One year ago ...

It's a year since my lovely Molly went to the Rainbow Bridge. It seems like yesterday. I can still feel the pain, smell her fur, remember how she felt when I held her, still feel her soft muzzle and whiskers when she stood up on her hind legs to give bunny kisses. She was always affectionate  so we knew something was wrong when she stopped doing that a week before she died. She was having trouble breathing so I took her to the vet where the nurse on reception immediately decided she needed oxygen so she took the basket upstairs to put her in the oxygen "hutch". That was the last time I saw her alive.

The vet called a few hours later to say she was OK with oxygen but when they took her out she died. She was very very old. The kind of "Come and see this old rabbit" to all his colleagues old. It was immensely distressing because I hadn't said goodbye. I'd expected she might have to be put down but then I would have been with her, as I was with Dolly. She was whisked away in the vets and I spent months thinking she'd died believing I'd abandoned her. Molly and Dolly were rescued rabbits so we always tried to be careful they never thought we were abandoning them.

Molly was so friendly and intelligent (but thick compared to Dolly ...). It breaks my heart to see rabbits left alone all day in tiny hutches or used as photo props without any thought for their welfare.

Molly and Dolly both lived much longer than we expected and they were a joy. It was a bit barmy two grown-ups getting rabbits but we loved them to bits. We won't have any more as we plan to live in a flat soon. I'm ready and willing to be a bunny Auntie when neighbours go on holiday! In the meantime I still save the last bit of a banana, go to the back door and then remember the bunnies are gone.

This is one of my favourite photos of Molly and I believe "Be yourself" was her mantra. (Quickpage by Connie Prince)

Two into one ....

My bunnies' blog, Dolly and Molly, has been merged into this one. Both bunnies are now at the Rainbow Bridge and, as you can see from the dates of the posts, I still haven't been able to write about Molly, who went there last June. I'll do that soon. I'll also bore you with details of my knee surgery and other non-happenings in my life. Layout below was made with Indigo Designs' Spring Memories template:

Fair Weather Friends

Last night I was idly composing a blog post about Twitter in my head and glanced at Oscar Pistorius' Twitter feed. It's usually entertaining apart from the times when I want teach him how to work the flash on his phone. He had about 450,000 followers. Today after being charged with the alleged murder of Reeva Steenkamp he had about 250,000.

What happened to those 200,000? Did they unfollow him because they think he's guilty? Because they think his career is over whatever the outcome and they therefore have no use for him? Or maybe a few are just depressed about it.

I'm appalled at the muck-raking journalism going on, and I use the word journalism loosely. Many assume he's guilty and that's something I always find offensive. Everyone is entitled to a fair trial no matter what they're accused of. No-one was there at the time so how come all these commentators think they know what happened?

People who didn't know Oscar before somehow think they know him now and engage in character assassination. I must admit that when I read about a house full of weapons and late night sessions at a shooting range - at the time they were originally written - I thought "You need to let your PR company handle your Twitter account, Sonny, and watch what you say to journalists." It didn't make me think he was a potential murderer, it just made me think South Africa must be a dreadful place to live and it wasn't a good idea for an athlete representing his country to give that impression, albeit inadvertently.

The Channel 4 TV report was hopeless. They couldn't even pronounce Reeva's last name properly. How hard is it to call a local news agency and check that? They talked about Oscar in the past tense the whole time which I found rather surreal. Danny Crates had some wise words, just as he did during the Paralympics. He looked sad and said (I'm paraphrasing as I can't stand watching the report again). "There are no winners here. A young lady is dead and if he murdered her his life is over. If he didn't his life is still over and a young lady is dead." Both families are going through a terrible time and they're in my prayers.

The number of Twitter followers will go down and down but friends remain and will support Oscar. He is innocent until proved guilty. In the meantime it's time to give the "hang 'em high" idiots on the internet a wide berth.

Added 17 February

I was beginning to think there were no libel laws in South Africa, there is so much ridiculous junk going around. But of course there are, and a whole lot of people will - I hope - get sued. It's explained well here.

Don't believe everything you hear

...or everything your speaking toy (we have lots of them)says:


> [Kit is Etc by Danyale's Shabby Couture Christmas] Merry Christmas!

