Herding hoof hearted cats

Who watched the eclipse of the blood moon? I had an early start the next morning and had to get to bed early. Plus it was freezing, literally freezing, outside. I climbed into my nice warm bed and at the appropriate time, I opened the curtain and thought, 'Mmmm very nice.' Then I punched my pillow into shape and went off to sleep. I used to get up at all hours of the night to watch meteor showers but as age has crept up on me, I am more inclined to allow the younger ones to do the midnight watches for shooting stars and strange shapes. Last week a green fireball flew across the New Zealand skies. Barry and I saw a similar one about 4 years ago and it is really impressive. But these days I like my warm spot in front of the tv or reading a book on the couch and the idea of shivering in the chill is not on my agenda. What was the green fireball? Even the specialists don't know but think it might be space junk finding its way home to Earth.

This week I noticed a personalised number plate that caused me to giggle. It was HOOF Hearted. I didn't get the joke straight away and had to take a second to process the words ... and sound them out in my mind and then the answer came to me. Obviously, it is the dog or maybe the cow that made the noxious smell. Although a friend assures me that young children will own up to passing gas even if no one suspects them of the deed. It is usual to pass gas between 10 and 20 times a day, (male and female are equal). As you age your gut health might decline and that is why elderly people seem to be fart machines. Did you know that flatulence was the basis of the first-ever recorded joke in 1900 BCE ... yes folks, that is 4,000 years ago more or less. Do you want to hear the joke? It's actually not that funny, but anyway here goes: 'Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.' Okay, I did warn you that it was not that funny. Do you have a 'go-to' joke when in company? The easy out is a limerick and there are many red faces as the joke embarrasses the jokers. A dear friend once had a bumper sticker that was frankly rude. I asked her if she knew what it meant and she didn't. She had bought the sticker to cover a scratch and was clueless as to why it might be considered in bad taste. Now talk about red-faced. There I was telling a lady double my age about the facts of life and what her car now told people about her beliefs. Another lady had a bumper sticker that said 'Honk if you think I am beautiful.' When feeling sad, she would sit at a green light until someone honked and then would feel much better about herself. Myself? I have never wanted a personalised number plate or a bumper sticker, funny or rude or whatever. I like to be mysterious and leave people guessing about the real me. No, not really. My Dad loved that ditty that said YYU2 YYUB ICUR YY4me. (Too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me). I forget jokes as soon as I hear them and my memory prompts me at inappropriate times. I might be sitting quietly in Church and suddenly remember a joke from my childhood. My sister had a friend that would laugh uproariously at our jokes only to come back to us weeks later and say 'I finally figured out your joke.' I asked her why she had laughed and she said because she didn't want to look stupid in front of us. Now here I am fifty or sixty years later and suddenly giggling about jokes, so who is really stupid now?

My grandson, Omani, was learning about idioms and asking me what each one meant. My school teacher daughter later advised me that they were discontinuing the teaching of idioms because kids these days don't have a clue as to their meaning. 'A stitch in time saves nine.' Well, who actually stitches these days? It's a dying art. 'My joke went down like a lead balloon' ... Again, why would I want to fill a balloon with lead? Only an idiot would do that. 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush' ... why are you holding a bird and shouldn't you put it back in the bush with its mates? I love idioms, they colour our language with such imagery that it lightens the soul. Recently my lecturer was talking about putting too much information in a painting. He said, 'Don't open the door and let all the cats out at once.' It's good to know there is more to the picture or the story than appears to the viewer, but it is not necessary to stuff all of it onto one poor little canvas. An old school friend, John Bozas, told me that if I wanted to hit the tennis ball with power and strength, I needed to hit through the ball. Pretend that the ball is not even there and smack the air from one end of my body to the other. If we slow our muscles down to only hit the ball, we will fail. So, I thought that is what I needed to do with my art, hit all the balls as hard as I could ... let all the cats out to run wild. But it ended up with the paintings looking like garage sales. No real focal point. I was not choosing what I wanted my viewer to look at. Everything was competing with each other. My next challenge seems a bit like 'herding cats'. An impossible task. At least it is not like 'rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic', it will hopefully have a positive outcome at the end. In New Zealand I came across the idiom 'A box of birds.' As in 'I have just completed my exams and am feeling like a box of birds.' Or that I feel I have done well. I am not ready to say that I am feeling good about my recent art works, maybe in a few week's time. I did publish a new book this month that I am pleased with, so maybe I can say that I am a box of birds about that accomplishment. Now all I have to do is decide if I need all those cats frolicking across the canvas. Should I just hint at their presence? A paw print, a tiny tail or perhaps a whisker? The cat that has kept me company over the past two years since my husband died made her own journey to that big sandbox in the sky on Monday. I will dedicate the next bit of art to her and her propensity for licking my hand just when I needed it most. I will tone down all the other cats so that they fade into the background and highlight just one or two elements. There you go, I am starting to herd my cats successfully.

Fifty years ago, I attended some lectures at the University of Cape Town. No, I was not a student there. I couldn't afford to go to uni back in those ancient days, but the thought of all that knowledge just down the road was intoxicating. I was flatting with some university students and as soon as they heard that I was not a person of intelligence and learning, they would turn their backs on me and go and find someone else more interesting. I suppose I wanted to feel that I could fit in their crowd somewhere? Why? Who knows? I was young and ... well, I was young. I heard about the lectures on heraldry and I could attend after my working day was over. I snuck into the back of the lecture hall. In the front rows were the intelligentsia with their eager faces and pens at the ready. I listened and hid in the shadows and learned as much as I could. I soaked it up like a sponge, facts that would not help me in my job or my life. There was no shining future for listening to this lecturer talking and chalking at the front of the lecture hall. He scribbled stuff that I found fascinating. And I still remember most of the information all this time later. Am I an aficionado? Nope. But this month I was asked to write an article for a newsletter about how to read a heraldic symbol. Why did I say yes? Well, I cannot turn down a chance to show off. That is the only excuse I can come up with. My problem is that I overshare. I really do open the doors and let all the cats out. The article was very limited to space and word count and that was the real challenge. My mother would tell me that I had verbal diarrhea, and obviously, that extends to writing. I edited and edited and pulled my hair out in frustration but I got it done and sent it off on time. Yay. Did this new knowledge of heraldry get me into the inner circle of the university students I so admired? No. Not one of them would give me the time of day and I got to the stage where I didn't care anymore. If I fell over them today, I wonder who would be the happier person? Them with their certificates and diplomas or me with my canvas and keyboard? There was another non-student in the apartment with us (we shared the space to save money), Jan was Scottish and lovely. She was a carer for children with intellectual challenges. She spoke of things like a child trying to sew and managing to pierce her eyelid with the needle. Anyhow, Jan and I bonded because we were both outsiders. The day she left she pulled me aside and said, 'You are the only 'real' person I have met. Thank you.' Well, who really needs all those stuck up university folks? I had Jan and I was in love with my husband and my future was bright. Sorry, I should not tar all students with the same brush. There are really nice university students out there, I was just not fortunate to meet any at that time. But those lectures stand out as a beacon of hope that has illuminated my intelligence through the years. I wonder if that lecturer had any clue as to how he affected me? Most probably not, I was just a shadow in the back of the hall after all.

I will leave you with a quote about cats. 'Cats leave paw prints in your heart forever and always.' But herding them is not advised and letting them all loose is not a good idea unless you are sitting in an university exam and need to remember all you have learned in one foul swoop.