I watched some of a wildlife programme about Yellowstone Park last night, and it’s all wrong, you know.  It is, and will ever be, Jellystone Park to me.  Much of my childhood was shaped by Hanna Barbera cartoons.  You could keep worthy numbers like Blue Peter.  I liked the cartoons, and the odder, the better.  So, Yogi Bear (hey, hey, hey, how’s it with you, Boo Boo?  I’m … smarter than the average bear.  Is that a picanic basket?), The Flintstones (Yabba Dabba Doo, but it was really rather ruined once the babies Pebbles and Bam Bam joined them, though Betty Rubble was ever a complete babe) and, most of all, Huckleberry Hound, who had a Southern drawl and sang snatches of My Darling Clementine, were always my chosen viewing.  Of course, I watched British cartoons too.  Noggin the Nog (and Nogbad the Bad), Captain Pugwash et al, some of which I can’t think of right now.

Then there was one about a lion king, whose name I seem to remember was King Leo, originally enough, and the hero was an advisor or courtier called Odeo Colonie (accent on the second O in the second word, as in cologne-ee), both loyal and true blue – he was a skunk, but I remember nothing else about it and there was a bird called Yackey Doodle Duck, and we named a budgie after him, but I don’t remember much about him either.  I remember him as yellow, but I must either have had a book or imagined it, or it was his description, because there was only black and white television in those days.

The other favourite was Top Cat, which was marvellous.  Then there was Tom and Jerry of course.  I also appreciate that some of the cartoons weren’t Hanna Barbera.  I’m not sufficiently bothered to check which were and which weren’t.

I read a lot and was quite pretentious there – I read A Pilgrim’s Progress when I was about 8, which was the hardest going I could have imagined – I slogged through it determinedly at the rate of a page a day – and  then started on Shakespeare with The Tempest.  I’m not sure why, I read them in bed on my own, but I was certainly an odd child.  But in television watching, I was as lightweight as they come.

I remained awake from earlier than usual – it’s often between 3 and 4 am that leaves me with two or three hours to lie there before dropping off again, but last night it was 2 o’clock when I woke and stayed awake.  On waking, first I turn on to my back because my scar hurts, which is what wakes me (not the hip itself, that’s fine).  It is soon better, but  now I’ve started lying on my side I can’t sleep on my back any more, so I turn again.  I really want to lie on my left side, but I don’t know if that’s okay yet.

After a while, when it was apparent I was going to be awake for a while, I fished my phone out from under my pillow and turn it on to check for emails.  I read them – sometimes answer a few, but only if the Sage is soundly asleep as the keys tap slightly when typed.  I hide under the duvet so that the light doesn’t wake him either.  This morning, I didn’t write, but played a few games (the keys don’t tap when I’m playing) of patience and one of draughts and downloaded Angry Birds and played that, and then I read.  At present, I’m re-reading Vanity Fair.  Reading on the phone is by no means the same as a proper book, but it is all right, and certainly warmer, and has the advantage of not needing a torch.

After half an hour or so, I lay back and let my mind drift.  I remembered several emails I needed to send and made mental notes, including what’s to go in the next governors’ agenda.  I wondered what I could blog about next.  There are various things going on at school, but even when they’re not actually confidential, I can’t really talk about them except in the most general terms.  I would like to vent a degree of ire about another matter, but it is about someone and it would be too easy for that person to be identified, so better not mentioned.  I’d meant to be gardening again, if only in the greenhouse, but the weather is horrible and I’m staying put indoors as much as possible.  I can’t keep talking about dogs.  Nor my hip.

There’s nothing to talk about, I concluded.  Maybe I could just amuse?  I thought about entertaining topics and came up with a couple of thoughts.  “I’ll have forgotten those by the time I wake up again,” I reckoned, and indeed I have.

I thought about Mother’s Day, which is this Sunday.  In church, they’re very hot on you calling it by its proper name, Mothering Sunday, as Mother’s Day is a commercially-inclined import, but in fact even the churches treat it as a day for making a thing about mothers, so it’s not got its original meaning there either.  We’re planning to serve coffee and cakes before the service starts, and I seem to have assured everyone that I’ll make most of the cakes, which was more enthusiastic than wise of me.  I keep thinking I could do some baking early, things that improve with keeping, but I don’t seem to have made a start yet.

I’m not sure that winter is really over yet, whatever the calendar shows.  I’m still in a comfy state of near-hibernation.

