Actually the blind assassin is a misnomer. The assassin was not blind but blinded his prey.
Here is the beautiful Rocket puppy photographed by our friend Henrietta, relaxing after attending a hectic party. Rocket - not Henrietta. The party left a treasure trove of toys which he dutifully removed from the re-cycling box in the kitchen. He chases a beer can around the floor, eats a champagne cork, noisily destroys nine paper napkins then - silence. A soft whimpering reveals an empty cream pot well and truly stuck on the end of his nose. Ha! But all such frivolities have come to a temporary end. The next evening, cornered by the ever playful Rocket, Pocket the cat strikes out with his paw - all claws extended like a canteen of knives and blinds Rocket in the eye. The vet doubts he can save the eye and instead has sewn it up and we must wait another week to see if it is saved. It is unlikely the vet tells us again. We are heartbroken but after a week in his lampshade collar which is driving all of us mad, he continues to be the lovely mischievous puppy he always was. He is now a wabi -sabi dog. Wabi -sabi is the Japanese world view centred on the acceptance of imperfection. An aesthetic that is sometimes described as one of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete,
I asked the blind assassin Pocket (above)for his bon mot and he said " All your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched," I said that was very profound for a blind assassin and he admitted that Seneca had said that. He was merely repeating it. I said I hoped he was feeling wretched.
And Pixie's interesting fact is that it doesn't half hurt when Rocket bashes you with his lampshade collar that he has to wear to stop him scratching it.
From behind, with the big lampshade thing round his neck, he looks like a little robot hoover as his head skims along the ground. As a consequence Pocket the cat is now scared of him. Ha! And next door's hens are all looking very worried.
Pixie's other interesting fact for this month's blog post is "and thus the heart will break, yet broken live on." I said is that really a fact? And are you allowed two interesting facts? You'll be writing the whole blog post next. And she said alright - it was Lord Byron said that and that perhaps he'd be better at writing the blog post. And I agreed and said he'd more than likely begin it with "there is rapture in the lonely shore - I love not Man less, but Nature more.. rather than talk about blind assassins which anyway is the title of a marvellous book by Margaret Atwood.
So the nights are getting colder and there is rapture in the lonely shore and it will soon be the end of the dahlias but with a bit of careful mulching they'll be back again next year.
The horses - by Edwin Muir
Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.
