The New Pussycat on the Block

Seems I'm not that good at blogging, as it's been nearly a year since my previous post.  And in that post - just after our handsome cat, "Peeps", unexpectedly died, I posed the question of whether we would ever want to have another pussycat?  After all, whenever a truly-loved pet dies, it is always hard to believe you could ever have another; because, surely, the one just passed away was the best ever, and no other could hold a candle to it...

Watch this space, I'd written.  And indeed, 6 months later - last September - our friend Julie, who volunteers with MK Cats Protection, told us about a gorgeous little tortoiseshell 'puddytat' which MKCP had just rescued.  She showed us a photo of her - Jemima, they'd called her, and said she was presently in quarantine whilst she weaned her 3 kittens!  Poor little mite was only about a year old, and already a 'mummy'!

Well, the photo of 'Jemima' helped us decide to arrange a visit to the MKCP foster-carer, looking after Jemima until she was re-homed.  Once seen, we were smitten!  She's only a tiny little cat, and even now, 5 months after we adopted her, she still looks more like a kitten than an adult cat which has had kittens!  MK Cats Protection organised a vet to neuter and vaccinate Jemima before we adopted her, and once we took her on, we registered her at our veterinary practice, had her 'chipped', and bought pet-health insurance.

'Jemima' came to live with us on 5th September 2014 and very quickly made herself at home!  We decided that 'Jemima' was a bit of long name to have to call out every evening if she went 'walkabout', so we shortened it to 'Jem' - and she soon got used to her 'new' name.  But we didn't have to worry about her wandering off down the road, or, (worse,) going over the back fence and through the copse to the main road, just 50 yards behind our bungalow... She's only ever once been over the back fence, and only ever once gone out of the front garden!  She really is a home-loving pussycat, and gets all the fun and exercise she needs racing about our home, or back garden, chasing birds and squirrels!  And she's such a playful little thing!  She loves nothing more than tossing a ball-point pen or a pencil around the floor; and has lots of fun chasing her furry balls, or "killing" her furry rat.  And after a good chase-about, her equal next pleasure is to stretch out, lengthwise, down Ann's lap or down between my legs, as we sit in our reclining chairs.

So 'Peeps' remains a beloved pet, but 'Jem' has taken her place as our treasured, and much-loved pussycat, and we trust we'll have her energetic and lively character for many years to come!

"Peeps" - The results of the Post Mortem

It's been 11 days since we lost our beautiful, loving, pussycat, "Peeps".  And 10 days since we got the results of our veterinary surgeon's post mortem report.
When our vet phoned me with the report of how poor little Peeps died - (little? He must've weighed 14lbs / 7kg at least!) - anyway, when she phoned me with the result, the day after he died, it was really quite 'liberating', as I'd been kicking myself for 24 hours that "if only I hadn't let him out into the front garden and left him there...".  She informed me that he died of 'Sudden Death Syndrome' - the same condition that has claimed the lives of some very fit, energetic, sportsmen in recent years.  He also had an enlarged heart, and the heart attack which killed him might have occurred at any time - even as he scampered round our living room...  It was a real comfort to me, to know it wasn't "my fault".


When we left Peeps at the vets that Thursday evening (13th March), we'd also instructed them that after the 'PM' to send his remains for cremation and return them in a wooden casket, with his name on a brass plaque, as we've done with all our other pets... And each one now rests on the floor of the summerhouse, where we can continue to see and remember them; and their individual characters.
We got Peeps 'back' today.  I phoned the vets and went and collected him this afternoon.  The crematorium which our veterinary practice uses has been the same throughout the years we've owned pets, and finally had to say goodbye to them, and so the caskets are identical in design and construction - a fine, light, hardwood - and when returned from the crematorium there is always a condolence card contained in the package - a really nice touch, and *so* helpful to a grieving pet owner.


So that closes that chapter of our lives, but, like the memories of "Jen", (my wonderful German Shepherd dog, who I had before I met and married Ann), "Whisky", (the cat that came with our bungalow when we bought it, back in '86), "Lynx", the most soft, loving, pussycat, who stayed as small as a kitten all his life), "Peer", a big, bruiser of a cat who finally softened and loved being cuddled by the time he passed away, and lastly "Peeps", the biggest, most colourful - ginger & white - most adoring of his "Mummy" pussycat who's short life with us was, at least, the happiest 6 months of his two and a half years... ...


