Re-entry, to the sounds of rain and hammering… election, what election? Is something happening? Sod that, we’ve got a kitchen to build!
Sorry for the sudden drop in posting, but we had to unexpectedly decamp to (what were supposed to be) warmer climes as the builders moved in the boiler went out and the heating and hot water went off.
It was bad enough manoeuvring 2 wriggling catboxes and our bags and baggage on and off high-stepped, double-decker Dutch trains, if only I hadn’t only a day later then managed to let our Hector escape into the scary midnight wilds of Zeeland, not to be seen again for three days.
It never occurred to me that a three-legged cat would make it down several flights of vertiginous, typically Dutch stairs, bumpety bumpety bump, without going totally arse over tip and landing in a tangled heap at the bottom.
I was wrong.
The trouble is, all horribly howling cats look the same in the dark and what I’d thought it was the resident deaf cat doing her usual midnight howl with a bit more gusto than usual was actually a horribly intestinally clenched Hector, determined to do his business in the proper outside and none of your namby namby litter tray business; that’s for girls. Once in the big outside the tempting scent of many tiny, nervous mammals went straight to his head and it was no more Mister Sleek City Cat, hello Hector, King of The Mighty Jungle!
So much for the brief, relaxing break we’d hoped for – instead, we got three days tramping the hedgerows and back gardens of a small market town in the south Netherlands, getting drenched and chilled through to the bone, looking for a cat who was having a very nice time thank you playing the mighty hunter, and who didn’t want to be found at all but only to miaow pathetically now and then from some inaccesssible spot so that we wouldn’t know how much fun he was having.
Glad he did. We had no fun at all. [Point of order: may I also note at this point that it really is bad manners and somewhat insensitive to continually complain like a fretful child (although you are 28) to someone who has a terminal illness, that you have one tiny degree of temperature and a bit of a sore throat?]
Nevertheless, chilled to the bone, exhausted and irritated beyond endurance as I have been, it’s as good a way as any to spend the run up to a presidential election. Better than listening to overpaid and overexposed pundits getting increasingly, nonsensically hysterical.
I should be thankful that at least I’ve been mostly spared the BBC’s Justin Webb, who’s all over the airwaves this morning desperately fighting to have McCain taken seriously, as if he can win now in any other way except by poll interference, a rearguard legal action a la Florida 2000 or the sudden appearance of a barking mad ‘lone wolf’ with a rifle.
You can hear the Republican talking points for the day echoed in Webb’s reports, just as loudly as he must be hearing the echoes of his career as Washington’s foremost British media suckup going down the tubes the closer that Obama’s election gets.
Hmm, I wonder how much of Webb continuing to assure viewers that McCain can still win (despite all evidence to the contrary) we’ll get on tonight’s overnight BBC election coverage?
One thing’s certain, there’ll be no shortage of rubbish spoken by all concerned: even without Webb, the BBC’s election commentary’s has become even more asinine now Lewis Hamilton is the World Formula 1 champion.
Potted R4 Today programme: “Obama is the new Lewis Hamilton! Hamilton is the new Obama! Look, they’re both black! That means something doesn’t it? Not sure what, but we’ll say it anyway!”
Oh God, I just had a horrible thought: once the results are in, how long before Campaign 2012 starts and the speculation over Palin’s potential presidential candidacy begins? I give it less than 24 hours.
I can’t stand it. I think I’d rather go back to the rain and the wet.
