Linguist

How do you say ‘to fancy someone rotten’ ? I ask Luis, my Spanish teacher.
‘Gustar’, he replies.
I'm disappointed. I wanted something more colourful.

For the next ten minutes, he won’t meet my eyes. I wonder if he thought that was a hint.
Oh shit.

Fluff

1. People of blogland, thank you for your kind comments of the past week. J and I were reflecting on this need we felt for letting others know of our sadness at losing our fluffball; working in a nerdy, blokey kind of place he was nervous about letting on that he was sad, for fear that someone would laugh, or sneer, or shrug.
I have been more fortunate, in close contact with kind people who instantly admitted how devastated they would be if their own moggy died. Validation, if you will. I will.

2. Our house has felt empty this past week, and now that the cat hair has been hoovered off the living room carpet there’s only a shredded basket in the corridor as proof that there ever was a feline ruling over this place.

3. We are debating; a visit to the local cat shelter is in order; we have a good home to offer. But we don’t know when we’ll go yet.

4. Sid the vicious cat from next door is already prowling our garden, shifty bastard, trying to conquer his arch-enemy’s territory. I can’t spend all day by the door with my water pistol, you know!

5. the thing is, when we go to the rescue centre, we’ll probably want to take them all home.

Chavo, March 14 1999- November 22 2005

1. It’s been a tough day, people of blogland, and the mantra ‘it was only a cat’ hasn’t helped none.

2. He was a wee fluff ball when he got him as a kitten. On the train back from Wimbledon, he was poised; poised but cold. I took him out of the cat carrier and held him inside my jumper. He stopped shaking then.

3. ‘What’s his name?’ a couple of blondes asked. ‘Gustave’, we replied. ‘Good stuff?’ they guffawed. ‘Can we have some?’ It was Gustave -later nicknamed Chavo- because J and I agreed on Flaubert and Malher.

4. Chavo had a good cat’s life. Six and a half years of it. He had a few fisticuffs with the moggy from next door -the one we call Sid because he’s vicious; he also had to move house once, a traumatising event after which he hid behind the washing machine for 24 hours. Not bad.

5. Over the last week, Chavo grew a fat belly. So fat that he was getting stuck between the bars on the staircase. We grew worried. I told him I’d take him to the nice vet lady and forgave him in advance for getting explosive diarrhoea (his favourite vet surgery trick.)

6. Gustave was dying of congenital cysts wrapped around his liver. They had been causing his liver to bleed, which was filling up his belly. I had a choice of taking him home post-surgery and watch him die within days, or two weeks at most, or not letting him wake up after the op. I didn’t think it fair on him to have to be in pain just for the sake of us saying good-bye. So we never did.

7. It was only a cat gorgeous, sweet, lazy fluffball.

8. Sorry about the mood, bloglanders. But this really sucks donkey balls. Hairy ones.

Traducción

People of Blogland, those of you that have been following will know that I have been brushing up my extremely dusty Spanish. Amongst my efforts I am working my way through some amusing verb drills/translation exercises. Here are today’s gems of lexical and syntaxic beauty:

1. Tell me my friend, are you depressed? (estar)

2. He admits (admitir) that sometimes he takes a nap at work but he does not admit when he makes a mistake (un error)

3. They (fem plural) are in a bad mood (estar de mal humor) because the television set is broken (estar dañado) and therefore (por eso) they are bored.

4. Hamburgers and French fries are very popular in the United States (en los Estados Unidos)
And my favourite:

5. How much truth do you possess? (la verdad)

I’m having so much fun. (pasarlo bien, diverstirse.) Although I still don’t know how much truth I possess. Do you?

In other news, I'm having a kick ass week end with my Special Lady Friend, thank you very much. We made risotto, too.

It’s –3°C out here you know

1. I hope there’s some entity somewhere counting up karma points.
I hope that the karma points-counting entity knows to add big fat negative karma points to the bus drivers who shut the door in your face and drive off just out of meanness, and leave you cold and tired and laden with grocery bags and wanting to cry because you’ve hard a hard day, and now you have to wait another half hour for the next bus.
Big fat bad karma points.
And good ones to me for not throwing my eggs at the bus windows, as I was very tempted to do.

