Skip to main content

Shadow

I have acquired a shadow - actually I have always had a shadow; especially on sunny days - but this evening, I have a four-legged shadow, who moves every time I move, lies at the bottom of the stairs when I go up to check on Littlest and her sister, and is now collapsed at my feet (as close to my feet as he can get without actually lying on them). Panting!

When last unwell, he drooled rivulettes of drool all over the floor. Today the floor is dry, but the panting is quite pronounced. Is this just a hazard of having a big, constantly ravenous dog, who eats everything he comes across that is remotely edible? Today, he sampled a maggot-infested rabbit, until I noticed and it spoke to him - Beep! Beep! - and he left it alone. His good behaviour was rewarded with a bone, but he obviously decided that that wasn't sufficient, as there are now fewer apples left on the tree than there were this morning - the size of the next family crumble is shrinking by the day!

So over-appled or rabbit-poisoned, he lies on the floor. Or has he, perhaps, come out in sympathy with friends' equally large (equally stupid?) and equally ravenous dog who ate an entire chocolate fudge cake earlier today and according to their vet requires a night-long vigil by his basket? Four-legged friend would probably welcome the company, if I sat up with him (and the mice) in the utility room all night. Actually, hopefully no mice as current tally is two caught.

Best update with health of various four-legged friends tomorrow ... meanwhile, thinking of friend and her chocolate-filled dog.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#
Post a Comment
Read more

Confetti for the brain. A little bit of history regarding a use for holes and a couple of quotes.

Confetti - noun: small pieces of coloured paper thrown over a bride and groom following their marriage ceremony. Also the bane of church yards and wedding venues - who wants to exit church after their favourite spinster aunt's funeral and slip on the papier mâché mush of last weekend's weddings, or step, in your wedding gown, onto a pink spattered step when your colour theme is lilac? Confetti - derived from the Latin confectum, meaning something prepared. Which suggests that there is something missing from the traditional wedding rhyme 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue ... something prepared.' How about something shared ... declared ... or ensnared?? Nature's confetti is all over the ground at this time of year - The garden, footpaths, and pavements are covered in blossom snow. And, when he falls asleep beneath the apple tree, it speckles Four-legged-friend's black coat. The confetti we know today - bits of b
Post a Comment
Read more

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!
Post a Comment
Read more