Lazy Cat Blogging

In both senses; is there any topic for blog posts that requires less thought or effort? Still, I figured it was worth announcing the arrival of our new housemate, if only to give some context to later complaints about scratched furniture and nibbled miniatures.

So it's a grand Musings welcome for Splodge-cat. Long may she reign.

Things I Learned This Week

This last week was set aside for catching up with family and friends, so mainly I was reminded that my friends' child can be hilarious:

Everyone! I will now sing Fireman Sam!
FIREMAN SAM!
FIREMAN SAM!
FIREMAN SAM!
FIREMAN... um, SAM!

But also somewhat terrifying:

I am a farmer OF PEOPLE!

I was also forced to confront the fact that my father's mind may now be wondering quite some way from the beaten path:

Dad: I heard this story you'd love.  There's this guy who has to go see a play being put on by this terrible but wealthy actress, who's hired a theatre and employed a cast so she can star in an adaptation of Anna Karenina.  Have you read the book?
SpaceSquid: I have not.
D: Well anyway.  They're all there handing out their Hanukkah presents.
SS: Hanukkah?
D: A sort of Jewish Christmas.
SS: I know what it is, I just don't think that-
D: And then the Gestapo arrive.
SS: What?
D: And our guy shouts "Look in the attic!"
SS: ...
D: What? Isn't it funny?
SS: Do you mean Anne Frank?
D: Er... yes.
SS: Now it's funny.

I suppose there is something oddly comforting in the idea that the generations above and below mine are just as bizarre as my own.

Postcards From The Front

Merry Christmas from all here at Squid Towers. May your festive doggies be bright of coat and mischievous of temperament.

This Will Get Me A Thousand Hits Minimum

Because who am I kidding, y'all are here for the cute animals.  This here is my parents Old English Sheepdog, Molly.  The voice on the video is my father, demonstrating the power of positive reinforcement.  Which, considering last time they played together she ran into his leg so hard he was on crutches for weeks, is actually pretty good of him.

Further delightful images.

Greatest dog alive.

People Who Take Pictures of Food

It's been very quiet round here, I know.  That's mainly due to the four days I took to play through Diablo 3 with various vidheads, but it'll be going on for a little while longer whilst I visit my mother (who just turned sixty-one) and occasional commenter Chris.

In the meantime, here is a picture of a battenberg cake I made for my mother.  I did a test run last week that actually turned out a bit tastier than this one,butthis is the one  I'll be giving to Parental Unit Beta because a) it's newer, b) it's more symmetrical, and c) Fliss hasn't dropped it on the floor.

(Note that this picture is already out of date, since we smothered it in melted Galaxy chocolate moments later.  I decided not to go with a picture of the finished product, though, because it could basically be anything under there.  No-one is going to believe I baked a cake without overwhelming evidence.)

When Dogs Are Gorgeous

Excited puppy dogs, it turns out, can be damn hard to pin down on camera.

After a great deal of trial and error, though, I can reveal the true unbearable cuteness of Molly the dog.

Introducing...

It has been decided by the upper echelons of the clan that it's time for a new doggy.  Behold Molly, slayer of rabbits!

(Top left: Spacesquid Senior.)

I'll see if I can get some action shots when I meet Molly next week.  Hopefully none of them will involve her pissing on my shoes, but we'll just have to see.

Last Night Something Pretty Bad Happened...

We lost a dog.

Sometimes cancer is a horrible malingering presence, slicing off the pieces of a loved one until there's nothing left but a shivering nub, alive in spite of itself.  Other times, it rips through someone so quickly that you still haven't processed its arrival by the time it's already gone, having torn out something irreplaceable along the way.

So it was with Storm, who went from dozing contently in shafts of sunlight to passing away on the operating table in less than a fortnight.  She could have kept fighting, sitting immobile for months on end as the vets fought to save the front half of her body, but we decided she deserved better than that.  A dog who uses her front paws to signal her love and need to be loved should not have to learn to live without them, especially since the exchange of limbs for a few more months of life was a gamble no sensible haunter of Vegas casinos would have taken.

