Omar's Diary to 16th November 2019

The main event of the week was on Tuesday. Man Servant pressed a fresh shirt and trousers to make up two changes of wardrobe including boots and socks. These were packed into the “red thing” and the rush was on to get to the stables by ten for a photo shoot that Man Servant was partaking in with one of the equines.

Oh, how his thespian side came out.

“What do you think? The fedora or the tweed cap?”

“Yellow or blue shirt?”

I dread to think what he would be like if this sort of thing became his living.

Lady Servant was away on Thursday night and as always on her return presents Man Servant and I with small gifts. Man Servant was given another book about the Ottoman Empire and he immediately went to the index. I do hope he was looking up my name so we can prove my origins. I was presented with two new balls.

They are both made of very hard plastic and have a bell inside them. Now, I have worked out the Servants' circadian rhythms and know when they start to enter a phase of very deep sleep. That is when my own mischievous circadian rhythm tells me to start playing. This involves giving the two new balls a good whack along the hallway making them bounce off the skirting boards and walls. This is very loud as there is a laminated floor and never fails to disturb Man Servant from his deep sleep into grumpy wakefulness.

As Saturdays go, today was not much different from any other with its own rhythms and patterns that are different from weekdays.

By mid-morning Mitsi and I had been abandoned by the Servants who went out to visit the equines. Neither of us were that worried about this situation as they had left a supply of Dreamies for us, the central heating was on and Radio 3 was playing on the radio. For those not familiar with Radio 3, it is broadcast by the BBC, the UK PBS. It plays predominantly classical music including live opera from the Metropolitan Opera house in New York, jazz and music from around the world.

I do enjoy its eclectic mix, especially after breakfast as I snooze through to luncheon.

On their return to Omar Towers the Servants were burdened with bags of shopping. I am pleased to say that none of the bags they brought home split, disgorging their contents down the driveway as happened last week. I suppose Man Servant’s efforts to retrieve these errant items is the nearest he will ever get to “hunter gathering.”

In the shopping was a copy of The Times. This is beginning to worry me slightly as this is the third consecutive week, he has bought this paper. I do hope he reverts to his more catholic reading habits and brings a different newspaper home next week.

In The Times was a short piece on how honey production in 2019, as measured in a survey of 1,000 servants, known as “beekeepers,” had increased by 30%. This increase was partly attributed to a very warm spring and summer. It was also partly attributed to local authorities leaving open grass areas, like the one near here, to grow naturally and rewild.

A while ago Man Servant wrote to the local authority about a piece of open land near Omar Towers. He politely asked, with citations from some learned papers he had read, if the local authority would consider leaving areas of this open land uncut and allowed to grow naturally. Not only would this improve the aesthetic appearance of this area it would, much more importantly, allow the natural wild grasses and flowers to grow that would provide habitat and a much needed food source for the pollinators. The local authority turned down Man Servant’s request.

I wonder if any of the 1,000 beekeepers in the survey were from the New Forest area surrounding Omar Towers?

We did read some of the longer pieces on British politics. I will not mention them in any great detail here if only to say that the pieces were loaded with “ad captandums”* of the servants referred to as “politicians” who, even through the printed word, appear to be shouting louder and louder without making any substantive case for them to be chosen as Larry’s new servant.

I would really like to have a say in this process but am disqualified from voting. I really don’t know why. So, I would urge all servants who are qualified to vote to register and do so on 12th December. Even if it means choosing a new servant for Larry, Downing Street’s resident feline, who is a least-worse choice.

As we were express reading through the paper, I saw a headline “Rail Bosses Signed End of Famous Dining Car.”

Oh, how I hoped this was not signalling a further downgrading of the rail services in this country. The end of three course lunches and dinners, silver service of course, while the countryside passes in a blur? A switch from haute cuisine a la rail to mere convenience food and the lowest form of hospitality; the microwave? I was so relieved when I read the article in its entirety as it was about a rail service between Memphis and Chicago in America.

*Ad captandums = arguments that appeal to the mob rather than reason. So much easier to use two words instead of ten in the pursuit of brevity.

And finally, from E M Forster, as quoted in The Times:

“Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity (coarseness, is revealing something, vulgarity is concealing something)”