Tuesday 3 April 2007

I am very tired tonight. My partner is tired. Everyone is tired. I suppose it might have something to do with the fact that we didn't get much sleep last night.

My partner has had a very sudden relapse of severe illness, mainly induced by a terrible time she is experiencing at her work. I cannot, alas, say anything about that here but it is getting to the point where she is frightened to go to her job in the morning. And with good reason. Ah well. She begins a new course of treatment at the hospital tomorrow morning, and has a job interview in the afternoon, so it should be a better day than the past couple. I shifted from my usual half of the bed last night to sleep on her side and snuggle up close because I knew she was distressed. It was a useful exercise, as I did much better with my ongoing campaign to steal the good pillows. So she is comforted, I get a fair share of the better pillows and everyone is happy. Heh heh.

My partner has been unwinding from her difficult days by taking me to Abbotstone in the evenings, now that the hours of daylight are longer. We had another quality walk tonight, with a cracking match of Dog's Bottom. Despite my partner taking an early 4-0 lead, I romped to a glittering but hard-won victory on the stretch back to the car.

I very nearly caught a rabbit. A really fat one too. I got SO close, but he was surprisingly agile for a chunky lad and I missed him by a whisker. Dammit. My squirrel is still there though - or at least bits of him are. I think my partner is still a bit annoyed with me for killing him. She sighs and says she supposes it is "just nature". But no. There is NOTHING natural about nature. It is easy for her; she doesn't spend most of her days alternately hiding from or being beaten up by a psychotic swan. Oh yes.

I alluded to this befeathered lump of pure malevolent evil in my blog entry for 4 February but felt, at the time, that mention of this river-bound nutter was a horror for which the world was not yet ready. But, having had the sh*t liberally kicked out of me yet AGAIN the other day, the time is ripe for exposure. In a cruel twist of irony, he lives on one of my favourite stretches of river - I walk there almost every day with Maisie. The wretch has been the bane of my life for over a year now. On a good day, he sits in the water; I stand on the bank and we yell foul abuse at each other. On a bad day (and there are plenty more of these, I can tell you) he launches a sudden assault on me in a flurry of foul swan-words and white feathers and I get a selection of colourful new injuries if I don't run or hide fast enough. I have, in the past, successfully hidden in bushes, under barbed wire, under a plank and behind a four year old child. All to the sound of Maisie's laughter. I, of course, am far too much of a gentleman to retaliate. The beaky s*d could learn much from me. To illustrate my point, here is what the public at large sees:






This is what I see:






Enough said.

Don't have nightmares. Although I might.

Good night.