Hello Kitty!

Isn’t he cute?

No, he’s not mine. He’s my daughter’s kitten, so I suppose you could say he’s my new grand-kitty.

It has been so long since we had a kitten in the family, I had forgotten how tiny they are. 

And that's the leg of the man who says no more cats that he's sitting on. Just saying!

Who Are You?

I’ve just done this fun test to see what career would suit me. I enjoy doing this sort of thing and thought you might too. 

Turns out I am, along with 1% of the population, an INFP – Questor. Careers that would suit me include: holistic health practitioner and writer. Whoo!

I could also be a minister/priest/rabbi – oh well.

Well that was fun while it lasted. 

Any more INFPs out there? Did you do the test and find it accurate?

And while you’re in the mood for tests, how about this one on the BBC? 10 questions on grammar. I scored 8. I wasn’t happy with that!

I do love this time of year when/if it behaves itself!

Dogs and Cats!

We had to take Indy to the vet on Friday. He hadn’t been himself and I’d been up with him all night on Thursday night. He just couldn’t settle and didn’t seem to know what he wanted or where he wanted to be.

We couldn’t get an appointment with Tom, so saw one of the other vets. I was concerned that he had a urine infection or was in pain or… well you name it.

Gemma found that his legs are showing improvement! He was quick to put his feet back to normal after she’d folded them. His temperature was fine and there was nothing in his wee to indicate a problem.

Then she took a glucose reading. 4.9. A good reading for a healthy dog, but looking back at Indy’s curves, his readings are usually much higher at that time of day, sometimes up in the 20s and don’t dip down until just before his evening meal.

So his insulin has been reduced. Friday night was much better – he did ask to go out, but he wasn’t aimless and lost. Last night he woke up at 4 and asked to go outside, but for the rest of the night he slept peacefully.

I think what he’d really like is a little kitty companion like in the old days.

I think my beloved is getting fed up with me saying that, but my bed looked much prettier when it was decorated with dogs and cats!

Here he is on his 13th birthday.

And this is how he looked the first time I saw him.

And here’s my Gt Grandad with his cat in 1946 for no other reason than I like it! Oh look, he has a cat! I believe the cat's name was Bill. 

Ripped Genes - Glynis Smy

Today I am delighted to showcase an exciting new book by Glynis Smy.  

Last year saw the debut launch of Ripper, My Love.

Today, the sequel makes its presence known: Ripped Genes.

Ripped Genes will be at a special launch price of 99c/(77p approx) for the ebook version, until end of May. 

The descriptive blurb holds a spoiler for those who have not read the first book. If you would like to read, Ripper, My Love, first, then contact Glynis at: glynissmy at outlook dot com, and put FREE BOOK PLEASE in the subject line. You will be sent a code for Smashwords, where you can download a copy in any format you please. This offer will finish at the end of May, so spread the word.
 

Growing up in late nineteenth century East London, Kitty Harper’s life is filled with danger and death – from her mother, her beloved neighbour and the working women of the streets ... Read more.

PURCHASE and Review Link to all books by Glynis Smy

The author has lived for eight years, in Cyprus. Her historical novels carry a twist in the tale, and she creates strong female characters who struggle in life.

In June 2013, Glynis returns to her hometown, Harwich, Essex, in the UK, where she will gain inspiration for her next novel, The Man in Room Eighteen. 

Find Glynis on:
Twitter: @ghunibee
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glynissmyauthor

Glynis also runs a site where she showcases, (not reviews), books for authors. It is free of charge, with no catch: New Book Blogger (not just for newly published books). She actively encourages self-published authors to submit to the blog. 

Good luck with Ripped Genes, Glynis! I can't wait to read it!

Parade, Pixie Ears and Painting!

I went to the St George’s Day Parade to see my oldest granddaughter and oldest grandson take part (oldest makes them sound so old - they're 5 and 8). They've recently been invested into Beavers and Cubs.

It was lovely! Leading the parade was the Pipe Band, then came the little Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Venture Scouts and Sea Scouts.