What does one say about The First Dog?  Some experiences cannot be repeated, not really.  We like to pretend they can - that's why we have alcohol - but twelve and a half years after she first bounded into our lives, all nervous barks and melodramatic sighs, there is now just Storm, and every other dog.

Some people thought Storm an unintelligent dog.  To be sure, she frequently gave that impression.  Once upon a time she would stare in incomprehension as her adopted brother Josh (another Old English Sheepdog, who preceded her in crossing over to the Land of Infinite Milkbones) would show her how to open doors.  She never did work it out.  Just recently she adopted the habit of deliberately trapping her head behind my father's chair, forcing him to move it so she could pass, despite quicker and father-free alternative routes available.

I never thought she was stupid, though.  She was just exceptionally good at tactical thinking.  Why walk quietly into the front room when you could force others to move aside, demonstrating your superiority?  It takes a supremely superior canine mind to develop a bark that clearly expresses "I don't want this toast unless you put some scrambled egg on it, humans."  Put simply, Storm was as smart as she needed to be to have everyone else do things for her.  Like Paris Hilton only, you know, of some worth.

We gave Storm, I hope, a very happy decade and a quarter.  In return, she gave us what a dog gives.  If you've experienced it, no description is necessary.  If you haven't, no description will suffice.

Sleep well, Storm.  We loved you a great deal.

Storm "Stormy Dog" Crossman 1999 -2012

Remember Those Things You Never Knew

Eulogies can sometimes be difficult.

Well, they're always difficult, of course. You can divide them into two groups: those that are too personal to write without pain, and those so impersonal you struggle to say anything at all.

Usually, it is only those of a clerical persuasion that have to deal with the latter. When my grandmother died, it was obvious that the minister (from my mother's church, of the Methodist persuasion) didn't really know the deceased well enough to offer much more than general platitudes (that wasn't her fault, my grandmother wasn't much of a church-goer, and the last thing she told the minister when she visited her in hospital was "I don't really believe in God, but let's try praying just on the off chance it works"). It seemed a shame that the last word on my mother's mother was comparatively impersonal, but that's the way it goes sometimes, and I always think that those who give such speeches without feeling they really knew the subject must find that really difficult, and maybe quite upsetting as well.

It never really occurred to me that I'd find myself in the same position.

Yesterday afternoon we buried my grandfather's ashes. I've spoken before about the kind of man he was, and how much lessened Middlesbrough is by his absence, so I won't go over that again, save to say that it was a short but satisfying service, and my grandmother chose an excellent resting place for his remains - just beside the reservoir that he and my father went fishing on when Dad was just a child, and again more recently when their constant butting of heads abated somewhat.

So I won't go over all of that again. I'm not here to talk about my grandfather directly in any case, but rather his estranged son.

The Crossman men are complicated beasts. This is clearly not the place for the airing of dirty laundry, but suffice it to say we tend to have father issues that would make the writers of Lost raise their eyebrows. I have the honour of being, at minimum, a third generation screw-up on that front (my great-grandfather died too soon for anyone to quiz him on the issue). That's not to say I don't love my father, or there's any reason to think he's anything other than a wonderful man who went to superhuman lengths to not repeat the mistakes of the past. Still, though, it's enough of a common thread to make me worried about the hypothetical (very, very hypothetical) day that I might be prepared to have children of my own.

My uncle left his wife and his two year old son in 1979, for which I don't think my father or grandfather ever forgave him. He started up a new family, which lasted for a few years and a few children, before he left them too for a third woman. I know little about his second family, who I have never met, and nothing about his third, who I don't believe anyone in the family has ever met. At some point in the early 80's, he disappeared off the radar completely, and no-one (save, as I learned in January, my grandmother) ever heard from him again.

