Catman, you're looking cool today (Yoko Ono)

Laney 'laxin' by the fire

Wie geht's?

Some random thoughts about cats and dogs:

Some people are cat people, and some people are dog people, and some people, I spose, are cat AND dog people but they are poor confused wretches. It's a binary thing. You're either one or t'other. Decide.

I'm a cat person. Pretty much because my mother and father were cat people (never dog people). So, I grew up with Champy at Asquith Ave. and Ramelton Rd. We never had a dog. 

Jacky is an animal person. She loves 'em all - horses, dogs, cats, whatever. Over the last 39 years we've had a succession of dogs and cats and horses - too many to list really.

The current ratio of dogs to cats at Maple Grove is three to one as we are currently hosting Jade's Tango but Laney doesn't care. Meh! Dog smog! 

As you can see from that picture, she owns the place.

Cats come and go. They are not owned. They are hosted. They are relatively independent. They treat humans and other animals with a vague disdain (dogs are forever channeling their inner two-year-old and are always in yer face/needy). 

Cats are superior to us.

I like that about them.

Love and peace - Wozza

Women hold up half the sky (Mao Zedong)

DMP with her bridesmaids
- Nita far left on April 18th 1953.

Wie geht's?

I've been celebrating having three amazingly brilliant women in my life over three days this week (two of them in that photo above).

Nothing else seems more important this week in Wozza's World than acknowledging them and their influence.

Amazing woman #1 - April 21st, 1984, was our 38th wedding anniversary. As a friend said recently - Jacky deserves a medal (maybe next year).  

JFP -April 21, 1984

Amazing woman #2 - April 22nd was my stepmother's birthday. Nita Purdy passed away last year. Dad's second wife was a good friend of my mum's (as that photo indicates) and a terrific grandmother style presence in our family.

Amazing woman #3 - April 23rd, 1930, was my mother's birthday - she would have turned 92. That's up there, but these days, it also isn't really, is it.

Medical science has made huge gains in the last 40 years and no doubt will do so throughout the next 40 years. All of which is a pinprick in time, is it not. 

Love/peace and may God bless them all - now and forever - WNP

Well my heart went 'boom' when I crossed that room (The Beatles)

 

Wie geht's?

Me? Slowly getting there - better each day. Thanks for asking.

The upside of living in Covid-ville is that the reading pile has been considerably reduced. Three books so far and halfway through the fourth.

This may come as something of a shock - but I quite like books about The Beatles. I have a few (some are pictured above) and I'm always keen on finding new ones.

Craig Brown's One Two Three Four is my latest acquisition and it's great! Mainly because he flits around with time - jumping into lovely anecdotes and offering some alternative realities (just like me and G Knowles esq - what if Paul hadn't failed Latin and therefore hadn't become friendly with the younger George Harrison at school?).

His research is top notch - I loved the background material on Jane Asher's family for instance. And his list of 1957's (a key year) neologisms include long playing records now being called 'albums'!

He turns the distance from the Beatles' evolution - some sixty to sixty-five years on now, into an advantage, so that he can forensically analyse the different witness statements from those who were there at key events. It's remarkable how different they all are, and how much the events morph over the years in people's heads.

Plus, and this is especially important, he interjects some excitement and personality into his musings, and I'll even forgive him this beast of a sentence and the non-use of a semi-colon after the colon.

If I could be any Beatle, at any time, I would be Paul in his Wimpole Street years, living with Jane, cossetted by her family, blessed by luck, happy with life, alive to culture, adored by the world, and with wonderful songs flowing, as if by magic, from my brain and out through the piano: 'I Want To Hold Your Hand', 'I'm Looking Through You', 'The Things We Said Today', 'And I Love Her', 'We Can Work It Out', 'Here, There and Everywhere', 'Yesterday'.

He makes a great point here. 

By the way, Paul McCartney was aged 21 to 23 during this time (1963 to 1965). Extraordinary!

Love and peace - Wozza

Well I'll never be a stranger and I'll never be alone, wherever we're together, that's my home (Billy Joel)

The heart of Wozza's world.

Wie geht's?

The 14th of April has a golden glow around it.

Back in 1962, a beautiful baby girl was born. She grew up to be a beautiful woman. And she married a...(ahem, sorry, I digress).

In fact, she grew up to be the nicest person I have ever met. Not just 'a nice person' but unequivocally - the nicest (and that's a high bar, because I have come across many really nice people in my travels).

For two thirds of her life, she has been my best girl by my side and the pleasure, the privilege is mine.

So, raise a glass with me and celebrate this gorgeous girl - and wish a very happy birthday to the great Mrs Purdy.

Love and peace - WNP

I got a rockin' pneumonia and a boogie woogie flu (Johnny Rivers)

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

This has been an interesting week. I tested positive for covid-19 on Monday morning.

This doesn't feel like anything special anymore - as in, it's rampant through NZ communities now, and, of course, the world is pretty bored with Covid-19 by this stage.  

For what it's worth:

As a vulnerable Boomer, I'd been keen to get triple vaxed a.s.a.p., so I got a mild dose of Omicron, but even covid light knocked me around - sore throat, fever, runny nose, cough. All pretty much happened simultaneously.

Day 2 and 3 were the worst but things have improved since the fever broke and the nose has now dried up (after sneezing my way through a whole box of tissues).

What I'm noticing now on day 4 and 5 is how little energy I have. A simple walk to the outside rubbish bin leaves me puffing. I've been self-isolating and working from home during all this and checking emails and writing reports has been about the limit of my energy reserves. Now it's just a heavy, meh, feeling.

This too shall pass.

As I keep reminding myself, any day above ground is a good day.

Plus, glass half full - the good thing is that I've had it and can get back on life's crazy train.

Love and peace - Wozza

Get like you used to be (Chicken Shack)

R G Purdy and W N Purdy - DYB DYB DYB

Wie geht's?

Hope your answer is positive. Speaking of positive - I woke up with a sore throat, cough, runny nose and feeling achy so I did a R.A.T. and it was...POSITIVE!

So, Jacky and I have started a seven day self-isolation from today. We're both triple vaxed so hopefully it's a mild dose and I don't get man-covid (it's lurking - stay away man-covid - you're not wanted here!!)

On to other things:

Slight deviation for this post. First up - the above photo should really have accompanied the previous post but I ran out of time to find it/scan it/crop it and use it. 

So - better late than never and all that. It will make sense if you scroll down and read that post - smiley face.

On to the main business - I loved this poem from Danusha Laméris that Swissmiss posted on her blog recently. It's worth sharing so here it is:

Small Kindness

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

Love and peace - cough cough - Wozza