steepholm

I've not posted in the last few days for lack of matter and fear of repetition, but I'm looking in just to reassure you (I know you were worried) that I and mine are still well. I've actually been pretty busy with work, in fact, both teaching and research.

My teaching I'm doing, not via Zoom but Blackboard Collaborate Ultra - the hipster's choice. As for research, I've been continuing my "deep dive" into British views of Japan (and particularly Japanese children) during the Meiji period. This is all background for my projected book on British children's literature in Japanese popular culture. Not that I quite have a contract for that book yet, but the signs are promising. The reports on my proposal were both positive and constructive - which can't always be said of reader reports. Anyway, if it comes off it will keep me happily occupied for the next year or two.

Although... if it's not possible to travel to Japan it will be a lot harder, and I also wonder selfishly whether the research leave I'm due in autumn next year may fall victim to the inevitable retrenchment at British universities, where recruitment (especially from lucrative overseas students) may well crash if social distancing lasts much longer. No one's said anything of that kind yet, but my paranoia has a pretty good record in the gentle art of soothsaying.

On the domestic front, I'm still rather worried about Jessie. A couple of days ago, I walked into the living room to encounter something resembling a murder scene, with blood spatters on furniture, bookshelves, carpet... (Clearing it up gave me a lot more sympathy than I ever expected to have with axe murderers - the stuff really gets everywhere!) I thought that she must have picked at her eye wound, but in the 48 hours since I've become convinced that the blood is actually coming from her nose, and this morning I was able to obtain photographic proof, as she was sleeping.

( Look away now if you don't like the sight of blood )

Is this part of the healing process, or is something more serious going on?

On a more positive note, I've started growing my own shiso plants, with a view to getting an aromatic salad ingredient and a tasty garnish. But first they must run the gauntlet of my overwatering.


She Sows Shiso

Waa! Jessie's eyeball has burst. I had no idea that such a thing was even possible. Her behaviour today was sedentary, but honestly no different from normal - pottering to her food bowl, clambering blindly up the sofa to find the little ramekin from which she likes to drink, standing beside me waiting to be scooped onto my lap - the usual habits of a dignified elder statescat. I stroked her half the morning, but I didn't actually look her in the eye until lunchtime - only it wasn't an eye at all, but a bulging puss-filled sac. I'm very squeamish: once was enough.

Luckily the good weather continues, so I was able to wait with her outside the vet's, where they are of course observing strict social distancing. Someone came out to fetch her, and I passed ten minutes with a book, in spring sunshine striated with the shadows of blossoming branches, something that in normal circumstances would have been very pleasant. Eventually the vet came out and, sitting crosslegged on the wall, told me in her best kerbside manner that Jessie would need to have her whole eyeball removed, and that at her age and with her low weight she may not survive it. We await the outcome of the operation, probably tomorrow.

I'm sure she would look good in a patch, but if she comes home it will be with her eyelid sewn down over the cavity.

At least I was here to take her. If things had gone according to plan, I would be three miles above Tashkent by now, en route to Kansai.

I dislike practical jokes that are aimed at individuals, but have always been a sucker (in every sense) for the elaborate spoofs that broadcasters and newspapers get up to on April Fool's Day. The fact that they are aimed at everyone dilutes the humiliation to acceptable levels.

This morning I woke to a rather nice story on Radio 4's Sunday programme, based on the recent fashion for using real donkeys at Palm Sunday services, which has led - so the story went - to a spate of rustling, and in some cases the substitution of donkeys with llamas (because the prophecy of Zechariah, which Jesus was fulfilling, can be translated as referring simply to a "pack animal").

I've come across several more since - the first email in my inbox this morning was an ad for a machine that would print photographs onto toast - but I'm bound to miss most of them. So, if you've seen a really good April Fool this year, feel free to link to it here, or (if it's not linkable) describe it. I'd like to read it.

Meanwhile, no one knows how to do Relaxed like Jessie.
"As swimmers into cleanness leaping..."

Not enough sleep last night - but Jessie, as usual, has the right idea...

On returning from St Ives, we heard that we had been approved to adopt a cat! So yesterday we picked her up...

( *Warning: May contain anthropomorphic captions* )