At present there are two schools of thought; one that says I never met him, and one that says I met him once, before I was old enough to speak. I've always been curious about our black sheep (and my currently-undetermined number of extra cousins). My father always maintained I would be better off never running into him, and my grandfather only mentioned him once as far as I can recall, some comment about being sure he was, at least, bound to be having fun somewhere (i.e. drunk past the point of all logic). It's easy to say "I wish I'd never met him", but I'm entirely aware that this is an opinion entirely borne from the fact that I never had to meet him.

In any case, it doesn't matter any more. With typical ornery Crossman timing, Alan Crossman passed away yesterday morning, just hours before we left to give my grandfather to the ground. I considered letting this pass without comment, under the circumstances, but it felt wrong to have noted the loss of my father's father and not mention the passing of his eldest child. What's more, I think my grandfather - despite the rows and the heartbreak and the years of bitter silence - would agree with me on this. That's one of the many, many reasons I loved him as much as I did.

Type "Walter Crossman" into Google, and the very first hit is my grandfather. Alan, I cannot find at all. But he was still one of us. However much he tried not to be, he was one of us. I hope some part of him was OK with that.

Mad Men And Englishdogs

Watching Up tonight was difficult. Not because it’s a bad film; it’s some considerable distance away from being anything approaching a bad film, but because I was fairly well positioned to be punched in the gut by a movie in which the message of “Don’t let the past weigh you down” is delivered by a (surrogate) grandfather and an unbearably cute and loyal doggy.

Obviously, if I were to become miserable over the losses my family have borne over the last nine months, I’d clearly have missed the point of the film entirely. Instead, then, I’m just going to use this post as something of a memory to the departed. A few things that passed through my mind on the walk home.

“Don't ever ever underestimate the will of a grandfather. We're madmen, we don't give a damn, we got here before you and they'll be here after. We'll make enemies, we'll break laws, we'll break bones, but you will not mess with the grandchildren. ” - Josiah Bartlett, The West Wing.

“A dog's friendship is stronger than reason, stronger than its own sense of self-preservation.” - The Mayor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“I never won a fight with Walter Crossman, because he always knew that the best way to win an argument was to be right in the first place.” - Ray Mallon.

“My name is Dug, I have just met you and I love you!” - Dug, Up.

I spoke at some length on my grandfather when he passed away, as indeed did others, so I hope he will forgive me for focusing on our four-legged friends this time around. Dogs are, quite simply, indispensable. When I was becoming Doctor Squid, I listened to Bill Bryson gave his traditional Chancellor speech which, amongst various other nuggets of wisdom, reminded us that we are all uniquely special - an infinitely unlikely swirling mass of molecules and thought - but that so was everyone else, so it was important to make sure we don't get above ourselves. Cats, as Ambassador Delenn once pointed out, are the universe's way of making us face up to the latter point. Dogs, I think, are the natural counterbalance, a reminder of how uniquely brilliant we all are. As an old friend once pointed out, there is nothing quite like seeing a dog barrel towards you, its tongue hanging out, and bearing an expression on its face that shouts "My God, it's you! This is the best thing that could possibly have happened to me today!"

In other words, dogs are God's apology for the rest of reality.

This Year's Loss

My father phoned a little while ago to inform me that my grandfather passed away this evening.

The news was not unexpected. He had been in hospital for three weeks, and as time went on had spent less and less time conscious, and a smaller and smaller percentage of that time operating coherently. Apparently,the occasion on which he was most aware happened to with the only time I was able to visit him, on the 3rd (I wanted to make damn sure my fever had passed before I started traipsing around a hospital).

It was immediately obvious during that visit that what bothered my grandfather the most wasn't his illness (which I won't go into detail about, but which was very serious and clearly terminal even before he took a turn for the worse a few days after Christmas), but his loss of independence. He requested we bring him beer, which the doctor was kind enough to permit, but it rapidly transpired that his interest lay not in the beverage itself (though I very much doubt that he didn't enjoy it) so much as the hope that the empty can could be employed as an impromptu latrine with which to frustrate the nurses.

