Janet's new deliveries and her reading pile. We've both read the Leckie, Janet's currently on the Stross ("bonkers, and I now know an awful lot more about banking than I used to"), Grant to follow, and the Max Gladstone because, well just because really. Janet loved Three Parts Dead.

We had a bit of an adventure yesterday when we found an injured cat in our garage.

After I got home last night I looked out of the kitchen window and spotted a grey and white cat with its collar hooked under its armpit, something that happens to our cats occasionally and severely hampers their movement. I dashed outside and saw its tail disappear into our garage through a hole in the door (must get that fixed!) Janet and I found the cat cowering at the back of the garage behind the lawnmower, and it quickly became clear that it was in a bad way. The collar was a nasty red plastic one and it had rubbed the skin raw under the leg, removing all the fur in a large area which was red and evil-looking. The poor thing must have been in agony.

Intrepidly donning a pair of chunky gardening gloves I managed to grab the hissing beast and desperately tried to remove the collar while it struggled and bit me frantically through the gloves (which proved fairly useless at resisting cat fangs). Finally Janet cut the collar off with scissors, at which point the cat settled down a bit and we managed to get it into one of our cat boxes.

Then we rang around every local vet we could find, all of which were shut. One answerphone directed me to a 24 hours vet helpline, which in turn sent me to the RSPCA, who gave me a log number and told me to, er, find a local vet. Finally we got one that was open til 7 pm and kindly agreed to stay open long enough for me to get there with the injured cat. The RSPCA log number means the vet can claim £60 + VAT, and ring if they need to ask for more money. According to the RSPCA this makes for much more cooperative vets!

Then I came home, slathered my bloodied finger in germolene, and Janet did some "Injured Cat Found" posters which we taped-up in nearby streets, pub and shop. I was still a bit worried to be honest. The wound looked like it was many hours or days old, and although the Vets took the cat in last night they couldn't treat it properly til this morning. Also the cat could have been miles from home and the owner might never be found.

Thankfully Janet took a call today from someone who saw our poster and recognised the description, and we've just had a call from the vets. The owner has collected the cat, Megan, and it should make a slow but full recovery. Apparently it's been missing since July, when it was being looked after by a friend of the owners during a holiday, and went missing. (Oh the guilt that friend must have felt!) They haven't seen it since.

All told that put paid to most of last night and I have a sore finger for my troubles. Cats mouths aren't the most hygienic things so I'm keeping an eye on the finger but so far it doesn't seem infected.

Phew. I'm very relieved, and the owner has passed on their thanks. As Janet says, we'd want someone to do that for our cats, so it's only fair we do it too.

This weekend we went on a flying visit to London, mainly to see the Babylon exhibit at the British Museum before it closed, but also to cram in a few other things along the way.

We had a chilly but beautiful night time walk around the embankment via the London Eye and Big Ben, a pleasant meal and a glass of Hoegaarden in the White Hart, and Janet got to buy half the stock of Falkiners a lovely little shop selling hand-made paper and bookbinding supplies.

The Babylon exhibit itself was an unusual blend of fact and mythology, including the many artistic interpretations of the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, but despite a couple of beautiful items it didn't inspire me in the same way that last year's Terracotta Army exhibition did.

If anything we enjoyed the new Egyptian room at the Museum more. The room contains items from the Tomb of Nebamun, including some fantastic and lively wall paintings. This image of a cat is excellent and surprisingly naturalistic.

And of course Janet got to commune with the Rosetta Stone again.

We also booked to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum (the Darwin exhibition was sadly sold out) which showcased some stunning photography that was only enhanced by being displayed on vivid high definition screens rather than prints. Despite allowing people into the exhibition in booked slots it got rather crowded, particularly in the corners, but it was well worth it. Then I queued for 30 minutes to get a cup of coffee while my legs begged for mercy.

The Natural History Museum is one of those places that's always fantastic to visit. The building itelf is so lovely, like a secular cathedral, and is stuffed full of wondrous things. I'd have loved to have stayed longer but the urgent need to fall over won out.

I'm absolutely knackered, but it was a good trip. Photos can be found on my Facebook here.

More books, probably the last of the year.

( 19. The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell )

( 20. The Little Sister – Raymond Chandler )

( 21. Northern Lights – Philip Pullman )

( My books of 2009 )

So that's 21 books this year vs. 9 last year. I set the bar low but I'm still pleased to have notched up more than twice as many as last year. I had a bit of a blip after The Little Sister in which I started two¹ books² which still languish unfinished on a shelf, which slowed my pace considerably.

My wife meanwhile notched up 38 books, vastly outstripping me as always and beating her tally of 35 last year.

( My wife's books of 2009 )

--

¹ Apocalypse How by Daily Show writer Rob Kutner, initially a very funny take on surviving the post-apocaypse, but one where the law of diminishing returns sets in very quickly.

² Who Wrote the New Testament by Burton L Mack., a scholarly, secular attempt to reconstruct the actual beginnings of early Christian belief through literary and historical analysis, but one that for me feels nearly as much of a conjectural house of cards as the religion itself.

Today we pressed the big red button marked Engage Christmas! Infernal Christmas Engines thrummed into life. Somewhere, deep within the bowels of the earth, Elves stirred from their slumbers.

