Old lady Domino has been upstairs staying out of the way ever since Oscar arrived, but tonight she’s come down again and is lay on her usual place warming her old bones on the radiator. She keeps glancing meaningfully at Oscar and he glances back, but all seems well.
Lyra, meanwhile, is remaining aloof from the whole business.
NEW MEMBER UPDATE
NEW MEMBER
I’ve got hold of a new baby today. I’ve called him Oscar Paws and he was abandoned at the local animal shelter and I couldn’t resist him. He is a tabby with white shoulders and legs and chest and is about one and a half years, and the others are tolerating him. He’s eaten and sicked the food back up and eaten again and I hope we’re lucky in keeping it down.
I’m trying to upload a photograph of him taken on my donated phone.(The previous one I dropped in a puddle and drowned). I want to try and do justice to his full handsomeness.
Here we are.
HAPPY NEWS
I’ve just been told my youngest sister has got a job.
Not a seasonal one like mine, but a real long-term employment job.
For the first time in ages, all three of us (me and both my sisters) will be in work over the Christmas period.
A CONSIDERED OPINION
Over the years, I have been sexually active with members of both genders and I’ve learned that I’d rather read a good book.
JUST IN CASE-CLUMSY BUGGER ALERT
In case you’ve been wondering why I’ve not been adding to this wreck of a blog recently, well, I fell down the sodden stairs and landed with my legs shot out in front of me and my coccyx hard on the step and it’s knocked all the strength and energy and fight out of me. I’m still a bit in pain but I feel up to writing again.
By the way, the coccyx is undeniable proof we evolved from a creature with a tail.
Oh yes, I might have a job. (if I didn’t keep tumbling down the stairs). I’ve got to go for an interview and if all goes well, it’s mine.
UNCHRISTIAN CHRISTIANITY+
Everyone’s favourite New Zealand born evangelical Christian, Ray Comfort, and his pal Kirk Cameron, who in his younger days was an actor, have really shown their true colours by putting out their own version of ‘The Origin of Species’.
What do I mean, their own version?
Well, it’s exactly the same as it was first published, one hundred and fifty years ago, but with a special addition. At the front, before you actually get to the book, is a sort of preface, fifty pages of it, written by Ray Comfort, listing the mistakes of evolution, (Piltdown man, anyone?) how evolution tempted Hitler into his own brand of hateful racism, how Charles Darwin was a racist and a misogynist, etc.
In other words, it’s the book with a load of anti-Darwinist propaganda stuck at the front.
Now, putting aside the fact a few (corrected by other scientists, who after all are only human) mistakes, doesn’t make evolution less true in itself. For every Piltdown man there is a Darwinopterus, which is a genuine, perfect example of what Creationists would call the (a) missing link. And that fact that Hitler was (he wasn’t) a rabid evolutionist who massacred millions of Jews in the name of Darwinian purity, doesn’t make evolution fiction. Neither does what Darwin himself thought of other races and females. Darwin’s ideas about other nationalities does not detract from the fact evolution explained the diversity of life on earth and still does after one hundred and fifty years. But don’t worry about that.
Instead, concentrate on what Comfort and his pal Cameron are doing. Now, I used to be a Christian, and I was taught by many old saints, that charitable works, cheerful giving, being kind to those you can’t stand, loving service, is what Christianity is all about. Because when non believers see your example, they will want to know more about this Christian business and might even get saved themselves. But no. Western Christians like Comfort and Cameron are too busy pedalling propaganda to go out and serve in the name of Christ. If you go and do an old person’s shopping for them, or babysit to give a harassed single mother a few hours off, or help build a shed or make a bed, and do it for Jesus, that’s Christianity. There is nothing in the Bible that says ‘write a load of stuff to turn people to me’. Actions, not words, make the Christian. That’s what makes people like Comfort and Cameron unchristian.
As to the job and my efforts in getting one front; I’m not going to post postings(?) as to my daily job-finding efforts. There are few things more boring than having to put up with an on-going autobiography concerning what a body gets up to. I will only mention it again when (if) I manage to get work.
JUST THE BEGINNING
I went down the job centre and perused the jobs on offer. Found three that I might take to. All cleaning jobs, all evening jobs.
Anyhow. . .
I rang up the numbers provided.
One job had gone. (Nice of them not to ring up the job centre and tell them to remove the offer).
Another, you had to have a clean driver’s licence. (Why? Unless you have to clean an area so big you need your own transport to get around it).
The third led me to an answerphone, leave your name and phone number and I’ll get back to you. So I did. This was about dinner time, and they’ve not got back to me yet.
I might nip down to where I worked before and fish for the possibility of getting my old job back. I doubt it, it’s been too long since I turned it in. Still, I can always reapply. . .
A HOPE, A CHANCE
Th doctor has prescribed tablets for my arthritis in my legs, and the pain and stiffness is actually easing off to such a point where I can get up and down the stairs without too much effort. Plus, the pain that kept me awake and out of my bed has gone almost completely.
And, now, to be honest, I can’t think of any real reason why I can’t try and get a job. Cleaning or something, maybe. Something that doesn’t require pieces of paper to prove you can do things you can do because you’ve taught yourself. ANYTHING is better than sitting about watching life pass you by, the minutes drip dripping like water from a tap with a damaged washer. I’ve read everything in the house, I don’t put my computer on until after tea most nights (saves money) and there are vast, trackless wastes consisting of time I can’t fill up doing bugger all. Being out of work is damn boring. I feel useless. I’d feel like I was achieving something again. Plus, the money from a job would be nice.
It will be nice to get back into the world of work again. Then I’ll have enough money to purchase a Microsoft word CD-rom and use it to e-parcel stories up in such a way they will be read by a publisher who specializes in reading unsolicited manuscripts.
I think I’ll take a stroll down the job centre, see what they’ve got on offer. I’ve got the will to go ahead, and I’m keen to start. There is always a chance, even with jobs vanishing as businesses go under. Someone might give me a go. I’d like to work as I did before, the night shift in a supermarket. I’m a natural night owl, am more active after eight pm. Now my noisy, anti-social neighbour has vanished, possibly for good, there’s no reason why I can’t work at night and sleep during the day. There’s more choice as well, as not many people want permanent nights, and the money’s better.
I’ll have to get moving. The longer I put it off, in this employer’s market, where the employer can reject you if you haven’t been in work for a set time, the less chance I have of getting work.
I can always try, and I’m sure someone will give me a chance. It’s better than this doing nowt and achieving nowt at the moment. Anything is better than that.
CAUGHT AT KISSES
I caught my two babies Domino Basset and Lyra Tab kissing on the wicker chair in my living room.
Here is photographic proof.
Actually, the sad thing is that this event is a one-off as they are usually hissing and spitting and scrapping at one another.
BOASTING ON BEHALF
This evening, my middle sister swam thirty lengths of the local swimming baths.
Thirty lengths.
She is forty-two, not necessarily a sportswoman, and she has swum thirty lengths. She said she could have done more but she got fed up.
I’ve not been to the swimming baths for twenty years, and I remember getting all excited because I managed to do a breadth and a half. My middle sister, a hard working woman as well as a wife and a Mother swum thirty lengths and said she could have done more but she got bored.
She can play music, too. Any instrument, she can get ahold of and play, although she’s never had a lesson.
My middle sister is very talented.
Quick addendum: if my Dad had been less keen on me, as eldest, being the sports person in the family, and stepped over me and actively concentrated on my middle sister, he wouldn’t have been as thoroughly disappointed.
