Snug as a bug

It's unseasonably cold this evening. I don't mean Antarctic winter cold, or even American High in the Rockies cold. Just cold for us on our Gulf-Stream warmed little green island. The temperature is a balmy 0 C, or 32 F, for our other visitors. The car roofs are dusted in pale waves of frost and I'm sure the potted geraniums in the back garden may be done for by morning. If they survive, I may move them into a tumbledown shed that's had a reprieve and has a sunny window.

Billy Connolly has some funny stories of growing up in Glasgow and the efforts to look more affluent when the parish priest came around, spoiled by the brother shouting from the bedroom:

"Mammy! Billy has his leg down the arm of the duvet!"

Herself and I both survived frosty nights in unheated bedrooms as children with blankets of adult coats on us for protection. I remember my father's large tweedy coat, the smell of tobacco from it, it's rough outer texture and smooth inner lining. We also had some furs, remnants of the family's few years in Canada, and these tartan-lined bearskins had long, soft brown hairs to keep the cold out of the unlucky bear. The furs are long gone, of course. But I found a small bear-fur hat from my mother's 1950s collection. It's sitting on a shelf by the door of my cluttered study. I'll give it a pat for old-time's sake on the way to sliding in under the many togged modern duvet in our centrally heated 21st Century house.

Times move on. On Monday, our visiting 3 year old grandson stopped in his tracks in front of the living room fire.

"What's that?" he asked, staring at the naked flames.

Good night.

...got no worries; got no cares....

Herself starts the day off with that question dreaded by men everywhere:
"Do you remember last night?"
I lie there half in and out of consciousness. A few minutes earlier, I was trying to find a bus home from Wicklow. Then the five-to-eight weather forecast was unceremoniously switched on on the radio and woke me up from the dream.
"Er... No...?"
She throws clean socks and teeshirts at me. I brush them aside as it's getting hard to breathe under the mound.
"I woke up in the middle of the night to find you leaning over me."
"Oh, aye...!"
"And you said: 'I've lost my hug'!"
"I don't remember that."
"So I gave you a hug and you hugged me back. It was lovely. A lovely big hug."
"Feck! Don't remember that at all!"
So, there you go....
I lost my hug....
Wish someone had warned me.

Grandaddy's boots...

At least I have my health

Following on from cheesy dreams and toothache, I found myself on Monday suffering with stomach ache. And when a stomach the size of mine aches, that's a BIG ache!

There's a gastro- bug going around at the moment and I seem to have got a version. It seemed in my case to only exhibit cramps rather than resolving into anything messier. All the same, I was in bed shivering like a jelly by 9.30 and though I went to work yesterday feeling only a little sore, I decided to take today off to chase off the very last of the bug.

Update on the seagulls: Three of us were looking out the window at the puzzling seagulls on Monday when a small brown blob of fluff on webbed feet scuttled across the roof tiles! The pair evidently have at least one chick, possibly two. Yesterday the parents spent quite a long time away but came back in the late afternoon. I suppose they were out shopping.

Cheese before bedtime

"Excuse me!" I said over the garden wall. "Excuse me!"

The waiter didn't reappear. I was furious.

In the background, the cats jumped around a pair of chattering magpies that fluttered about in pibald circles on the lawn. I left them to dance and stepped back in through the back door into the crowded kitchen.

"Babe," I said. "That fellow is ripping you off!"

The waiter had peered over the garden wall in his white shirt and black waistcoat and told Herself that there had been too much salt used with the meal. It would cost another €1 on top of the bill.

He had already charged €0.90c for the same reason on our previous bill. If it happened again, I was going to challenge it. And it had.

"Where's the bill?" I asked. Herself handed me a booklet that fell in fan-folds onto the floor as I fumbled with it.

"Look!" I said. "They charge so much already that they can give you a whole waiter's book as a bill!"

I flicked through the white pages and came to a multi-coloured one which listed the menu and the accompanying prices. The menu clearly stated that the prices already included the cost of salt.

"I knew it!"

I pulled a salt cellar from the counter and tried to explain.

"This is our salt cellar," I said. "How are they supposed to know how much salt we've used anyhow? Do they weigh it beforehand? Do they?"

The crowd milled about and I lost sight of Herself. She was somewhere to the front of the house, speaking with someone at the open front door.

I went out the back door and looked fruitlessly over the wall for the waiter. My father's neighbour, Billy D, gazed out over his shoulder through next door's kitchen window at the melee of cats and magpies.

I awoke to Herself sitting on the side of the bed.

"I'm glad we turned that mattress yesterday," she said. "I didn't move the whole night."

I groaned, thinking about the cheese sandwiches I had had before bed. Always a good idea at the time, but always the cause of the strangest dreams. I told Herself about the salt.

"I didn't move either," I said. "I was weighed down by a block of cheese."