2. Chavo the cat and I have another thing in common besides messy black hair. Both our stomachs are rounding up for winter, or so it seems; to the point that I’m getting rather worried at his sudden diamond shape. Recently, he’s been waddling. I hope he doesn’t explode.

3. The woolly socks knitted by Grandma are calling. As is my bed and a good book. I know, I wear socks in bed. So?

Almost a regular Monday

1. The disembodied female voice in Glamoursmith Bus station purrs: Bus number 367 s now boarding from gate 4. The lady clearly has higher aspirations than measly bus stations. Then, for added urban grittiness, she adds: gate 4. Yo.

2. I grab the daily free dose of utter shite that is The Metro, and peruse the article on Pete Doherty. How can a junkie look so fat? What do they cut his crack with, pork pies? I’m dumbfounded.

3. I am attending a one-day conference about my job, with 40 people who do what I do. Strangely, I feel no kinship. I’m very polite to the lady on my left, though. People don’t expect me to be polite. I like to watch their face change as they realise I’m actually quite nice.

4. I sit in the dark with my Special Lady Friend to watch Broken Flowers. At the end as we’re queuing up for the toilet, an old lady with her white hair in a bun strikes up a conversation with us about the film. She found it exceedingly slow. I enjoyed the slowness.

5. Later on we have steak so good it’s stupid in a cute little Soho restaurant. At the table next to us are sat a man in a grey suit as well as his late fifties, and a much younger transvestite in a clingy fuchsia dress and matching leg warmers, worn over turquoise high-heeled court shoes. Odd couple. We steal glances while pretending to look at the decoration, and then we hold hands over the table. If they can, we figure we can too.

List

People of blogland, I have been busy not blogging. Instead, I have:

- Worked long hours, propped up by coffee; which in turns means no sleep when it’s time to sleep, and very small and puffy eyes the next morning at the beginning of more long hours, so that more coffee is needed, etc. Repeat for 5 days.
- Been trying to circumvent a cold with copious amounts of vitamin C, which also means I can’t sleep when it’s time to sleep.
- Felt a little sorry for myself, a little mushy in the head, and remembered it’s de rigueur in November.
-Tried to stop listening to the news to lower my blood pressure, and failed.
- Wondering where the following things are going: money, clean mugs, time, tins of cat food.
- Tried to stop sounding English in my Spanish class. Instead, I now sound French, which I hope is an improvement of sorts. Perhaps.

This weekend, I plan to sleep in, have a long bath, and wrap myself around my Special Lady Friend. I hope she won’t mind.
Thank you for stopping by!

I have a very harmonious home life part deux

Saturday, 2pm in the Y household: time to try and make my face look presentable before I venture out and meet the world and my Special Lady Friend.
This is going to be a coffee and makeup day, then.

-I can see that your efforts are highly effective, says J, hovering near the bathroom door.
-You’re only saying that because you’re envious. You’d like to play with makeup too.
-Play? You’re not even being creative. Why don't you draw a big circle on your cheek? Or you could at least draw little dots under your eyebrows like Bjork.
-This is not about being creative; it’s about looking vaguely human. The antithesis to the adage that old Goths don’t die, they only need less makeup. Leave me alone.
-I can’t leave you alone; I really enjoy witnessing this level of optimism.

A little support at home is always nice.

Non sequitur

I’m a bit aimless tonight, blogfolk.
I have :
given the cat his winter haircut;
tried to mend a pair of torn fishnet tights – and that’s impossible, but I’m cheap this week.
Read a couple of short stories by Neil Gaiman
perused my favourite blogs;
refreshed the opening page of this site to see what cuteness it could come up with each time and laughed, mostly. C’mon, girls, less attitude; smile and make your bum jealous!
Tried to call my Special Lady Friend to check if she was still willing to get on a train and leave London with me tomorrow afternoon – we’re paying a highly important social call to Lady J for her birthday, you see.
Cancelled my TV licence direct debit.

I think I’m a bit bored.
Now it’s properly dark, so in order to alleviate my aimlessness, I might mosey on down to the riverbank and watch the pretty fireworks.

R.I.P

1. We did own one of those TV set things; it sat there in the corner under a layer of dust; then on Sunday J turned it on and it imploded. There was smoke, too.

2. Oh well.

3. As soon as I cancel the TV License direct debit, though, I’m sure I’ll feel the unfightable urge to watch something. Anything. What to do?