It's worth a try

If you go in for having people to stay and someone has to wear respectable shirts at least from time to time, one thing which mounts up in vast unseemly heaps is ironing. The good Olga hasn’t really been well since the new year, the Professor and I seem to be being ill alternately, and we have no time --  having been laid low for a fortnight, I am now frantically trying to catch up with what should have been done and the Prof is in no better case. I have take a decisive step in this matter, having had houseguests over the weekend which was somehow the last straw -- suffice it to say that, though the individuals in question were perfect dears, I’d got ironed sheets and duvet onto their cosy bed about forty minutes before they arrived. I have bought an infernal machine. It heats up in less than a minute, and jets hot steam wherever you want it jetted. Basically, you stroke the steam-breathing magic dragon over your shirt, and it goes all smooth, even the difficult crevices which, when ironing, take ages. The main problem identified thus far is that you have to pull the shirt smooth, then direct the head over the surface, so if it’s all wrinkly at the bottom hem you can burn yourself with some ease. It’s not a device which would be sensible in a house blest with young children, that’s for sure. But, on my third go, I found I could get a respectable shirt with all its yokes, gussets, collars and God knows what, from creased to wearable in three minutes flat. We will need to buy a suitable laundry rack (what the infernal machine comes with is a sort of clotheshanger) but I think it should be just as good with duvet covers and things. Here's hoping it's been a good idea.

Inching forwards

Nearly a week has gone by since my last post. I have spent it in the grip of an exceptionally tedious virus: there are ever so many things I am supposed to be doing and though I have inched forward with the curent project, ‘inch’ has been the word. The good Olga, conscience stricken for having been paid for a month when she couldn’t work, turned up today to sort out my study. This has been a famously tactful process. She hasn’t thrown away any paper, she assures me, but all the piles have been disassembled and cleaned, and the remains of fossilised daddy long legs and so forth removed, which is definitely a good thing, since the gluey remains of antique insects hasn’t exactly encouraged plumbing the depths. I might even be able to bring myself to move stuff about when I’m feeling a bit stronger, and I even wonder whether a book Honey managed to lose years ago will emerge from the newly tidy heaps. Running up and down stairs with piles of books is a bit beyond me just at the moment, and there’s no point in moving books unless they’re moved to the right place, but I will try and sort it out. I’m feeling better today, and a bit less dumb than I have been for a while, so perhaps I am over the worst.

Taxonomy

After a week in London (and briefly, Oxford), I came home and was going to report when I was felled by a sneaky virus. Timing suggests the plane, which, regardless of its merits as a way of getting home is a perfect device for wafting other people’s germs at you for an hour and a half. I generally try and totter South once the exams are over, but for once, I wasn’t astonished by leaving winter and arriving in spring – though it is true that my Mama had a camellia in a bud vase on the mantelpiece, it was bloody cold and there wasn’t a sign of a daffodil, or even a crocus. I varied my usual long hours in the British Library with a beguiling day and a half in the Warburg, looking for matches for mysterious fifteenth century images. The picture library is compelling: it’s easy to get obsessed with the idea that the image you’re after must be there somewhere. But, under ‘Allegory of Life?’ ‘The Soul?’ Something else entirely? I also found myself tangling with the taxonomy of another great print collector, Christopher Columbus’s bastard son Fernand. The renaissance mind in action (categories are nested and hierarchic). Saint/not saint. Clothed/nude, male/female, animals, number of figures are the basic ones. Thus an engraving of the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John comes out as Three Nude Male Saints, as far as I can see, because the nudeness and maleness of the principal figure leads over the gender and clothedness of the others. Once you learn to work it, it is, like Aby Warburg’s collection, a mighty taxonomic engine. I’d never really thought before how difficult it is to organise prints. The weather wasn’t nice in London, but here it is quite spectacularly foul. Blizzard has turned to sleet, and there’s been a sort of insidious creeping chill. I have been in bed, coughing, and Miss Kit has been welded to my lap, which is mostly nice for both of us. The only problem has been over her medication. It’s obviously extremely upsetting to wake her from trusting slumber and do something awful, so I have to catch her when she’s been off for a walkabout and has just returned. These moments have been few. She has flicked an ear at the sleet spattering the window, and snuggled. The antibiotic does seem to be doing her some good, at any rate. 

Ding Dong

For the last fortnight, while I have been rushing about with exam scripts, neurotically counting, checking things off lists and muttering, Tony has been, in his snail-like way, causing a doorbell. The Professor bought this object in Edinburgh before Christmas – not a dread ding-dong, Avon calling,  Friedland chime, but a real brass bell, attached to a springy coil of metal. This in turn has to be attached, upside down, to something movable which will cause a wave-like reaction in the coil and a consequent dinging and donging of the bell. I can only say, he has been in bodger heaven, and quite a few things we have been pleading with him to do since before Christmas have gone undone while he gave it his full attention.. There is a hinge involved, at least one spring, quite a lot of brass wire, several neat little bits of wood, and the wheels off a kitchen pulley. The result would make the late Rowland Emett burst into tears of envy, but when you pull the knob, the bell rings. At last. Perhaps now he can be persuaded to sweep up the leaves (chance would be a fine thing). Unfortunately, Miss Dog, who is modern, refuses to believe that it’s a doorbell. When Tony was decommissioning the hideous Friedland chime, which hasn’t worked properly for years, it rang for one last time, which caused Miss Dog to leap alertly out of her chair and run downstairs barking. It would be quite handy if she made a habit of this, since sometimes people come to this solidly built house and completely fail to attract our attention, or there’s a game of silly buggers where they go to the back door and you go to the front, then you go round and they go round and we all go round and round till we meet somewhere by accident, but unfortunately, she seems to be saying, no Friedland Chime, no bark. Perhaps we have the wrong dog for our somewhat retarditaire mode of life.

Pill Popping

It’s not been the easiest day. Poor Olga turned up for work and nearly fainted with pain after about an hour – we took her to the pharmacist who is the front line of medical emergency problems, and he was pretty certain he had identified her problem. A lot of tangled tales in fractured English later, it emerged that she had been prescribed an antibiotic by her own doctor, but it was causing problems of its own;  they’d given her a penicillin derivative and I guess she’s allergic to penicillin, which is far from unknown, but language problems had prevented her from clear that she was having real difficulties. We took her home, wrote out a brief account of what seemed to be happening, and left her to it, since the doctors’ wasn’t open. Meanwhile, Miss Kit and I also have antibiotic related problems. I’ve got terribly good at squirting Metacam painkiller into her, and she hasn’t resented it,  but four days ago, the vet thought it would be worth trying her on an antibiotic. The Metacam is liquid, and once it’s in, it’s in, because cats can’t really spit. They can, however, eject a pill. Yesterday, I fired the pill (in fact, a capsule) down her throat six times, and each time she managed to gag it up. It was so upsetting it’s temporarily (I hope) damaged our relationship: she keeps, as usual, asking to be picked up but once on my knee worries I am about to torture her and flounders off again. I haven’t had the heart to try and give her today’s capsule, but comfort myself with the thought of what happened yesterday. She is very partial to a little raw meat, and I take a night-time snack up to bed with us, because she prefers eating at night to during the  day. Last night, along with the usual kibble, she had a bit more raw meat (having walloped some down earlier) one piece of which had a  capsule cunningly inserted so that it was quite invisible. Eating in the dark, she fell for it, because it was all quite gone come the morning. I hope this ploy goes on working, because however good the antibiotic may be for her physically, these struggles are striking st the core of her little world, which is essentially, her trust in me.