Teaching the intangible

I've been really enjoying Monty Don's new series, Mastercrafts, about people learning rural crafts. Part of my enjoyment can be explained by my inordinate fondness for Monty Don, but mostly it's because I love watching people skilled in their craft do their work.

The programme uses the familiar 'they have only 6 weeks to compete to be the best at X' format, which seems to be obligatory for any kind of reality show these days, but it isn't too obnoxious. Winning isn't the only goal for those participating, and they can all progress further with the skills they have learned when the show is over.

What fascinates me is the difficulty of actually teaching many of the crucial skills for these traditional crafts. In the programme on thatching, for example, they were told that a vital part of building a durable, watertight roof is to make sure that the bundles of longstraw (called 'yealms') are properly blended in with one another and the rows offset, so that there are no gaps or channels for the rain to enlarge. That sounds straightforward enough, but to a novice — certainly to me, watching the programme — there appears to be no obvious visible difference between a good and bad piece of thatch. It seems to be something that you learn very gradually by developing a 'feel' for the subtleties of the materials and the ways in which they interact.

Another example in the same programme was the technique for bending hazel rods, sharpened at each end, into 'staples' with which to pin the yealms to the roof. The tutors demonstrated how to bend and twist the rods in the middle, with a flick of the wrist to cause the middle to bend rather than break. However, it was clear from how difficult the participants found this process that there was a definite 'knack' to it, that was very difficult to teach directly. The tutors could model the necessary process and give them guidance about what they should pay attention to, but in the end, they had to learn the precise action required themselves.

I think that many traditional crafts require these kinds of skills that are difficult to teach quickly, which is probably why apprenticeships were traditionally so long. However, as someone who also teaches as part of my living, I can recognise similarities with some of the skills required to be a good scientist. For example, grammatical rules are fairly straightforward to teach, but trying to guide students in how to properly structure their writing, write clear, logical, flowing sentences and so forth is quite difficult to do. You can give tips, point out good and bad examples, and suggest ways in which they can improve, but in the end, they need to develop their own 'feel' for what makes a good piece of scientific writing.

Crochet frenzy

For some reason that I still don't quite understand I got a yearning (or a yarning, hah!) to learn a practical craft over Christmas. I spend far too much time in front of a computer (mostly for work, but it spreads into the rest of my life) and while I love messing about on it, and I just wanted something creative to do with my hands that might help me relax away from the screen. Then I happened upon the Babette Blanket and it was love at first sight. It's a crochet pattern, and I haven't crocheted since I was about 6 years old (I think my Granny taught me), so I had to learn it again.

Learning something (anything) is one of my favourite things, so I bought a great beginner's book on Crochet, Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker¹, a couple of hooks and some yarn, and started practicing. It's quite tough trying to pick up a manual skill from written instructions and pictures, so there was a certain amount of unravelling and redoing before I understood how the stitches worked, how they look together and — the hardest part of crochet for me — where the heck you put your hook next.

I think it's safe to say that I'm addicted. I find the process both relaxing and absorbing at the same time, and you can produce something practical at the end of it. I can knit (very simple patterns, anyway), but I find that having a hook in one hand and the yarn in the other is much easier than trying to juggle two long needles and the yarn with only two hands.

I made a hat (a bobbleless, beanie type hat) in an afternoon, which astounded me. It was even the shape of a hat and fitted my head, which was inconceivable. I had some yarn left over in the same colours (soft grey and dark green, Rowan Cashsoft yarn I got half price in a sale), so I made a really long, narrow scarf. Both are lovely to wear — warm and very soft because of the cashmere in the yarn. I didn't quite keep the number of stitches straight for the scarf, so one end has a bit of a slope to it, but I'm going to maintain that it just gives it a wonky, handmade charm.

Next, I'm going to tackle the Babette blanket. I went with cheaper yarn than they specify in the pattern, and fewer colours, otherwise it would cost a fortune, but I'm having a wonderful time putting the colours combinations together. It's also a great project for little chunks of time, because each square (of which you need to produce billions) is quite quick to crochet, so you can finish one in 15 minutes or so in front of the TV of an evening. There are different sizes, and so many different colour combinations that I don't think I'll get bored with it.

