sir_guinglain

My cold is perhaps improving; I slept fitfully during the night and awoke not long before my parents took some glass and grass to the tip; I went too as their health issues are worse than mine. This turned into an extended shopping trip, as (among other things) we searched for the double of a soup I'd bought in Aldi in Chipping Norton and found that Aldi doesn't stock it in Westerhope. A lesson in local buying. A dash for tissues and menthol sweets at nearer shops to my parents' led to a chat with their less visible neighbours, eating sandwiches outside the bakers', who turned out to be very friendly - they now have a puppy (present at shops) to add to their cat (not present, unsurprisingly), and the puppy ("joined at the hip" to the six-year-old daughter) let me stroke her forehead (most of her was swaddled in blanket by six-year-old, who liffted her dog up so it could see a picture of a certain long-deceased Samoyed) which is more than I've had from the cat (whom I've been misgendering for a year on the basis of their name being traditionally used by a male pantomime character). After all this excitement and following lunch I fell asleep again (but not before watching Star Trek Discovery on my phone - a fairly good episode even though I am not convinced by the Georgiou strand) and was woken at half-time by my mother who was bored by West Ham versus Newcastle and needed to form a support group. J joined us via Skype.

I have not managed any work these last two days and giving up some of my commitments, long urged by family, is looking more likely. Damaging patterns can be difficult for me to acknowledge, even now; and traps can become fur-lined, but I'm sure I've said that before.

On returning to my flat last night I found my neighbour Gna trying to persuade her black cat, Marmite, to come into her flat from the lobby. On my arrival Marmite hid behind me and proceeded to attempt to climb up me, so I picked him up for some time and he behaved as if he was my cat for a little while, until he decided that Poppy couldn't be allowed to reign over Gna's flat and agitated to climb down. He did shepherd me up to my flat, as if to make sure that I was there; Gna tells me that he sometimes goes up to my landing and wails, though this only seems to happen when I am out.

Another black cat has its eccentricities too:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/8021407.stm