OHS

At last, at last! A (rather blurry) portrait of the famous Open Heart Surgery in which his 'operation scar', courtesy of Flad, can plainly be seen. He is getting rather fat, owing to my attempts to make it up to him by chucking out at least four slices of bread a day. This morning it was apple and cherry crumble, on which he seems rather too keen. Fortunately, Flad is tucked up on the armchair so the risk of further surgery is quite remote. I think. I haven't been downstairs lately...

Postal Strike

I earn a very modest income from freelance writing. All my payments come in the form of cheques that (normally) plop through the letterbox at irregular intervals and set me leaping and whooping all the way to the bank, where, if I'm lucky, they clear just in time to pay the direct debits.

I was just due for a couple, amounting to around £600, when the strike began. I was also expecting: an important book from Amazon which will form the basis of a meeting with a publisher and a possible commission; a pair of winter boots ordered online; an 'insomnia cure' in the form of a machine that pumps soothing noises into your stressed lughole and (I hope) cancels out the sound of Mr Boom-Box driving past at 3 am with his car windows open and stereo pumping 10,000 decibels into the owl-flapping, bat-sniping night.

Then there was the First Aid DVD. I ordered that just before the last postal strike and it has never come - and I've forgotten who I ordered it from. There was the £40-worth of anti-ageing skin products (don't laugh); I aged ten years while waiting for them and eventually the firm had to send out another batch and put in a claim against Royal Mail. As did an Irish firm from which I ordered.... no, can't say. Too personal. The embarrassment of phoning to say the goods hadn't arrived was second only to the way the humorous Irishman at the other end of the line gently joshed me as he spoke about the product.

And now it's all happening again and I, along with many other of the self-employed who are flapping gently about at the bottom of the income pool like so many floundering fish, are all washed up for real. I can't take it any more. I am about to shoot myself in the brain with an iced vodka bullet. This could really be my last post.

Mid Spid's fate

The day has come. Having failed to feed Mid Spid last night, despite several attempts including chasing a daddy longlegs with a sieve, as I didn't have a butterfly net, only to chase it straight into another spider's web, I decided the time had arrived to relocate a garden spider... in the garden.

A wine glass and a freebie cd from one of the Sunday papers was all the spider-capturing equipment I needed. I shook him into a bush alongside the path, in the hope that he will spin a catch-all net from bush to privet hedge.

On my return, something drew my eye to an area beneath the worktop where the washing powder, kitchen towel and other such items lurk. There, watching me with great interest, was son or daughter of Big Spid.

Enough of spiders. I must have scared off enough arachnophobic friends and am probably down to one reader - myself. So my next entry will concern the subject this blog was started for - the annoying little ills that beset the human body. Even I don't want to read about those!

Open Heart Surgery

As the postal strikes seem never-ending, The Boyfriend suggested training our friendly local pigeons to carry our mail. I say 'friendly'; I mean plain damned stupid. One day last summer, I was working upstairs when I heard a commotion, bumps and bangs coming from downstairs. When I went to investigate, I saw:
* feathers everywhere
* blood everywhere
* a blood-stained black and white cat (Flad)
* a blood-dripping wood pigeon

I shooed Flad into the kitchen and closed the door, then I rang The Boyfriend, who was in the middle of helping his friend fit a kitchen. With panic in my voice, I informed him, "Help, you've got to come home straight away. There's blood everywhere and there's a half-eaten pigeon sitting on the sofa watching TV."

It was true. With its breast gashed and stripped of feathers, the poor bird was watching Richard and Judy. I don't know which gave it more pain, its injuries or Richard's smug, shiny grin.

Flad wasn't injured. By the time Alan came back, the cat had gone "yum yum" and licked off all the pigeon blood that stained his white front. Alan bundled the pigeon in a towel and carried it gently to the bottom of the garden and let it go. It fluttered feebly off and we shook our heads sadly, never expecting to see it again.

Miraculously, it survived, though with a jagged white scar down its chest feathers, and we christened it Open Heart Surgery. This year it has found a mate - another injured bird, this one having something wrong with its shoulder, which sticks up in an odd hump where the wing joins on. It also walks with a limp. I've named it Quasimodo. Another victim of Flad the Impaler, methinks.

