On Caroline, Cats and Climate.

I met a woman called Caroline this evening. She was standing in the wood at the top of the lane, clutching a glass of wine and accompanied by a cat. It occurred to me that a woman who would take her recreation by walking in a wood with a glass of wine and a cat probably had something of consequence to offer a strange person like me, and so I was happy to be engaged in conversation.

Most of it was about the attributes associated with various women’s names (at least by me because women’s names happen to be one of my areas of interest.) I imagine she must have found my waffling rather tedious, but she did tell me a rhyme associated with the name. I don’t remember a word of it, of course, because I don’t remember that sort of thing unless it happens to have been written by Shakespeare, but I think it was quite sweet. (Actually, it’s patently untrue to say ‘I don’t remember a word of it’ because I do remember a word of it. Caroline was a word of it. I even remember a second one: ‘shine’. That came into it somewhere. But that’s all.) And she told me that she’s not really a cat lady, she just happens to have two cats which like to go for walks with her. Well, that must make her some kind of cat lady, mustn’t it?

And then I went to say hello to Rosie the horse who was in a paddock on the other side of the wood. Rosie and I are old friends and she was happy to come and greet me. She put her muzzle over the fence, apparently indicating that she would like to have some of the longer fresh grass growing on my side. I picked some and offered it to her. She looked at it, smelt it, declined it, and then nutted me in the ear, presumably by way of protest. It was quite painful. I promised to take her a carrot next time, and then we were friends again.

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The weather forecasters say that we in the UK are in for a heat wave over the next few days and they’ve put out a health alert. What we call a heat wave in the UK is what people in California and the Australian Northern Territory call ‘a bit chilly for this time of year.’

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I painted a window frame this afternoon. It took a surprisingly long time, but do feel free to be uninterested.