In a few moments searching around on the web for more patterns (yes, I know, get away from the computer...), I stumbled across a blog called Attic24, and was blown away by the gorgeous colour combinations. Lucy has an incredible colour sense, and I feel really inspired to let rip with loads of wonderful shades. I can see that I'm going to be haunting the knitting shop a fair bit from now on, but first, I have a blanket to finish...

¹ Ignore the slightly naff title: it's a good book, written in a very clear, informative and witty way. It also has some great patterns for a variety of things that you can't imagine your Granny wearing. ↑

Walking songs

The recent snow has made cycling to work impossible. Some brave (or foolish) souls have been cycling along the main roads, but my route goes through parks and other open spaces where it's certain that very little gritting will have been done. I'm also a total coward when it comes to riding in icy conditions. I have a Weeble¹ like ability to stay upright — despite slipping — when on foot, but I crash to the ground on a bike at the first wobble on ice.

Usually when I can't ride to work for whatever reason, I take the train, but I decided (for reasons of economy and fitness) to try walking at least one way to work this past week. The plan was to walk the 4.8 miles to work² in the morning, and then catch the train back again. It isn't a huge distance, and it ended up taking me an hour and 10 minutes at a brisk pace, even negotiating the snowy pavements. I had to get up earlier, but it was really pleasant getting into a good walking rhythm, watching dawn break, and having the route mostly to myself for the first part at least.

On Friday afternoon, there were signalling problems at Birmingham New Street, and consequently much of the local network was thrown into disarray. Mr. Bsag called me to say that there were cancellations noted for at least the next hour, so I decided that I might as well walk home too.

I had been quite cold in the office during the day, and the chill persisted despite the exercise, so half way home I felt rather weary. I was listening to my iPhone on shuffle, and just at that moment, the track Ma' Africa by Ulali and the Mahotella Queens (from the album '1 Giant Leap') came on. As soon as it started, I felt instantly warmed, thinking about hot, African landscapes, and within a few minutes I was almost bounding up the hill, a spring in my step, admiring the way that the setting sun was washing the snow with pink and smoky grey.

If the snow continues, I can see I'll have to put Ma' Africa on repeat, particularly when travelling home.

¹ Thank you low centre of gravity! ↑

² A different route to the one I cycle, which is longer, but more cycle-friendly. ↑

Almost wild

One of the things I really like about cats is that they retain a lot of the independence and behavioural traits of their wild ancestors. I realise that this is often cited by people who don't like cats as one of the things they dislike most about them, but it would be a dull world if we all liked the same things. Having a couple of cats in the house seems as wondrous to me as having a couple of small leopards wandering around in my living room.

I was reminded of this very strongly a few nights ago, when — in the middle of the night — Bella strolled up the bed to drape herself along my torso ¹. As I was lying on my back, she was actually higher than my head, and I could see her looking down at me in the dark, with her nose a few centimetres from my chin. She was purring loudly, and half-closed her eyes in evident bliss. There's nothing quite as relaxing and cosy on a cold winter night as having a warm, purring cat sleeping on your chest, so I closed my eyes too. After a minute or two, I felt her paw gently pat my cheek, claws retracted, but still faintly perceptible on my skin.

It was a classic domestic cat move: 'I could rip your throat out, but I won't because you're quite comfy and you give me food. And you can be quite amusing sometimes.' Despite being in a rather vulnerable position, her restraint actually made me trust her more than ever, and revel in the delicate path that cats tread between wildness and domesticity.

The truth, of course, is that cats own their humans rather than the reverse (and there is evidence that they domesticated themselves), but I think that it does humans no harm at all to be put in our place by another species every now and again.

