Blog H2

This is an afterthought of Blog V2; last Tuesday, after two successful removals of the vet's row of stitching, we finally created a dressing/truss which Holly, our superactive little rat, could not rapidly remove, and hence, we have been able to supervise the so far successful healing of the large scar left from surgery, to remove a growth that these little critters are prone to. Now I have to watch in awe as she contends with the maddening itch that lurks under every dressing; we have replaced it once, after day two, with a slightly less restrictive truss, but she, a four legged beastie, still has to suffer the destabilisation of her front half. Add to this the hopeless task of reflexively scratching her itches through the dressing, and you start to get a picture of the burden this little creature is coping with. I am filled with admiration. Cats and dogs, being bigger, withstand and take human style dressing proceedures; I've seen dogs and cats live with plaster casts and all sorts of encumbrances by just taking it easy; not so for a rat. You object that I add the lowly rat to the 'man's best friend' notions propagated for cats and dogs? Considering the shorter lifespan of rats, and having a sixty year history of a few dogs and many cats, I rate Holly as equal to any of them for fortitude, stamina, and sheer determination to be her hyperactive little self; she almost never relaxes, but has succombed to some sympathetic little massages since the surgery, and I hope she will continue to be so soothed after this is all over. But being herself is her strong point. Her sister too is a character of totally different perameters, and only goes to underline the amazing variety of personality one may find in this perrenial rodent. ('Rongeur' is the French term; I prefer it.) It is the constant, (almost) concern for this little critter's progress that has had me design a dressing system for tiny beasties, which is formed from virtually indestructible thread (stronger, more resistant than Kevlar is available now) in a series of four point adjustable loops, which can be set to anchor accurately the dressing on said tiny body, but allow full movement, the space to continue to scratch and groom, and, when it finally gets chewed through, can be replaced with an identical, low cost replacement. (Aha! low cost? I hear you crow? Can I describe the investment in time and effort to get this process reasonably right the THIRD FUCKING TIME?) Dear readers, necessity is the mother of invention. I have the material readily available from European sources. I have overcome our crisis, as getting this material would take longer than the healing of Holly entails, but I'd like to work with a Vet Supply Organization to get a suitable product into the surgeries of the world. Small stuff; great purpose. I will try. Nuff said.

E3

We don't use buses very much for getting about, but if we have a major voyage to make we always check the buses out, and this is a big shout out to EUROLINES, a French company who cover Europe, and for the three years we've had them on our list, have made fucking sure our chances of actually making any successful contact with them are fraught with failed emails and more unresponsive telephone lines than any organization we've struck that actually have a website up there in cyberspace. I presume these fuckers have identified a market amongst PEOPLE WITHOUT ANY OTHER FORM OF TRANSPORT, and have chosen to exercise there microcephalia on them, and any normal, sensible, 'alternative option'- conscious people who feel it is worthwhile to seek something other than a five dollar jet ticket are fair game for their ultra-studied indifference.
The trip in question is Paris-Zagreb, which pretty much passes by our door, in Slovenia, BUT THEY WON'T LET YOU GET OUT THERE. Instead THEY TAKE YOU TO THE NEXT COUNTRY, where I have to drive, through three toll/customs gates, EACH WAY, and fight my way through a congested, polluted city where the bus depot is. (Needless to say, there an't a bus....)
We can do the air trip, cheapest €35 option, but it goes via London, with a long wait for the connecting flight, and as my partner will be carrying a new Mac desktop computer, (read WMD) the thrill of hanging out in a London Airport for several hours, (you've been there recently? No luggage facilities anymore; you piss where you sit or you take the computer boxes with you into the cubicle, in the john, two floors and several kilometres from your departure area) and one starts to realise just what a hold those pricks in Eurolines have over you.
I feel like I am in the real 'war on terror', and it is only the impossibility of owning a couple of vehicles in Europe that causes us this angst in the first place; we'll take a car back to France, sell it there, and bring the money back to buy a car here; re-homologation we have done once, an astounding experience requiring detailed contact with all the thicknesses of bureaucracy here or there, and we'll avoid doing it again. This is one Europe, but it is controlled by the motor trade/mafia who want you to have as much contact with them as you can possibly imagine, and the insurance? Don't ask...while we see the future, OUR future, as having as little possible contact with these cretins as possible, as the only viable way to survive into my children's dotage....
But the problem remains; we need to get from there to here, and short of following my partner in a second motorvehicle, there is no logistical way of making a sensible, brief, (24 hours for 1500kms?) trip in this century, and RAIL say three days, and that is TWO hotels, FOUR taxis, and godknwswhatfuckingabout, so..........
Where do you think your future is headed? Do you think living in the South Pacific might be a safe number? Free of environmental catsarsetrophy there are we? If you have a permanent job somewhere, please look closely at how you do it, and please, if you deal with the public, remember they chose to come and see you (probably) and in that case it behooves you, as a paid member of this muddle we live in, to give them an easy run; it will go on down the line, I can assure you; good news spreads fast too y'know.....
Nuff said.