Will we have another pussycat?  Watch this space!

A Short, Intensely Powerful, Era, Has Come To An End

I really cannot take it in just now.  Our handsome, nay, beautiful, ginger pussycat, "Peeps"; so loving, so adoring of Ann, my wife, so much a scamp, so fun to watch playing with his toy mouse, or a newspaper on the floor... has died, suddenly - cause currently unknown - yesterday afternoon.
It was a lovely, sunny, mild day, and I'd let Peeps out into the front garden for a 'change'.  Peeps rarely went out the front, preferring just our back garden, and which we, only once, ever saw him jump up onto the back fence as if to go 'exploring' elsewhere, but he never did.  In fact, even when the back gate was opened to take the wheelie-bin and recycling bags round to the front of our property, ready for the "Bin Men", Peeps would never venture past the gateway!  I don't think he was a 'wuss', as they say these days, I think he was just too unsure of the big, bullying, cat from two-doors up, to want to venture out.
But yesterday, I thought I'd let him out into the front garden - he wanted to come with me while I replenished the bird food in the feeders and bird table - and, as it was daylight, I figured I'd see how he arrived back inside our bungalow through the back door?  Did he come over the roof?  Did he go down the side alleyway and then over the back fence?  Considering he never ever jumped over the back fences, just *how* did he get back indoors when he went out the front?  All previous times for this, was night time - because we only got him last October, so this Spring we were *really* looking forward to seeing how he liked the south-facing (so *very* sunny) back garden.  Now we'll never know.
After an hour of him being out the front and not returning - highly unusual for Peeps - I went to find out where he'd got to.  And found him just inside our next door neighbour's front gate, very recently dead.
I couldn't believe my eyes!  "Peeps!" I cried, and looked around for meanings... There were no visible signs of poisoned foodstuff, or saucers of antifreeze (a common poison used by cat-haters); nor a sign of a scuffle with another cat.  No visible wounds, broken bones from a car hitting him - and the driver then moving him off-road into our neighbour's garden - nothing to tell me how he'd expired so suddenly, at hardly three years old, and apparently still as fit as a kitten...
We've taken him to our veterinary practice for a post mortem, and they say the results - such as they will be - they'll communicate to us this afternoon.
Actually, I don't think I can write anymore, I'm getting choked up...

The Summerhouse is Finally Online!

Wa-hey!  After nearly two years, and having tried 'home-plugs', a network booster, and Ethernet cabling... the summerhouse has finally got Wi-Fi!  Thanks to a rather expensive - but wholly worth it - Wi-Fi Home Plug (made by Devolo), which I bought at Christmas and which has provided Wi-Fi throughout our bungalow for the first time ever, now I've found out the signal will reach to inside my wonderful summerhouse!


This afternoon, the summerhouse has been opened up and sat in for the first time this year, and here I am, finally able to *truly* write this blog as "A View From The Summerhouse", cos at last I've got a Wi-Fi signal in here.  No more writing my thoughts down in MS Word, then transferring them to the blog when I go indoors.  Now the blog can properly be its title!


So here I sit, the sun was beautifully warm, all afternoon, and the day was bright with it, but now it's dropped below the (western) garden fence, heading for sunset.  As we drove back from our morning church service, the car temperature gauge read 20 degrees, in March!!
What a great day!  Spring has sprung, the mini-daffodils nodded in the warm breeze, and our resident female frog lazed in the pond, awaiting her suitors, no doubt!  Only Blue Tits and Great Tits were visiting the bird feeders, but with all of them in their finest Spring plumage, I reckon they're nesting already - and maybe that's why we haven't seen either the Collared Doves, Woodpigeons or Starlings... praps they're all building nests and too busy to feed?!


Just a short 'View from the Summerhouse' this time.

My new Blog is up!

My new wargames blog, called "Squibzy's Solo Wargames - a wargaming miscellany" is up and running... well... it's got two posts on it.

