Grania

This is TaTa's friend Grania (fair of hair) with her hairdresser Roberta. Grania is a Gaelic name meaning Love or Grace. The name has inspired books (Grania;She-King of the Irish Seas by Morgan Llywelwyn) and Diarmuid and Grania by William Butler Yeats (TaTa's favorite poet) and George Moore with music by Elgar. There is an historical figure named Grania Uaile which is worth googling.

Friends

Stacy cutting her mum's hair on modelling day at SuperCuts
Suzie and TaTa on the Hathor Wherry at Barton Turf
Suzie being a grunt on the Hathor Wherry
Mike, Maxine and Treacle

We resign...sort of

First of all we decided that it only fair we form a coalition bloggership as the BTU (Blogger Trade Union) said it was discriminatory and we used an unfair voting system.
Then after experiencing the ravages of blogging we also decided that it is not for us.
Collectively we do not have Tizit's imagination, creativity, vocabulary, intelligence and breeding to write a blog.
So instead we have decided that Muddle would be our photographer and we will sometimes make comments but nothing as clever or philosophical as Tizit.
Siamese are the wisest of cats and we miss her charm, her grace and her enthusiasm.
We are moggies not moguls.
As you can see technology and letter opening are not our greatest skills.

Messing about on the river

Well actually it is the Norfolk Broads.
Here is TaTa with Susi who helps crew the wherry Hathor. There are only eight wherries remaining and they are remarkable and intriguin vessels.

A wherry is type of boat traditionally used for carrying cargo or passengers on rivers and canals in England, and is particularly associated with the River Thames. Passenger wherries evovled into the Thames skiff. Wherries were clinker built with long overhanging bows so patrons could step ashore dryshod before landing stages were built along the river. It is the long angled bow that distinguishes the wherry and skiff from the gig and the cutter which have steeper bows following the rise of the Royal Navy and the building of landing stages. In the late 18th century the name was given to the Norfolk Wherry with large sails which was developed to replace an earlier cargo boat the Norfolk Keel.

As wherries are completely wind and sail dependent moving a wherry from its mooring is labour-intensive and involves long punts to push the boat into a wind.

The wherry was full at time of sailing so instead TaTa and KeKe went on a solar powered boat developed in Germany and the only one of its kind in the UK. It has 14 solar panels which charge the batteries so the ride is smooth and quiet.

The new bloggers

The vote was 40% Muddle 20% Floozie and 40% Chevvie. So Muddle and Chevvie are the new blog writers. They will start writing in June.

Time to vote!

As written on the previous blog we are now looking for a suitable blogger to take over from Tizit. Treaclethe dog had a go but did not savour being a newshound.
Choose your blogger!
Hello...I am Muddle. I am 12 years old and was born in this house. I am very much a loner and like to go out and about in the neighbourhood and go through catflaps and windows so I get to her a lot of local gossip. I am very wary of human strangers (as should all animals be). My bestest friend in the whole wide world was Loofah who has now gone to Hound Heaven. I have a special fondness for fresh wood pigeon.

Greetings. My name is Floozie. I was a street cat and bought up four kittens without the help of the government. Three have now been adopted and the other one is living here with me. Because I have lived on the streets I am wise beyond my years (3) and have had to live on my wits. Lots of people come to this house and I carefully take note of what they say. As you can see from this photo I am always on the lookout for a new story. I like going out in the garden now. I don't like being handled much because I hurt my back. I have a special fondness for my stuffed mouse.

High six. My name is Chevvie (short for Chevrolet because I have a 24 valve purr, eight gears and find cornering a little difficult). I am the son of Floozie. I am 12 weeks old and spend most of my time running around for no reason, shredding cashmere sweaters and falling into the bath. I waited for my first story to come out of the printer but instead a picture of my bottom arrived. I have a special fondness for anything to do with food and leaping for great heights at 3am onto someone's head. Tab had to get a tetanus shot because I thought her arm was a dangerous snake and bit through it.

Glug. I am one of Three Fish called Fish. We would make good writers because like most journalists we go round in circles, back and forth and spend most of our time gawping at Z-list celebrities. It is totally untrue that Fish have a 3-second memory...what was the question again?

Nibbles. We are Cumfy and Mumfy. We had a relative called Giggle who worked for The Guineapendent so writing is in our jeans. We spend most of our time munching the grass and because of an incident with a fox we live outside during the day and then go inside just before dark. We do not fiddle our expenses and give out as much as we take in (we nibble, then we fertilize). We have a special interest in carrots, celery and corn - any vegetable really which begins with 'c'.
So, who is your favourite.
VOTE NOW!
You have one week!