This started as a blog about all my ailments but it seems to have turned into a wildlife blog. There is just so much of it round here, from mutant slugs of a luminous yellow shade, to what appear to be a pair of adolescent Long-Eared Owls, that yell loudly from the oak trees in the field beyond the garden. Yesterday, a pair of green woodpeckers joined Open Heart Surgery and Quasimodo on the lawn.

As for Bald Fox, he is now a fine furry fellow and rarely appears in the daytime. The homoeopathy worked a treat. I still give him the occasional suppertime jam sandwich, for old times' sake. And Mid Spid? He's still in the living room. I haven't had the heart to chuck him out. Especially as it might rain tomorrow.

Mid Spid's restaurant

Mid Spid is a garden spider with stripy legs. He (or she?) should, by rights, have a web stretching across the garden path from bush to hedge, in which to catch all manner of juicy dinners on wings. Instead, he's got me.

The living room's window is rarely opened. It's an internal room which leads on to the kitchen extension. Nothing ever flies in so poor Mid Spid is waiting in vain. Which is where I come in. Last night, I was out with a torch trying to find any sort of insect. They were in very short supply, apart from a mighty wasp, the sight of which made me slam the patio door shut with trembling hands as it crawled its furry way up the glass, regarding me with antagonistic antennae. The only thing I managed to catch, a small moth, escaped from my cupped hands.

Today was Mid Spid's third day without food. I could see him sagging weakly in his web like a fainting soul on a hammock in a striped swimsuit. (How long can a spider go without food? Anybody know?) So this afternoon I went out determined to find the poor arachnid something tasty. Bingo! A moth AND a daddy longlegs. The guilt wasn't as bad as last time. I felt they were being captured for a good cause. I did slightly squash the moth, though. I hope it didn't spoil the flavour.

But tomorrow, I'm afraid Mid Spid is going to be caught in a plastic cup and transferred to the great outdoors. The colder and wetter it gets, the less likely I am to be able to find him the spidery equivalent of steak and chips and and I think his chance of survival will be greater if he can spin an outdoor web and net his own grub.

Upwardly Mobile

The recovering stroke patient, searching for things to do to improve the fine movement in his right hand, decided to gather up all his old cds and dvds and making them intpo a mobile to hang from the apple tree. The other side flashes red, this is the silver and purple side. Poor Flad the cat, who used the space between the apple trees as a potty spot, is now terrified by the flashes when the sun catches the mobile, and has been forced to seek a new loo place elsewhere. Maybe it even gives him a migraine. He hasn't looked in a good mood lately. Curled up, opens a baleful yellow eye when I approach, as if to say, 'Unless you're going to give me an extra dinner, b*****r off!'

Mid Spid

I think Big Spid must be dead. He or she hasn't been seen for a month now. In his place, in the corner of the living room, we now have Medium Spid. As the windows are closed against the nippy weather, he was in danger of starvation so I broke my Buddist(ish) vow never to harm a living creature and caught him a daddy-longlegs.

I thought it would be a quick death. Inject the fangs, death, munch. But no. I had forgotten about spiders' fetish for mummification. Spindly legs threshing feebly, the creature I had condemned to death was rapidly cocooned in web and immobilised, whereupon the vicious arachnid sucked out its vital juices WHILE IT WAS STILL ALIVE! I can't describe the guilt I suffered.

When I was a toddler, if I stamped on an ant with great relish, or squashed a beetle, my mother would announce, "The king of the ants (or beetles) will get you for that." She would direct her attention to the skies, point to an oddly shaped cloud and declare, "Look, there he is!" and we would cower, convinced that the cumulo-nimbus had sprouted legs, thorax, abdomen and antennae (or even chitin) and was all set to fall on us from above and eat us up. Quite cruel, my mum, looking back now. Fortunately, it's hard for a cloud to form the shape of a daddy-longlegs. Or is it? Still, it's dark now. I'm safe till tomorrow.