Omar's Diary - 8th February 2018

On Friday evening Man Servant returned to Omar Towers from another day at ‘work’ looking rather tired.  No sooner he had crossed the threshold into the baronial hall than Lady Servant told him that they would be away for the weekend going by railway on Saturday and returning by plane on Sunday.  They do appear to live a rather fast life but what about arrangements for Mitzy and myself while the servants are away?

Immediately after dinner Man Servant went and arranged for our regular but itinerant servant to serve our meals twice a day so all was well.  ‘Regular but itinerant’, would that be an oxymoron?  I personally would have preferred three meals but I guess I must learn the difference between wanting and needing as there are so many, many hungry felines a lot less fortunate than myself.

One of the benefits of anyone of my Servants flying is that they very often return home with a complimentary magazine from the airline.

On this return they brought home a copy The Spectator for 3^rd October 2018.

Man Servant does annoy me sometimes when he reads this particular publication.  Instead of starting from the front he often starts at the back.  I think he looks on the short light articles as an intellectual warm up in readiness for tackling the major ones towards the front.

There is a regular feature on etiquette which Man Servant enjoys.  Having read it several times neither of us are quite sure whether or not the letters addressed to ‘Dear Mary’ are genuine questions or hoaxes dreamt up by journalists who write for this magazine.  For example this week one man wrote in asking how best to cope with having to sit through a lunch without excusing himself to go to the toilet when he already has a bladder problem.  Mary’s response was for the correspondent to buy some Tena Man that would absorb any leakages without him having to leave the table.

Man Servant laughed at this solution. That attitude may be alright now but as he advances in years I am sure he will be suffering from the same problem eventually.  I already am aware that he no longer uses the alarm facility on the phone to get up in the morning anymore.

Me? I am quite happy with the en suite facilities provided while the cold weather persists and I never ever have to leave a meal part way through.

Lady Servant returned from one of her many travels the other week and brought home a copy of Gordon Brown’s autobiography ‘My Life, Our Times’.  Both Man Servant and I were most shocked very early on in this book.  Mr Brown was explaining about the rough and tumble of politics and how you expect to have a hard time but as much as he tries to brush it off lightly comments from Andrew Marr and Jeremy Clarkson about him were really quite shocking.

In an interview in 2009 Andrew Marr suggested that because Gordon Brown only has vision in one eye that he should consider stepping down from high office.  Then Jeremy Clarkson, formerly of Top Gear, referred to him as a ‘one eyed Scottish idiot’.  I really feel that sort of talk from either of them is most uncouth. I am rather glad that one of them has been consigned away from the BBC to a commercial channel.

Even though Man Servant was a way over the weekend he was still very happy about his football team, Arsenal.  They won their game against Everton five one.  A real thumping if ever there was one.   Although not as big a thumping as he witnessed at Yeadon while he was away for the weekend where he witnessed the complete and utter humiliation of a goal keeper.

Lady Servant has been working from home this week.  Both Mitzy and myself, without any organised or communicated plans of collusion, have managed to make her life a little stressful.  We have two feline dining areas.  One upstairs and the other downstairs, not below stairs I hasten to add.  At lunchtime one of us will approach Lady Servant signalling we want our lunch served upstairs.  Then just as Lady Servant returns to her work the other one of us will demand lunch downstairs.  This role usually falls to me.

I will fuss around her legs making vocal demands that my bowl be filled.  I am not really hungry but I do enjoy playing this game.  My bowl is filled and I can see there are delicious bits of prawns and fish in there which really are my favourite.  I casually walk over, look into the bowl as if I was Jay Rayner thinking about an introduction to his next restaurant review.  Make a close inspection, sniff it a little, flick my tail and walk away.  This always causes Lady Servant some mild distress which is vented with a frustrated ‘Oh Omar, you are such a fussy little monkey’.  After Lady Servant has gone back to her work I immediately return to my bowl and clean it up before retiring to the sofa for the rest of the afternoon.

On particularly mischievous days when one of is being fed upstairs the other one will start scratching the carpet at the front door to be let out.  It really is a fine bit of sport and even better over the last few days as Lady Servant has been suffering from a sore back.