A loving story

Both Floozie and her son Chevvie have managed to wheedle their way into my heart. I was angry because I thought KeKe meant them as replacements for Tizit. After this blog there is going to be a vote as to who writes the blog as it has always been a blog written from an animal's perspective and not a human one. So tomorrow I will post the candidates and you can vote and choose. I received this email and I thought it pertinent to everyone. We have had a tough two years with animals and I didn't want anymore ... we lost four cats, almost lost Treacle and our six guinea pigs eaten by a fox. I didn't think there was any space left in my heart for another animal but I was wrong. It was too early and I am too tired and too ill. But somehow or other the loudest purr in the world in my ear at 3am and to watch Floozie go from a frightened little animal to a comedian has been worth it. Sometimes love is not instant, sometimes fear blocks love and ultimately love wins over. And finally I had to go and have a tetanus shot because Chevvie bit right through my arm in the elbow joint!

I am sorry you are not feeling too happy with your two new cats. I know how hard it is as in the past have had all the hissing and spitting and carry on that goes with a new mum coming into the house where there are other animals. I still bear the scars when I was bitten terribly on the hand by a mum who thought I was going to touch her baby. But it is not the cats fault they came to live with you and Kees was trying to fill a gap, maybe a little too soon. These words are ones we are having at David's mums funeral on Tuesday. I am sure you know them but they count the same for dead pussies as they do for dead mothers.

"You can shed tears that she is gone, or you can smile because she has lived. You can close your eyes and pray that she''ll come back, or you can open your eyes and see all she's left. Your heart can be empty because you can't see her. or you can be full of the love you shared. You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday, or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday. You can remember her only that she is gone, or you can cherish her memory and let it live on. You can cry and close your mind. be empty and turn your back. Or you can do what she'd want; smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

When I first took in my last dog Sheba, we already had a wonderfully funny loving little shaggy mongrel called Dibbles. Dibbles was rescued a few days old from a field where she had been dumped and chewed by rats. She was full of maggots and her tail had been cut off and was just a ragged stump. Dibbles was about to be put to sleep by my friend Wendy a PDSA nurse. Instead she put aside the syringe and began washing the maggots out of the huge wound on Dibbles back. I happened to be there and saw this happening. Three months later Dibbles came to live with us.

Sheba was a stray on Wanstead flats. It took Wally Probyn, the man who rescued her over a year to catch her. When she came to us she had been homed with a lovely couple of retired schoolmistresses but had escaped and run away. She was nervous and distraught without Wally but he was unable to keep her in the top floor flat he had in London's East End. I spent a week out every night trying to find Sheba and eventually she ran back to the old ladies and jumped on their bed. They slept every night with their back door open hoping she would return. She came to us because we had a walled garden and she could not escape.

I tell you this story because one day I was at the vets and another nurse friend Debbie and I were talking. "You don't like Sheba do you" she said to me. I had not said so but obviously my tone or something I had said conveyed this to her. It stopped me in my tracks and really made me think. She was right. Sheba was a scared little dog who looked more like a fox. She did not know how to play and was terribly insecure. Dibbles on the other hand was everybody's friend. You could not help but love her. From then on I saw Sheba differently. Dibbles and she were great friends. Dibbles however had been so badly wounded and infected as a puppy that she developed a very bad bowel condition and had many operations on her rectum. She would have needed a colostomy had she been human. She passed pure blood from her backside and eventually had to be put down. She was just six years old. Sheba then became our only dog along with 23 cats.

I realised I had the gentlest most loyal dog anyone could wish for and she became my guardian angel going everywhere with me when I could not venture out of the house alone. She sat on the settee with me at every therapy session and when I was distraught she would go and sit beside my therapist and shake.

I hope things work out for you all. We are in Essex from Monday and the funeral is on Tuesday. This is not an easy time but we have to get through it, just as David's mum would have wanted. I don't know if I told you but the doctor and his wife who run mum's home lost their 30 year old son the week before mum died. He had a massive brain haemmorrage. He was a barrister with a wonderful life before him. I spoke to Mrs Khan his mother today. She was very brave and just kept saying how much they miss Dave's mum as she was such a lovely lady. She said she always told her children when they used to say "It's not fair" that life is not fair and that just about sums it all up.