WHAT colour is that doggie in the window??

I fear I may be about to launch into what could be misconstrued as a xenophobic rant and I am VERY aware that as someone who hand feeds her cat fresh prawns, opens the door for her if she doesn’t want to use her cat-flap and pays cat-sitters to check on her if I’m gone for more than 6 hours at a time I may not be the most sane of people when it comes to spoiling pets either. But hey at least I don’t dye her luminous colours or dress her in plastic baseball boots, a Burberry coat and a cute pork pie hat ... the photos accompanying this piece (if you can see them properly) are real. If we could’ve got the poor burgundy pooch (no idea what breed he was other than completely hyper) to stand still for more than 2 seconds I may have worked it out. Yes OK I accept that different attitudes towards animals exist in China (the poor old Daisy Duck who was sat on a basket in the wet market outside the office was a different duck each day..) but really. We saw a bright pink poodle, the pictured poor little Pomeranian with the orange ears & lime green tail, and the pictured burgundy terrier (I think) all within the space of a day. The grooming parlours look like human nail bars – all neon lights & people in masks spraying poor Fido ludicrous colours that will no doubt cause (someone) cancer... but beyond this these tiny dogs were carried everywhere in baby carriers! It was clear that their owners adored them (one lady carrying a tiny Chihuahua in a Louis Vuitton coat - yes the dog - checked with the bar owner she could bring the dog in with her before she comitted to sitting down!) but they didn’t treat them like dogs at all. On our last day I pointed out to hubby what I thought was a cute baby in a white rabbit suit (you know bunny ears & little tail) who told me to look again - & with shock I realised it was a little dog! The most gobsmacking sight however had to be the terrified Chihuahua strapped under the stomach of a big golden retriever in a customised Baby Bjorn. If we hadn't been in the middle of crossing the road I would've taken a picture. I am not making this up. I wish I WAS joking... Cats on first glance appeared to get off slightly better but in reality it was worse. It was either the feral life (cat-walking precariously across rooftops, free but not safe) or an ostensibly safer but cramped life in a shop window. Teeny tiny kittens, big cats, small cats, all with their backs turned to the street to avoid the ever present banging on the windows. It was only the strong arm & realistic stance of hubby that stopped me emptying my bank account to bring all the cats home with me. The yes the KC is spoiled & indulged but she has freedom & is kept safe & is treated with respect - as a cat!

Fab-U-Lous!

Sorry to borrow from Craig Revell-Horwood but I think he sums up my feelings perfectly. Jet fresh back from Shanghai & ‘fab-u-lous’ seems so apt. In fact it was worth missing Strictly in Blackpool for!! Work all good but play even better. Having not been there since 1995, as I expected, the old place has changed! Gone were the vast empty spaces & fields going in from the airport full of soldiers practising manoeuvres and in their place were high rises, lanes of motorways & Gucci & Mont Blanc shops. It put me in mind of Hong Kong in the early 90’s – so much energy & potential. However the overriding first hit of capitalism is very good at helping you forget it’s a communist state. It's hard sometimes to remember this is a country that has just jailed a man for daring to try & bring to justice the big corporation that was responsible for the death of his small child & that has put the wife of the jailed Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo under house arrest for no apparent reason. However as I was not there to try & bring down communism but to help some newly hatched capitalists ply ther trade more effectively I won't dwell on the bad stuff. I will tell of the good stuff we encountered. Firstly restaurants – I cannot believe how well we ate! Unbelievably fabulous food that didn’t break the bank. We had Chinese, we had Indonesian we had Malaysian (sometimes all at the same time!) we had Japanese and I even had crabsticks on a pizza - this culinary delight was at the behest of my trainees - they wanted chicken wings & seafood pizza so who was I to argue! The restaurants were also amazingly stylish although some were far too cool for school. We ended up in one place that was eye wateringly cheap (just over £10 for 2 huge bowls of noodles, 4 sides & 4 beers) but was so painfully, consciously trendy it was comedy. All polished concrete walls & black marble bench tables with white leather stools, and the staff dressed in floor length black aprons. Quite put my very style unconscious husband off his tea! And staying in the French Concession was incredible – it felt like Vietnam; streets full of low rise stunningly beautiful 1920’s villas with art deco gates, but if you looked just behind them the 250 floor glass & chrome skyscrapers loomed. The weather was unbelievably kind – 20 degrees most days – but the layer of pollution took a while to burn off & that unique Asian smell (sewers mixed with garlic & herbs – in HK we used to say it was the smell of money) lingered at every street corner. Will stop now & attempt to construct the next instalment – I will try not to rant about how they treat their pets ..... a lime green Pomeranian anyone?

