Daily Mail Screenshot
When I was about one year old, Tom Cat came into our garden. He was a stray, older than a kitten, we guessed about a year or so older than me. And he didn’t seem to have an owner, so he stayed.
Tonight we had to have him put down. He’s had problems with his teeth before but on Tuesday night something happened, almost like he’d had a stroke (cats don’t really have strokes, so the vet thinks it was renal failure.) He became very still, and he wasn’t eating anything. So we took him to the vet and, as I thought might happen, he was euthanized. We were all there to watch, and I’m really glad we did.
So yes. The house is empty now, even though I can’t really believe he’s gone. (Already I’m hearing mewing from the hallway.) My strongest memory of Tom Cat is him jumping up the fridge and freezer to get to his favourite spot on the top of the kitchen cupboards, which always used to impress visitors. But I also remember when we moved house, and had to go out for months with a picnic basket to get him back from our old flat.
Tom Cat
b. Who knows?
d. 03 \ 03 \ 2006
I’ll miss you Tom, but remember your life with love and fondness 
Linda Smith
I didn’t know until today that she was President of the Humanist Society too. RIP Linda Smith, and thanks for all the laughs. You will be missed.
Right, also have to say that I saw the school play Dracula Spectacular tonight, which was rather excellent 
and I know others enjoyed it too. And Tasha was great, of course. 
Some other memorable performances (out of many) were Miss Naïve, Dracula himself and Dracula’s mother played by our friend Anna-Ciara. Woot! We also agreed that for the next production the school should really invest in some mics for the stage. Well, they’ve already bought new curtains…
Saw this George Clooney film at the Tricycle Cinema on Saturday night. It’s about the famous journalist Edward Murrow (who I’d actually never heard of before) and his taking on of the infamous Senator McCarthy who orchestrated the hysterical anti-Communist witch-hunts in 1950s America. Oh, and it’s filmed in black and white – something I got used to surprisingly quickly, but I think that’s cause I’ve watched quite a bit of 1960s Doctor Who 
So yes – to be honest, I don’t think this film deserves quite the glowing praise it received – but it is nonetheless very worthy and worth seeing if you’re interested in that period of history. Or current affairs, of course, as the obvious metaphor to the role of the media today… although I couldn’t help feeling incredibly uplifted after watching the film about the role the Internet now plays. It’s no longer a question of a few corporations controlling the ability to get your message out there, although of course they still command the mass audiences, anyone has the ability to publish, at least in many parts of the world. Damn the sponsors, we’ve got Google.
The other organisation that came to my mind was the BBC. The speech bookending the film about the role that television plays is a powerful reminder that in Britain, our culture has been shaped by an organisation that is not dependent on advertising revenue and does uphold a public service ethos (at least some of the time!) to inform, educate and to entertain.
Appropraitely we ran into my History teacher on the way out – he was going to see the later showing. And my other cinema anectode was the labelling of the vanilla ice-cream as ‘natural’. That annoyed me. Why is vanilla any more natural than strawberry or chocolate? Stop the organic-natural-reallyreallygoodforyou-food nonsense soon please.
Also – have just completed my first draft of a rather tricky essay on another era in history – Britain’s role in the Middle East. I read it through and realised I know exactly what the teacher is going to say: too much storytelling! How do you avoid storytelling in an essay that stretches from 1917 to 1956 though?
Good night, and good luck blog readers. This blog post was brought to you by the correct spelling of aluminium.*
*(In the film they say aluminum. Aluminum?!)
Ken Livingstone suspended for four weeks.
Oi! Give us back our mayor!
I’m really quite angry about this. He was rude and offensive to a journalist. An annoying prick of a journalist who was making an arsehole of himself. And clearly someone who can give it out but cannot take it, which is a hypocrisy I cannot bear. Why should he apologise for hurting his feelings? Go cry at home Oliver Finegold. Being Jewish doesn’t exempt you from insult, and it’s actually quite offensive to others that you believe you can use your religion\race to duck behind your own shortcomings as a human being. Fuck you.
(Incidentally – I’m aware it wasn’t the Evening Standard that brought the action. But they turned it into a story when there wasn’t one in the first place. So the point remains.)
Just to remind you why some unelected body has seen fit to remove our democratically elected mayor for a month:
Ken Livingstone was recorded asking reporter Oliver Finegold if he is a “German war criminal”.
Mr Finegold replies: “No, I’m Jewish, I wasn’t a German war criminal. I’m quite offended by that.”
The mayor then says: “Ah right, well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard, you are just doing it because you are paid to, aren’t you?”
Anyone who thinks that’s racist, or an insult directed at anyone other than Mr. Finegold and the Daily Mail group have a very limited intelligence. Come Back Ken!
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
