A Gentleman's Domain: And as the sun slowly sinks in the West...

I tore a label off the other day. Everyone in the USA will know what I mean – anything made with fabric of any kind other than clothing (upholstery, cushions etc.) comes with a label headed “Do not remove, under penalty of law” and even though that does not apply to the end user, many people still leave them attached. I unfolded a portable patio chair a few days ago, to relax in the evening sun with a book and a Pepsi, and with a certain devil-may-care I tore off the label. Even so, in spite of what my rational senses told me, I did feel a frisson of guilt, and for a moment I was expecting a sudden visit from the police label squad. “We know you’re in there. Throw out the patio chair and come out with your hands up!”

There was a second label, and I tore that off too. I was going to use it as a bookmark but then I read what it said and the implications shook me to the core! Look what it says. In effect, the government of the state of California is warning that this chair is not non-flammable enough for them to feel easy that its citizens are sitting in it, and it warns them against doing things in the chair that might cause them to burst into flame. Well, a pat on the back for Arnie and his state’s government. But I live in Florida. Where is the warning from Governor Crist or one of his minions in Tallahassee? Don’t they care? Are they so unworried at the possibility of my sudden immolation that they can’t even be bothered to warn me? They need to model their technique on that of Sacramento and be a bit more Californian about it. I don’t actually smoke, or wave naked flames about anywhere near this chair, so the prospect of my seated combustion is remote, but even so, this callous indifference has left me shaken. I’m not angry, but I’m rather disappointed.

Vets can be so blasé cant they! Our vet provided us with a bottle of liquid medicine and a syringe (sans needle) and told us to give Sam, one of our cats, 2cc of the liquid every day. The recommended method was to use the syringe to squirt a measured amount of red liquid into his mouth, once a day. Ha! Have you ever tried to give medicine to a cat? I have never forgotten, from my childhood, when we had to give pills to our Siamese cat, Nokomis. Normally she was the sweetest, most affectionate cat you could ever meet. But when we tried to give her pills, she transformed into a snarling, hissing, razor wielding wildcat! It took all four of us (parents, sister, myself) to do it. We had to wrap Nokomis in a towel and, wearing gardening gloves, to open her mouth and insert the pill. And then make her swallow it. Half the time she fooled us into thinking she had done so, only for us to find it on the carpet a little later on. So it was with not a little world-weary cynicism that I listened to the vet airily telling me to squirt a small measured amount of red liquid from a bottle into Sam’s mouth. It takes both my wife and me to do it, and we have had to resort to wrapping him in a bedspread and holding him by the scruff of the neck. Sometimes we are successful. I suppose we should use reverse psychology and try to convince him that this liquid is something that he absolutely must not drink. Not allowed! Then he’d regard it the way he regards most food that we eat and would spare no effort or deception to get at it and polish it off.

If you are looking for a book to read and you want something more challenging than a nag-and-shag or a formula thriller, please permit me to suggest The Unbreakable Child by Kim Michele Richardson. This, I should warn you, is not a fluffy, cuddly read. It is a harrowing account of how the author was sent to an orphanage run by nuns and for seven years she and her fellow inmates were beaten, abused and degraded by these foul Brides of Christ.

The violence was so unceasing and, it seems, administered for both good and bad behaviour, that it almost beggars belief. You couldn’t get away with a story like this in fiction – no one would believe it. You have to be somewhat dysfunctional anyway to be a nun, but that is no excuse for, to take one example, punching an eight-year-old girl in the stomach and making her eat her own vomit. And of course, these women lied to the girls with terrifying stories about burning in hell. All this, mind you, did not take place in some Third World country, but here in the USA. And not way back in the twenties or in the Depression, but in the Sixties. This was the decade of flower power, free love, The Beatles, Woodstock, the Apollo space program. And while all that was happening in an increasingly enlightened world, nuns were beating up young girls. The author does have her own happy ending, I’m glad to say. She is now a happy wife and mother, and was able to bring a successful lawsuit against the Catholic Church. Read her story!

Still on books, I have for the last couple of months been a member PaperBack Swap, an online club whose members can swap paperback books (hardbacks and audio books too) with each other. It’s all very simple (which is probably why I can understand it): after you join (it’s free) you list the books you are making available and whenever anyone wants one you get a message, with that person’s name and address. You send the book off by media mail, and you get one point. Every point you get entitles you to choose a book from the 3.5 million books that have been posted by members. The only cost to you is the postage for the books you send out, so you end up with a lot of books more or less at half price, and you know that your unwanted books have gone to good homes. Check it out here.

Back home in the UK, there were local government and European Parliament elections last week, and as usual these were greeted with a barrage of indifference by most people. However, about 45% of the electorate did turn out to vote. I won’t bother you with the results, some of which were very heartening and a few of which were downright disturbing. I will briefly mention one thing, that always makes me feel that there still is some fun in British politics. I refer, of course, to the existence of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, which was inspired by the Silly Party in a Monty Python sketch. The Raving Loonies contest local and parliamentary elections, have never won a seat, in all probability never will, but they do brighten up election coverage as a cheerful alternative to mainstream politicians blethering on about what they will do and how everyone else is rubbish. So far no one has tried to stop them, though you do once in a while hear some old stick-in-the-mud complaining that the Raving Loonies are cheapening politics. But no one seems to mind. How could anyone really object to a political party that fields a candidate who legally changed his name to Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel just before the ballot papers were printed?

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Comments

I almost lost my coffee reading the first portion of your post.

Like you, have this wave of guilt the floods me when I cut the tags off of mattresses. I also always get the willies when I read tags on products that state such and such state does not approve of this item (particularly if there is lead content or what have you). I'm just thankful I have never read such labels on my toothpaste (also look for the "made in China" tag to be safe).

As for cats...been there, done that...I feel your pain. But, still laughing my butt off, anyway :)

Posted by: DizzyDezzi | June 13, 2009 at 01:43 PM

Hahaha! Nicholas, please be careful in that chair. You have neglected to consider the possibility of spontaneous combustion (and If you'd allow links here, I'd have linked you some stories about it- it's somewhat amazing). Muaaah!

Posted by: Thorne | June 13, 2009 at 11:45 PM

I like to rip the tags off of things. I have no good explanation for this. I simply hate tags. I enjoy it even more when the tag dares me to do it by warning me that such an action is forbidden.

Hee hee... this made me laugh. I've had to give medicine to my cat on a few different occasions & she did that same trick, pretending to swallow her pill only to spit it out.

What I find the most challenging, however, is when I have to scrub her chin with acne medication. It never fails to bring a ruckus.

I can't believe that I haven't heard of this book! I think that I'm going to have to look into it... I like to read things that are guaranteed to disgust me, piss me off & feed me disdain of the humans. ;)

So glad that I finally had a chance to get caught up on my blog reading - I missed your humor!

Posted by: Rasmenia | June 15, 2009 at 09:26 AM

Ack! That book scares the hell out of me. I'll thank my mom yet again for being an atheist. And I'll thank the nuns who cared for her for awhile in her youth for being kind, non-abusive women.

I've had cats before, and I don't know how single people give them meds. It's always at LEAST a two person job.

California. Yeah, some idiot here in California would probably dip their lawn chair in gasoline and set it on fire, and then sue the company for not warning them that it was flammable.

Posted by: J | June 17, 2009 at 08:34 PM