The evening was hot and the tears in my eyes had nothing to do with the brightness of the sun!

And I forgot my camera! So I had to take pictures with my phone and because of the sun (not that I’m complaining) I couldn’t see the screen and had to take pot luck! Don't ask me how I managed to give the cubs pixie ears - I have no idea - phone wobble? My little granddaughter is the one with the two pigtails in the picture below - actually the only girl I think. She's not wearing the scarf because she wasn't invested until the following week.

I’ve been a bit busy preparing another short story book for Kindle, The Painting & Other Stories. This one has ten short twist in the tale stories and because the stories have a different tone to previous collections, I’ve gone for a completely different sort of cover to my usual.

In Indy news, we had a worrying few days with him refusing to eat his breakfast! Well, it wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry because he was yelling at me to hurry up and give it to him, but when I did, he backed away, even when I held the bowl for him. Most unIndylike behaviour.

I tried raising his bowl, holding it for him, changing the bowl, adding something extra tasty, but to no avail. In the end the only way to get him to eat was to hand feed him. Then after about half an hour, he’d be back at his bowl licking it all round the kitchen.

But in the evenings, fine, no problem.

Back to the vet. Weight stable – he’d lost a tiny bit. Diabetes controlled. Wee, nothing amiss. Teeth, nothing obvious. So a thorough check and his difficulty eating in the mornings seems to be all to do with a worsening of arthritis which causes morning neck stiffness, so he’s now on medication for that.

At this rate he’s going to need his own medicine cabinet! One thing Tom did say was that you would never believe Indy was going to be 13 on Friday! He looks like a young dog which seems funny when you think of all the medication he’s on, but it’s true all the same!

All Excitement on the Blogging Front!

No, not me, I haven’t done anything exciting, but there’s a blog party going on over at Rosemary Gemmell’s Flights of Imagination Blog.

There is champagne and cake – need I say more? Oh I do? Well you can read excerpts from Rosemary’s new Tween Novel The Jigsaw Puzzle plus a giveaway!

It seems lots of my Facebook and Blogging friends are turning fifty this year and you can read about Sally Quilford’s new special 50^th anniversary pocket novel over at her blog.

What have I done? Well I’ve just finished a story that took me weeks to write and hours of research. The hardest story I have ever written. I lost count of how many times I wrote and rewrote the first 300 words before I finally found my voice and got it moving. The final 2000 words arrived in a day once I’d finally got going.

It’s for a special project and it may not be accepted, but I enjoyed the challenge.

Ooh get me, two posts in a week! I think I need to go and lie down now – but first I’m going over to Flights of Imagination for some champagne and cake.

All Quiet on the Blogging Front

I haven’t been in Blogland much lately. I don’t know why.

I think the subject of the weather has been exhausted and there’s that other thorny subject that some other bloggers have been brave enough to mention, but I’m not one of them.

But I did find an interesting little snippet during the course of some research I’ve been doing which I’ll share with you.

In 1647 the London Corporation of the Poor was established and one of its provisions was to erect work-houses. Two confiscated royal properties were given to the Corporation and by 1655, one thousand adults and a hundred children were employed there.

Children in the care of the Corporation learned basic literacy. And people didn’t have to live in the work-house, but could either work from their own homes or turn up on a daily basis to work.

I wonder what became of those people when Charles II came back and reclaimed his properties in 1660?

My Gt Gt Grandmother died in the Tendring workhouse in 1904 (the lower pictures if you follow the link). It was a cruel twist of fate that her son in law, my great grandfather, died in that same workhouse at the age of 92 in 1968. It was of course a hospital by then, but it was a grim place and even as a child I felt it had an unpleasant atmosphere, but I did like going to visit Grandfather and he always had a tube of Trebor Mints or Polo Mints in his bedside locker for me.

Anyway, that all very nicely brings me to a bargain I found today!

Among my favourite books (that is books I like to read more than once) along with Jung Chan’s Wild Swans, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Alfred Lansing’s Endurance and Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell.

And the bargain - it’s free on Kindle and only £1.99 in paperback. And well worth a read – and a re-read!