Old Camera, Pet Wars and a Teeny Tiny T10

Because our camera was odd and the memory card full and the uploading onto the computer irksome, and the desire to take pics of the work unfolding paramount, I took me, silly me, to Comet or Currys to buy another.
“I’d like a memory card please, for my camera,” I said, reasonably.
“Which camera is it, madam?” (really, I did get a madam.)
“A Canon fine-pix,” I said, inwardly lamenting the “x”, I do so go for a properly spelt word.
“Hmmm.”
A lot of flicking around between computer screens went on. An aborted phone call led to the replacement of the handset with very little having been said.
“Are you sure about the name?”
“No, no, no! It’s a Fuji fine-pix!” D’oh!
“Aaah, would that be an SL, or a DX, or a SX or ….?”
“I don’t (bloody) know! It’s silver!”
I went away again.
I returned later. With the camera and brandished it proudly, presumptuously rummaging in my bag for cash for a speedy transaction.
The man shook his head sadly. “This is a very old camera.”
“5 years …” I said, puzzled.
“Very, very old,” he said turning it round in wonder at its potential museum status. A small crowd of blue-shirted, name-badged men gathered to peer and frown.
So I had to buy a new one. Cheaper, they said.
Our new one is well dandy, 10,000,000 pixels no less. I am hoping that someone had to count them. Nice big screen, now filling nicely with piles of mud and blurs of puppy.

Had a fantastic dog and cat moment yesterday which I am compelled to share.
There is a thing in the garden, possibly sold as a summer house, which is sited inconveniently, hard against a tree which the previous owner had forgotten might grow. It now takes our bikes and garden chairs and, temporarily and oddly, my desk. It is also where the cat is fed, whom regular readers from the Other Side will know is the spawn of Satan, only not as nice.
We have optimistically had a new slab created for it – the summer house, not the cat – in a corner, but are at a weedy middle-class loss as to how to move it so it continues to be in the wrong place.
Stonehenge comes to mind: they did it, we must be able to.
But not yet.
My Swiss friend came over with her three year old boy who was entranced by it. Open door: in. Out. In. Out. First the piles of sand and grit, now the summer house. Hours of happy fun. If this is England, it rocks. We all had to go in and stand with him, amongst the motley furniture and torn packs of cement, feeling foolish and hot and dusty.
Then they went, and I forgot to shut the door properly. Well, it’s a man’s job, shutting doors properly, and E was away at Lords. Along came the wind overnight and blew the door half off its hinges.
Next morning, alive to the open status of this hitherto forbidden paradise, in skipped Lolly (dog). Bouncing on stiff teddybear legs she was, in the parlance, well made up. Then she caught sight of the kat fud. More prancing. She sashayed over and tucked in. I chortled.
But the cat, inappropriately jauntily monikered Maisie, was lurking – unpleasantly – in the flower bed and on glancing up, saw Lolly through the grimy glaze of the cat flap. Like a Jane Austen dowager spotting her favourite niece being slighted by a cad, she stiffened and set sail across the ballroom of the grass landing her furious face scant millimetres from the glass. Lolly looked up, all perky, all Let’s Play. Maisie lifted her paw and smacked it hard against the cat flap which shuddered and flew hard into Lolly’s face the other side. Maisie sat a moment to contemplate the just deserts of the outcome and then swaggered off to insult the Ceanothus.
Later, I fed Lolly and she tucked in joyously.
Along came Maisie. She strode right up to the dog, whom she has hitherto merely hissed and spat at, and started eating the food without a by your leave. Confused, but at heart a nice sharing kinda gal, Lolly sat back dutifully and licked her lips, imagining the taste of food which only the cat was actually getting.
Unbearable to think that Princess Lolly considers herself to rank lower than the cat but thus it seems to be. I gave it a minute, out of reluctant fairness, and then chased Maisie away.

This morning I took T10 to the doctor to address his persistent cough. All was fine until I made some incidental reference to his skinniness. She weighed and measured him and fiddled with her computer and declared that he is below the 5th percentile so must eat unhealthily for the next month to see if we can fatten him up slightly.
I said that I had been like that as a child and an insulting “I find that hard to believe” silence hung in the room.
We went and bought some chocolate, and I selflessly shared with him to show my allegiance to his new diet. I returned him to school and made myself an exhaustingly large plateful of scrambled eggs on crumpets. It’s a tiring lark this Eating Up business.