Photocopying is

rather different these days.
Do you remember those enormous machines which worked very slowly and kept on jamming? There was a machine in the basement of the building I worked in at the university in London. My little "office" was next door to it. I would hear the thumps and bangs and occasional swear words as people tried to get it to work. Sometimes a face would appear around my door and someone would say,
    "Cat, do you know anything about..." or "Cat, can you get the wretched thing to work?"
I would go in and look. It wasn't because I believed I would be any more successful than the person who asked. It was simply because I sympathised. I wanted to give moral support. Once or twice I even managed to pull out a piece of paper which had jammed. 
I knew how to load paper into the machine - and do it the right way up too. If you didn't do that then the machine would sulk. They were temperamental things.
The copying was only in black and white of course. We still thought it was pretty good. It meant I only had to type my first thesis once. Photocopies of the required copies were acceptable - and they hid a mass of correction tape.
All this had to be done page by page from the original document.  You had to get the piece of paper you were copying lined up straight on the screen and close the lid and....hope for the best.
We moved on to photocopiers that could do colour printing. I never had much to do with those. 
Libraries put photocopiers in. Our local library now had three machines. You can scan anything in up to A3 size and print it off.  There were dire warnings about copyright. Sadly people seem to think that copying anything in any amount is acceptable. It isn't but I doubt it will change. 
You can copy at home. You can even print in colour at home. I have never ventured into colour printing at home. The printer attached to this computer chugs along in simple black and white.
But I needed something a bit more than that.
I went off to the big stationery business a few train stops away. I prowled in and lined up behind the people waiting. When it came to my turn I handed over  what I wanted copied.
    "Be about ten minutes. I think. There's still a big job ahead of you," the boy told me.
    "Can you bind it as well?" I asked, "I think the margins are big enough."
    "Sure thing."
Eight minutes later he waved me over again. He passed me over a copy of my recent thesis - the one I never intended to write. It was on better paper than I have  here at home. It was bound in simple comb binding. The front page has the university logo in colour. There is clear plastic cover over the top. It cost me about a fifth of what it once would, if that.
And with it he handed back a USB that had all the information the machine had needed to give me the hard copy.  I really do like modern technology when it means I don't need to carry vast quantities of paper around and feed them slowly into a machine one by one.

Clearing out the shed

is something I am leaving to Brother Cat and his partner unless they find things that need my attention.
    "Cat, there are two boxes there. Can you take a look please? It's stuff that looks as if it might belong to you."
Now I know that there are some things in the shed which belong to me. I thought they were in the small blue trunk. It is always possible of course that things have been shifted around without my knowledge.
I went out to look a little later. No, these things don't belong to me. They belonged to my mother. Why they were out in the shed is a mystery which will never be solved. It means they have been there more than twenty years.
I sort it. A tiny English-French dictionary my mother took on their trip to Europe. Her schoolgirl French was barely up to the task even with the dictionary but the Senior Cat knew none at all. The friends they travelled with believed everyone would speak English.
A couple of handbags - no, not good enough to be passed on. An old set of school pencils, a "rolling ruler", some cloth only fit for throwing out, a small carved box, and a t-shirt still in the packet  all come to light. I don't know who the t-shirt was intended for. It might have fit a child in the junior school. It's fine. The charity shop can have that.
In the other box I come across no less than eleven printed tapestry canvases. Where on earth did my mother get those? Tapestry would never have been her "thing". It would have been much too slow for her. There is some embroidery fabric too...the expensive Irish even  weave sort of linen. It's another mystery. My mother was never an embroiderer, or at least not by hand. She tried some machine embroidery for a while but she was too impatient to really enjoy it.
At the bottom of it all is some knitting yarn.
I had just found that when a friend called in to see the Senior Cat and wish him Happy Birthday. (He turned 97 yesterday.) J....belongs to the same group I belong to. I show her the yarn. 
    "Looks as if it might be okay," she said inspecting one lot closely.
"Might make a prayer shawl. Do you want me to wash it?" 
    "You can have it," I tell her.
I pass it over in the sure knowledge it will get used and pull the rest out.
     "This looks okay too. It just needs washing." 
It's another job I need to do. I'll skein it up and wash it carefully. If it is all right then it will survive washing. Then I can put it back into balls again and.... well, someone will use it.
I just hope they don't find any more yarn out there or, if they do, it doesn't need washing before I can give it to someone for the Replanting Australia project. 
I suppose that at some point today or tomorrow a box of books will be found in the shed...and they will get the blue trunk down from where it sits on top of the old cabinet-dryer that ceased working forty years ago.
Sheds contain unexpected rubbish - and treasures.