¹ She usually sleeps at the bottom of the bed, gradually shifting over the course of the night to sleep on my feet. ↑

Post-Christmas pre-New Year round up

I meant to post just before Christmas to wish everyone a good holiday, I really did. It's just that I was so exhausted from a very busy period at work that I just flopped as soon as my holiday started, and did practically nothing. Doing nothing has done me the world of good though, and I feel much revived. So much so, that I took the big step of upgrading ExpressionEngine (which runs my blog) to the beta version of 2.0.

As it often is with these things, it didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped. For some reason, one of the templates (which are kept in the database itself by default with ExpressionEngine) got truncated, so I had to delve into the backup of the database to find the original. Thank goodness for backups! I've also got a slightly odd installation because I have all the ExpressionEngine files in a subdirectory, but then fiddle with the URLs so that the directory doesn't appear in the permalinks. So I had to try to remember what the heck I had fiddled with last time to get it to work properly. Anyway, it all seems to be working now, and the new control panel is a great improvement. There are huge architectural changes under the bonnet (it now uses the CodeIgniter framework), but until I have time to delve around a bit more, the control panel is the only visible thing which has changed. I'm sorry if the feed has suddenly updated with lots of old articles. I've been converting all of the articles from their mixture of Markdown, HTML and Textile format to be HTML (partly because the Markdown plugin hasn't yet been updated for version 2.0). I've worked back to articles originally published in 2004, but haven't quite had the energy to do the final two years, since nobody probably looks at them now anyway.

As I said, apart from some intensive tinkering, I've done very little: a bit of baking, a lot of reading and a fair bit of film/TV viewing, and that's it. I did sit down and watch Hamlet on the TV — all 3+ hours of it. I've seen quite a few of Shakespeare's plays at one time or another at the theatre, but for some reason I've never seen Hamlet. I don't think I'll be posting any spoilers if I tell you that it's not the cheeriest of the Bard's productions. Almost everyone dies, or is miserable, or goes mad, or — for the most unfortunate characters — suffers all three.

The thing that surprised me most was that it was all so familiar, despite the fact that I've never seen it before. I don't just mean the "To be, or not to be" speech or the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" one, or even, "Alas poor Yorick". So many of the incidental phrases have become an embedded part of the English language, that it almost feels as if Shakespeare is dealing in clichés, but of course it was Shakespeare who created the clichés. There was "to the manner born¹", "hoist with his own petard", "brevity is the soul of wit", and so on. It's pretty impressive that the words of one man, writing plays in the 16th Century, are still in such common usage in the 21st Century.

¹ I was convinced that this was "to the Manor born" until Wikipedia put me right. Penelope Keith has a lot to answer for. ↑

Soap

Victorian Farm is back for a short run of Christmas specials, which I'm pretty happy about. The episodes are as interesting as ever (for example, I now know the origin of the phrase 'grinding to a halt'), but one thing really made me laugh. A few days before, I had caught a bit of Kirstie Allsopp's Homemade Christmas, where she was making soap. Soap making at home basically involves water, caustic soda and a fat, and caustic soda is pretty nasty stuff, as the name suggests. Consequently, they took great precautions when mixing the ingredients, wearing long rubber gloves and safety specs. The end result looked lovely: little dainty soaps scented with herbs and essential oils and decorated with rosebuds.

Soap making on the Victorian farm was a rather different matter. Ruth heated the water in her huge washing copper, adding a large chunk of rather old and manky looking fatty meat to provide the fat required: no airy fairy coconut oil there. She then added the caustic soda carefully, but without either rubber gloves or safety specs for the sake of authenticity — health and safety be damned! And was the end result a dainty rose-scented block? In a word, no. Rather than leaving the soap to cure and dry for 6 weeks to remove all traces of caustic soda, she scooped a bit out immediately and showed that it was ideal for scrubbing out chamber pots. Let no-one say that the average Victorian lived a glamourous life.

The Climber

Public transport in the UK has countless failings, but if you are looking for a silver lining to the big, grey cloud of its many inadequacies, it might be that they provide a reason to bond with your fellow travellers. Sometimes that bonding just involves rolling your eyes at your neighbour in a wordless "Buses, eh? What can you do...", but at other times, it turns into something a bit deeper. A distinct dearth of buses last Friday resulted in Mr. Bsag and I talking to a gentleman I'll call The Climber¹.

