Charlie's Diary

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Mon, 09 Dec 2002 More bad news ... Also while we were away, a huge fire gutted almost a city block of Edinburgh's Old Town -- a UN world heritage site and extremely close to some of our favourite haunts in town. The Old Town (so called because it's older than the New Town, which is only slightly older than the United States of America) is a mediaeval warren of eight storey high stone buildings. The fire broke out in a night club and spread like crazy through chimney pipes and sealed rooms, some of which may have been walled up for centuries -- due to a lack of up to date survey reports the fire brigade had a hell of a time dealing with it, needing 130 fire fighters on site and taking almost 48 hours to put it out. (We nearly bought a flat about fifty metres away from the site of the blaze, some years ago -- but our current location is comfortably distant.) [ Link ] [ Discuss Local news ] posted at: 15:34 | path: /misc | permanent link to this entry Silent house Feorag and I are just (in the past fifteen minutes) back from our annual pre-Christmas shopping trip to London. The flat is silent. For the first time in seven years, there's no excited blob of orange and brown fur chasing her tail in circles to welcome us back home. Sekhmet died while we were away. She was a brown-and-orange female cat with a white bib (normally male coat markings, which tended to confuse people) who we adopted from Lothian Cat Rescue. She was smart enough to know that the red dot came from the human hand holding the laser pointer, smart enough to know who to complain to when it disappeared from the carpet -- and, unusually, an incredibly human-friendly feline. Most cats pull the I-love-you-now-feed-me trick, then stalk off once they've eaten their fill. Sekhmet, after being fed, would climb into my lap and purr with gratitude for a few minutes before falling asleep. She liked people, even strangers. About the only things that would make her run away were vacuum cleaners, and mice. (Yes. We once had a confused mouse wander into our flat. Sekhmet saw it -- and ran away.) I work at home. Sekhmet would come up to me several times a day and demand attention -- crawling into my lap, sitting on my wrists while I was typing, lying with her chin on my shoulder purring in my ears. If she thought I was dirty she'd wash me, and frequently she'd take me to task and explain to me in maternal feline style that I was being a clueless kitten and ought to do things her way. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and she'd either be sitting vigilant guard duty on the window sill above my head, watching the garden for intruders, or sleeping on my left foot. If we went out for an evening on the town, when we got back in she'd be sitting there in the hall, indignantly lashing her tail: "what kind of time do you call this? And where do you think you've been?" Feorag and I usually do a pre-Christmas shopping trip to London. We were away when, on Saturday afternoon, I got a panicky phone call from our cat-sitter. He'd been in to feed her and play with her in the morning; she'd been her normal friendly self. But he'd just arrived for her afternoon session to find her lying comatose in the living room, food untouched since morning. He took her to the veterinary hospital but was too late: by the time he got there she was dead. We don't yet know what happened. My money is on either a bowel cancer leading to an internal haemorrhage, or on something like a rubber band. More likely cancer -- looking back, she'd been more than usually sedate over the past few months, and had lost a little weight -- but we won't know until we get the post mortem report on Wednesday or Thursday. What I do know is: we're grieving. She died young -- only about eight years old, early middle age for a house-cat -- and alone, probably in pain. Even if you don't dote on your pets, you owe them a duty of care: we were four hundred miles away when it happened, leaving us with the inevitable burden of guilty what-if's. The flat is too big without her. [ Link ] [ Discuss death ] posted at: 13:27 | path: /misc | permanent link to this entry

specials: Is SF About to Go Blind? -- Popular Science article by Greg Mone Unwirer -- an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction Inside the MIT Media Lab -- what it's like to spend a a day wandering around the Media Lab "Nothing like this will be built again" -- inside a nuclear reactor complex Quick links: RSS Feed (Moved!) Who am I? Contact me Buy my books: (FAQ) Missile Gap Via Subterranean Press (US HC -- due Jan, 2007) The Jennifer Morgue Via Golden Gryphon (US HC -- due Nov, 2006) Glasshouse Via Amazon.com (US HC -- due June 30, 2006) The Clan Corporate Via Amazon.com (US HC -- out now) Accelerando Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB -- due June 27, 2006) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) Free download The Hidden Family Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) The Family Trade Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Iron Sunrise Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) The Atrocity Archives Via Amazon.com (Trade PB) Via Amazon.co.uk (Trade PB) Via Golden Gryphon (HC) Via Amazon.com (HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (HC) Singularity Sky Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Via Amazon.com (US ebook) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) Toast Via Amazon.com Via Amazon.co.uk Some webby stuff I'm reading: [ Engadget ] [ Gizmodo ] [ The Memory Hole ] [ Boing!Boing! ] [ Futurismic ] [ Walter Jon Williams ] [ Making Light (TNH) ] [ Crooked Timber ] [ Junius (Chris Bertram) ] [ Baghdad Burning (Riverbend) ] [ Bruce Sterling ] [ Ian McDonald ] [ Amygdala (Gary Farber) ] [ Cyborg Democracy ] [ Body and Soul (Jeanne d'Arc)  ] [ Atrios ] [ The Sideshow (Avedon Carol) ] [ This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow) ] [ Jesus's General ] [ Mick Farren ] [ Early days of a Better Nation (Ken MacLeod) ] [ Respectful of Otters (Rivka) ] [ Tangent Online ] [ Grouse Today ] [ Hacktivismo ] [ Terra Nova ] [ Whatever (John Scalzi) ] [ GNXP ] [ Justine Larbalestier ] [ Yankee Fog ] [ The Law west of Ealing Broadway ] [ Cough the Lot ] [ The Yorkshire Ranter ] [ Newshog ] [ Kung Fu Monkey ] [ S1ngularity ] [ Pagan Prattle ] [ Gwyneth Jones ] [ Calpundit ] [ Lenin's Tomb ] [ Progressive Gold ] [ Kathryn Cramer ] [ Halfway down the Danube ] [ Fistful of Euros ] [ Orcinus ] [ Shrillblog ] [ Steve Gilliard ] [ Frankenstein Journal (Chris Lawson) ] [ The Panda's Thumb ] [ Martin Wisse ] [ Kuro5hin ] [ Advogato ] [ Talking Points Memo ] [ The Register ] [ Cryptome ] [ Juan Cole: Informed comment ] [ Global Guerillas (John Robb) ] [ Shadow of the Hegemon (Demosthenes) ] [ Simon Bisson's Journal ] [ Max Sawicky's weblog ] [ Guy Kewney's mobile campaign ] [ Hitherby Dragons ] [ Counterspin Central ] [ MetaFilter ] [ NTKnow ] [ Encyclopaedia Astronautica ] [ Fafblog ] [ BBC News (Scotland) ] [ Pravda ] [ Meerkat open wire service ] [ Warren Ellis ] [ Brad DeLong ] [ Hullabaloo (Digby) ] [ Jeff Vail ] [ The Whiskey Bar (Billmon) ] [ Groupthink Central (Yuval Rubinstein) ] [ Unmedia (Aziz Poonawalla) ] [ Rebecca's Pocket (Rebecca Blood) ] Older stuff: June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 (I screwed the pooch in respect of the blosxom entry datestamps on March 28th, 2002, so everything before then shows up as being from the same time)

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