I’ve written about Huckleberry before, the dog that was born when I was about seven and whose nature was so lovely that I want to replicate that by naming another dog after him.  Yes, I know that doesn’t work.  Doesn’t really matter, after all, I don’t really expect Ro to strangle a leopard to save someone’s life, although he’s named after my great-uncle who did just that.

Huck was the only dog I’ve known who led you where he wanted you to go.  He would take your wrist in his mouth (it never hurt, he never hurt anyone) and take you there.

He was left-pawed and his father, Simon de Montfort, was right-pawed.  So, Simon opened the drawing room door and Huckleberry the dining room door.

Neither of them was in the least needy or dependent.  We were certainly the staff and did what was expected of us.  Simon had an exaggerated sense of dignity – in his life, I never saw him empty his bowels, nor Huck, and they wouldn’t “go” when taken for a walk on a lead.  Simon had a huge vocabulary – some words, if we didn’t want him to know what we were talking about, we had to say in French, then after he learned that, Spanish and finally spell them out.  The biggest insult was to say “you smell”, when he would stalk out of the room in high dudgeon (what does high dudgeon mean, exactly, I wonder?  Is there any other sort of dudgeon?)  Once, he got shut in the downstairs loo and, when we realised and opened the door to let him out, he wouldn’t talk to any of us for the rest of the day.

The dogs would all work as a team – if one was shut in a room and couldn’t open the door, one outside would push the door open.  Or, if it was latched, Huck would come and bring someone to open it.

The dogs had chair rights.  My father usually managed to hang on to a place on a sofa, but the rest of us usually had to sit on the floor.

I’ve got a picture upstairs – I’ll look it out tomorrow and add it.  It has a young Z in it, from when I was about 10 years old.  It was taken outside, it doesn’t include any chairs.

We proof-read the catalogue very carefully, all three of us, before sending it off to the printers on Friday.  Today, we went through it again, against the original Excel draft, because we knew alterations had been made from that, and it’s that spreadsheet that Ro will use to upload the catalogue onto the website.  We found another two mistakes – one didn’t matter at all, it was just a decimal that should have been altered to a fraction on a measurement, but the other was a description of the provenance of a piece of china that had, somehow, been put against two different pieces.  Very relieved to have picked that one up.  It would have been quite a blunder to have that printed.  So Weeza has notified the printers and it’ll be corrected.

Otherwise, the main event of the morning was the Sage, unasked, doing the hoovering.  Honestly, he really is a treasure.  And he bought kippers for dinner, yum.  Real Lowestoft kippers.

He had, and deserved, a lovely time this evening while I was out at a meeting, buying stuff on eBay.  One item, he got for less than half what he’d bid – it was slightly mis-described and went for a lot more than the vendor probably expected, but a lot less than it should have.  He suspects that the underbidder is kicking himself.

There’s not a lot going on here at present to tell you about, I’m afraid.  It’s Squiffany’s birthday later this month and I haven’t been shopping at all yet.  I did ask her what she was hoping for (in a general sort of way, not asking what she wanted from us) and was discomfited when she replied “Barbie”.  That is where I draw the line, I’m afraid.   I may buy her a swing for the garden instead.

I’m afraid that I have done nothing this weekend.  I could and should have – the sun has shone and I could have done some gardening, or at least got on in the greenhouse, but I pottered about relaxedly instead.  I say this with no excuses and no shame or guilt – I see nothing at all wrong in taking time off or not doing much if I don’t want to.

I suspect it’s something about being brought up with dogs.  Certainly, I’ve always described myself as more than half dog.  But if you look at a dog, it will concentrate hard on what it wants or needs to do and then it sees no reason at all not to lie in front of the fire for several hours, sleeping.  And then it eats dinner and lies down again, probably being cuddled by its human companion.  Dogs have got things sussed.  Cats have too, but they’re not as bright as dogs, because they know everything that they want to know already while the average dog admires its human and wants to learn.  I read recently that a dog is the only animal, other than a human, that can follow the direction of a pointing finger and understand what is meant by it.  If that’s so (that is, that other primates can’t do it too) then it’s really remarkable.

I like cats, very much, and I’d be quite happy to have a cat live with us (though the Sage wouldn’t), but it’s the open mind of a dog that I really appreciate and understand.

I’ve a feeling that cat people won’t agree with me here.  But does your cat follow the line of your pointing finger?

If the answer is “yes”, I withdraw my case.  But I’m still more than half dog.

I am not happy to announce that, in today’s Times, there is an advertisement for a construction toy “The most amazing Xmas gift for your child.”  No, really.  It’s not right or proper.