Your Majesty?

OMG. I've just twigged why the KC would rather sit out in the cold garden alone than in the warm near a human being – she won’t sit with us mere commoners as she’s a secret royalist! There I was getting ready for our trip to communist China (we leave tomorrow!) & the closet feline Royal watcher wandered in to the living room where HRH William & “Waity Katie” (although waity no more) were on TV giving an excruciating interview about their engagement & their 95 year ‘relationship’. Normally she would turn tail and run up the stairs to the sanctuary of a peasant-free bed, but tonight the sight of the heir to the throne had KC the Royalist doing the unthinkable - settling herself down on the arm of the sofa (actually sitting next to me!) to stare straight at the TV. Well well who’d’ve thought it?? Will she camp out on the day itself I wonder?? Stay tuned...!

D.I WHY????

Oh dear. I have just ruined the kitchen. Oh OK I exaggerate but only slightly. In a bid to save some cash & keep the kitchen we have for another couple of years we decided it would be smart to sand down the worktop & re-varnish it as it’s solid wood & would come up a treat! So nice handy man came & did the ostensibly hard bit of sanding etc but he only had time to put one coat of varnish on as it took forever to dry. So off he popped leaving me with a tin of varnish, some sandpaper & the words” it’s really easy – honest” ringing in my ears. But I’m sorry despite my having spent 6 evenings at a DIY course not so long ago they didn’t cover varnishing & it’s not easy. I read the tin 3 times. OK I‘ve got this I thought. I found a suitable brush and I dipped and started to “paint”. Except no-one told me varnishing isn’t like painting, you don’t work it in you simply glide a layer over...... So we now have lumps & bumps & rough bobbly bits & bits where I put way too much on that look wet even though they are dry & a series of pretty rivulets. Yup, all needs doing again...

Pretty ... vacant?

Had a ‘middle class vegetarian faux housewife’ moment yesterday. Or should I say I was an unwittingly foil to Mugatu’s “little Cletus” from Zoolander. And am duly ashamed. Had to go for yet another MRI (foot still iffy; hey ho) and hospital is close to small town with decent supermarket, so whilst lying in huge metal tube being forced to listen to Norah Jones on the hospital headphones (no that’s not my ashamed moment but it probably should be) I pondered a bit of a food shop – hubby working from home so I planned to go & get warming soup & lovely bread from said supermarket for lovely lunch a deux. Scan duly complete & off I went. Got to soup aisle & as ever I went for New Covent Garden & other such namby pamby middle class faux handmade stuff. Because you do. Then I saw a “meat” offer (hubby indulges, god forbid I do) and as ever because I can afford to, I checked provenance, is the farmer listed?, is it RSPCA approved? Is it organic? And all boxes checked popped some packs into my basket. Then on my way to the till wandered down the clothes aisle. Now normally I wouldn’t stop at supermarket clothing – puh-lease!- but in front of me were a lovely pair of dark denim jeans, very long, well cut – and only £10!! Good lord!! Into the basket they went. Got home, tipped organic, wholesome, all pigs lived a happy life stuff into fridge & said to hubby, 'blimey, look at these jeans, amazing! How do they do it so cheaply??' Hubby raised his eyebrow as only he can & said – well, where were they made? Ah good point – had not even crossed my mind. So I checked label and ..... there it was – made in Bangladesh. That’s how they were so cheap. So much for organic RSPCA approved sausages huh?