

It reaches over her back,
and right over her head to
the tip of her shiny black nose.

When Woad pats his cat Grisel
she purrs and she dribbles,
then she purrs and she dribbles some more.

“oh Grisel” says Woad
“you are quite a toad,
Just look at the state of my floor!”