Since hardly anyone reads blogs on a Saturday (Dave reckons it’s Sunday, but I find that I get more readers on Sun than on Sat) I will update my hiplog – I realise I’m doing this to death and I apologise but it’s an easy way to make notes for myself.

In the last week, I’ve graduated to using a step to get into the bath and standing, to getting in without the step and sitting on the edge (with a towel underneath, it’s chilly else), to kneeling in the bath to, last night, with great happiness, sitting properly in the bath like a Christian, splashing happily.  I quite naturally seemed to know when I wasn’t ready to progress to each stage and then when I was.  To get out, I drew up my unoperated leg underneath me, put one hand on the rim of the bath and the other on its bottom, went up to a kneeling and then a standing position before stepping out.

As I said, that was last night, but yesterday morning, I got up a bit late.  I was awake, but the Sage wasn’t, so I was happily playing games on my phone until I realised I only had 20 minutes  before I needed to be out of the house.  Time was, 10 minutes was ample but now I need to put a face on and a breakfast in, and then I couldn’t find my handbag, so I was 4 minutes late leaving.  So I ran down the drive.  Yes, darlings, I ran.  And it didn’t hurt.  I haven’t run without pain and lurching to a stop after a few steps for at least 3 years.

I was extremely puffed out by the time I’d run 100 yards, I admit.  Still.

The other thing I’ve graduated to in the past week is sleeping on my side.  The operated side only, I’m not risking the other until I get the all clear from the consultant, and it wakes me up every half-hour or so, but I’d got to the stage where my back was aching beyond sleeping through, and it is improving.  Usually, I can just lie on my back for a few minutes, then return to my side and go back to sleep.  I’m not getting a lot of sleep, but I am resting and not getting up early unless I have to, and I’ll catch up sooner or later.

Colour is returning to the membrane of my eye (I have been taking an iron supplement too) and I don’t take an afternoon nap.  I can dress without using a grabber, but I still need a sock aid for my right sock or for tights.

Yesterday afternoon, I picked up Squiffany from school and we played board and card games, which had me sitting in a lower chair than usual – this was fine for a while and then suddenly it hurt.  The Sage went and got me my high cushion and it was all right then.

The operation was 6 weeks ago yesterday.  A friend of mine had her second hip operated on on Monday and we’ve been exchanging emails today, she having returned home on Thursday.  She had her first hip done when she was 58, 6 years ago, and she says that she feels noticeably more tired this time round.  She doesn’t consciously feel 6 years older, but her body says she is!  She says she can get around very well, but feels breathless after a while and has to stop and sit down.  I’ll be seeing her in a couple of weeks, when I’ll take her to a meeting in Bury St Edmunds, so we’ll compare notes then.

Well, red

“I must have been terribly good in a past life to deserve all this,” I said to the Sage as he brought in a pot of coffee and a mug, after having cooked and served my dinner to me an hour and a half ago.

“Past life, heh heh,” he chuckled.

“Or a present life, maybe?” I added hopefully.

“Present life, that’s it.  I’ll go and get another log to put on the fire,” he said.

No fashionable angst here.  And it’s not all one-sided, I am very good to the Sage too.  Why, only today, I …  um … I  – oh yes, I congratulated him on cleverly helping a friend to open a cabinet with the key missing, and I found out why the side door was sticking (no, that was genuinely deductive, he couldn’t do it) and I gave Tilly her breakfast.

That’s about it.  I think he’s about due for more cake.

And smells, before the dark of reason grows.

Or something like that.  It’s from John Betjeman’s Summoned by Bells – I’ve relied on a memory from 4 decades ago, so if I’ve misquoted, my apologies.

The reason for it is that I’ve just been listening to music that took me right back to childhood.  The other day, you see, there was a programme about Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and it made me want to listen to it again, but I haven’t a CD of it, so I got it from Spotify.  And, as is not uncommon, it got me downloading various other things of his, including the Lieder Ohne Worte.  And, unexpectedly, it took me to my mother playing the piano in the evening while my sister and I sneaked out of our bedroom and sat on the stairs to listen to her.  She wouldn’t play in front of anyone, nor sing if anyone but us could hear her.  Not surprising, perhaps, that I was acutely self-conscious about both things myself, but extremely odd that now I voluntarily, though with no enjoyment, play the organ at church services.

I’ve also been listening to the Italian Symphony which, as I remember, was about the first classical LP that I ever bought for myself.

Nostalgia tends to make me melancholy, with or without reason.  I’m going to go and pick up Squiffany from school and put it all out of my mind.

…as Alphonse put it –