Yep, that’s me. It’s cold, it’s raining, all my wonky bits are hurting (A Lot) and I’m feeling very sorry for myself.

So I decided, instead of going for a walk round the block in the rain, which didn’t sound much fun, I drove to the big Tesco’s up the road, parked near the main road, and so it’s a good five minute walk to the shop. Where I bought more painkillers, and two boxes of dairy-free cakes. One box of 6 mini Bakewell tarts, one box of 8 apple and blackcurrant pies.

Am currently sitting at my pc (obviously) having eaten two of the Bakewells, with a nice cup of Lady Grey tea. Yum. And am feeling, unsurprisingly, a lot less miserable!

It’s not only retail therapy that works for me, it’s actually being able to get out of the house into the fresh-ish air, even if it’s raining, and buying something excitingly full of sugar.

Also popped in, on the way back to the car, to the large garden centre, and bought some catnip/catmint. I’m waiting to see what happens when the cat gets a whiff of it. I have a spray, and when I’ve used it on her toys/scratching post, it drives her wild. Come springtime, if she hasn’t destroyed it, I’ll plant it in the garden. My parents used to have a large catmint shrub, and my first ever cat Penny used to just sit in it! I believe tom cats are a bit rougher with catmint, and bat it about, but she-cats just like to bathe in it. Like a sort of feline bubble bath I guess.

Which brings me to my next anecdote from long ago.

We used to have a marmalade cat called Orlando. He was a very handsome cat, with a rather odd habit. Whenever my mum, my sister or I had a bubble bath, he would tiptoe round the edge of the bath, patting the bubbles, clearly very interested. Well, one day, the bubble bath had been run, and was sitting waiting for one of us to get in. However, before that happened, we all heard a large splashing noise, and when we went into the bathroom, there was a soaking wet Orlando, pretending like billyo he had intended to do that all along . . . but he never investigated bubble baths again. So lesson learned I guess.

This was the very same cat who had an absolute thing about duvets. Particularly down-filled ones. He used to sit on them and wee every time he got the opportunity. Consequently he was banned from the bedrooms . . . lesson not learned (by cat anyway).