Amid a flurry of calls on various matters including an invitation to meet the new Headmaster at Warwick School tomorrow to discuss Geoffrey Eve and another abuser from the "good old days" - a matter on which I have received shocking new information overnight- I have received a call from the vets. The ashes of the King of Cats, Oakley, are in an urn and ready for collection.
And thus there will be a small ceremony on Saturday. My daughter will take Joshua for a walk allowing a few of us to bury the urn close to that of Kitosh whose ashes were finally laid to rest here a few years after his demise and to say a few words of farewell. There is not room underneath the rhubarb plant where the body of Oakley’s Companion Tara lies.
Meanwhile, the Mrs is in Belfast on a piss up, I meant serious academic conference. I have been left strict instructions about washing, cleaning and other matters that can wait until Friday afternoon a couple of hours before she gets back. I have also been left a book called Goodbye Mog which I MUST read to Joshua.
Mog is a cat who lives with a ghastly family of tedious do-gooder liberals and my right-on sister has sent a number of Mog books for Joshua to read. I make a few changes as I read them to my lad, to make Mog’s dreary Guardian reading family a bit more entertaining. Your son wants to dress up like a Greenham Common woman? Fine. But allow me to explain to Joshua that this is not normal. Dirty Harry does not dress like that because he is a real man. Comprende? The daughter is a vegan? Whatever – that is why she looks like she has cancer. Eat some of Mog’s food FFS and get healthy you pathetic snowflake.
But this book, borrowed from the library, is about Mog’s demise and what happens next. It is predictably drippy but I will obey orders. I’m a good German. Last night, Joshua and I watched the Paddington Movie but maybe tonight I shall inflict Mog’s demise on the poor boy. And then we can watch an old Clint film to cheer him up.