Rabbits are for life, not for Christmas

Some per shops are sensible and don't let people buy rabbits just before Christmas. They will often sell you a gift certificate and a book so that your child can learn how to look after a rabbit instead. Unfortunately some shops do sell them. It's really really stupid to buy a rabbit as a Christmas present!

Gunslinging Lunatics

The gun-toting nutters on Facebook are doing my head in.


"It's part of our history" Oh good, we can join in then. We can remove women's property rights, send children up chimneys and burn witches at the stake.

 "We've always had guns" Ah, the "but we go to bullfights every year" defence. Even better is "we've always had lots of guns and hunted animals". And you wonder why I don't want to be your friend?

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people" Or, as we say here, "Americans with guns kill people"

"It's a right under our constitution" So you're going to let a bunch of old men from hundreds of years ago decide what you do? The law is there to serve the people, not the other way around. And - hello - doesn't your constitution give you the right to carry a musket and form a militia? Maybe we shouldn't put that militia idea into their heads...

"It's mental illness that's the problem". I'd agree there. You are seriously mentally impaired. You want weapons in order to kill people and therefore more people will be killed. Now what part of that don't you get?

I've hidden and/or unfriended and/or blocked those who are sending atrocious and offensive stuff around Facebook. I've also reported several posts to FB under the "hate" category, the worst one being a mother with a machine gun on one hip and a baby on the other, which was accompanied by some of the worst hate comments I've ever seen. I started arguing with them but it was like arguing with a drunk. I was told it wasn't my business. Well, actually Facebook is an international community and the rest of the world do have a say what goes on there. Facebook will themselves have a say when international advertising revenues go down.

I'm not against debating important issues on Facebook. I'm against offensive images and messages being shared. That's not debate, it's bully boy tactics. "I'm going to stick this on your screen and I don't care who it offends". It doesn't do any cause any good.

Many Facebook users, like myself, are at home on their own all day and use Facebook to talk about their hobbies and enjoy the company of like minded people. I suppose the junk does at least tell you who the like-minded people are.

I don't believe there is any hope for the American people. The gun lobby is huge with seemingly unlimited funds which they are allowed to spend, unlike the political parties which (as I understand it) have a cap on their spending. Neither political faction will stand against them. There is supposed to be free speech but I don't see it. Maybe I hang out in the wrong places but it seems to me those against guns (and indeed against the war) get shouted down. If I was an American and wanted to protect my family I would leave and go and live somewhere else.

Lo...and behold: Italian Grammar Errors

Grammar irritations are multilingual and today I'm a Grammar Fascista.

I've just finished reading The Villa Triste by Lucrezia Grindle on my beloved (plain ordinary, no colours or music) Kindle. You can find the book HERE.

It's a good read and I found it horrifying to discover that I apparently knew nothing about the fate of the Italian people during the war. As one commentator (well, OK, my husband) said "It was two enemies fighting each other. We didn't care". Clearly my history teachers didn't care because I don't remember Italy being discussed at all. Without giving anything away it's a story of the Italian "partisan" resistance and how their lives intertwine with a murder in the present day. You can read as much in the Amazon reviews and mine will be joining them shortly.

My beef with the book is this: There is a character referred to many times in the story as a ghost because no-one evers sees him. The author gives him the Italian name "il spettro".

OUCH!!!!

Spettro is correct - our word spectre comes from the same Latin root -  but it would be lo spettro, not il spettro since il (the masculine definite article) becomes lo before an " S impure" and other combinations. Basically a "sp..." sound is an s impure and can NEVER go with il.

We had a very good Italian teacher at our school and she took the trouble to spend virtually a whole  lesson on this, making sure we knew that combinations like il spettro would sound so wrong it sets your teeth on edge. This gaff really set my teeth on edge throughout the book.

I don't know if Lucrezia Grindle speaks Italian. Her first name sounds Italian but the bio says she was born in the US. If she speaks Italian then she speaks it in another universe. If she doesn't then she should have let an Italian read her book before publication and it would have had a big red circle around "il spettro". Even if - and I doubt this happens anywhere - there is some part of Italy where "il spettro" would be the spoken version it shouldn't end up in text that way.

Surely any book about the Italy during the war should have had an Italian eye cast over it anyway? It's now bothering me that the authenticity of the story is somewhat lacking and that's completely spoiling my enjoyment of the story.