After the Chris Wood gig last week, we had a couple of transport choices. Moseley is in an awkward transport location relative to hour house, so we could either take a bus into the city then get the train out, or we could get a different bus to a main road and then catch a second bus. Arriving at the bus stop for the first option, we read the live bus departure ticker with a sinking heart: 20 minutes to the next bus. Never mind, we thought, there's always Plan B, and walked a short distance to the stop for the other bus. As we looked at the departure ticker there in disbelief, a tall, slim man sitting on a wall by the stop said, "I wouldn't look at that, if I were you. It will just depress you." He was right: the next bus was due in 25 minutes. Progressing reluctantly to Plan C, we told him we'd walk to the main road, a distance of about a mile. He then asked if we'd mind if he walked some of the way with us, since he was heading in our general direction, but wasn't sure of the route. We were quite happy to have company, and so, we made the acquaintance of The Climber.

He was an enthusiastic, bouncy sort of chap — like a half-grown puppy — and as he loped along beside us in the dark and drizzle, he started to tell us about his interests. It turned out that he had been climbing for four hours that evening, on an indoor climbing wall, working out by doing 50 pull-ups, 50 sit-ups and 100 press-ups. Clearly we were in the presence of some kind of Iron Man.

Now, Mr. Bsag always claims that he is shy, but he invariably chats happily away to perfect strangers, while I go all shy and just listen. So as we walked and Mr. B. and The Climber (TC) chatted, more and more details emerged of TC's energetic exploits. We heard about his epic peak-climbing weekends (also involving gargantuan bacon and egg consumption) and his competitive downhill biking (1 mile downhill in 1 minute, which means speeds greater than 60 mph, of course). As the walk progressed, and Mr. B. asked speculatively about other outdoor activities, stories about show jumping and even tall ship racing emerged. I was captivated, silently daring Mr. B to ask him if he'd crossed Antarctica, or raced Formula 1 cars, or gone into space.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing TC of telling tall tales. He seemed very genuine and talked in great technical detail about everything he'd done, but it just seemed amazing to be walking in the rain to a bus stop with such an athlete. I remembered something that Chris Wood had said earlier in the evening (paraphrasing slightly): "All of my stories are true, but some are truer than others."

¹ I wouldn't use his real name even if I knew it, but we never actually found out what it was. ↑

Ninja shopper

I'm off to a wedding next weekend, and I had nothing to wear. When I say 'nothing to wear' I don't mean in the sense that people often mean it ('I've got lots of suitable things, but I want something new', or 'I've worn that outfit more than once'), but literally, nothing suitable for a wedding. Unless you think that jeans, t-shirts, jumpers or one very light, very floral, summery dress are suitable for a winter wedding, I had nothing to wear.

So I was forced to try to buy some clothes. Regular readers will know how much I hate shopping for clothes (in fact, shopping for anything except computer gear, hifi equipment or records), so I had inevitably procrastinated until the last possible moment. Things were getting desperate. I decided that I'd do a bit of online reconnaissance first, so make the trip as brief and painless as possible. I looked through the websites of a couple of shops and identified some dresses that looked OK, then planned tactical visits to those shops: get in, locate dresses I'd found on the internet, try on, buy then get out like some kind of womenswear ninja.

Of course, things are never as simple in real life as they are on the internet. Once I was in the shop, there was so much stuff that I had real trouble finding and even recognising the things I'd picked out. Eventually — forcing myself to stick to the plan and not run home empty-handed — I found a few possibilities and trudged into the changing room with a heavy heart. One dress — despite allegedly being my size — wouldn't even go on without permanent damage to either the fabric or my body. Another fitted and was sort of OK but there were things I disliked profoundly about it, and the third made me look like I was wearing a knitted sack. I had to face the fact that I was going to have to go to another shop, and try on more things.

