Ginger Ninja 2019
The price is the same as last year – £8.50 per calendar, plus postage and packing. This varies according to where you live:
£2.50 for within the UK, £4.50 for Europe, £5.50 for the US and Canada, £6.00 for Australia and New Zealand. Continue reading
I dispatched the PDF of next next year’s Ginger Ninja calendar to the printer’s today. Here’s a screen shot of the cover and a sneaky preview of Mr January.
Cover boy
I wrote quite a lot about Billie when I visited Melbourne nearly two years ago. I told my friend Vicki to warn Billie I’d be relying on her for canine comfort as I’d be missing MasterB. She’s not a cuddlesome dog, said Vicki. But in the wayward manner of pets who like to prove their owners wrong, Billie decided immediately I was someone she’d like to cuddle her, and our bond was established. She was elderly then, her gait a bit wobbly, and made me think of a refined lady who’d had a bit too much Sherry but was still game for a knees up.
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I think this this photo taken on das Boot last weekend, may have to be included in the 2019 Ginger Ninja calendar. Feedback from those to whom I have sent a couple of versions has been positive, but a bit low on constructive criticism, meaning I still don’ know which of the photos they think are strongest, rather than being happy with the overall effect. Continue reading
Octavia used to have some paper table napkins inscribed frugal is such an ugly word. I don’t mind frugality. It makes room for the occasional splurge. I’m rather more uncomfortable with excess, something modern weddings seem to have a lot of.
So I like this photo of my parents with friends and family (mostly my father’s family as my mother married in England in the days before cheap air travel). The date was 28th August 1948, so today would have been their 70th wedding anniversary.
Mum and Dad’s wedding 28th August 1948
Celia remarked yesterday that the long weeks of relentlessly high temperatures and continuous sunshine seem like a distant dream. She’s right, though it’s still been warm, there is a definite end of summer feel. This evening it’s been raining with a determination which is doubly annoying as I forgot to take something out of the car earlier. Also I closed my windows to keep the rain out and I felt rather too warm, so the sounds of rain fizzling to a stop has been most welcome.
Maybe if it cools down there may still be blackberries when I eventually get to das Boot. I picked lots in NI to have with my breakfast and to add to yoghurt, which was all very geographically appropriate as it is what the Tourist Board likes to call Heaney country.
Blackberries in Heaney Country
Cagey has asked for pictures of the cat that looks like Queen Victoria. She means Lily.
Lily
Since Cat died 20th March 2011 I have invited people to join me the Sunday following the anniversary in remembering our pets. It began the week after Cat died and brought me tremendous comfort. I was overwhelmed by people who emailed me telling me stories of their pets, how much they had loved them, how much they missed them, how much they appreciated those animals’ contribution to their lives.
Often when a pet dies it’s hard to talk about it. Colleagues can be unsympathetic; it’s only a cat/dog/guinea pig is a fairly common response. Yet it is normal and right to grieve, and wrong if we have to hide our grief, be made to feel ashamed, made to feel weak or foolish.
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The Grand Master
Most photos of MasterB that I post here show him lying down, sunbathing, sleeping, or looking out of the window, maybe sitting in the garden. The most active images show him taking a leisurely stroll. So it would be perfectly understandable if some of you thought of him as a fairly static cat, a sedentary cat. Understandable but wrong.
This may look like a flat to you and me, but to MasterB it’s a racing circuit, a feline version of Brands Hatch combined with elements of Aintree.
He races about it, leaps from one piece of furniture to another, weaves between chair legs, refuels with some biscuits in pit stops.
I’ve been trying to work at home, but no work can be achieved until we have had interactive play. The current favourite toys are the play cube, now somewhat battered, and the equally battered fishing rod feather toy.
So here are a couple of shaky hand videos to see the boy in action.
