I'm not sure if it's normal to find yourself welling up to Dire Straits', 'Walk of Life'. I find Chris Evans on R2 in the mornings is just what I need - but hadn't bargained on this. It might be time for a holiday.
My anxiety about the war was interrupted by something closer to home this week. We're supposedly looking after our neighbours' cat while they're on holiday in the Balkans and I went with the dwarves to their apartment to do our routine feed, water and clean up last week. The dwarves love it there as the family have older boys with exciting toys.
We went in the door and there was an ominous silence. Normally Rainbow, a fluffy and exotic looking feline, is padding about miaowing as we enter. I paced about, calling her name. Filled up the water, shook some food into the bowl, cleaned the litter tray.
No sign.
My mind started to race as I combed the apartment. I wasn't sure cats really come when they're called - but I carried on, looking more frantically under cushions to reveal nothing but the occasional regurgitated fur ball.
The dwarves were unalarmed, happily playing with some transformers. But my imagination had already jumped to phone conversations to Bosnia explaining I'd lost the beloved family feline; to images of finding a cat corpse under a bed or curled, cold, in a corner.
After half an hour I had looked in every nook and it was time for my Arabic class. I dropped the dwarves back home and walked down the road, my mind a mire of misery; my face pink with panic.
After an hour and a half of watching my pretty Arabic teacher Suhair's mouth, open and close, explaining present continuous and future tenses in Arabic, I had to admit my problem. I confessed that nothing had sunk into my head during the class apart from the fact that Arabs sometimes call the wife: 'Al wazirah lildakhaliyya' (the minister of the interior) which I'd found funny enough to remember, even in my panic.
'Aaah' she said, when I explained. 'It sounds like one of those Persian ones! I really love those, but they cost about 2,000 shekels so I can't afford one at the moment.'
Gulp.
She suggested: 'I think you should go around with a bowl of milk, and make some little kissing noises, and say: 'here Bissa, bissa, bissa'. It's how we say 'cat' in Arabic'.
The class came to a close and having received a calm text from the owners in answer to my panicked: 'Help! Missing Rainbow!' that 'she does sometimes like to hide', I decided to pop back into the flat without the dwarves, to have another look.
As I climbed the stairs, I heard a little 'miiiiaaaaaow' from the other side of the door, and opened it to see a fat and healthy looking Rainbow creeping about the hall looking rather pleased with herself.
I think she must have been hiding in a cupboard and laughing at me as ransacked the apartment.
Never work with children or animals. Is that what they say? I will think twice before I agree to look after anyone else's.
But Rainbow at least ensured that my mind was taken off the misery of this war, the same way that when I was about 8, Mum managed to take my mind off the doctor piercing a needle into a fingernail I had jammed in a drawer, by squeezing the other finger so hard, it actually hurt more.
My anxiety about the war was interrupted by something closer to home this week. We're supposedly looking after our neighbours' cat while they're on holiday in the Balkans and I went with the dwarves to their apartment to do our routine feed, water and clean up last week. The dwarves love it there as the family have older boys with exciting toys.
We went in the door and there was an ominous silence. Normally Rainbow, a fluffy and exotic looking feline, is padding about miaowing as we enter. I paced about, calling her name. Filled up the water, shook some food into the bowl, cleaned the litter tray.
No sign.
My mind started to race as I combed the apartment. I wasn't sure cats really come when they're called - but I carried on, looking more frantically under cushions to reveal nothing but the occasional regurgitated fur ball.
The dwarves were unalarmed, happily playing with some transformers. But my imagination had already jumped to phone conversations to Bosnia explaining I'd lost the beloved family feline; to images of finding a cat corpse under a bed or curled, cold, in a corner.
After half an hour I had looked in every nook and it was time for my Arabic class. I dropped the dwarves back home and walked down the road, my mind a mire of misery; my face pink with panic.
After an hour and a half of watching my pretty Arabic teacher Suhair's mouth, open and close, explaining present continuous and future tenses in Arabic, I had to admit my problem. I confessed that nothing had sunk into my head during the class apart from the fact that Arabs sometimes call the wife: 'Al wazirah lildakhaliyya' (the minister of the interior) which I'd found funny enough to remember, even in my panic.
'Aaah' she said, when I explained. 'It sounds like one of those Persian ones! I really love those, but they cost about 2,000 shekels so I can't afford one at the moment.'
Gulp.
She suggested: 'I think you should go around with a bowl of milk, and make some little kissing noises, and say: 'here Bissa, bissa, bissa'. It's how we say 'cat' in Arabic'.
The class came to a close and having received a calm text from the owners in answer to my panicked: 'Help! Missing Rainbow!' that 'she does sometimes like to hide', I decided to pop back into the flat without the dwarves, to have another look.
As I climbed the stairs, I heard a little 'miiiiaaaaaow' from the other side of the door, and opened it to see a fat and healthy looking Rainbow creeping about the hall looking rather pleased with herself.
I think she must have been hiding in a cupboard and laughing at me as ransacked the apartment.
Never work with children or animals. Is that what they say? I will think twice before I agree to look after anyone else's.
But Rainbow at least ensured that my mind was taken off the misery of this war, the same way that when I was about 8, Mum managed to take my mind off the doctor piercing a needle into a fingernail I had jammed in a drawer, by squeezing the other finger so hard, it actually hurt more.
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