{Cheese and Beans}

In between various work requests and support calls from customers, I sat at work this morning watching the clock – watching for 11am to arrive; knowing it would mark the end of a little life in a vet’s surgery a few miles away.

I didn’t tell anybody at work until the time had passed. I worried about calling home – wondered if I should or not. Wondered if somebody would want to hear from me, or if they wanted to be left alone.

In the end I did call, and was surprised at the upbeat voice on the other end of the line. We didn’t talk much. I asked if it had gone okay. I got a despondent “yes”. I volunteered that I might be able to finish early and pick the children up from school.

Thus began the task of requesting an early finish, and telling various female friends at work about the fate of our little man – a trouble we had not shared with many. The surprise was perhaps that both male and female staff were taken aback. Our little man had become known to quite a few colleagues over the years – singling them out for claws and footprints on their smart clothes while en-route for a night out (or a night in with pizza and rubbish movies).

I made my way down to school, and took a wrong turn. I went the wrong way in the town I have lived in for the last ten years. I got lost in the same roads I walk every weekday morning with the girls.

Fate decided that I would be breaking the news to the girls. Little Miss 4 didn’t really understand.

“Where Mummy?”

“She’s staying at home because she’s very sad”

“Why is she sad?”

“Because you know Simpson was very poorly? He died.”

“He died already?!” (a note of consternation – obviously the four year old brain still thinks the world revolves around them)

After a few minutes stood among the gaggle of Mums – many of which I know, and all of which totally ignored my presence (and Wendy’s absence), Little Miss 6 came bursting from school. Little Miss 4 broke the news.

“Simpson has already Died!”

“Oh no!”

“We need to get nother cat! Cheer Mummy up!”

“Yeah! Dad – we are going to get two cats…. (pause for thought)… can we get three cats Dad?”

I say nothing. She starts skipping.

“Yay! We’re going to get three cats. We’re going to get three cats!”

“I said nothing of the sort little madam”

“Awwwwww”

She then feigned tears, before brightening up considerably on sight of one of her friends, and went racing off to play in the playground while we waited for the eldest to finish school.

Without exception, each child’s first remark upon leaving school was “I’m starving – have you got anything to eat?”. It’s nice on days like today to have some kind of consistency.

This week the video for “Telephone” by Lady Gaga was released. There are not enough adjectives. It’s inventive, loud, original, and perhaps most importantly, it’s different. The famous quote from the annuls of Apple comments on the crazy ones; that they change things. Love her, or hate her, Lady Gaga is changing pop music as we know it – dragging us with her as she turns the machinery.

She polarises audiences in the same way Madonna did. The major difference this time is perhaps that she is a much better singer, and more driven (who thought that was possible?). Once you read past the popular music press headlines, you find a workaholic who keeps her act up through every waking hour, travelling the world every day, endlessly turning the crank handle of a global marketing machine.

When not in front of the cameras or on stage, she is posting to the social networks – sharing her thoughts with her “Little Monsters“.

The world has never seen this kind of star. If a person is the sum of her parts, you might say she is the first successful composite of all that have come before; there are shades of Blondie, Britney Spears, Madonna, Christina Aguilera, and many more.

I just wonder how long she can keep it up for.

Over the past few weeks we have been keeping a brave face on a rather sad story at home. Simpson, our many adventured cat, has run out of lives. What we thought was a cold didn’t get better – and taking him to the vet turned into a week’s stay in hospital.

He has a tumor in his head – causing breathing difficulties – or rather in his case the ability to breath through his nose. No nose means no sense of smell, and no sense of smell means he won’t eat (it turns out cats need to smell what they are about to eat). You might think hunger might defeat that base instinct, but no – he’s literally wasting away in front of our eyes.

The result of his hospital stay is a pipe stitched into his stomach to allow him to be force fed by syringe. Not exactly the quality of life you might wish for any animal – let alone one who was rescued fifteen years ago from an animal shelter.

While it’s easy for me to see this weekend as perhaps his last with us, it’s not my decision. He’s not my cat. He lets me know he’s not my cat (cats have staff, don’t they). As much as I might joke about wishing him away from time to time, in reality I can’t imagine what the house might be like without him.

He’s had a fantastic life with first Wendy, then myself and Wendy, and latterly being forcably adored by three little girls. Now we approach his final days, and need perhaps to all be brave, and know when the time has come.

I’m guessing there’s going to be rather a lot of hugs and tears in this house in the coming days.

It’s all change again for my personal blog – gone with the minimalist theme, and in with the loud, in your face theme. I would like to say this was all planned, but of course it wasn’t. During a fit of “what can I do next” last night, I ended up looking at the free themes over at WooThemes, and came away with this one – it’s called “Mainstream” if you are insterested in slapping it on your wordpress install.

I’m not sure that it’s any easier or more difficult to read than previous incarnations of “Cheese and Beans”, but at least it mixes things up a little. I guess I got bored with the blog being mundane.

Better to be “something” rather than “something of nothing”. Feel free to tear into me, and accuse me of being a serial tinkerer (I’ll freely admit to it).

At some point over the coming weekend I promise to begin writing “real, proper” posts again – instead of these self interested sidenotes about all manner of geekery.

It’s about time I caught my few remaining readers (thankyou for your perseverence, by the way) up on happenings in our menagerie.

For some unknown reason (and remember this is a professional software developer and web designer talking) the web server this installation of wordpress is sat on will no longer let me upload files.

What. The. Hell.

To be honest, I don’t have time to fiddle with it, and I’m not sure I can really be bothered to do so. Standby for the entire contents of this damn blog to move elsewhere… the RSS feed will remain the same, and the domain name will… the platform may well be ripped out from underneath itself though. I’m sick of this.