Postscritch: The railway kitten…

When writing about my first (that wasn’t my parents’) cat, Jay, I forgot — goodness knows how: as my jaw still bounces off my slippers thinking about it! — his most astonishing exploit.

Home at the time of his adoption was just around a mile’s walk from Darwen station, which had regular and frequent direct trains to Manchester: a place I used to visit a great deal, mainly for the culture — especially the Hallé orchestra at the Free Trade Hall — although shopping at the Arndale Centre (in the days before the devastating 1996 IRA bomb) and for pre-loved clothes (the city has a wonderful student-based and therefore youth-friendly economic sector); exploring the architectural Wow! that is the Central Library; playing backgammon in hidden pubs off Deansgate of an evening; snaffling cask ales and late-night vegetarian takeaways — particularly after experiencing The Smiths launch Meat is Murder… — were all great motivations for being there: and it is for these (and many other wonderful contributing enticements) that Manchester became the first city (of — and still to this day — a very select handful) that I fell in love with (and eventually worked in).

Listen to the waves against the rocks…

It was the top of page 212 that unlocked the floodgates I had been blinking back all day:

For people who are in continual pain, the relationship with bodily risk is different. Pain is not a healthful by-product of healthy exertion or impressive effort: it is a constant companion. You want to limit your time with pain, not encourage it.
    For people who live with fatigue, the relationship with effort is different. Exhaustion is not a healthful by-product of healthy exertion or impressive effort: it is a constant companion. You want to preserve yourself from fatigue, not encourage it.
— Polly Atkin: Some of Us Just Fall

Anyone — and it probably is a one (so thank you, dear reader!) — who has followed this blog over the last eleven years or so (even when it has vanished into the haze of forgetfulness, or weirdly veered down the path less travelled by) will understand my cathartic tears: disability, along with (for me) its constituents pain, fatigue (sans sleep), and an overwhelming desire to walk (when I shouldn’t), are the chief characters found amongst the subplots cunningly pushed through these pages, as they are throughout my life. Since three other motorists did their best to render me immobile (or worse), and (much later) my heart suddenly stopped (ostensibly because of a drug I was taking to alleviate one of the main aspects of the disability caused by those earlier collisions, but actually caused by a congenital genetic mutation), disability and illness have become intertwined both in my life and in my mind (although possibly in different ways). They have also become my necessary guides (although possibly not always in a good way).

A lymerical ballad…?

Written in Dove Cottage…
…in the time it took me to climb the café stairs!

There once was a chap called Will,
who struggled to stay very still;
    He wandered as only
    He could… – very lonely:
Down dale, ’round lake, and uphill!

Let slip the dog afar…

I posted the following on Instagram late last night:

Any human being that can write such a sentence as that below – especially in the context it bookends… – is a saint: of emotion; of love; of wordsmithery; of so many things that are so vitally important to me. And yet it is just one of thousands that move in the same way: a quality of writing so rarely encountered; a quality of life, a quality of love… ditto.

“I walked for hours in the forest that night though I don’t remember the trees.”

Thank you @paulbesleywrite for the read of the year; maybe even the decade. Still got some way to go (after over a hundred pages, tonight); but feel that I am on the journey with you.

It was yet another sentence in his book, The Search, yet another situation, yet another way of defusing a tightly-packed grenade of emotion carefully, thoughtfully, differently, vividly, and never over-statedly, never explosively. Even the sharpest, toughest, most brutal events are gently smuggled into your brain, and only then do they suddenly evolve from pocket-sized Rembrandt etchings seen in near darkness to the most audacious, brightly-lit, multi-hued Jackson Pollock and Van Gogh canvases.

A Tale of Two Kitties…

A rather camera-shy Petronius the Arbiter

The first cat is the steepest…

I was outside Darwen rather than Damascus: however, the conversion took place just as abruptly, with only a few seconds warning. One moment I was being asked…

– How would you feel about looking after Jay for a while?

[All of my friend’s cats – and horses – were named after birds: Blackbird – ‘Blackie’ for short – a rook-coloured bruiser wearing white gloves (probably concealing knuckle-dusters); and big bullying brother to Kestrel – a beautiful, mournful tabby, with the same gleaming toes; and currently Jay – who, not being a blood relative, was beaten up by both of them almost daily, and therefore frequently went missing for days, and always came home injured. Why Kestrel didn’t also fly away – without the “coming home” bit, of course… – I shall never know for certain. Timidity is one possibility; but likely also some warped form of sibling loyalty.]