In the second shop, I found one of the dresses I'd seen on the 'net fairly quickly, which made me happy, but found that they only had a size smaller than the one I needed, which made me sad. Gritting my teeth, I decided that I should at least try it on, because the thought of having to go back to the first shop and buy the dress that was only sort of OK was too dreadful a prospect to entertain.

My first problem was how to actually get into the dress. With layers of lining and material, it appeared to be like an apple-pie bed, and I kept encountering dead ends, rather then finding my hand emerging through the neck hole. I got more and more frustrated, thinking, "This is ridiculous. I can write code fairly competently in a few languages, hook up computers and hifi gear without consulting manuals, and I even have a PhD for goodness sake: why can't I find my way into a dress and get my limbs in the correct apertures?"

Much tutting, mumbling and exasperated swearing later, I got the thing on, and after nearly dislocating a shoulder, fastened the zip at the back. Amazingly, despite apparently being a size too small, it fitted perfectly. And it actually looked quite good on me: as good as anything looks on me, since I'm more of a laundry basket than a clothes' horse. For the fashion fans among you¹ it's a kind of 50s shape of dress, with a boat neck, sleeveless, fitted over the torso and high-waisted, with an A-line skirt, in black². If you think of Audrey Hepburn, then substitute the adjective 'gamine' with 'Hobbit-y', you're along the right lines. Alternatively, take a JPEG image of Audrey (not in the 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' dress) and reduce only the vertical dimensions of the image, and that's the general impression.

I then had only to buy some shoes (another trial, but walking boots, trainers or Crocs don't cut it at a wedding), and I was free! With any luck, I won't need to go clothes shopping again for another 5 years or more.

¹ Though I have no idea why you're reading this blog, because there's precious little to interest you here. ↑

² Yes, apparently it is now acceptable to wear black to a wedding. I was amused to find, when searching on Google for an answer to this very question, that it's a very popular search phrase. White is still taboo (because you might be confused with the bride), but black is fine as long as you wear colourful accessories. And what else would you expect a ninja shopper to wear? ↑

Academic Spring

This coming week is Fresher's Week, so once again, the campus will be filling up with students. I always think that the start of the academic year is a kind of Academic Spring. Life seems to return to campus, with fresh-faced green shoots, eager to start their life at University, and there's lots of visible activity. Which isn't to say that nothing happens over the vacation: contrary to what undergraduates (and others) believe, academics don't get the summer vacation off. We usually work harder than ever to try to get some solid research done before we're swept away by the tide of teaching once the academic year starts. But that activity is rather hidden (like bulbs and roots developing under the soil) as we work hidden away in labs and offices.

It's the start of a very busy time for me. I've got more teaching to do than ever, but despite that, I'm looking forward to seeing those green shoots again, and diving back into public activity again. For me, Universities only really seem fully alive when they are populated by undergraduates.

That's my feeling now, anyway: ask me again in late November, and I'll probably be itching to get the mower out.

They call her the Ginger Ninja

One of the great things about having two cats is watching them play together. Bella and Bianca remind me a bit of Clouseau and Cato sometimes (Bianca is Kato), particularly when they are launching ambushes upon one another from inside a duvet cover that's hanging over our bannisters.

"Not now, Cato, you feul!"

Claiming territory

We've started to allow the cats to roam the house freely at night. Cleo actually preferred to be shut into the kitchen, dining room and living room at night (she'd pester us to tuck her in bed if we let her roam free), but Bella and Bianca seemed to want a bit more freedom. Inevitably, what happens is that they sleep on our bed: not always both at the same time, but at one point or another there will be somewhere between zero and two cats plus two humans on or in our bed.

This is fine by me. I like having them on the bed at night, as there's nothing more restful than a purring, sleepy cat. The only problem is that they are experts in claiming bed-surface real estate. In fact, they have the kind of devious, strategic skill which would make them champion players of the Chinese game, Go, assuming that they could be bothered to play a game for abstract rewards, rather than something actually useful like duvet space. It starts off equitably enough, with Mr. Bsag and I each occupying half of the bed, and the cats slotted into the remaining spaces. At some point in the night, we will wake to find that Mr. Bsag and I are unaccountably teetering on the outer 10cm of our respective sides of the bed, with the cats stretched luxuriously across most of the remaining space. They are fairly placid about being lifted and moved to another area of the bed, but only — I suspect — because they just re-formulate their invasion plans (complete with large maps and little model cats and humans pushed around with long rakes) as soon as we've gone back to sleep.