Men's sheds

are nothing like those comfortable cosy craft spaces belonging to other humans.
The Senior Cat has a shed. He hasn't been able to use it for the last couple of years. Middle Cat read the Riot Act and told him he was not permitted to use the circular saw several years ago. He meekly agreed. Since then he has done little things but now he feels unsafe.
He has now passed the contents of the shed over to my brother. 
My brother has less space than the Senior Cat. He looked at the shed when he was here in November last year. He came into me looking a little pale.
    "Heck Cat! The mess out there...."
    "I know," I told him, "It's not safe to even venture in."
It isn't quite that bad but it isn't good. The friend from the Senior Cat's church who helps us with two hours of very heavy gardening once a fortnight needed some duct tape yesterday. I knew there was some in the shed.
     "It's in the drawers on the side," the Senior Cat told me.
     "No, it isn't. I thought it was too."
     "I had better come and look."
     "No, just think."
     "Well it is somewhere on the side. He can have a look."
I went back to our friend. We found it in one of the cupboards. His parting words were,
     "It's just as well your brother will be over tonight."
And yes, Brother Cat and his partner arrived last night. They are staying with Middle Cat and they will spend the next three days clearing out the shed - or as much of it as they can in that time. They came to see us before they settled in for the night and discussed how this was to be done.
     "But it might be useful...." the Senior Cat started to say. Brother Cat shook his head. 
      "I don't use slotted screws any more." 
Oh. The Senior Cat slumped.
      "I've got a couple of old golf ball typewriters out there. I picked them up for nothing. I used some of the springs..."
      "They are land fill now..."
      "What?!"
And so it went on.
Brother Cat hugged the Senior Cat before they left - not common these days. They love one another deeply but it seems men of a certain age don't hug one another.
After they had gone to Middle Cat's place the Senior Cat sat there staring into space for a long time. I know he isn't happy about not being able to use the shed and watching so much of it go is going to be even harder.
I went on clearing away the tea things. Then I heard him sigh and mutter,
     "At least  he'll get rid of those rusty old paint tins."
 

"I've been diagnosed as having Alzheimer's"

S.... told me yesterday.
He had been sitting, as he often does, in a chair by his front door. He had given me a wave and  I had stopped briefly to speak to him. I know it had taken all he had to admit this to me. 
S...lives alone. He has never married. He worked for the further education sector but had been retired for about ten years. In that time he has done very little. He reads and he gardens. He goes for solitary walks. Occasionally, very occasionally, he goes out with a nephew who lives on the other side of the city. His sister lives in another state. 
I met him after his very elderly neighbour, now deceased, introduced me. S.... was going into hospital and she thought he needed to know that I was the person who sometimes took her prescriptions to the chemist. He didn't want me to do that. He was fiercely independent.
    "I don't want to be beholden to anyone," he had growled.
    "And if you don't let anyone check on you and you end up on the floor then you will be an even bigger nuisance," I told him. I sensed he was the sort of person who had to be told that. He was. He agreed reluctantly that, if he needed help, I would do the chemist and the milk run.
He asked for help twice. I left prescriptions at the chemist. I later discovered that he had bought a supply of "long-life" milk to see him through his convalescence. 
His neighbours have never been into the house. I have never been into his house or his garden. I simply picked the prescription up out of his letter box. He has never directly said please or thank you but  he did start to talk to me if he happened to be out working in his garden. Three years in a row though he gave me his lavender cuttings with a rough, "You might be able to use those."
And now?
I don't know what he will do. He isn't the sort of man you can ask. He knows I will help if he needs help of the sort I can give. It must have cost an enormous amount for this intensely private man to admit  his problem to me. I certainly couldn't tell him that I had wondered recently whether there wasn't a serious issue there. He had seemed confused and forgetful and he hasn't fully understand the diagnosis of another serious condition.
I wonder what will happen to him. Will he go on staying there to the point where he can't care for himself and the house, which is not in good repair anyway, starts to fall down around him? Will his nephew, a busy man by all accounts, have to try and help? It won't be wanted. 
I know I'll need to go on making contact when he wants it - and that won't be often. How long before he "forgets" who I am?
How do you help someone like him?

The proposed nuclear dump

which has been under discussion in this state was back in the paper this morning. This time there was a picture of some children who "oppose" it.
Now let me explain about the proposed depository - and yes, it is a "depository" and not a "dump". "Depository" suggests something planned and cared for while  "dump" suggest thrown somewhere - at least it does to me. I suspect it does to many others as well. That is why some people see it as so important to use the word "dump".
The depository though is intended for the storage of waste associated with nuclear medicine.
Now nuclear medicine is used to look at, diagnose and treat certain medical issues. It uses tiny amounts of radiation in the process. Yes, there is a (small) risk in that - but the benefits would seem to my non-medically trained self to far outweigh the risks.
And so we have nuclear medicine and we have nuclear waste from nuclear medicine. I know people who would not be alive today if it were not for nuclear medicine.
That nuclear waste has to be stored somewhere. We humans still haven't worked out how to make the waste entirely safe so it has to be stored somewhere considered "safe" - or as safe as possible. Yes? 
Apparently not - at least not if you are a Green. You will oppose it in parliament. You will stir up opposition in the community. You will tell children that there shouldn't be a "dump".
And you will make no attempt to explain the benefits of nuclear medicine and nuclear medical research. If you did that then the children you are so carefully indoctrinating might start to question you.
I read all this in an email from a mother of a twelve year old boy yesterday. The boy has apparently been arguing furiously with her over "the dump". She has tried to tell him what I have just said above. He isn't listening. She is wrong and he is right. His new teacher has told them "all about it".
   "Cat, do you think it is all right for me to talk to the headmaster about this? I do think the kids need to know but they need to know all sides, not just one side."
My response was "absolutely all right". I think it is like a lot of other contentious issues. If those issues are going to be discussed at all then they have to be discussed in a balanced way. If we don't do that then children aren't being taught to think for themselves. They aren't even being really taught to listen.

