Thank you for your gentle ways
Thank you for the happy days.
Thank you for your judgement sure
Thank you that our love endured.

Thank you for your wit and grace,
Thank for your funny face.
Thank you for your deep blue gaze and
Thank you for your warm embrace.

In my dreams I travel deep and low
Into the loving world of long ago
The jacket on the chair ,it smelled of smoke……
The funny tales, he sang, he laughed, he spoke

So faint the memory, strong are its remains
Security and love in our domain
The brushes and the stipplers all stood by
For no-one told his tools that he would die.

On his shoulders, like a queen I rode
So safe and happy on the path he trod.
His voice was clear and he could whistle too
In those days men were used to do

 

And  love shone from him on my mother dear
She smiled and made us cakes for Sunday tea
What  tragedy to leave  his children five
But in that distant space ,he is alive

The fire as red as any glowing rose
We were dressed so well in  home made clothes
Too happy, needing no words to relate
Our sense of being in this  generous space

I can’t get back to them, I cannot swim
The passages too wet , the light so dim
Yet I feel it in my body faint and clear
Death is not the end of those so dear.

Deep inside our minds, ancestors live
And   to out hearts a depth and breadth they give
Yet missing him,I hover near the place
Where I might dive into his dear embrace

The  table where we  banged our little heads
The chairs so close together like a bed
The teapot  always full, the sugar bowl
The fire, the kettle , pussy cat and coal

The fireplace had its oven  nice and warm
Looking at hot coals made me feel calm
The children seem to play in that   far space
And all around  is love  and on  and on I gaze

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/out-the-darkness/201809/extreme-altruism

What shall I do with  a dilated pupil?

a) Send them to the Headmaster

b} Give them a shrinking glance

c) Look away

d) Go to an Eye Clinic

e} is she  having a baby? How can you see her cervix? Are you a doctor?

My glasses are reading  any advice?

A} You have schizophrenia

B} You are a witch

C} You  need an eye test

D) They are a surveillance device.Throw them in the bin

My lenses are plastic

a} You have had cataract surgery

b} You are deluded

c} They are  ruining the environment.Hide them if you can get them out of your eyes

4} You want attention.? Ask for a glass eye next time

As Mary ate her Weetabix, she felt a pain in her left leg rather like a toothache gone astray Emile, what are you doing? Emile crawled out looking dusty. And he had just had a bath. I was trying to bite the hairs off your leg, he miaowed plaintively There are no hairs on my leg, she whispered. Oh, dear,I must have walked into a cobweb I wish Stan had got a cobweb brush, she muttered tp herself But do we really need a different brush for everything? Soon we will have one for each tooth. That will be expensive She felt in her pocket for her Tablet. She wanted to draw a diagram of her brush cupboard using an Android App. But her pocket was empty The back door opened and in ran Annie wearing a yellow nightdress and matching slippers Hello, she cried. I wanted to catch you before 9 am Why, asked Mary? The postman will be here by then. He has got a parcel for me. But I put your address. What is the point of secrecy when you live alone? You have no man to question your expenses, have you? Nor a woman either Well, Emile might ask me to explain. Just because Emile is male it does not give him the right to tell you what to do All my life I have obeyed men, Annie cried Yes, after you have manipulated, seduced and terrified them That is very cruel. I was only trying to help them. Well, you may have done, but why not help yourself? How can I do that? Tune into your body and see what comes to mind Beetroot, Annie responded. So you must need them, get dressed and we will go to the greengrocers You have got very bossy, said Annie. Did you have a nightmare? It was more like a night-tiger, Mary revealed. Something bit my foot and it hurt Oh, mother , cried Emile, it was me! You, Emile. What made you do that, she said angrily? It was in my way as I crawled under the duvet, the cat whispered. Surely you could have gone further down. I wanted to see what you tasted like! That is evil, not to say perverted, Mary told him. I shall take you for therapy or would Confession be better? Is it a compulsion you cannot help or is it a sin? Annie was silent. She did not like questions nor any kind of prolonged thought Don’t ask me, she finally said. Maybe Emile needs a man in the house. I don’t want any more men, Mary said sadly. They seem to die Well, Stan was 128 years old. Annie informed her.I saw his birth certificate once. Unless it was 12.8 years Don’t be so ridiculous. How could he have been 12.8 years old? It must be a miracle, said Annie. Tell the Pope and he might be declared a saint soon St Stan of Knittingham, Patron Saint of Almost Adolescents. The bell rang. In ran Dave. He was dressed in navy. I am ready to take you to Church, he told the ladies To church? I’d rather go to Wigan Pier Oh, the sea is not there on Sundays! Is it there on the Sabbath, Annie muttered? No, it’s not, Dave said quietly Wow, two more miracles, she said as she fainted into the Pantry How annoying, Mary said. I just classified the jam Well, things could be worse, said Dave. She’s not broken any and cut herself What, she falls and breaks nothing. She must be very light. Yes, she is quite electric, he quipped Whatever next? The marmalade! And so ask all of us