Taking note

So, I have to edit this thing for work. It's not a huge edit, just a bit of information to add to a paragraph of a collaboratively written document. In a meeting last week about this document, I made some notes on the print-out of the document, so that — I thought at the time — I would remember what I had to do when I got around to the writing this week.

And can I now make any sense at all of my scribbled notes, arrows, underlining and other hieroglyphics? Reader, I cannot. As far as I can make out, the notes are instructions for building a space elevator, written with a Da Vinci-esque mirror script. In Klingon. It's funny that something that seemed so straightforward at the time can be so utterly impenetrable now. Or it would be funny, if I didn't have to mentally reconstruct the whole thing as a consequence.

Hating fashion with a passion

I've made no secret on this blog of the fact that I hate shopping for clothes. In all seriousness, given the choice I would rather visit the dentist than shop for clothes. Basic items like jeans, t-shirts and so on, I buy online, and use a small selection of suppliers, where I know what my size corresponds to in their sizing. I don't enjoy that much either, but a few clicks and it's all over until the clothes arrive and you have to try them on: relatively painless. But I've got a couple of events coming up where it is expected that I will dress up (i.e. wear a skirt or -- gasp! -- a dress). So that means that I have to go to actual clothes shops, find something I don't detest and try it on. And then repeat until I run screaming from the shop.

There are two problems, quite apart from my utter indifference about what I wear. The first is sizing. I am short, and I am curvy, and clothes manufacturers seem not to have encountered women of either shape before, still less both shapes in one woman. Modern clothes are seemingly not made for women with waists smaller than their hips. The second problem is fashion itself. Even if -- like me -- you have no desire at all to follow fashion, you are utterly stymied by it. Not all styles suit all shapes of people, and fashions mean that at any one time, only one or two styles will be in fashion. This wouldn't bother me at all but for the fact that it means you can't actually buy clothes in the shapes that suit you. Once every 10 years, you might get lucky when a style that suits you comes over the fashion horizon, but if you want to buy clothes in the intervening years, you are out of luck. Your only option is to haunt second-hand or vintage clothes outlets, in search of that empire line/flapper/50's tea dress shape.

I'm seriously starting to consider the possibility of learning how to make my own clothes. I could borrow or buy a sewing machine, find fabric I like, and actually make clothes that a) fit me, b) suit me and c) I like. The trouble is, I have no idea how to go about it. I'm a complete n00b when it comes to dressmaking. Does anyone know of good sources of basic patterns (particularly ones which can be easily modified), and easy guides for people who are liable to sew the wrong seams up?

A week with the cats

For me, this week has mostly been about marking exams and getting to know the cats. I'm sure it will be pretty obvious to everyone which one was more entertaining. Don't worry, this blog won't turn into an 'All Cats All The Time' enterprise, but I wanted to write a bit more about Bella and Bianca, now that we've got to know them a bit better.

Bianca

Bianca has a rather lovely dual personality. Most of the time, she is ultra-laid back, a kind of feline version of the Cadbury's Caramel bunny. She sleeps or stretches languidly, looking at you with half-closed golden eyes and a 'hey, take it easy' expression. Her fur is even cream and caramel coloured. Then, at various intervals (not coincidentally, often around food time) she has her Crazy Time and roars around like a kitten, skidding on the laminate flooring as she races about, wide-eyed. In either mode, she's very cute and very good natured, taking opportunities to snuggle up on laps or in convenient gaps on the sofa between the human occupants. She's slightly subordinate to Bella (and a year younger), so while Bella grooms her forehead affectionately and licks the inside of her ears (she has very clean ears), she also gets put in her place by a gentle cuff with a paw from time to time.

