The last week since the very sad but timely passing of Cid has been interesting. I find that the passing of a beloved companion animal feels very differently when it is the result of nature taking its course slowly and inexorably, rather than the short shock of a terminal illness. I feel sad, lonely, regretful that he can't still be with us, but there is none of the gut-wrenching sorrow that I felt when Minstrel was taken from us so quickly through cancer.

Prince, our "visitor" cat, has been visiting regularly which is comforting in my catless state. Yesterday morning I found him "cottage loafed" on the kitchen floor in the sunshine for the first time. He was after fuss and a bit of a cuddle, and then he pranced off down the garden path with a spring in his step. It's not unusual for him to visit us every couple of days or so. He was not around this morning though, emphasising to me that he is a part-time cat only!

I have made a lot of changes around the house. New lightshades, furniture moving, some old stuff being chucked out, washing curtains, energy-saving bulbs where possible and cake-baking are some of the things that have happened this week. It's cleansing - not disrespectful, not sweeping out the old, but making way for this new time and reflecting in my home the shifts and changes that are taking place in my mind.

I have much to look forward to - Mum and Grandma visiting this weekend, and Cranleigh Show on Sunday. My nephew's Christening soon. A short holiday to Cornwall with Mum and Jessica at the end of August. And then a holiday in Skye with Ian in mid-October.

I also have a lot to do - it's time to think about cycling three days per week soon and the garden needs more work again. I have painting and knitting to get on with, and there are changes afoot at work I'm sure. More time and attention can now be paid to my husband and our relationship; things we do together and where we are going.

Life moves on, and in a new configuration.

I post this morning in a new, catless state as we had to have the last of our two cats put to sleep last night, aged 19 and a half. It was totally the right thing to do, and I feel that I have discharged my responsibility to him in full to look after him well in life and make the right decision for him at the right time when the time came for him to go.

I feel very spacey this morning after very little sleep. As he was so old, we have not been able to have any holidays away at all for about 5 years now as he would become distressed and stop eating and drinking if left on his own. I have a holiday in Skye in October now to look forward to. We don't plan on obtaining any more cats - preferring to wait until the right cats arrive at the right time - if they ever do. We still have our constant "visitor" cat who came by last night - he's owned by many households on the estate and eats where he wants to. Nice that we still have some cat things in the house for that reason.

I'm at work as I think sticking to my routine will be most comforting for me.

Thanks for listening.

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Will this prevent me from cycling to work?



Why not? Coz I'm mental perhaps?

Hilliers Arboretum, of which my mother is a member, is holding a sculpture session at the moment. They have some really amusing, interesting, beautiful and downright gobsmacking items. The setting for this and the weather was perfect - warm and sunny with cool breezes and a constantly changing sky. Handy as a lot of the installations incorporated glass and mirrors.



That object in the foreground upon closer inspection appeared to be a pollen particle I believe. The use of mirrors was lovely as it reflected the green and blue all around it.



We quickly realised that the use of mirrors was being explored thoroughly by one of the artists, and also brushed silver metal. These I thought particularly lovely. I thought they really showed at their best in the sunshine with the colours of the garden glowing around them.



I loved the small fern sculpture that I found hiding away in the undergrowth, as hidden and unassuming as the plants themselves. They rewarded you if you gave them more than a passing glance - the white ceramic texture was lovely and the small glass windows lit them subtly if you bent down to look closely.



Our joint favourite though was a tall mirrored spire which a full-length picture could just do no justice to. It was set in front of a stand of trees which the wind was moving beautifully, and the movement made the mirrored spire come to life. The base was made very interesting by it's pebbled surround and the reflections of the clouds and sky in it as you stepped up close was stunning. I cannot imagine it looking better in any other position or setting. I found myself walking around and around it just looking at the constantly changing play of colour. It was really fantastic.





I highly recommend visiting this show. I believe that they are holding one each year. If sculpture in gardens is always this much fun, I think it will become a habit.

I got home to find that new potatoes had apparently started to grow on my bike because of the rich deposits of loam to be found in it's various crevices. That's what Ian promises had happened, anyway.

I'm emphatically not a twitcher. Travelling all over the countryside at breakneck speed to join hoards of people all arriving at the same location in a haze of noxious exhaust smoke and noise before peering through my bins at some hapless speck in the near distance before haring off to the next destination is not my idea of fun, or a good way to treat the countryside.

There are three carefully-selected places that we go, and then when we go we will spend 4-6 hours in situ, generally in blissful silence for most of that time. We enjoy it for the fresh air, the quiet, the National Trust places that we generally visit in the area also, and mostly of all for the pleasure of watching the behaviour of the birds, animals, insects and plants in their natural settings. We've seen too many amazing sights to mention, but the highlights have been a magpie mum teaching her little one how to break into the skin of a dead rabbit, a sparrowhawk hunting a kingfisher (the kingfisher got away, but it was a close thing) and a visit from an enormous hornet who seemed to want to keep an eye on us and make sure we were not up to any mischief!

We did a fair amount of this enjoyable, peaceful and sometimes thrilling pastime during my week off a couple of weeks ago now. The weather was magnificent too - pouring rain and howling winds for a while, then blazing sunshine and fluffy little clouds.

High summer is so beautiful - I can just stare and stare for hours.

I really have to start becoming more disciplined about spending just a few minutes every now and again posting - things happen so fast that finding the time is definitely an issue! I have had very serious computer issues for some time which has not helped. I have resolved this by treating myself to my first ever brand new laptop. Working in the sector that I do, making use of customer disposals and supposedly "broken" machines has been enough for the last few years, but trying to blog, web design, manipulate huge digital files and keep my data reliably intact has taken it's toll on the very old machines that I have been using. Moving to Vista of course has never been an option.

I've bought myself (with my bit of the profits made from photographic assignments) a brand-new Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv200, the specs of which are way higher than anything that I've had before. It's lightning-fast and can run easily any and all software that I want, including Adobe Elements in order to mess about with the video files from my Cycle Cam! I'll get round to recording and posting more of that shortly.

Cycling to and from work also takes up a lot of my available time and energy - although I wouldn't give it up for the world. I'm going to spend some time this evening posting some bits from the last month or so.