His Maculate Dentition

Hee. I had to take Young Barryvar to the vet this morning.

He was ... displeased by this notion.

So I opened the Pinky-Purple Carrier of Doom and left it in the hallway. Went upstairs to collect Baz from his nest on my yellow jumper; carried him downstairs, just in time to see Mac's back end disappearing into the carrier.

So then we had all the fun of Chaz with his bad shoulder and two stubborn cats, one who didn't want to come out and the other who didn't want to go in.

You would have laughed and laughed.

Actually, I laughed quite a lot myself. It may have had a hysterical edge to it, but still.

Then off we went in the bus, Himself voicing his displeasure quite loudly, thanks. At the vet's, we were distracted by five border collie pups and a girl with four A-stars to celebrate (she'd clearly been working there through the summer, and had been fetched in by her mother to be duly embarrassed by fuss); then a new young vet checked Baz'z teeth, which was the point of the journey.

He's fine. A little tartar, perhaps a hint of gum disease, nothing to worry about. Certainly no urgency for treatment.

So that's thirty quid and half a morning gone, but on the other hand it's reassurance, which is priceless, and it's not a hundred and fifty quid for surgery. I can live with this.

And now I just have a sulky grumbly cat to placate. And Mac, who is fairly sure he's missed out on something. And perhaps I ought to do a little work...

Cat Treat Dilemma solution

I am an idiot. I have hamz!

*administers hamz*

Another question! About beer, and receptacles, and time past!

Okay. If I go to a pub for a pint, there are generally two ways it might arrive: in a tall smooth glass, or else - more rarely, these days - in a dimpled glass tankard with a handle. Which I would call a pint mug, because a tankard in a pub means some regular's personal pewter mug that he keeps behind the bar there. Yes?

But this is the nineteen-forties, and she is a well-bred young woman who used to go into pubs with her husband while he was alive, because she liked to be with him and see him amongst his man-friends. So: would she have called it a mug, was that current even then? Or would it have been a tankard to her? Or something else? Certainly it would have been the standard glass that a pint would come in, these tall smooth ones are a more recent innovation, but I do not know how they were known in those days.

And I did not know when I started writing this book, that these would be the questions that I stumbled over. Life. Fiction. Why can't I just make it up...?