We spent yesterday painting one of the walls in the living room. The colour we finally chose looked completely different on each sample patch we painted, so in the end we chose the closest to what we wanted and slapped it on one of the walls. It looks good. On that wall, and that’s the best we can do. If I’d been on my own, I’d have painted this morning till it was all done once over and stuck the Christmas decorations up tomorrow morning, but he’s a tad more conventional than me, so we called it a day yesterday evening.
This morning – one half-decorated wall (needs another coat) and the sample patches covered over so they aren’t standing out. He wouldn’t let me write ‘Merry Christmas’ across the wall in the colour we’re going to paint it, but – if you’re ever going to graffito your own walls, now’s the damn time.
We put up the decorations around the walls, near the ceiling, and they look even better against the paler green. Next step was to remove the decorations Genie brought in for our delight – so many feathers on the dining room floor that I know there’s one less blackbird alive out there. We haven’t found the plucked corpse yet. Genie has gone on the naughty list.
This is the last week of the excellent project called ‘What the Cat Dragged In’, the doctoral thesis of Hannah Lockwood, student at the University of Derby. She started a citizen science project three years ago as part of her research to investigate what domestic felines prey on – whether they kill, injure, fetch it home, let it go… I registered two of our cats on it, knowing that neither was a hunter – Sasha too elderly and stately, Genie too timid – hoping that they would rack up a nil score that would skew the overall total of cat-kills in the UK towards the ‘not-so-deadly’ side. And that’s the point when Genie became a stone-cold killer, fetching us home a variety of rodents, birds, one rabbit, maybe a rat three weeks ago and today, a blackbird. I still treasure the day she and her brother dragged a live blackbird chick in through the catflap and let it go. The chick chased them up the hallway and up the stairs, and swore at me as I tried to rescue it – swore all the way back to its parents. Maybe this is the same blackbird, grown up and off guard. Much as I hate it, the alternative is to lock her in permanently, and she’d hate that. So I have to dob her in one last time for slaughter of the local wildlife. Best of luck to Hannah Lockwood, hopefully soon to gain her doctorate.
There we are. House dressed for Christmas, tree up and lit, presents under the tree (not many – we don’t buy big presents). Ten minutes to go and we are ready for Christmas.
We’ve even listened to ‘A Fairytale of New York’. Done.
Julia Chalkley 