Mary was looking at the carpet in the hall.

Look at this carpet,she said to Emile

I can see your paw

marks all over it

Yes I trod in some red paint that someone has spilled on the pavement.

I think I will have to get you some shoes said Mary but you can take them off when you go in the back garden.

Do you mean we’ll have to go to the shops to buy me some shoes said Emile hopefully

I don’t know. If I went to a toy shop they might have some dolls wearing plastic shoes.

I don’t want plastic shoes the cat responded angrily.

My feet need to be able to breathe

So you would like leather shoes will you Emile?

The only alternative seem to be Wellington boots.

But do they make Wellington boots small enough for cats?

I don’t know the cat said wisely

Well if you would only learn to read you could look on the computer yourself.

It goes against my wilder nature to learn to read.

Well Mary said do you believe that I have no wilder nature ?

I believe you did at one time but I haven’t seen much evidence of it recently

That’s because Stan is dead, she shouted.

That would not bother a cat,

Well you may not have noticed but I am not a cat. And if you’re so pretty and wild, love me love me do

Don’t be so ridiculous. I am too small to make love to you.

You could run up and down my spine with Algipan on your feet

I’d rather wear perfume on my feet and run up your bosom.

Naughty cat, bestiality is not allowed in Britain.

Well don’t tell anybody about it. It’s not real bestiality just running up your body with perfume on my feet.

Well it’s something that no human being could do without seriously injuring me.

So you see there could be an advantage to marrying the cat

Yes my love I do love you very much Emile but I would really like a man as well as you and maybe you could find a lady cat that you could marry then we can all live in this house together then you and your wife could have some kittens

I’ll have to see who the man is before I agree to that. He might not like cats.

Is that case I should tell him you are a dog.

And so say all of us.

This is a photograph by Mike Flemming of the recent partial eclipse of the sun. It is very beautiful and just awe inspiring. I’ve never seen a photograph that was such a work of art. It reminds me of some of the paintings that Turner did which I believe we’re in Kent looking at the wonderful sea and sky views. It reminds me also of The Fighting Temeraire.

https://www.britainexpress.com/counties/glouces/castles/sudeley-church.htm

in fields of lushest buttercups we ‘d lie
We’d watch the clouds as gently they blew by.
Love was born we thought would never die.
But you are gone, and so I sadly sigh

That love itself remains without your form
Yet tears of loss enfold me like a storm.
I knew you’d never hurt or do me harm.
I felt your smile’s embrace, so wide, so warm.

How is the world,now emptied of your being?
No sound, no touch, no smell, no sight, no seeing.
How is the world when you have gone ahead
Yet I must linger in this empty bed?

Yet those who’ve loved are grateful for this gift
Our sorrow is that life itself’s t,oo swift

The leaves have not yet fallen from this tree

It makes my room so dark I cannot see.

Winter clocks will change and lengthen nights.

The sun will scarcely rise nor give much light.

The angle of the sun brings danger near

It blinds the eyes and fills us with great fear.

in Sudeley Castle chapel the stained glass

Concentrates the light and let’s it pass

The world is different every day and hour

it is the same for little winter flowers

Look a[ modern life we are too rushed

The artist in us all is daily crushed.

When we struggle fearing we are lost

The spirit we all share will pay the cost.

It doesn’t save that you have great wealth

As long as there are poor you have no health.

t

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/elin-cullhed/euphoria.htm

This is a novel based on the last 6 months of the life of Sylvia Plath the great poet.

I have only read a bit of it but it’s beautiful written although it is very sad.

Do people sometimes take risks which are too great?

Marrying someone you met 3 months ago in a country a long way from your own country then moving to a remote

village but who are we to judge?

Her death what a great loss to literature and also a personal lost to her friends and family

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/27/where-to-start-with-sylvia-plath?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/27/cost-of-living-crisis-stop-the-squeeze-calls-for-wealthiest-to-pay-proper-share-of-tax?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-the-stress-of-work-is-killing-you-and-what-to-do-about-it-wbxzdqbzl

That there’s an upside to pushing ourselves to the limit in our professional life is a fallacy, says Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. “Pressure is good for you. Pressure is stimulating and motivating, but when it exceeds your ability to cope, we’re in the stress arena.”

He says that 20 years ago the leading cause of absence at work was backache — now it’s stress, anxiety and depression, according to the Health and Safety Executive’s report the year before the pandemic. “It was 57 per cent of all long-term sickness absence. During the pandemic it rose to 63 per cent, but it’s not just the pandemic — we have a problem.”

That problem, says Dr Mithu Storoni, a neuroscience researcher and the author of Stress Proof, the Scientific Solution to Protect Your Brain and Body — and Be More Resilient Every Day, is that the way we work creates “an environment almost curated to trigger stress, but most importantly to not recover once that acute stress happens”.

63 per cent of long-term sickness absences during the pandemic were the result of stress, anxiety and depression

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