The morning after

Despite Norma's expensive medication (which meant she perked up for a week or two) there is no getting away from the fact that she is a frail, elderly cat at the end of her life. She is still thin, doesn't really seem to know where she is most of the time, can't always recognise things such as her very important food bowl and mostly spends her life asleep. However, the sun appeared on Saturday and she decided to join us in the garden. She walked up to shed, sat in the sun for an hour, followed us around a bit and then settled down for a rest in the evening. By the following day her exertions had taken its toll and she could hardly move from the cat basket. She seemed in pain and yet again I found myself thinking that I was keeping her alive more for my benefit than hers. When I think like that she usually improves for a day or two!

My brother knows all about feeling bad after the previous day's activities. He took part in the Eton
Triathlon with my sister and brother-in-law. This has become an annual competition for them as it is near to home, and close to their respective birthdays. It is the alternative to getting p*ssed on your birthday called wrecking your body in a vain attempt to try and kid yourself that you are still as fit as you were at 25.  My brother ended up getting smashed! He was in an altrication with another bike rider (a friend of the brother-in-law as it happened) and was thrown over the handlebars, breaking his collar bone and doing some nasty soft tissue damage to his hip that meant when he finally left Accident and Emergency at Wexham Park Hospital he was in a wheelchair. Today, with the aid of a concoction of pain killers he can take a few gentle steps and was optomistically hoping that he would be recovered in time for his annual golfing trip to Scotland in June. (I suspect that he won't be, as, being the wrong side of 40, his injuries will take more than a few weeks to heal. I did tell him that if he had been in the Tour de France he would have just had to keep on going!) So, the Birthday supper they had planned was spent in all the luxury that the NHS has to offer. My brother was taken to hospital by ambulance and I assume that they were paramedics provided by the events organiser since they got lost in the way and it took them over an hour to go 5 miles. They went from Eton, to Slough via Reading which as anyone will tell you who knows the area is a 'bloody long way round'. They blamed in on their Sat Nav.. but I am not so sure....!

Finally, I read somewhere that Black and White cats are the least popular and more difficult to find homes for that any other colour. I told this to Mandi as he sat and thought about the meaning of life.