Given this, given how unhappy he was to be reliant on others taking care of him, and given his lifelong discomfort with the idea that he was a burden to anyone, I genuinely think that if he'd been given the option, and once he realised he was almost certainly never going to leave the hospital, this is what he would have chosen. This was arly into my visit he asked whether or not he was becoming a drag upon the family.

He also asked, ludicrously, if he had done good in this world. You would have to know him personally to know just how ridiculous that question was. The men in our family deal poorly with childhood as a rule, but my grandfather's was something else again. Once more, I won't go into detail, because that would offend his belief (which I don't necessarily share, but choose to respect) that one's troubles are to forever remain internal, but it would be an understatement to describe his early years as brutal beyond measure. No sooner had he finally escaped the situation that had made his life so torturous, he found himself in the Navy during the Second World War, in which he divided his time between decoding Morse signals, punching people in the face (because he was a boxer, or at least mainly because he was a boxer), and hoping to God his helmsman could dodge the next shower of Kamikaze planes. Grandfather served on three vessels all told, including the HMS Jamaica, and an aircraft carrier that I am deeply ashamed to admit I can no longer recall the name of. He talked rarely of the war, and only ever to me. I have no idea why this was the case, but I was always deeply honoured by that fact. In fact, despite this unique dialogue, it was not from him but from a newspaper article that I learned he had been awarded the Burma Star.

Following the war, my grandfather worked in a steel factory for some time, before ultimately becoming a magistrate. This was not a position he sought for the power it brought, but from a sincere desire to help his community. Like many of those from Middlesbrough, my grandfather was a die-hard Labour supporter, because of his unshakable belief in socialist principles, mainly those that suggested we're better off making sure everyone is doing OK. He knew what he thought was fair, and he fought for it his entire life. He was also, considering he was born in 1926, a remarkably progressive man. This was most obvious in his opinion on homosexuality, which as with everything else was inevitably forged into a one-liner: "So long as they don't make it compulsory."

He probably wouldn't want me to mention he received the Middlesbrough Citizen of the Year Award six years ago, but on this point I will defy him, since it serves my greater point that only he himself could spend his days wondering whether or not he had done enough to make his life a net positive. I don't know how many people lie on their death beds and wonder whether they did enough; I guess quite a few. What made my grandfather unique, though, was that he constantly strove to contribute more to his society even whilst he was still entirely healthy. It wasn't some last-minute gasp of guilt or self-justification, it was the principle by which he lvied his life. If anything mattered more to him than to come home each day having done some good in the world, then I haven't the faintest idea what that could possibly be.

He had many other qualities as well, both good and bad. He was physically incapable of dealing with any situation other than to make jokes about it (sound familiar?), but it was through those jokes that he expressed his affection. It might sound strange to reveal that I know my grandfather loved me because of the day he tried to persuade me he'd gone for an IQ test and received the world's first ever negative score, but it remains stubbornly true. Affection was something one had to infer, rather than be given, but it was always there, just below the surface. How can one care so much for strangers and not love one's family?

He leaves behind his wife, three children, nine grandchildren (that we know about, it's a long story) and a lifetime of service to everyone he could find to help. Rest easy, Grandad. You deserve it.

Memorial

Following a horrible accident yesterday afternoon, we've had to put one of our dogs down this morning.

Josh was only our second ever dog (our first, Storm, is mercifully still going strong), so there's not a lot to compare him to. He was more boisterous than his older sister, and harder to handle, but that same troublesome streak made him far more obvious in his affections as well. I spent Friday and most of Saturday at my parents house, trying to recover from the gribbles, and Josh sat by my side the whole time. Losing him so suddenly is a terrible blow.

In Three More Years He'll Be Fifteen

It's SpaceSquid Senior's quasi-birthday, so let's take some time out to consider his favourite comedy, and remind ourselves there's more to it than watching someone act inappropriately in a restaurant.

Take A Guess

A merry festive season of choice from all those at Chez SpaceSquid Senior. In particular, you are offered non-demoninational greetings from Storm, who is viewing Christmas morning with her usual disdain:

And from Josh, who appears to have stuck some wrapping paper to his head:

Try not to get too drunk, you'll need all your wits about you for bashing the crap out of the Doctor Who Christmas Special in an hour or so.