Actually, I'm so pleased I decided *not* to go public with it, yet, because I'm finding it a BIG learning curve, making this new blog "relevant" to the world-wide wargaming community which it will finally be aimed at!  I mean, uploading photos and adding captions is a pain!

For instance, I wanted the first photos I uploaded to be left-aligned, and my captions to the right... can I do that???  Can I 'eck-as-like!  So I've got a *lot* of learning to do before I get this new blog right enough to go "public".

Hey-ho...

Intentions, objective, and purpose ... Will it be accomplished this time?

Intentions, objective, and purpose ... Will it be accomplished this time?

Intention: to paint-up my "lead mountain" (see footnote) of wargames figures - especially my 28mm Darkest Africa characters, natives, and Colonial British Forces figures for my African campaign - within this next six months.  During the same period, construct the model buildings, scenery and terrain for these.

Objective: to finally get the campaign underway, albeit over ten years since I imagined it!

Other objectives are to get my Second World War, French Resistance, 20mm game finished writing-up, and then play-tested, before submitting it for publication to the Solo Wargames Association magazine, "Lone Warrior".  Also to finish the 15mm Pirate ships - Galleons and Brigs - ready for wargaming with my collection of 15mm 18th Century Pirates later this year.

Purpose: all this is so that I can begin writing a new blog, specifically to showcase my wargames figures during their 'campaigns', or one-off battles; together with photographs taken of the game, with an accompanying narrative, like a picture book story, which, hopefully, will emulate my "role model" blog, "The Campaigns of General Pettygree" - see < http://generalpettygree.blogspot.co.uk/ > - that has fascinated and inspired me for several years, now.

So, those are my Springtime Resolutions on this, the 1st May 2013 ... and I just hope that, after nearly two years of retirement from work, during which I've longed to get back to my wargaming, I'll finally get to paint my "lead mountain" of wargames figures and actually get some solo wargames played!  It's about time!

Footnote: Historically, toy soldiers were made of lead, hence all metal wargames figures are referred to 'lead' soldiers.  So wargamers call a collection of many (i.e. hundreds!) of unpainted, metal, wargames figures a "lead mountain" because if they were all piled up together they'd look like a 'mountain'!  And Richard has got several hundred unpainted figures!

RIP 'Mrs T' (Mrs Margaret Thatcher) 1925-2013 (PM 1979-1990)

RIP 'Mrs T' ... or, more correctly - and more formally - Rest in Peace, Mrs Thatcher.

RIP?  Did I just write 'Rest in Peace' for... ... *Mrs Thatcher* ???!!!

Well, the years roll by, and the heat of one's more youthful, and passionate, political views mellows with age, doesn't it?

In 1979, when 'Mrs T' (though we hadn't started calling her that 'till many years later), with a Conservative government, got voted in, I was a Labour Party voter in 'Conservative clothing'; because my (then) wife and her family, were all Tory, and I *had* to fall in line or risk the wrath of "She Who must Be Obeyed!"

But by the mid 1980's, with *that* wife out of the way, (divorced, dear boy, not murdered!), I was able to be the political person I'd always been "underneath", but never able to give voice to, as my parents were Tories, my brother's a Tory, and my (now ex) wife was a rank-Tory!  However, by 1986, I was re-married to the most wonderful person ever - my lovely wife, Ann - and, thankfully, she is also a Labour Party voter, so we "suffered" together the final years of Thatcher's Reign!

So, although I'm a fan of women getting any job going, from a caterer to a Prime Minister, I'm afraid the legacy of the "Thatcher Years" will, for me, forever be one of deregulated this, that, and the other, which have all proven to be total failures (for most people) in their respective spheres.  BT replaced the General Post Office, and Royal Mail was cut out from the Post Office, and now both are ailing.  Umpteen railway privatised train companies have replaced British Railways, and STILL we don't get trains which run on time or commuter rail fares people can afford!  I could go on... but I can see your eyes are glossing over, so I'll just end as I began, and respectfully say Rest in Peace, 'Mrs T'... ... but actually, I'm not that sorry you're now fully consigned to history!