“

I have walked the silent paths of grief
Sunless,dreary,cold and all alone. 

I have slept on beds of winter leaves.

I know that death’s a greedy starving thief.
Although my heart weeps and my joy has gone.
I have never felt I was deceived.

I have learned that human life is brief.
I have learned by sorrow we’re undone.
I have sifted earth and what’s beneath.

I have felt the dark emotions seethe
I’ve felt cruelly burned by glaring sun.
I have learned the geography of grief.

I wait in sorrow for this life to cease
Yet some are never loved by anyone
I have dreamed in beds of winter leaves

Unconsoled grief can make us dumb
Into our hearts, we drag the ice that numbs
I have walked the silent paths of grief
I have made my bed on winter leaves

https://www.thetimes.com/article/38298a4b-8790-4dd2-b358-6ab1d5c2e992?shareToken=38d4d21a358f149861bc6db6ff378fc9

A study suggests that taking time to contemplate aesthetically pleasing art can boost abstract thinking and help free us from everyday anxieties. More specifically, it appeared to induce what is known…as psychological distancing, a kind of stepping back from your own thoughts, allowing for greater clarity and a healthier perspective.

While Mary sat in the kitchen on a large pine chair looking at Hotter’s latest shoe catalogue,Annie was creeping up the garden path in a pair of turquoise suede elegantly heeled shoes matching her teal tencel culottes and blouse.Round her neck was a large lump of amber on a gold chain handy for beating off muggers or lustful men and women
Despite the heat she was in full splendour with golden beige tinted moisturiser from Langone of Lyons on her lovely complexion,pink eyeshadow from Yves St Current and dark brown boot polish as her mascara had run out and she’d not been out for a while to buy more
Annie ran the last few yards and darted like an eel into Mary’s 1970’s orange kitchen.
What on earth are you doing,dear? Mary asked her.Those shoes look unsuitable for leading anyone up the garden path.Mind you,I do like them
Oh,I’ll explain,Annie said huskily.
I told that psychotherapist across the road I was living with you.
What exactly do you mean by living,Mary asked anxiously.
Well,he said yesterday that anyone who lives alone must be lacking in some way.Except for him of course as he had full analysis with Alfred Zion.
You mean Wilfred Bion,Mary told her.
Zion,Bion,what’s the difference?
It shows your lack of education,Mary told her.Not that education nowadays makes much difference when almost anyone can get a 2.2
.After all would you pay £90,000 for a fourth class degree in Aeronautical Engineering?
And Zion is in the Bible
That’s not quite what I would have done, said Annie.A degree in flirtation and pleasing men would be more up my street.And cooking of course although I once did have an interest in Hebrew and Aramaic.
It’s not a way to progress in a neo-liberal economy,although reading the Hebrew Bible is always interesting.Personally I prefer that to the New Vex-a man.The stories,the love songs,the action.Mary’s round eyes gleamed with intellectual life and a bit of languorous lust
How about God? Annie asked her.
He seems to have changed as he related to his people.But he was a friend despite being an abstract concept.Though one could hardly call him a concept as he is inconceivable.
Mary’s voice faltered as she was stunned by her own articulacy and wondered what she might say next that could offend millions around the globe with modern technology beinf so widespread
You should write a book,Annie said kindly.
I think I am ill-equipped to write about God.And ,also ,I am saddened to see how his own people have been treated.I can’t dwell on it over much as I already feel weak and weepy.
Why what have you been doing,asked Annie.
I have been sorting out clothes to give to the hospice shop. I’ve got a big bag
full already and 2 bags of newspapers and rubbish of various kinds which somehow creeps into my bedroom… tissues,cotton wool, old hairbrushes.I am hoping to get it nice and neat before my sister comes to see me in August.And no doubt she will not be happy even then.She’d like me to buy a small new flat with a lovely bathroom and kitchen. But I don’t want to leave my neighbours behind.If I won the lottery I could get the neighbours to move as well.Love thy neighbour etc
And now I realise I have far too many pans despite burning several.But it’s a big decision for a woman who was famed for entertaining friends with scorching Beef Vindaloo and lemon mousse that looked like yellow rubber.Giving that up is a big wrench.
Why can’t you carry on, asked Annie.
Carrying on is precisely why I can’t do it.Now I am a widow the wives of my former colleagues and my own women friends are afraid I will steal their husbands.
Emile miaowed in ecstasy as any talk about the love lives of his family were always intriguing.He was hiding as usual behind the stone flour bin.
Don’t you see,said Annie.If we pretend we are living together then you can mingle with men without suspicion.
This is beginning to sound like a spy story,Mary told her.And do not drag me into a character part in the play based on your romantic love for that psychoanalyst.
He looks ugly and boring to me.
Oh,that’s just a projection,Annie told her.You are defending yourself against acknowledging how much you long to lie in his arms and let him smother you in kisses.
Well,said Mary,I see you have been reading Freud for beginners again.
Or is it Freud for Dummies?
Mary recalled how nice her dummy used to taste when it was dipped into a jar of malt and codliver oil.Maybe that is the answer,she thought.
I’m going to Mothercare,she called as she ran out of the house in her green trainers and denim trouser suit.See you later.
Annie sat in the kitchen wondering how soon she could see the psychoanalyst again without being accused of sexual harassment.Even old age has not deterred her from seeking a replacement for dear old Stan.A few tears ran down her cheek and Emile jumped out and sat on her knee.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-milton

the volume were composed in Stuart England but published after the onset of the English Civil War. Furthermore, Milton may have begun to compose one or more of his mature works—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes—in the 1640s, but they were completed and revised much later and not published until after the Restoration.

This literary genius whose fame and influence are second to none, and on whose life and works more commentary is written than on any author except Shakespeare, was born at 6:30 in the morning on 9 December 1608. His parents were John Milton , Sr., and Sara Jeffrey Milton , and the place of birth was the family home, marked with the sign of the spread eagle, on Bread Street, London. Three days later, at the parish church of All Hallows, also on Bread Street, he was baptized into the Protestant faith of the Church of England. Other children of John and Sara who survived infancy included Anne, their oldest child, and Christopher, seven years younger than John. At least three others died shortly after birth, in infancy or in early childhood. Edward Phillips, Anne’s son by her first husband, was tutored by Milton and later wrote a biography of his renowned uncle, which was published in Milton’s Letters of State (1694). Christopher, in contrast to his older brother on all counts, became a Roman Catholic, a Royalist, and a lawyer.

Milton’s father was born in 1562 in Oxfordshire; his father, Richard, was a Catholic who decried the Reformation. When John Milton, Sr., expressed sympathy for what his father viewed as Protestant heresy, their disagreements resulted in the son’s disinheritance. He left home and traveled to London, where he became a scrivener and a professional composer responsible for more than twenty musical pieces. As a scrivener he performed services comparable to a present-day attorney’s assistant, law stationer, and notary. Among the documents that a scrivener executed were wills, leases, deeds, and marriage agreements. Through such endeavors and by his practice of money lending, the elder Milton accumulated a handsome estate, which enabled him to provide a splendid formal education for his son John and to maintain him during several years of private study. In “Ad Patrem” (To His Father), a Latin poem composed probably in 1637-1638, Milton celebrated his “revered father.” He compares his father’s talent at musical composition, harmonizing sounds to numbers and modulating the voices of singers, to his own dedication to the muses and to his developing artistry as a poet. The father’s “generosities” and “kindnesses” enabled the young man to study Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and Italian.”

Little is known of Sara Jeffrey, but in Pro Propulo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (The Second Defense of the People of England, 1654) Milton refers to the “esteem” in which his mother was held and to her reputation for almsgiving in their neighborhood. John Aubrey, in biographical notes made in 1681

Cracks in the pavement
Look like rivers approaching
an estuary.

Natural beauty,
the shapes and forms wandering,
sanctifies the road.

Cherry trees branches,
A wide canopy of leaves.
Blossom blows away

Sung geometry,
held still and made eternal,
Catches at my throat

I thought this looked interesting but have not studied it closely.The  dangers of excess spirituality are well known already

20 not so obvious indicators of emotional pain and psychological suffering

 

“The spiritual dimension of existence is as important as the physical, emotional and intellectual one. A healthy human spirit is expressed in an unshakeable trust in yourself and life, in seeing life as a gift, having the wisdom to deal with negative aspects of life, developing basic goodness and a loving nature, and a firm decision to leave a positive legacy behind for your descendants.

Spirituality can also include healthy religious beliefs without any fanaticism, having a connection with nature, and dealing with philosophical questions of existence at some point in life.

But people who are emotionally hurting can be drawn to spirituality for other, less sensible reasons. It can feel so good to be part of a larger whole, a larger plan.

If you felt alienated from your family and home, spirituality might seem like a shelter where you belong to something bigger than life; you might finally feel like there’s a greater plan for you. Spirituality can give you a poor consolation that you have a home.

Consequently, instead of developing inner strength and trust in yourself, you start seeking explanations for human pain, the will to live and hope for fortune in doubtful spiritual guidance like tarot, astrology, numerology and other types of fortunetelling. Any fanatic religion might give the same false comfort.

You give your personal power and proactive approach away to an external force, hoping to hear favorable outcomes for yourself. The less you trust in yourself, the more you need such external crutches.

As mentioned in the beginning, a spiritual dimension of life is important. And there might be a greater plan for you and all of us. Having such faith in life is important and far from problematic.

The problem occurs when you start using spirituality to compensate for inner insecurities, hoping that some greater force will take care of every problem in your life. The problem occurs when you start to only daydream and lose yourself in spiritual dimensions, instead of acting and improving yourself.

Spirituality can also quickly become a poor consolation for suffering. Suffering is the pain of you wanting the world to be different than it is. Part of being an emotionally healthy person is finding a way to accept reality as it is and deal with the problems life serves you.

Every human being also has the opportunity to co-create a fairer reality for generations to come. But running away from reality in spiritual dimensions can lead only to more pain.

2. SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS

Superstitious beliefs take second place right after spirituality. Believing that number 13, breaking a mirror or walking under a ladder will bring you bad luck, or that finding a horseshoe will bring you good luck has no connection with reality.

There’s not even any scientific study that would support a significant extraordinary effect of the moon on human behavior.

If your mind gets obsessed with waiting for what kind of bad luck will hit you after a black cat crosses the road, that definitely indicates emotional lability and a mind that isn’t strong enough. Bad things do happen, but not because of the number 13, horseshoes or black cats.

Sometimes they happen because of your own stupid decisions and sometimes just because of how life is designed – we all get lucky or unlucky sometimes.

The majority of generations in human history faced some kind of a hardship like wars, famine, natural disasters, and so on. And there is no human alive who would live decades without problems, obstacles and personal struggles.

In the past few centuries, we have made life much more comfortable, but struggle is still a part of life. Without bad things, there would also be no good to experience. It’s how life is designed. You can’t have more fortune or misfortune by following some superficial beliefs.

The best thing you can do is to develop inner strength and unshakable trust in yourself that you’ll face anything life serves you, no matter what it is.  By adopting that positive outlook and expecting good things, you can focus your mind on the positive, which absolutely leads to a better quality of life.

3. EXCESSIVE ALTRUISM

A similar sign of emotional pain to questionable aspects of spirituality and religion is excessive altruism. Being a good person, helping others in need, and contributing to a better world is definitely the right thing to do.”

 

What’s the most important thing to take into hospital with you?

My phone charger.

What not your toothbrush?

You can’t charge your phone with a toothbrush

You can’t clean your teeth with a phone charger either although you could use some tissue paper

But suppose you have a heart attack?

I might have to ring 999.

If you’re capable of using your phone it seems unlikely that you’ve had a heart attack.

That depends on the person and how polite they are.

What’s politeness got to do with it?

You’ll find out one day

You want to keep it secret

Because it’s embarrassing that’s all

What else would you take with you to the hospital

My phone my toothbrush my comb

What about your boyfriend?

Only if it’s a mixed ward.

Do you think the beds will  be wide enough  for 2 people?

They might have to sleep on top of each other.

I don’t think the doctor would like that

Let’s change the subject. Which book would you take with you?

The penguin  book of comic versem

How ironic

No that’s a separate book ; irony is not the same as comedy

Sometimes irony can be funny

My goodness you are so intelligent. Have you ever taken an IQ test?

Yes the 11 plus

What did you get?

85

You must be very clever to be able to do maths at university with such a low IQ

It’s not that low

half the population have an IQ of less than a hundred

Half the population have a height less than  the average also.

Short and intellectual stunted and that’s just half the population 😄

Is it less than or equal to?

I can see that you did maths or statistics

The probability is greater than or equal to a half.

But a half of what?

They don’t tell you that even at Oxford

Did you not ask them?

No they are very cruel.

Once they said to me I don’t believe someone with your intelligence does not understand  infinite sequences and series

So I replied strangely if I could explain why I don’t understand infinite series and sequences then I would understand it wouldn’t I?

That is the paradox that we were always trying to escape from

But maybe it’s the paradox that’s the most important thing in life whether it’s in intellectual subjects or it’s the paradox of living with other people who claim to love you but also seem to hate you something that cannot be avoided

It’s  as if life is in a big knot has been tied in the world and we can’t undo it

So the most important thing in life is learning how to live with paradoxes even though you would never know that that is what you were doing

So you can live a good life without knowing what you’re doing

That is what I believe but if you do know what you’re doing you can also explain it to other people though they may not thank you for it.

That’s the other paradox that you try to help people and it makes them angry.

I suppose we are all insecure to some degree

That’s why we keep tying these knots

Thank you very much Professor Blogge

Don’t mention it

Alright I won’t mention it Thank you very much

What about New Year executions

Christmas fees

Birthday cocreation

Funny folly days

Fall hallows

Hot steamed bidding

Don’t forget the scream for the Christmas pudding

Do you think starters are coarse?

I seem to have mislaid the wives and the hawks.

I misled my folks!

What do you think of paper lap buns?

Would you like to wear paper blunderwear?

I’ve been reading my well frozen library books,all bleak. Do you want to  examine me tomorrow on paper?

Paper, paper everywhere and not a drop of ink.

I think I shall write with a PIN tomorrow

If you had a combination of real numbers and a computer I wonder what the outcome would be?

Alfred wished his wife would make a cake.
He himself could neither boil nor bake.
Yet when Marie bought cakes in Marks
His eyes emitted orange sparks.
I saw their marriage was at risk
And so I undertook my task.
I bought a needle circular,
And now I knit round cakes for her.

Wilfred wanted clean sheets every night
Their laundry basket was a wearing sight
Yet when Annette rang the launderette
He swore right through the alphabet.
I thought that they might well split up
Then dear Annette would lose her grip.
I bought some lovely plastic sheets
And on his bed they look so neat.

Herbert like to use real handkerchiefs
And, fancy, he wore heavy cotton briefs.
When Mary Jane boiled all his stuff
He said his pants weren’t clean enough.
I thought their union’d perish soon
And she’d not find another groom.
I bought ten gross of paper pants
And now he feels quite exultant.

Gilbert liked his tea to be real hot
But one Sunday his troubled wife forgot
He screamed and yelled like an infant
His face was red and petulant
I thought Diane would strike him dead
And have nobody in her bed.
I bought ten insulated mugs,
A teapot, and by Jove they’re snug!

These little tales are meant to make you laugh
For I would rather read or draw a graph.
But if we do not help our friends
We’d go much further round the bend.
I don’t want you to suffer long
So I’ll come round and sing my songs.
I’ve got my handbag and my case
And now I’m coming ,full of grace.

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/earshot_n

Leonard Cohen On Psychotherapy

One notes that psychotherapy is not part of the joke. As Cohen told Stina Lundberg in a 2001 interview:

I don’t trust them [psychological explanations]. As I say in that song: “I know that I’m forgiven, but I don’t know how I know; I don’t trust my inner feelings, inner feelings come and go.” I think that psychological explanations can be valuable and that psychotherapy can be valuable for some people, but the fundamental question of how and why people are as they are is something that we can’t penetrate in this part of the plan, that we simply cannot grasp, and the feelings that arise – we don’t determine what we’re going to see next, we don’t determine what we’re going to hear next, taste next, feel next or think next, we don’t determine, yet we have the sense that we’re running the show. So if anything is relaxed in my mind it’s the sense of control, or the quest for meaning. And my experience is that there is no fixed self. There’s no-one whom I can locate as the real me, and dissolving the search for the real me is relaxation, is the content of peace. But these recognitions are temporary and fleeting, then we go back to thinking that we really know who we are.

And he told another interviewer in 2001:

For one reason or another, I didn’t have any confidence in the therapeutic model. Therapy seems to affirm the idea unconditionally of a self that has to be worked on and repaired. And my inclination was that it was holding that notion to begin with that was the problem — that there was this self that needed some kind of radical adjustment. It didn’t appeal to me for some odd reason.

Asked if he had tried psychotherapy, Cohen told another interviewer,

I preferred to use drugs. I preferred the conventional distractions of wine, women and song. And religion. But it’s all the same.

For the record,

Cohen did go to a therapist once, actually — out of desperation. He was so depressed that he called a friend and asked if she could arrange for him to see her therapist straightaway. Then he drove to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica “at about five miles an hour,” barely able to negotiate the traffic. When he got there, the therapist asked him to describe his feelings. After Cohen had finished, she said, “How can you stand it?”

We went to Richmond one bank holiday

With visions of a boat upon the Thames

One way or another men must pay

When we seek  a Richmond  holiday.

When we are alone what shall we say?

We don’t know until the bitter end

We went to Richmond one bank holiday

With visions of a boat upon the Thames

https://www.thetimes.com/article/152336fa-eed9-43e7-9979-429fd833a62a?shareToken=7547fde5add7c20c020df4e96a5f71d4

’ll go to Sodom Gomarrah

I’ll get some prayers; rite after death.. whose

I go to Confession; it’s smashin’

I wish we could still buy “Indulgences”

Oh, God, be fair to aged present!

Give me oil for my lamp, keep me burning.

Is desire a sin, and for ” whom”?

We should meet others without memory or desire especially in a “brothel”

He asked for a whore more in bed. I think that’s a misprint

Can’t get up, tired.

Speaks bad English

I am now a ” sinner” having committed more than 1,000 sins right here on my blog pages.

They are called posts officially But we all know about mass deception and wholly disunion.

J

Against sadness:no-one here can weep
Nor lounge about in melancholy deep.
Was Van Gogh senseless to permit his muse.
For his masterpieces ,was the price too steep?
We see the yellow chair but not his views
Nor his mind where technique made such leaps.
Nor was his journey broadcast on the news.
Against sadness.

Happiness or joy is hard to find
When we rest, the News preys on our minds
Yet some are cold towards the slaughtered priest
His nose a beak of bone in old face lined
Now Muslims go to Mass and join Christ’s feast
Against sadness.

What rages in the mind make men kill thus?
In Syrian wars the innocents fare worse.
But these are our near neighbours so we weep
And wonder how to end the frightening curse
The sins we once committed hold us deep
We hold our hands out wanting to be nursed
Against sadness

I wish I were in Lancashire again

Pendle Hill the pike of Rivington

The mountains of North Wales , the Cheshire plain

I will never climb, my legs are gone,

Dear home, the cobbled street my skipping rope.

The end wall of the house my mother’s face.

The tree she planted and her helpless hope

The love ,the feeling sad, the lost embrace..

I wish  I were in junior school once more

The powdered ink,, the brass the desks of oak

Children’s laughter to the sky can soar,

Skipping fast and how our arms would a àche

I wish I were a child and has no cares

I miss the. Freedom, bonfire night the War

Mary had ordered all of her groceries but she forgot to put tea on the list So she sent Emile to the corner shop with a note tied to his collar Please give the bearer your best tea. Emile went off and managed to get into the shop after some children who were getting sweets with their pocket money or debit cards He went up to the counter and mewed, Mother has sent you a note. One of the children laughed Is your mother a girlfriend of Mr. Kumar? No, she is not, Emile growled with a loud throbbing voice Mr. Kumar led Emile behind the counter into his living room and spoke to his wife She asked Emile to sit down as she went into the kitchen and poured him some tea from her China teapot .Do you want it on a saucer, she enquired thoughtfully? Yes, please, said Emile. This is very kind. He leaped onto the rug and began sipping the Ceylon tea. This makes a change, he murmured. I didn’t know you could just walk in and get free tea! After a few minutes, the shop door crashed open and he heard Mary’s voice Oh, Mr. Kumar, I am so stupid. I sent Emile out to buy some Twinings tea and he has not come home! What shall we do? She started crying and dabbing her eyes with Stan’s hanky. Come through, he whispered politely. Do not weep, dear. All is well Mary came in and saw Emile drinking his tea and winking at Mrs. Kumar. Emile, you stupid cat. I was going crazy worrying.I’ll strangle you! Is it my fault, he replied. I only gave them that note you sent. But is it not obvious what I intended? she said plaintively These days you never know, the cat muttered. I try to be obedient as far as I can. Mrs. Kumar came out and gave Mary a cup of tea. Sit down, dear. Worry is so bad for you. Why did you not phone us? Since it was just a packet of tea I thought Emile could carry it. He is very intelligent normally. Yes, I am, thought Emile as he looked at Maisie, the Kumar’s lovely cat who was asleep on a chair. I wonder if I can wake her up, he asked himself. Does she drink tea? Would she like to start a family? It’s not too late for me to become a parent. Maisie opened her eyes What’s that cat doing here? I only came for the tea, Emile told her. But you look very beautiful. Shall we meet tonight I’m washing my fur, she told him with a smile How about tomorrow? Have you got a phone? No, he said, I’ll just caterwaul at dusk and if you are free I’ll be under the red maple tree waiting for you Good grief thought Mary. This cat is very cunning. Just one chance and he is making the most of it. Mr. Kumar gave her some tea and she wandered home in a daze after asking them for a drink on Sunday. My social life is looking up but there’s no-one who will hug me. If only Emile were bigger! His legs are too short!I should get a donkey instead