Bella

Bella is the kind of 'wild type' colour for Somalis, which is called -- oddly enough -- Usual (Bianca is Sorrel Silver, and Cleo was Blue). Despite the fact that it's not UN-usual, I love the colour and think it's very striking. She has stunning, big green eyes rimmed with black and the longest whiskers I've ever seen on a domestic cat. I'm sceptical about the myth that cat's whiskers grow to the width of their body, but if that is true, Bella has the whiskers of a much larger cat. She does like her food a lot, so perhaps she's planning on becoming a larger cat, and has grown her whiskers in anticipation. Either way, head on she has the look of a high-wire walker holding a long balance pole. It's rather a daredevil look. Bella is always alert to sounds outside, and when we first had her, would dive under the sofa bed in the office whenever she got spooked by a loud car or a dog barking outside (her former home was in a very quiet cul-de-sac). She's got a bit more used to the noises now, and is much more confident.

In fact, the very first thing she did after we let both of them out of their carrying boxes in the kitchen was to squeeze through an impossibly small gap beside the fridge and crawl underneath the kitchen cupboards. We had to pull the fridge and the washing machine out so that we could lie on the floor in the dust and call to her while holding out some food. She stayed there for quite a while, purring loudly, which -- as the cupboards acted as a natural resonator -- filled the kitchen with sound. Eventually, she came out and we blocked the gap up to stop her disappearing under there again. As I said, she's got used to her new surroundings now, and seems very comfortable in her own alert way. Certainly, she also loves curling up in our laps whenever she gets the opportunity, and adores her chin being stroked.

I've never had two cats at the same time, and it's fascinating watching how they interact. They don't curl up together like some cats do, but they are very friendly with each other, and also play chasing games together with toy mice or balls. They have different pitched voices, so we can usually tell who is calling even when we can't see them. Cleo was a reluctant feeder, so it's quite a shock to have cats who are so keen on eating. Mealtimes are delightful chaos, with both of them trying to climb up our legs while their food is being shared out, then there's a furry scrum until they work out that -- just like the last time -- there are in fact two bowls, so they don't have to fight over one.

Somalis are a lovely breed, and definitely people cats. They don't demand human attention all the time like Siamese cats, but they will happily follow you around and settle down wherever you happen to be, watching what you are doing or just hanging out. When I was weeding in the garden yesterday, I had two cats supervising my work through the patio doors the whole time. They're great, and we love sharing our lives with them. I also can't stop taking pictures of them, so you can see another shot of Bella and Bianca on flickr.

New arrivals

Regular readers will know that we recently lost our much-loved rescue cat, Cleo. We were really devastated by losing her, and felt completely bereft without her. While we'll never be able to replace her, and she'll always be very special to us, we really wanted to get another Somali, because we'd fallen in love with the personality of the breed. So we put our names down on the list for rescued/re-homed Somalis, expecting that it might take several months for a suitable cat (that is, a cat happy to be an indoor cat) to come up. Much to our surprise, we were told almost immediately that there were a couple of cats available for re-homing. We weren't expecting to get a cat so soon, and weren't expecting that we might be able to get two, but it was pretty obvious that we weren't going to be able to resist!

Unlike Cleo (who was a stray with a totally unknown and probably unhappy past), these two cats were being re-homed and were extremely well-loved and cared for since birth by a wonderful woman. They are lovely cats -- healthy and fit and very well behaved. Bella (top picture) looks a bit like a lynx, and has incredible large green eyes and is a really sweet-natured, gentle cat and an adventuress. Bianca (bottom picture) has a gorgeous coloured coat (called sorrel silver) which is a cinnamon-copper on top of white. She is very soppy, and loves being stroked and sitting on laps.

We only picked them up yesterday, so they are still exploring the house and getting used to their new surroundings, but I think they will settle in well. It's wonderful being around cats again, and we're really looking forward to getting to know two new cat personalities. We feel really privileged to be able to look after them. There are a couple more photos of both Bella and Bianca on Flickr, and I'm sure that there will be many more to come!

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