Primo status report

 A few people have asked me recently how is Primo.

Summary: he is fine, his grasp on leading a full industrious life includes: opening fridges to swipe butter and bacon, attempting to snatch bread from under the grill, taking a used yoghurt pot to his place in the garden, collecting the dustpan and brush for idle afternoon chewing under the cherry tree. These are all normal parts of his day. Sometimes he rings the changes a bit, another pair of glasses were destroyed last week.

We fall out mostly over my shoes and his desire to chew them. Many pairs have had their lives ended by Primo. More recently the game has shifted.  Now if I haven't taken a hint quickly enough he disappears briefly. He reappears for me to see he has shoe in his mouth, whilst his tail wags furiously behind him, head slightly to one side and down, he raises his big eyes at me. COME ON!!!

This morning, whilst I surfed to check on news of hurricane Irene on the East Coast, Primo bored with waiting, climbed on to some packed boxes by the bedroom window (I am not currently at home). He returned,by climbing down backwards and then continuing this reverse theme over mountains of cushions with a Masai Warrior in his mouth. I know without even looking, that whatever else was in that box, it will not have been as important as the one item he chose to show me he had. The Warrior has been  retrieved and placed well out of reach to survey the rest of the room. Primo wants to play across the fields and I am not quite ready. A combination of his antics and the quite extraordinary array of vocalisations he will make will contribute to my making the decision to comply with him. Primo has his own understanding of Pavlov's stimulus response technique which he uses to great effect.

Earlier the Orange Cat that resides here, purred in his face as he tucked into his food in front of Primo. I did take Primo to another place and fed him his biscuits and he has had his morning dance around a garden.  Until the energy he has been generating in his body all night - whilst the rest of us merely slept - has been dissipated with a few sprints, and lots of cantering, the solo canine Jazz singing will continue in one form or another.

He needs this:

And some of this

All will be content in the house when we reach this:

However briefly.



Primo also likes meringues.

Flintstones, Gardening, US Budget

When I was a child and The Flintstones were on, sometimes I would weary of the story line.

I loved the rendering of stone age life,  was amused by Dino, BamBam and Pebbles, and the bird beak record player. I liked the surreal and the word play and it was all this that made me watch it regularly.  

BUT

Sometimes Fred would get himself into a predictable predicament and worry about what Wilma would think and I couldn't - even at 7 or 8 years old - be bothered to stick with it. The rules of the cartoon meant that it would be resolved in some way in the next 20 minutes but so what ? I knew the ending and I was bored by the process. I'd go and do something else more interesting to me, sometimes that was just running round the garden with the dog for a while.

When my Mother was facing waiting for news she could do nothing about but would then have to deal with the consequences of - she'd head off out into the garden and focus on something more fertile, and real and long term.

I've felt the same about watching this crisis in the US for agreement between the executive and the legislature. Some resolution (whether it is the right one or not, I have no idea) was going to happen. In the meantime there was going to be posturing and competitive obfuscation and unedifying game playing. This is  boring and timewasting.

Can't help feeling that BamBam and Obama share only letters.