Our Christmas Tree looks very pretty. We vary from year to year on whether to put the tree up this early, but we do enjoy the build-up to Christmas far more than the wind-down so we want our hit of Christmas reasonably early -- particularly since we don't have any time off work before the main event this year. An impromptu drive down our street showed that a reasonable proportion of houses already had a tree up in their front room or porch. The research is in: it's Christmas.

Most but not all of our pressies are bought and wrapped, and we're slowly accumulating festive foodstuffs to tide us over the long hard winter a day or two of intensive snacking. As always given my wife's diet-controlled diabetes this involves much research into low-sugar alternatives to things like mulled wine, Christmas pud and other desserts. We have a reasonable selection of these, including a spicy sugar-free cake made with Splenda that Janet really likes. She's researching custard tarts at the moment.

Mmm... Christmas...

It's that time of year again. Honestly, we have so much fun on Halloween we should be burned as witches¹.

Janet's not feeling too grand today and can't leap up and down from the sofa very easily, so I'm taking the lion's share of the callers. The ratio of cute-kids-who-are-really-into-it to sullen-teenagers-in-scream-masks is so far not ideal, but we'll see how things go. The freezing drizzle we've had on and off all day has at least let up, which increases the chances of getting a good range of trick or treaters.

We've nothing to rival Janet's 133t carving skills on last year's pumpkin but the porch is still decked out in an array of pumpkins and scary Halloween tat. This year we've put one of our strange glowy rock things inside the pumpkin, giving it an exciting range of both red *and* green glows. For added scariness. And not having to replace the candle.



There's just about nothing on TV tonight that qualifies as Halloween fare until after midnight, at least not on any channel I could find without an understanding of astronomically large numbers, or a willingness to watch Most Haunted. The mainstream TV channels just don't seem to have caught on to the blatant commercialisation of this festival in recent years. Which is strangely unlike them. I've therefore downloaded obtained via ouija board from the spirit world Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape, a TV play I've always had a hankering to see and which is out of print so costs slightly more to buy than a large high street bank.

--
¹ Except, not really.^2
2 I'd be a Warlock for a start.^3
3 Yes, just like Julian Sands. Seriously, you remember that movie?^4
4 Okay, I kinda liked it too but that's not the point. What was the point?^5
5 Oh yes, in summary, not to burn us as witches and/or warlocks.

My wife's doing heaps of overtime this weekend, and I've been sat here staring at a spreadsheet for several hours trying to motivate myself. It's due next week, time is short, and I'll regret it if I don't do it. Trouble is, I've already worked most evenings this week and it's all beginning to catch up with me.

Quite clearly the thing to do is procrastinate!

Tom McRae now has a blog, McRaetheism. As usual he's walking that fine line between deadpan comedy and soul-destroying nihilism. He also has a couple of new song demos up on his myspace page.

We've belatedly been catching up with The Middleman, which is exactly the kind of cheesy, heightened-reality pop-culture-drenched romp that the world needs more of; it's sort of what you'd get if The Avengers and Buffy Season 1 had a messy car accident. How can you not love a show in which the finale features an evil parallel universe, goatee beards and an impression of Snake Plissken from Escape from New York? Plus it apparently meets the bechdel rule. It's *so* going to get cancelled.

Tonight sees the debut of the BBC's Merlin in the Doctor Who / Robin Hood family slot. I'm not optimistic, but it does have Tony Head in it. And a dragon.

Thought for the Day: no matter how large or crowded the supermarket car park, someone is always trying to get into or out of the car right next to yours.

It had been a while since we'd seen any newts in our pond, having at one stage counted nine newts swimming around simultaneously. We'd more or less decided that the newts had left the pond, as newts are (so they tell me) wont to do.

Then, on the very day my wife declared that if we didn't see a newt she'd give up, we found the tiniest of tiny baby newts (okay, larvae). And then two more. These really are small: only just over a centimetre long, about the size of a 1p coin. They have little gills and four tiny legs. Awww.



I've no idea how many others there may be lurking in the depths of our small pond, or what the chances of them surviving are, but this is a very cool discovery.

My wife just made some books. Actual books. To me, this is a little bit as if she built a new television set. It's sort of like magic.



Essentially the magicprocess goes as follows. The paper is folded, then hand-stitched into groups of pages called signatures.



These separately stitched signatures are bound into essentially the inside of a book.



Then there's a cardboard cover, in three parts so as to give it a flexible spine.



This is rounded to make a proper book shape. Here are three raw books.



Then the whole assemblage is glued together. Extra sheets link the cover to the inner pages, the cover is coated in book cloth/paper, and a cover design paper is glued over the top. Et voila! Three finished books



The end result is a little blank notebook that, frankly, I'd have a hard time telling apart from one bought in a shop. And all this from nothing but paper, cardboard, fabric and glue. How cool is that?



EDIT: And here's an open book, so to speak.

My wife's been busy making crafty things again. As you know she's a tireless explorer of different craft projects and gets through more in one weekend than I get done in your average month. This time around she's turning her hand to wire bracelet making, and as usual she's invested in a range of books, equipment and tools. She's only made a few so far, but this is the one she's most pleased with:



This one is copper wire shaped around a wooden mandrel, bound at intervals, with beads threaded on to make the pattern. As usual I'm very impressed. The other fruits of her labours can be seen here. She's already taken an order from someone at work to do some more! I think Janet pretty much has a good time with everything she tries, but she's particularly enjoying the bracelet making at the moment.

For those of you not interested in craftwork, here is a cute snoring three-legged cat: