Thursday 1 December 2016

A Goat, Cats' Whiskers and Indian Mutinies


Various groups are petitioning the government to replace the tallow that's used in the production of the new £5 note. One is reminded of the cause of the Indian Mutiny - the pre-greasing of musket cartridges with tallow and/or pork fat, which offended a number of religions - well, basically all of them in India. Vegans are also getting in on the act now. We may laugh, but imagine the uproar in Britain should dog fat be used.

December at  last; finally we can start thinking about Christmas. No.2 Son knows exactly what he's getting for Christmas - the write off of his £52 mobile data bill in exchange for no Christmas money. He racked up £52 in data above his 3Gb monthly data allowance, and that was in addition to the previous month's £82 data bill that he had to pay me. There was a slight gap between the bill for the previous month and me slamming a bar on his data usage on Vodafone, hence the £52. You'd think teenagers were a bit tech savvy, wouldn't you...

Lidl Petit Chebra goat's cheese - one of my staples. Can't get through a week without at least two of these cheese logs. Comes in a dual wrapper; the outside is a sheet of plastic and the inner wrapper is paper, the sole discernible purpose of which seems to be to stick to the cheese.


I always have to remove it. Seems senseless to have it there in the first place as the outer plastic wrapper serves its purpose in full.

Our neighbour's two cats regularly enter our house, much to the chagrin of Kitty, who doesn't really get along with other cats. The black one is pure mischief, whereas the ginger one (is one allowed to say  that these days?) just sleeps all day and when he is awake just sits there looking at you quizzically. I'm never sure whether it's a look of cool detachment or whether he's just simple.

Yesterday Hayley was away in Newcastle, No.1 Son was ill in bed, No.2 Son was in his caravan (with no idea how to connect to the printer) and I was in the kitchen. Suddenly our printer spat out a couple of pages of a More Than pet insurance application form. I have no idea how that happened, unless the cats were communicating with it via some cats' whisker wi-fi method and trying to tell me something.


3 comments:

Alan Burnett said...

When the lights go out (which they undoubtedly will) we can use the then useless £5 notes (tallow and all) to light our way to salvation. On a slightly different issue, do cats need nine separate life insurance policies?

Geo. said...

Commendable forward thinking. The paper/plastic layer probably there to give you a save the trees/tallow free wrapping choice...

Steve Borthwick said...

Lovely with a smidgen of fig-jam on French bread! Diet of kings.. :)