Hogmanay

Sent my love off to the city in an ambulance this morning. For the last week we've been sharing the worst case of flu either of us have ever experienced but by this morning it was time to admit that one of us was starting to need a breathing prompter.
Happy morphine, my darling.


Then in the afternoon, an intervention. Alison, you're making yourself ill with this blogging shit - you used to paint.
This much is true - I did use to paint. Hard to see how another nude will be of much use at the moment however and I can't seem to manage both at once. I give them, my kind and loving friends, my standard citizens' democracy chat, only slightly ruining it by fitting in the word 'ambulance' at the end and bursting into tears. Noted pamphleteer Thomas Paine used this debating technique all the time I'm sure.


Thing is I haven't blogged, read any blogs or papers, or watched tv news in a week and it's been a great relief to know little more than that Benazir Bhutto was apparently killed by a car door handle.
I think I'll just check my mail though and maybe a couple of blogs, just in case Harper has decided to use Xmas week to kick up his conversion to full psi-lon status....

Oh look, Skdadl said something nice about me in a great piece on the freedom of the press to become whores. Wait, actually it's even better than that. She says that even as much of the fourth estate "have decided to make careers out of laundering government propaganda", there's still us - the lowly unpaid blogging pamphleteers - to point out both this fact and where the facts in their stories should be.
Skdadl : "This is very hard work for a volunteer army, but it is a privilege to know so many people who have joined up anyway."
And a pleasure to serve with you, chickie chick.


Night. Trying to snow.
I've opened the gates to let the local deer into my normally off-limits garden. They walk uncertainly past the lighted window and sprint off down to a winter salad of roses and the remains of the veggie garden. They want those cabbages but first they'll strip every leaf off every ivy they can reach, ivy being higher in vitamins C and D than most veggies.

Much is made of the superior cunning of predators; not enough of the perseverence of herbivores. I've seen a doe run repeatedly up a 7' chainlink fence, throw her weight at the top, and spring back to the same side again.
If unlucky, she'll snag a hoof between the links, break a leg and die. If successful, she'll flatten out just enough of the top of the fence to turn what was an obstacle into a landing touchdown, a springboard to take all the deer right over the wall.


I imagine it is at those times that she turns to her fellow deer and says something like : "This is very hard work for a volunteer army but it is a privilege to know so many who have joined up anyway."

Eat everything down to the ground, my lovelies. There's a new year coming.

Jan 3 update : Thank you so much for your many kindnesses left here and elsewhere. He still can't breath without the machine and is not expected to come home any time soon, so if it's ok with you all, I'm not going to mention this again till I have something more encouraging to report. Your good wishes very dear to me and I thank you.