Sat with a Cat

[muninnhuginn]

The Little Cat. It's getting a tad stir crazy, it is. But it's purring. More importantly, after this morning's bad experience with a long claw caught in the bedclothes, it's allowed me to give it a pedicure and even permitted the claws on its baldy paw to be trimmed. This also gave me the chance to check how many stitches have been removed--and the answer is, only the one. Good cat.

Our joint fashion tip: the toy poodle shave is definitely best left to the toy poodle.

And there's progress, tho' too slow. We have no rubble out the front and salvaged bricks out the back. There is a partition roughly halfway across the living room (with a door giving access to the wreck at the front), which is keeping the noise down and the dirt out. There are down pipes from the gutters outside. The cleaners come on Wednesday. Which is when two lots of builders are coming to do quotes (the ones I already regard as my favourites are coming tomorrow and have already rung up asking preparatory questions), and when Little goes back to the vet for stitch removal.

Nice things: Looby Loo came home with a certificate for listening especially well; I've acquired a £5 Amazon voucher; I got my Michel Houellebecq on H P Lovecraft book today; and smelly stuff courtesy of BPAL and eBay: Pink Moon (may go to LL), Honey Moon (Mmmm, Bzzzz, spice?), and testers of Mata Hari (nice) and R'lyeh (neat). I'm wearing both Mata Hari and R'lyeh, which is more of a plot idea than a recommended scent combination.

Annoying things: builders (whom I don't want to get the contract for the rest of the work, tho' they clearly expect to); encountering the word "intercity" in one of the Bletchley in WWII sections of Cryptonomicon where it jarred as too modern a term (tho' I must check this out) for the setting. It's broken the magic, and I was enjoying the book greatly, and I'm not sure if I'll carry on. It took a good twelve months to make myself forgive Alastair Reynolds for the misuse of "crescendo" on the first page of whichever of his books it was I've read--Revelation Space?--and actually buy it. It was still necessary to take a deep breath and hold it through the first page before being able to enjoy the rest of the read.

Comments

[ci5rod.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about 'intercity' -- wasn't it a seventies term? Wikipedia suggests eighties, but I think not. Post-war, certainly.

[muninnhuginn]

Older than I thought, but probably not old enough.

[armb.livejournal.com]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/4/newsid_2486000/2486817.stm says the "Inter-City 125" came into service in 1976. While the word could have been used for earlier services, that it was still hyphenated suggests the it was still relatively new.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_Train says "Its trade name was 'Inter-City 125', later changed to Intercity 125" but doesn't give a date, nor does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterCity_%28British_Rail%29 ("InterCity (or, in the earliest days, the hyphenated version "Inter-City")").

[muninnhuginn]

I've a draft of my extended post on this sitting around until I have time to finish it.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Oooh, if we're ever in the same place at the same time I'd love to have a sniff of your BPAL stuff - I keep hearing about them and they sound terribly intriguing :)

[muninnhuginn]

I'm happy to share the addiction ;-) Pop round one evening if you like. I can't see me going out wearing anything but R'lyeh for a while so the chances are folk'll smell me coming.

I've only a handful at the minute: I resell rapidly if I don't like or if they don't like me.

I'd love to try the lot, but can already eliminate some just from the ingredients list. Violet? No way.