Omar's Diary 20th January 2020

I must apologise as it has been over a month since I last updated everyone about life here at Omar Towers. Since then there has been a General Election (the less said about that the better), Christmas, New Year, rain and mysterious viruses afflicting the Servants.

As regular readers know, I love to receive post. It was lovely to receive both a Christmas card and a letter from my most regular correspondent, in fact my only correspondent. He is a fine member of the servant species who lives in Dyce near Aberdeen. I seem to remember my own Servants travelling there last year. Anyway, he has a collection of twenty typewriters which is almost enough to start a museum with. The oldest was made in 1929 and for those of you interested in this sort of thing, it is a ‘Underwood Four Bank Standard Portable’. They are all in working order and have been used to prepare some of the letters I have received.

It would be nice to know how many words have been produced from those twenty typewriters. Did they become great works of literature? Did they produce peace treaties between countries to change the course of history? We shall never know but it is still nice to imagine a lonely author in an upstairs room working on a manuscript that won a Costa or Pulitzer on one of the machines. Much like Man Servant and I when we collaborate over the diary.

Since my last diary I have received two letters from Paddington Bear as he travels the world working as an Ambassador for UNICEF.

The first of these letters came from the Ivory Coast near the equator in western Africa before Christmas. One of the projects started there by UNICEF is to build school rooms using recycled plastic, a simple way of solving two problems. One, using up old plastic, that is causing so many headaches, which no one really knows how to cure. And two, providing the infrastructures for education.

The fun fact sheets do not mention Tonkinese felines. They do explain that there are African Forest Elephants in this region and that they are the smallest of the elephant species. They also explain about Pygmy Hippos. I can only assume the Ivory Coast is a very small country which is why only small elephants and hippos can live there.

I am sad to say that Mitsi and I were abandoned between Christmas and New Years Eve. The Servants, without following protocol laid out clearly in their servants’ handbook, went to their regular retreat at somewhere called ‘Swanage’. I wonder if it is as far away as Dyce. I do know they drove there in the “red thing”. Fortunately, they left the heating on for us, but the family warmth one normally associates with Christmas was somewhat lacking with them both away. We were not totally abandoned as the itinerant servant from Belgium checked up on us twice a day. She is very nice, but it was just not the same as having our own Servants around.

When they returned Man Servant really wasn’t himself. I don’t mean he was no longer his curmudgeonly old self that we all know and love. No, he was really off the pace and it has only been over the last week that he has returned to normal; an energetic curmudgeon. Lady Servant has been more fortunate and has not been afflicted at all this year.

During this week I received another envelope from Paddington Bear. This time it was from Jordan. My word he does get around. As with the envelope from Ivory Coast there was lots of information. It was about places like Petra, Aqqaba, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea. There was nothing mentioned about animals. This must be because Jordan is a very arid country. UNICEF’s main work in Jordan is to try to improve the lives of children who have had to flee from their own countries as much as possible with clothing, food, medicine and education.

Man Servant, Lady Servant and I are strong advocates of the value of education and below are what we collectively hope are salient quotes about this most important issue:

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” – Nelson Mandela

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled” – Plutarch

I know I hinted earlier that I would not mention the election, but I just had to if only from a feline’s point of view. It appears that Larry, the Downing Street feline, has had his prime servant selected and appointed for the next five years. This really is most unfair as Larry did not have any say in who his servant would be. The way the election finished it appears that there is very little chance of the new servant being replaced even if he fails to achieve the very high standards maintained by previous incumbents of this most important office.

In fact, Larry’s new servant is so safe in office that even if he failed to be there to open the door at Larry’s convenience, forgot to feed the right food at the right time in the right way, take him for medical treatments and worst of all, the absolute worst of all derelictions of duty – failing to keep the en suite clean; he would not lose his job.