Omar's Diary for the Week Ending 3rd November 2017

I do apologize for my last header photograph if it offended anyone. It is just that Man Servant could not locate the much better one above at the time.

Evenings this week have been, how shall I say? “Blissful.” It seems a bit of a coincidence that since the clocks changed on Sunday that both of my own servants have been home every night, especially Lady Servant whom I adore.

The evenings get dark early and once the servants are home together there is a pattern to their behaviour which is warm and secure.

After they have both given me the devoted attention as befits me, my servants then pursue their own interests. Some are shared and some are pursued individually.

A shared interest is watching a TV series on the West Wing which, although appearing to be chaotic, probably still carries more dignity than the real West Wing today. My servants think I sleep through these shows but I am actually listening. There is one scene where the Director of Communications arrives at work in the morning and asks the Press Secretary "Where did I go wrong?" The Press Secretary replies, "What time did you get up?" I think that is how Man Servant felt last Saturday when the family car failed to start.

Lady Servant is currently reading a book about the Battersea Dogs Home located in London. This is a charity set up to help homeless canines. As much as I don’t like canines they, very much like felines, deserve all the support and care they can obtain when through no fault of their own they fall on hard times: not knowing where the next meal is coming from, not knowing where they can sleep safely, not knowing where they can shelter from the weather, having to live rough as some members of the servant species also have to. I was homeless before I found my present servants so I can empathise with them and their plight.

Man Servant is reading The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron. From what I have been able to read on the back cover, this is a book written in 1933 and is about a member of the servant species who travelled through the Middle East. His routes took him to Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Teheran, Kabul, Herat and on into Russia. The page Man Servant has reached has a paragraph about Khoja Abdullah Ansari who was born in 1004 and died in 1088. What first caught my eye about this servant was that he is reputed to have "doted on cats" so he sounds like he might have been a nice servant to know, for felines at least. Unfortunately for those other members of the servant species around him he "was a prodigious bore."

This same part of the book refers to Babur (1483 – 1540), a Moghul Emperor who resided in Herat and Kabul once he had conquered Afghanistan. He sounds like he was quite a character as he liked a good party and was drunk more than once. He also liked gardens, making a very formal one in Kabul which was shown on TV the other night. As well as ruling an empire, he also managed to write poetry and was able to record his life for posterity.

When my servants go away for any length of time they arrange for an itinerant lady servant to come to Omar Towers and tend to both mine and Mitzy’s needs. The itinerant lady servant runs her own mail order business from home and is very, very cross tonight. The portal, I believe that is the correct technical term, that she buys and sells with other servants through has stopped making payments to her and several other users. The company providing the portal have described this problem as a "technical issue."

That wouldn’t be the same sort of "technical issue" that allowed Servant President’s Twitter account to be closed down for eleven minutes the other night?

Tonight the weather is dry and clear. At this time of year here in England, servants light fireworks to mark an event back in 1605 when a member of their species named Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. History is fine and learn from it but please, when celebrating anything with fireworks please think of felines, canines, and equines, as we do not understand what fireworks are and feel very threatened by them. There are enough canines, felines, and servants who have to live in conditions of loud explosions and flashes of light that are not celebratory in this world today already who have no freedom to find the warmth and security that Mitzy and I have with our servants.