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| This drone photo, taken by Bill Blake is on Wikipedia. His photos here on Flickr |
Life is quiet. How many people all over the world would love to write that. So I should be lucky, and so I am. But I have made plans for the future, not to be shared though for the time. My mind rests easy.
When, and if I move on there are things to do. Find my little cat a home, and also the bantams, they are going for free along with their runs and hen house. The dolls house and attendant furniture also needs to go and a couple of favourite chairs.
Yesterday, in fact Friday night, Lucy had one of her walking back and forth for several hours episodes, these are accompanied by various bumps and noises as she moves things about. So Saturday we both sprawled worn out, she snoring on the carpet for hours (thank god she is getting older!) and me catching up on 'Strike' on television. Sue in Suffolk had said that Tom Burke's (the hero) missing lower part of his leg was computer generated, and so I looked it up, and it was! How can I believe anything anymore?
Natalie the window cleaner came yesterday, and I have just paid her via the internet, quick and easy but my bank sort of sets out a lot of questions as to how trustworthy my payment is. Eventually one day cheque books will be obsolete but the new way is just that bit harder, with phones to hand for confirming numbers and the computer. Should I buy a clever, or smart, phone? no it will probably take up the rest of my life understanding it!
Happy Memories; So looking back on memories what did I come up with? Paul and I visited dozens of churches, but one favourite place jogs the memories. I even wrote a haiku for it, but it is long gone. This was Bartlow Barrows in Cambridgeshire. It required one of those drives along small English lanes in the full throttle of summer. The barrows are enormous, and not Neolithic but Roman, resplendent with an inner chamber of goodies. Information can be found here
What was so delicious is that they were again at the back of a church, though you had to walk along a dark path to find them.
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| Take the left hand path |
Our little Fuzzy Pomeranian is 16 1/2 years old. More and more often he has been having a time in the evening when he picks up one of his little toy balls and runs in a big circle through our house, round and round,and round. At first it looks like he is just running and having fun with his ball, but then he starts whining like something is wrong. The first time I thought that maybe the ball had gotten stuck in his mouth. I stopped him and gently removed it from his mouth. It wasn't stuck. I petted Fuzzy real good and tucked his ball into his doggy bed and then he calmed down. It is almost like he is treating the ball like it is a puppy that he is trying to find a safe place for. I've seen mama cats move their kittens, and getting worried and moving them again. He acts so worried about his ball. Luckily he is easily calmed when this happens. He has always treated his small toys like they were living things. He has never destroyed a toy. He often puts them at the side of his food plate like they are going to eat. They are placed very carefully to look like they should eat, too precisely to have just happened. I worry that this new running with his ball and whining about it may be a sign of doggie dementia, because he is so old. He is pretty healthy but is now deaf and has arthritis, but still can run pretty fast and always seems happy, when he's not sleeping very soundly like an old dog. He still loves to run and play, but I do worry what would happen if no one was home and he started running in circles with his ball like that, whining and worrying.
ReplyDeleteHello Susie, it is a relief to find other dogs have similar problems, thank you for replying. Lucy also has toys that are carried round constantly, hers mostly remain round her water bowl. Probably because she never got to have puppies so she carrys toys around. In the evening worrying is another trait of hers, all rugs are rumpled up as she goes back and forth finding somewhere to sleep, though she has her own rug it all seems down to anxiety. My daughter says her problems are to do with past history, rescue dogs have problems.
ReplyDeleteI have never had a rescue dog Thelma - so don;t have any experience of them but friends who have say that they usually come with problems of some sort.
ReplyDeleteLooking back on old memories is painful I find - I have to be in an upbeat mood to start with to be able to cope with it. Otherwise I am left bereft.
Rescue dogs can have wretched problems. Suki, a mongrel, was one. Her waiter owner, used to punish her with the retractable lead, which she was terrified of. The first time I let her off the lead, she did not know what to do and it took months to calm her down to normal.
DeleteI never knew bout those Roman barrows. Tom Burke never shows the faintest sign of a limp, even when he is running. I don't think his hare-lip surgery was CGI though.
ReplyDeleteThey are the largest in Europe I think, and a bit like a pyramid, had a chamber enclosure inside in which there was food and drink, and numerous other things to take you to the other world.
DeleteAnd coincidentally this series features the White Horse of Uffington. Burke does pant a lot though after a long run, with or without a artificial limb
Yes - I love that it features the Uffington one.
DeleteYour pictures are evocative - does that word evocative require an object? I don't know what they evoke... maybe what I want to say is "atmospheric"? Anyway, I love them, they make me want to walk down that path. I always say that!!
ReplyDeleteAbout smart phones, yes!! They make you feel stupid, they are so smart, and once you figure out how to use one to improve your life somehow, the technology is "upgraded," and you NEVER can keep up, so you feel older and stupider than ever. Well, I do. I greatly resent the time I have to spend not using but learning -- what a boring thing to "study," when the world is brimming with human things present and past to contemplate.
I miss my former self, before I had my smart phone, though it really has helped me to keep active and more connected to family and friends after my husband died. I refused one until then.
Yes many years ago the phone was so simple, it would ring and you would answer it, the number when I was a child was 365. Now, we have long numbers, getting hitched to the internet - not so easy around here, I normally end up at the front door to get a signal. We did have a house phone but with the old vet's number, so explaining all the time we could not fit Flossie in for an appointment was tedious.
DeleteIn reply to your next comment, so true, our children grasp new technology easily, but whether it has any value remains to be seen!
I was looking at a long page of random quotes and just ran across this one that seems to relate:
ReplyDelete“Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.”
— Lewis Mumford