No driver's licence

does not bother me most of the time. There are however rare occasions on which I did have one. Yesterday was one of those times.
I had to go to a meeting yesterday afternoon. In the late morning someone called me to ask if I would put in an apology. She sounded close to tears.
   "What's happened J....?" I asked.
   "I was closing the kitchen window and I felt something go snap," she told me.
Oh. The last thing J.... needs is an injury to either arm because she uses a mobility aid to walk around. She lives alone too - apart from two cats. There is nobody there to help.
We continued the conversation and came to the conclusion that, despite the pain, she probably had not broken anything. But I still said, "You need to get someone to look at it. Can you get yourself there in a taxi?"
She decided she could but of course that was the point at which I wished I could say, "I'll get someone to call in on the Senior Cat and come and take you there."
I went off to the meeting a bit later - leaving the Senior Cat at the point where he was contemplating his afternoon snooze. It wasn't a particularly pleasant meeting. There was some trouble we could all have done without. Even without that I was concerned.
As soon as I was home I called. No reply. I assumed, rightly it turned out, that she was still at the hospital. Again I thought to myself, "If I had a car I could call the hospital and..."
J....phoned much later. She was home. They had actually wanted to keep her there but there was nobody there to care for the cats. So, heavily dosed with pain killers, she had gone home to care for them.  Again I wished I could drive. I could have gone to care for the cats but J.... lives quite a distance from here. It isn't close to a train line - something I would need to get there without a car.
And where was everyone else? That's the problem. There really isn't anyone apart from a relative by marriage. He is very good to her but he isn't well either. When J...'s husband was alive they had each other but now she is alone she is isolated unless she can drive. Even that is a problem because she has to get her mobility aid in and out of her vehicle and that is not easy.
J... is usually cheerful but yesterday she was close to tears. I couldn't be there for her in the way I wanted to be. It made me want that licence to drive. Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I could!

Birthday presents

are usually books in this household. It makes no difference that the Senior Cat will turn 97 on the 5th of February or that he already has an extensive library. He will get books given to him.
I bought him two. One is called, "Around the world in 80 trees". It is by Jonathon Drori. A friend of his recommended it. I think the Senior Cat will enjoy it in a "dipping in" sort of way. The other is Tom Holland's "Dominion" which he will read slowly but read from beginning to end.
I will need to read these too - so that the Senior Cat has someone to discuss the ideas with. I find myself doing this more and more now.
   "Do not," I tell him, "expect me to read books about conjuring. If you want to talk about those then find someone else."
I am still a much faster reader than the Senior Cat but I am not as fast as I used to be. There isn't quite the same need for speed as there was when I prowled off to law school.
The amount of reading we were given to do in law school far exceeded the amount I had to do in my other university courses.  It was no good just reading the "head notes" - those useful little notes at the top of a case that told you the main points. Some of the younger students tried to get away with that - and they did when the lecturer was not the sort to pounce and ask, "Now what did the judge actually say here..."  The more mature students knew that we really did need to read an know precisely what was said. "Keeping up with the reading" was something you did if you were sensible.
I complained to my first  year tutor that my reading speed had dropped dramatically.
   "And how fast are you reading Cat?" she asked.
I told her. She laughed and said, "That's about three or four times faster than most students - and we know you are taking it in. Many of them aren't yet and some of them never will be fast."
It was the language and the vocabulary of course.  There were members of staff who were not much faster than me and several of the other older students. There were also members of staff who read at three times the speed and managed to retain what they had read.
I mentioned this to the Senior Cat the other day. He was complaining that he had "slowed down". Yes, he has. I told him it didn't matter because he is still reading. He hasn't watched television for years now. I keep meaning to watch programs and so does he but somehow we never get around to it. There is always something we want to read and even need to read.
There is a nicely wrapped birthday parcel sitting next to the Senior Cat's favourite chair. It is from my cousin and his partner. I suspect his partner chose it because he shares the same love of books. It will have been chosen with care. I was quietly told it is another book I will need to read.
But what would a birthday be like without a book?