Felonious kleptosquaters

A new, invisible kleptomaniac is squatting in our home.

I can picture him, and the other thieves already in residence, stealing out from their various hidey-holes from beneath beds, behind doors, and under chairs, in the middle of the night and tiptoeing to the linen cupboard, where they hunch down in a felonious ring around a lighted candle and plot their next raid.

They believe we don't know they exist, but actually, I know more about them than they would care to think: the one with a penchant for footwear is colour blind, because he only ever steals odd socks; the new one, who is partial to pencils, has toothache, because, if I find any he has hidden, they are invariably chewed; the one who slides half-finished mugs of hot chocolate beneath the children's beds has perennial rhinitis, because only a permanently blocked nose could be oblivious to the awful smell of rancid, sugary milk; and the one who tosses dog biscuits all over the utility room is perhaps a little different - I suspect he has four legs, whiskers, a longish tail, squeaks and answers to the name of 'Mouse!'

Comments

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...

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! ...

Temptation, virtual strawberries and a pretty useless tooth fairy

Littlest in the car on the way home from school: "What does tempted mean?" "And determined - isn't that the same?" Somehow, we got onto strawberries and in particular the last strawberry sitting, lonely, on a plate. "So, if I'm tempted to have the strawberry that just means that I'd really like it. And if I'm determined to have it, then I'm jolly well not going to share it, and it's mine, no matter what." Think she got that one! She's also tempted to sack the tooth fairy who has forgotten every night for the last 2 weeks to deliver payment for her tooth and if I might speak on behalf of the tooth fairy, there is equal determination on her side to remember. Maybe.

Walking The Dog

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