A Little Treasure – East of the Sun, West of the Moon

I don’t often put reviews on this blog and I’m not sure this is a review – more of a burst of enthusiasm about a new discovery.

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Fifty Shades of Facebook: Or how to cheer a catless friend.

If Fifty Shades  lived up to the hype  I could forgive the dreadful writing but it isn’t sexy, it’s just depressing. How many times can you describe someone in exactly the same way? I get it, OK? Grey’s a Control Freak who’s control freakery is freakily controlling. I’m not thick. I understand. I don’t need to be told this every other paragraph. And why do the words  Holy Crap and Holy Shit end every other sentence – really, apart from ten year old boys, who litters their thoughts with so many toilet references ?

No. Not sexy. Not Mummy Porn.  Read Jilly Cooper if you want sexy, at least she can tell a cracking story.

I gave Fifty Shades of Drivel  140 pages of my time but I was already fed up and it was making things worse.

And why was I fed up? Because, apart from the disastrous weather we’re having,  I am once again catless.

Bobby the  Rescue cat has packed up her fur and moved out.

I’m not altogether surprised. She and Diesal had problems.

Diesal has only read the first two words of the  labrador handbook:

1. Eat everything

He missed the critical next bit:

…. as long as it’s dead. Don’t make things dead in order to eat them.

This isn’t usually a problem with cats, he attempts to eat them, they smack him round the head a few times, he learns due respect.

The rescue centre thought Bobby would be well up to this task as she’d attacked every single one of the helpers at the cattery. Sadly, she hadn’t read  the feisty cat manual;

1. Beat all other life forms into submission. If they are too big to eat,  assume they are put on earth to provide you with food or comfort by whatever means  necessary. If they fail to do this, treat them  with withering disdain, they are of no use to you. You are a cat. You are afraid of nothing. You scratch the eyes of the face of danger. Especially when danger comes in the shape of a giant idiotic dribbling labrador.

In the five months she was here Bobby came downstairs twice. Both times when Diesal was  asleep, and both times  to tell me I’d have to get rid of the dog if I wanted her to stay.

I didn’t get rid of the dog. She didn’t stay.

So, catless and with reading material that made me want to poke my own eyes out with a stick, I turned to Facebook and found this:

http://wethreecats.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/fifty-shades-of-ginger.html

Suddenly the world seemed brighter.

Thank you Jackie Morris.

It’s time to move on.

I let go Fifty Shades of Stupid and picked up the breathtaking ‘A Monster Calls’.  And  I can let go of Bobby. Another little monster will call.

One day.

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The Bottle of Yearning.

Jackie Morris is running a competition on her blog – anyone can enter – you just have to know what’s in the bottle… I knew as soon as I saw it…

The bottle

The bottle was bought from a Singapore market, on a heat drenched street hung with laundry that fluttered high above like bunting.

The money that paid for it was intended for light cotton clothes, for sweet smelling pineapple, for chest easing Tiger Balm, but the bottle winked its ruby eye in the brilliant sun and my Mother could not resist it. Nestled between soft white towels, she picked it up.

The orb warmed her palm, the chain trailed heavily over her pale fingers and briefly took her mind off the pulsing headache that clouded her thoughts. A pink-cheeked child, in a white bonnet, tugged at her skirt. Me. My brother lay sleeping in his pram, shaded by a duck scattered parasol. Postcards of exotic birds tucked beside him, waiting to be sent home to Granma and Grandad.

‘What do you think Kate? Will Daddy like it?’

Light bounced from the bottle.

I shook my head, hot and cross.

‘Ducks’

‘Oh you monkey, aren’t you excited that Daddy’s coming home?’

She pressed a finger on my nose. In minutes we were walking again, pushing my brother ahead, the silver bottle tucked beside him.

We were all hot when we got home. She filled the paddling pool but the pain in her head was blinding now and drove her, stiffly,  into the shade. I splashed for a while on my own. When bedtime came she could barely talk. The bottle swung from her neck as she kissed us goodnight and stumbled from the room.

In the morning, my brother was crying in his cot. She was not there. I pushed open the door to her room and crossed to where she lay on the bed, coiled for sleep but too still.  The bottle was clasped in her hand. I took it, dropped it around my own neck, the chill of it shocking my skin. I clambered up next to her, pressed my downy cheek next to hers.

Cold.

All my cries would not wake her. All my hugs and kisses.

All my tears.

She left us the bottle.

In it are all the I-love-yous she never got to say. All the happy-birthdays and good-lucks, all the I’ll-miss-yous. Every well-done and I’m-proud-of-you that should have been ours.

Every I-am-here

And

I-will-stay-with-you.

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