The Cat who was also a Jinn

Here is a seasonal story for children (of all ages!) Please feel free to print it and read it to your kids/grandchildren.

Once there was a woman who had a cat whom she dearly loved. She had fur as white as fresh cream and as soft as silk, on her long, slim legs and on her neck and belly. Her head and back were grey and tan, and her eyes were as green as spring grass.

One night the woman woke and felt Belle (because that was the cat’s name) lying on the duvet behind her knees. She felt Belle sit up.

‘Rosie,’ the cat whispered, ‘the sun is rising. Can you feed me and let me out?’

‘It’s dark and I’m still tired,’ the woman groaned. ‘Lie down and go back to sleep.’

‘If you let me out, I’ll grant you a wish,’ Belle said, because she was really a jinn in disguise.

Rosie no longer felt tired. ‘It’s coming up to Christmas,’ she said, ‘and Wee Billy wants one of the latest phones. We don’t have the money to buy one.’

Belle tensed. ‘I don’t think that’s a very wise wish,’ she said. ‘You know that Wee Billy is a spoiled pup who already has a perfectly good phone.’ She languidly stretched out one elegant leg and then drew it slowly back. ‘It’s not the number of electronic gadgets you have that’s important. It’s the use you make of them; In my opinion a good book would be better but, if a phone is what you want, massage my head and you will have your wish.’

So, Rosie massaged the top of Belle’s head, and behind her ears and the front of her neck, until the cat suddenly jumped off the bed. Rosie eased herself out from between the sheets so as not to wake her husband, and slipped her feet into her slippers. Belle tripped lightly down the stairs and into the kitchen where she sat, looked up at the woman and licked her lips. Rosie took a tray of rabbit and chicken terrine from the cupboard, opened it, knifed it on to a plate and set it on the floor beside Belle. The cat ate what she liked, pushing the rest to the edge of the plate, then walked towards the back door. When Rosie opened it, she stood sniffing the cold December air, her green eyes checking for signs of life in the winter-stripped garden, until she was satisfied it was safe to venture out. Rosie closed the door on the grey light of dawn and went back upstairs. Her husband put his arm around her and they were soon asleep.

She was setting the table for breakfast when she heard a cry outside the back door and opened it. Belle came in with something in her mouth and dropped it at Rosie’s feet. The woman picked it up and knew immediately that she had in her hands the most up-to-date mobile phone in the whole wide world.

Rosie hid the phone in the cubby hole under the stairs. It was ten days before Christmas and, as well as doing her ordinary work, she had cards to write, presents to buy and shopping to do for extra and luxury food.

Night after night, Belle watched Wee Billy tweeting his friends when he came back from school and then, after dinner, leaving the house. She jumped on to the low table beside the sitting room window, and from there slipped behind the curtains. Through her spring green eyes, in the light of the street lamps and that leaking from houses, the fish and chip shop and the supermarket, she saw Wee Billy walk towards a group of men and boys who stood waving flags. They straddled the street preventing traffic from passing down it. When the police came they attacked them, and they attacked any stranger who came within range. The uproar continued until midnight, and then Billy came home.

Five days before Christmas, while her husband watched videos on his computer and Wee Billy rioted, Rosie switched on her favourite hospital drama, then sat on the sofa to gaze at the forty-two inch screen. Belle immediately jumped on her knee, sitting upright and holding her head back so that Rosie could stroke her silky neck before she curled up on the warm lap and closed her eyes. Rosie, exhausted, soon fell asleep but woke suddenly when her body started to tilt to one side.

‘I wish. I wish,’ she found herself saying, ‘that someone would do the rest of the Christmas shopping for me.’

‘Massage my head and bring me a saucer of milk,’ Belle whispered, ‘and you will have your wish.’

So Rosie began to massage the cat’s head and, as she did so, Belle said, ‘I’ve been watching Wee Billy going out to riot once he has finished his dinner. Why don’t you ask him to help you?’

‘That’s not possible,’ the woman replied firmly.

‘Oh!’ the cat said. ‘I just thought I’d ask. What you are asking me to do is not easy, but tell me what you need,’

‘Six tins of sweets, three tins of chocolate biscuits,’ the woman began.

The cat looked at her steadily, pupils widening from a thin dark slit to a round black hole, as she continued her list. ‘Do all humans revert to their childhood at Christmas?’ she asked.

‘Women don’t,’ Rosie protested indignantly. ‘For us Christmas is a time of great responsibily. We have to make sure our family gets everything the neighbours get, what the whole country has come to expect.’

‘Then bring me the milk,’ Belle said, ‘and I’ll be off.’

When she had lapped as much milk as she wanted, Belle crossed the room to the window, sprang from the low table on to the sill and, when Rosie drew back the curtains and opened the window, she disappeared into the night.

She had not returned the next morning when the man and woman went to work and Billy to school, and she was still missing when they sat down to eat their dinner.

‘Looks like she’s been run over by a car, or poisoned,’ the man said.

‘It’ll be a very sad Christmas without her,’ the woman said, and her already red eyes filled with fresh tears.

Billy put down his knife and fork, blew his nose and said nothing.

Then the door bell rang.

‘I’ll go,’ the man said.

Through the open kitchen door Rosie and Billy heard voices. Suddenly Billy jumped up. ‘Heck! It’s my Biology teacher,’ he cried. ‘I’m away out of here.’

His father came into the kitchen, his arms full of tins of sweets which he left on the table. A young woman followed him carrying in both hands plastic carrier bags which she too left on the table.

