Oliver has returned.
I can’t remember if I even told you that he was going away, but he was. He has been absent since Friday, and has now returned.
He has been on some kind of Army weekend where you have a go at being a soldier and charge about rescuing hostages and shooting and throwing things called flash-bangs.
He is absolutely exhausted but seems to have had a very good time.
He has told us all about it in fascinating detail. He had to sleep under some kind of umbrella strung between a couple of trees and eat out of Rat Packs. They had to run up and down hills carrying logs and every time somebody upset an instructor they had to do press-ups.
I recall Number One Daughter having a similar experience when she was in Basic Training.
Oliver has got to go for another assessment in two weeks, followed by another one which will last for another three days.
He will have spent so much time being assessed before they let him in that he could probably submit a request for holiday pay in his first week.
We listened to all of his stories with great interest, thinking secretly how glad we were that we had grown up and didn’t have to bother trying to be manly and heroic. It is very nice indeed to have reached the age where you are allowed to be a fragile old lady whenever it suits you, which it does sometimes, especially when there is something heavy to be carried.
After that Mark went off to Elspeth’s, because she seems to be having another MOT crisis. Her van needs to have an MOT on Friday and she does not think it will pass. As it happens I am having an MOT crisis as well because my taxi is also going to have an MOT on Friday and I do not think it will pass either, the difference being that Mark is married to me and so will not get three hundred quid for fixing my taxi, hence he is just ignoring it.
He is supposed to be going back to Elspeth’s to do some more things to the van tomorrow but we might go and do things to our own van instead. This is what we would actually like to do, we have been obliged to do cash-producing activities all weekend already, and we are bored with them now.
I had rushed round yesterday doing all of Monday’s dusting in advance, so that we could go and do van things today, and so was not especially pleased at the change of plans, although as it turned out it did not matter very much anyway, because the day was very busy anyway.
Apart from all of Oliver’s crawling-through-ditches laundry, I am sorry to tell you that poor little Guffy is not very well.
We have known for days that she is not well, but we had been hoping that she might recover. Her runny poo problem has not abated, and indeed today it has become so much worse that little watery drops of poo are leaking out of her almost the whole time, making her very sore.
She is not being a killer death rat slaughtering kitten any more. Today she was being a very sleepy quiet kitten, and just wanted to curl up on my knee and purr.
Cats purr to make themselves feel better when they are unhappy.
We had been giving her Imodium but you are not supposed to give it to cats for very long, so we stopped a day or two ago, and she is not at all well.
I think that her outlook might not be good. I think perhaps her kidneys are not working very well.
I am going to take her back to the vet tomorrow. I had not wanted to do that because she hates it so much, and because really I don’t think that there is very much that the vet can do, but we are going to try anyway.
Spare a thought for a leaky kitten.
