Omar's Diary for Saturday th September 2016

Lady Servant has been away again for two days to somewhere called ‘Liverpool’.  I am not exactly sure where it is but having heard how long her journey was it sounds far enough away to be in another country.  I am sure they do things differently there.  All I do know is that when Lady Servant returned to Omar Towers she told me that it was very nice to be back home.

Despite her affections towards me on her return I could not prevent myself from using my manipulative Machiavellian cunning and secure a sachet of kibble by faking that Man Servant had forgotten to feed me my breakfast before he left for work earlier in the day  I succeeded in this operation before Lady Servant had managed to get her suitcase upstairs to start unpacking.   I wasn’t really hungry.  I was just practising my exercise of power.  One has to keep one’s hand in so to speak.

While Lady Servant was away this week the affairs of Omar Towers have run relatively smoothly with meals being served on time but Man Servant does let things slip a bit when he is left in charge.  Perhaps I should not say anymore?  Then again, I may as well.

When Man Servant returns home in the evening he does make sure that the Chavs and I are fed so I have to respect the way he has prioritised his duties. Then he gets changed into his relax at home clothes and sets about preparing his own meal.  This week he had one of his favourite meals two nights in a row; egg mayonnaise salad garnished with marinated Adriatic anchovies.  For all of his domestic faults Man Servant does provide for himself very well on the catering front but not so much on the household tidiness front.

I think it might be the little rebel in him that stops him from washing up after meals.  He just leaves the crockery, cutlery and cooking utensils in the sink waiting until they are needed again before washing them.  I must say though that he is very good with my feed bowl as it does get cleaned before every meal.  This aversion to washing up his own things might be why he reverted to egg mayonnaise for two nights as it involves the absolute minimum of crockery and cooking utensils.

He did tell me that he eats light meals like salads after six in the evening because he has trouble digesting heavy meals any later.  That sounds very plausible but personally, I think it is purely cuisine laziness.  At least he does not bring in fish and chips and eat them straight from the packaging when Lady Servant is away.  That would be just so slummy.

I can tell when Lady Servant when will be returning home from the change in Man Servant’s behaviour.  He usually has a burst of energetic house cleaning and can whip around with the duster, furniture polish and kitchen cleaner in a few minutes as well as fluffing up the cushions on the sofa.  He has this activity down to a fine art and believe me it is a movement of well-timed precision like Swiss watch, as long as everything goes to plan.

Yesterday morning things were going to plan and I watched in amazement as he whipped around the residence. Then the amazement turned to amusement.  While he was tidying up downstairs the ironing board collapsed with a crash louder than plates being broken at a Greek wedding.  As the legs of the board had departed company from the board itself the only way Man Servant could do his ironing was to squat on the floor to press his shirt and trousers for the day.  It was quite amusing watching him struggle and unfortunately he went off for the day looking a little wrinkled in the shirt and trouser department.

In her travels over the last few days Lady Servant observed that on the bus from Salisbury to Ringwood that there were several elderly members of the servant species travelling who were suffering from various stages of dementia.  As dementia is an area that Lady Servant has specialised in she is very aware of the condition and its wider implications for the whole of society as it is largely age related and servants are living longer lives where the body is well maintained despite the advances in medical science nothing can be done to maintain the physiology of the brain. This is a very serious issue that the servant species has to be aware of as it one that is not going to go away.

Lady Servant brought home a copy of the International New York Times yesterday. The Tonkinese felines were bred in Canada and North America especially to live in apartments in cities such as New York and Toronto and this could be the reason I have such an affinity for this newspaper.

Unfortunately there was not that much in this edition to really grab my attention.  On page two there was an obituary for Philip Kingsley a man described as the ‘treater of the tresses of the famous’.  He developed a range of hair care products and treatments for people such as Audrey Hepburn, Jane Fonda and Mick Jagger.  His belief was that ‘Hair is the single most important part of our anatomy affecting our psyche’.  I wonder what Mr Kingsley thought of Mr Trump’s bouffant and even more amusingly, how would Mr Trump look and behave if he shaved his head?  On the Opinion page there were a couple of articles discussing Mr Trump and I particularly liked the following little jibes at his personality:

'His life is a vacuum of principle, and he never seems to stand up for anything larger than himself’ by Nicholas Kristoff.

Then Gail Collins, commenting on the question and answer session from Wednesday night stated ‘At times, Trump seemed to be exceeding expectations just by speaking in complete sentences’.

For readers who have been following my racing selections there is excellent news from the International New York Times.  There is no coverage of racing here in Britain so I have been unable to make any selections for the weekend.  So, we can all put our money away safely for a rainy day.