Did you hear the one about…

…the Bishop of Southwark?

The Bishop of Southwark has been behaving most strangely. He’s been accused of being drunk and getting in someone else’s car (without their permission) and throwing the toys found inside it out of it. When challenged on his behavior – he reportedly said “I’m the Bishop of Southwark. It’s what I do.”

He says he couldn’t, just couldn’t have been drunk – and must have had a head injury – because he was able to get from Southwark (an area just south of the Thames, home to London Dungeons, the Globe Theatre and Southwark Cathedral) to his home in Streatham (a South London area – not too far from where I live – and home to a movie theatre, gay bath house and the Bishop of Southwark – apparently).

The Bishop said that his Oyster travelcard records show that he used public transport from central London to his home in south Streatham, a trip which he insisted would be difficult to undertake while drunk. “I really do defy anyone who’s had too much to drink to make that journey,” he said.

I just had to laugh. Not just laugh, but bloody guffaw. Negotiate London Transport – drunk? Make the journey to Zone 3 – drunk? I defy anyone who’s been on the Underground after 1o on a weekday and after 8 on a weekend to question the fact that millions of drunken journeys are taken on public transport every year. I’ve contribulated to that statistic myself.

kitty diet update

For those of you curious about our attempts to slim down our fat cats, we have a kitty diet update. It’s not going well.

ViL: The cats are fighting
Me: They’re probably hungry
ViL: Have you fed them again?
Me: Not since this morning.
ViL: Do you think that’s enough?
Me: Probably not, but they’re supposed to be on a diet.

Well, we’ve tried to have our cats on a kitty diet, but I don’t think it’s working out too well. They look hungry, they look sad, and they are begging for snacks. And we are very weak.

We bought two big bags of “light” or “senior” cat food as the first step in our kitty diet. The first bag we served up was French and appeared to have a high proportion of hay. During the Bible reading of the carol service we attended on Sunday we heard “and the lion shall eat straw like the oxen”. I thought of our poor little lions at home eating French hay.

Trouble was, the kitty cats actually liked the French hay and I think they worked on us separately to get us to refill their bowl more frequently. “Miaow, miaow feed me,” they said. And we would. Or we’d say “Aww, it’s Christmas – let’s give them a little more.” We were not very consistent. We were bad pet owners.

But they’ve eaten all the French hay now and they’re on to English diet cat food. I thought that England was a nation of animal lovers, but I guess the traditionally shoddy approach to English food has overridden that natural love and the poor kitties don’t find their new food quite so tasty. In fact, they’ve eaten a lot less of the English food and begged for more human treats since we opened the new bag. This isn’t the end of the world – because the really fat cat, the one who actually needs to lose weight – isn’t allowed to eat human food because she has a whole series of weird food allergies that cause her to itch and scratch until she literally bleeds. So even though I do love to see cats dance on their hind legs for treats – it’s not really worth having a disgusting scabby cat as the price.