Monday, January 30, 2012

Thankful for the hum of traffic

Kate is many things but not untruthful in her blogging: I was unwell, I was busy, I was unable to spread myself as thoroughly as I wanted to.  The end of year in my job is always ghastly; this year it was combined with a series of tedious health issues that were fuelled by a lot of thin blood , my first published story (in a newspaper! With my name and no typos!)  a very full Christmas calendar and a much longed-for overseas trip from December 27. 

Thank you all so much for tuning in again. Blogging is a strange thing - you spend so much time and energy building up your little diary and establishing a rapport with clever people, only to have to disappear (seemingly) mysteriously when life and possibly your bones make demands of you.  My apologies for the gap and my deepest gratitude to you for reading again. 

Thank you for coming back - I will endeavour to make that worthwhile for you. The first thing I'll do is keep my holiday pictures to a stringently edited minimum.  

We went to a country where there are lots of good cafes....



...lots of traffic and lots of distinctive landmarks.....


....lots of intelligent use of public space and lots of reason to be rugged up.



In this instance it is 3 degrees Celsius so the ruggee is staring with real love towards a vendor who sells hot chocolate. She wears:  

*the old faithful woollen peacoat - thrifted in Sydney for $30 four years ago
*a black merino woollen sweater (from Monoprix, 18 euros)
*A vintage varuna wool Liberty skirt (Ebay UK, 20 quid)

*Extremely thick tights (Wolford)
*Boots (vintage, Ebay USA, $40) and 
*Scarf, wool and cotton from BHV ( a rather lovely Parisian department store).  

That little milk chocolate bag is Prada (Ebay years ago) and the the big grey bag bears testament to the fact that I really, really love shopping at COS. 

Get used to the peacoat and the bag for you'll see a lot of them over the coming days. The boots, not so much. 

And just in case you've ever wondered what my feet look like, here is an excellent illustration of them: 




Well, the right one at any rate. I think I have a rather striking big toe.









Sunday, January 29, 2012

Guest post from Kate


I have to do everything around here: shed on the towels, eat unattended butter, keep the insect community in check and stare needlessly at blank spaces at the wall until the roundears are half mad with distraction.

Yesterday she said to the big roundears, the tom, " I really want to blog again but I don't know how to start after a long absence." And he said, "Well, get Kate to do it. She's blogged before."

Hmmmph.

She really was sick. It was like a crime scene here for a while. I wasn't allowed to use my claws, not even in a nice way.

Mostly I didn't pay much attention because, well, she's not a mouse and frankly I am a cat. My attention span is limited.

But she's not sick anymore and she has more scarves which means I have even better warmth and insulation when I sleep in the good room.

She went away for a while and I got beaten up by a tomcat with one ear and no respect. I'm better now and she's come home. She bought me a present which I completely ignored.

"It's the year of the Dragon," she said, "maybe Kate could blog about that."

Oh, as if. AS IF. It is only ever the Year of the Cat as far as I'm concerned because 1) I can lick a dragon any day and 2) dragons are mythical and I'm not.