Goodbye Bubble

One of our cats died yesterday. Bubble was ten years old - an average age for a cat, but that made her older than Kitty and nearly as old as Hannah.

She was ailing, off her food and getting thinner. When we took her to the vet she got distressed and went into heart failure. There was only one thing to do.

The girls were all very upset to lose her. We buried her in the front garden, under paving slabs that should keep off the foxes.

Ali and I are upset too. But feel a twist of guilt as, without her, we can stop putting out cat litter, and worrying that the furniture will get peed on (she really hadn't been well for some time). Our remaining cat, Mackerel, despite having only three legs, is more robust, somehow.

Kitty has already decided that, since the other girls each had two animals for their tenth birthday, she will have two kittens. It's 18 months away though...

A Celtic journey

Freezing cold yesterday, and I was zigzagging across town. Finally, at 10.15pm, I was riding home with very tired legs

What got me home was a burst of Celtic energy on Rado 3's splendid Late Junction.. There was something particularly wonderful about whizzing round the Aldwych and over Waterloo Bridge to the tune of Scottisn and Irish music - all on Monday's programme.

Late Junction sometimes lurches into twaddle, but for a good hit-rate on music that makes you think twice. it can't be beat. And it certainly kept me jolly on the way home last night.

Samuel Palmer

I just went to the Samuel Palmer show at the British Museum. Absolutely wonderful. If you haven't seen it, sorry. It finishes tomorrow.

I've loved Samuel Palmer for years. I used to look at the Magic Apple Tree (pictured) at the Fitzwilliam Museum whenever I could at Cambridge. I never knew what a prodigy he was - founded The Ancients at the age of 19 - and I never knew his melancholy later work. And I never knew he was yet another South London resident - he lived off the Old Kent Road for a time.

There aren't many artists who can take such a personal take on landscape and communicate it to you in art. He's in a line from Durer through Blake to Stanley Spencer, and...

The sun was shining, and the clouds looked very Palmer-esque, with flocks of birds wheeling across the sinking sun. On the way home, the bus took us past the homes of Blake and Van Gogh, in Hercules Road and Hackford Road.

Welcome to the world of "Thought leadership"

"I thought you might be interested in the attached thought leadership piece from XXX which examines the issue of mobile working," says an email I just got. It's from a PR and it's offering an article which I might (they hope) want to publish.

I do love the term "thought leadership piece"! It conjures up images of radical proposals, a slice of Nietsche or Bertrand Russell.

Instead, what I get is 750 words, which starts (I'm not making it up) "In today’s increasingly competitive market place, businesses know that they need to be able to compete effectively... " and ends up "A fully thought out plan is an essential first step in joining the new mobile business paradigm, where business is done anywhere, any time."

The whole thing is such wearying garbage. Even more wearying is the thought that I also write this stuff for money, myself.

Sleeping Beauty Starts Tomorrow!

Sleeping Beauty starts tomorrow at the South London Theatre. With me in the Chorus, and Kitty (pictured) as a Fairy. It is going to be a lot of fun!

There are plenty more photos where you can see our scary baddy, beautiful princess, dashing prince and plenty more.

If you want tickets - you do, don't you? - rush to the South London Theatre. The box office is open every night this week, and the show goes on till Saturday 14th.

Lambeth's crazy parking fines...

Other people's parking problems are possibly the most boring thing in the world, but have a look at these pictures from outside my house today. I don't know whose car it is , but they just got a £50 fine for parking "on the pavement" where "on the pavement" is defined as having about two inches of their tyres up on the kerb. Incredible!