Omar's Diary to 23rd February 2018 - football, lameness and sore ears

Sunday saw quite an evening for a dark horse.  No, Man Servant had not subscribed to a racing channel so we could watch one of his 100/1 selections lose again with the regular monotony of a well-tuned metronome.  Instead we were both enthralled by the FA Cup tie between Rochdale and Tottenham. Rochdale is located in the north of the country but is placed in the south as far as football league tables are concerned.  Tottenham is based in the south, London in fact and most definitely not in West One, but very far north in the football league tables.

By the time the game started Lady Servant and Mitzy had retired upstairs for an evening of reading and in Mitzy’s case an evening of sleeping.

I wasn’t particularly interested in the football, being more of a Rugby Union feline personally, but I was fascinated by the amount of movement back and forth across the television screen.  Twenty-two members of the servant species in bright shirts and shorts chasing a white ball back and forth across a green background at a furious pace.  Marvellous!

As a feline I can confirm that I do have colour vision and can recognise the colours the servants refer to as red, green and blue.  Because we can see these three colours and their various blends and hues felines are referred to as being visually ‘trichromatic’.  The colours we see may not be as vivid as if they were seen by servants but who can really tell?

After the excitement of the football Man Servant and I read parts of the Observer.  This particular Sunday has a liberal and social democratic political framework which it has maintained since going tabloid.  My goodness!  I am expecting both the Telegraph and Financial Times to suddenly announce they are also going tabloid and that it will be it; no more broadsheet national newspapers. 

When all of the quality papers were broadsheets they were very useful as it was quite easy for a feline of my slightly generous proportions to hide and sleep under one.  Now, with the tabloids I can still get under them but they are never quite big enough to really snuggle under.  Regardless of how tightly I curl up there is always a part of me sticking out somewhere and getting cold.  Very much like an adult trying to sleep under a child’s duvet; it just does not work.

Having voiced a lambasting opinion about how Fleet Street or the ‘fourth estate’ have allowed standards to slip I must now divert my energies to the fashion industry and one fashion house in particular.

In the Observer were some photographs from London Fashion Week.

Thomas Burberry (1835-1926) founded the Burberry fashion house in 1856.  Since then the brand name has become world famous for quality and its very distinctive patterned linings to its range of outdoor clothing.  This world famous pattern has now ‘come out’ if you will excuse the expression, in that what used to be the lining is now used as the pattern for trousers, shirts and jackets.

Thomas Burberry must be turning in his grave at the very thought crying out ‘My lining, my lining my beautiful lining’.

Early on Thursday evening poor Mitzy was bundled into the carrier and hustled off to my private medical service.  Poor creature has a discharge from one of her ears and she is feeling a tad low.  Lady and Man Servant now have to rinse the ear out once a day and squirt a creamy type unction into it twice a day.  Mitzy is not very happy about this but it has to be done and believe me I have had worse things done to me when I have been at the medical centre than liquids squirted into ears.  There was this needle that was as big as…………………….and as for having my temperature taken that used to be the most undignified part of any examination.  Anyway, I wish Mitzy all the best for a speedy recovery soon.

Later that same evening the Servants went to a talk about equine lameness arranged by some equine doctors leaving me to console Mitzy.

The Servants returned quite late but they were happy if not a little tired as it was a very late night for them; ten thirty.  All of the talks were apparently very interesting especially the one that made reference to an American servant industrialist named ‘Leland Stanford’.  He was a very keen horseman and he had a wager of $25,000 backing his belief that during parts of the gallop stride the horse does not have any feet on the ground.  With an elaborate set of stills cameras and trip wires a series of pictures were taken of a horse galloping and indeed, at certain moments in the stride the horse is clearly off of the ground.  Leland Stanford had proved his point and collected the $25,000 which today would be worth nearly $465,000.  Amazing!

While the Servants were entering the centre where the meeting was being held they were preceded by an elderly lady servant using a walking stick.  In the lobby was one of the equine doctors who asked her:

‘Are you here for the lameness clinic?’

‘I don’t think so my dear, I have come here for the bridge club in the next room’.

Oh dear, neither of my Servants think the equine doctor realised what she had said.

During a break from preparing this edition of the diary Man Servant had to break off to help Lady Servant apply the required to treatments to Mitzy.  It was quite upsetting for her as she was fast asleep by the radiator when she was picked up, cotton wool rubbed around and inside her ears and then the ultimate squirting of the unction into the bad ear.  Believe me, Mitzy was not happy about all of this invasive treatment and has now retreated to the darkest depths under the bed.

PS We are still waiting for a response to our letter of complaint to the manufacturers of the blue goldfish.