Keeping It In The Family

Today's birthday message goes out to my two siblings. Interestingly (slightly), they aren't twins, my brother just decided to arrive as my one of my sister's presents on her third birthday.

In honour of their continued attempts to grow up I present two videos from the tiny intersection between my music taste and theirs.

So, for my little sister:



And for my younger bro:

Wanted For Crimes Against Cute Doggies

So one of my precious, precious doggies got set upon by a goddamn pit-bull whilst on the beach. Pictured here is the perpetrator (well, it's the same type, at least, and I'm really not that uncomfortable with racism as applied to dog breeds).

We also present my dog, pictured in happier times (i.e. without fucking holes in her fucking neck).

It looks like a fairer fight than it was, since Staffordshire Bull Terriers were specifically bred to ruin other dogs' shit, and Old English Sheepdogs, were they specifically bred at all, presumably were done so to create the illusion of a cowardly walking carpet. If Threepio had been a dog, he would have been a OES (Artoo would probably have been a spaniel). Storm ended up bitten fairly badly in three places.

Once this thing's owner finally bothered to arrive and grab hold of it, it twisted free and attacked Storm, biting my mother in the process as she tried to separate them. It then got lose again and went for Josh instead, which didn't go as well for the little git since Josh is made of somewhat sterner stuff. Both of them had to get injections, Storm's on antibiotics and we have to keep checking for infection, and given that it went for my mother (fortunately the damage is mainly superficial) the canine douche-bag is very lucky not to have been put down (and by lucky, I mean that the police won't do anything on the grounds it was my mother's fault for sticking her hands in the dog's jaws, apparently better to just have let it tear Storm's throat out).

So, given that these rabid bastards exist purely to rip the throats out of other dogs (this thing wasn't just vicious, it was pretty good with it target selection), wouldn't you keep the damn thing on a lead? How has it survived this long without being destroyed? Some of these breeds are now illegal in many countries, and I can see why.

A New Low

I popped in on my parents last night to discover my father unconscious following the ingestion of an entire bottle of champagne. When he finally stirrde from his drunken slumber and I asked him what occasion had prompted this debauchery, he pointed out that Boro had staved off relegation that day.

How bad does a team have to get for voiding relegation to be a bubbly-breaking situation?

Also, bonus bleurgh-points for my mother's story about having to remove a partially-digested sock from our dog's anus. This is exactly why I don't want kids. Or, in an ideal world, clothes.

Diamonds

Like a lot of people, I find myself somewhat confused when it comes to my love of my family, in that whilst I would be devastated should anything befall any of them, I can really only tolerate them through the mediums of alcohol or of distance.

Regardless, I wanted to note that today is my paternal grandparent's diamond wedding anniversary. A slap-up meal awaits me, presumably to be held in awkward silence.

In all honest my grandparent's marriage, insofar as I am able to judge, having been alive for less than half of it and possessing no real metric upon which to judge it for perhaps half of the remainder, is remarkable in no real way than its sheer longevity. At present their marital recipe seems to be 60% fighting and 40% sleeping, which they presumably do in increasing fear that one of them will finally snap and claw the other's eyes out whilst they lie prone. On the other hand, it's worth noting that there is nobody in my generation (with, just maybe, the exception of C & T) who are liable to reach their diamond anniversary, not because all my married friends are headed for divorce (although a number of them have already fallen by an increasingly packed wayside), but because no-one did it early enough for both parties to realistically be alive long enough to hit the aforementioned milestone. I recognise that a long-lasting marriage is not necessarily the same as a happy one, and that getting married before you're old enough to drive a HGV is probably not the best idea society ever came up with, but it's still worth noting that until we find some way to live forever as cyborgs, or at least how to grow replacement organs from stem cells, my grandparents are liable to have achieved something their descendants will find very difficult to replicate.

Assuming, of course, they haven't got divorced before we've gotten to the fish course.