‘Your Christmas shopping,’ she said, but before Rosie could thank her, she had gone, only to return with a large cardboard box which she left on the floor. ‘Back in a minute,’ she said. ‘Just a few more bags.’

‘You’ll have a cup of tea,’ Rosie invited.

‘Sorry, I can’t stay,’ the teacher told her. ‘My kids are in a nativity play and we have to get ready.’

When he was sure she had gone, Billy came out of his bedroom. On the landing, sitting on the carpet over a warm pipe was Belle, their cat. He bent down and stroked her head. ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ he said tenderly. ‘We all missed you.’

When Rosie went to bed she found Belle already ensconced on the duvet.

‘Billy didn’t go out rioting tonight, Rosie,’ she whispered

‘How I wish it would continue!’

‘That’s the best wish you ever made. Massage my head and your wish will be granted.’

Eating Candles

When I was a child there was a poor man who lived near a bridge not far from the church. People had seen him slip into the church and eat the candles left for supplicants to light and place before a shrine. They decided he must be touched, not quite right in the head; but my grandfather had another possible explanation. The poor bachelor was eating tallow to compensate for a nutritional deficiency. Unable to afford the fattier meat butchers sold in those days, he had found an alternative source of the fatty acids for which he hungered.

Like the candle eater I have been rebalancing my diet, reducing carbohydrate in the form of bread and potato, and allowing animal fat from meat into my cooking. For the occasions when I dine alone I have been buying the cheaper, tastier cuts shunned by most customers – neck and ribs of mutton, pork ribs and belly, burgers and chicken legs. I ask for suet when buying meat to roast and save the fat skimmed from stews or drained from a roasting tin. I don't eat excessive amounts of fat. I suspect my fat consumption is still no higher, and possibly lower than average. I have never owned a deep fat fryer, my consumption of cheese has decreased, and that of fat concealed in cakes, biscuits, ice cream or sweets is confined to weekend meals.

After a breakfast consisting of slices of fried black and white pudding, tomato and one slice of fried wholemeal soda bread, I feel so satisfied I have no urge to eat for more than six hours while experiencing an abundance of energy. This breakfast can fuel hours of activity.

Through eating less refined carbohydrate I can avoid the undesirable effects of high levels of circulating insulin, including the formation of small, dense, atherogenic low density lipoproteins and the resurgence of feelings of hunger not long after a meal. With adequate fatty acids in circulation to fuel muscle movement I don't think I'll have to resort to eating candles.

Fair To fat

Over the past few years I've been trying to explore in this blog our animal instincts and the ways in which they find expression among us, humans. Recently my attention has been focussed  on the most basic instinct of all, feeding. What I have eaten has been influenced, not only by the agricultural and cooking cultures in which I was brought up, and the wider cooking culture as presented by the mass media, but by advice, claiming to be scientific, about the health benefits and hazards of certain foods.

For most of my life I ate what I was told was healthy – plenty of fibre, fruit, vegetables and whole grains. I consumed relatively little red meat and fat (vegetable rather than animal). Yet, nine years ago, to the accompaniment of an increase in weight for which cutting calories and being very active were no antidotes, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, one of the diseases associated with what we call civilisation, and one which is now being included in metabolic syndrome, whose other manifestations are obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and coronary heart disease. Alzheimer's disease is even now referred to as Type 111 diabetes.

I think you will understand that I have good reason to check whether the dietary guidelines, which ever shriller voices and colour-coded products urge me to follow, are based on sound science. Reading all the relevant original research in the fields of anthropology, endocrinology, and medicine is out of the question. What I have found, read and re-read is Gary Taubes' monumental and riveting book, The Diet Delusion. I have also read his more recent and more accessible work, Why We Get Fat. Gary Taubes strikes me as someone who has the ability, the energy and the time to seek out the relevant investigations, and appraise them critically and with as much fairness as is humanly possible.

For decades I have been living inside a mental shield which has deflected fat and especially animal fat. It was with a sense of freedom that I read about studies like the Women's Health Initiative which involved 49 000 women. Of these 20 000, randomly chosen, were put for six years on a diet low in fat and saturated fat, with less meat, more fruit and more wholegrain than the remaining 29 000 women. Over the six years their total fat consumption was reduced by 25%. The diet was found to have no protective effect against heart disease, stroke, breast cancer or colon cancer.

The USA's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's decade long Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial had already shown that heart disease in men was not prevented by eating a diet low in fat and low in saturated fat. In 2001 the Cochrane Collaboration carried out a review of the literature. They found only twenty trials since the 1950s which were carried out sufficiently rigorously to be included, and reported they could find no association between eating less fat and less saturated fat with coronary heart disease.

I'll write more about animal fat in my next post.

Migration 2012

No two years are the same for migrating cuckoos, or so it seems. Last year I wrote about five cuckoos, tagged in England, who wintered in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Two took a westerly route through Spain, the rest headed towards Italy, but all survived the journey south. It was on the return journey to their breeding grounds that three of the five presumably perished. This year two more birds were tagged in England, but only one has reached the Congo basin. One of last year's tagged birds, he roughly retraced his route through Italy and Chad. The other three birds took more westerly flight paths. One made it through Spain as far as Mauritania; another, whose movements were very erratic reached the south of Spain. This year that country endured a torrid summer and there were outbreaks of wild fires. It is thought these may have destroyed the food plants of the caterpillars on which cuckoos depend, and the three birds, now presumed dead, had insufficient resources to fuel their flight.

This year five cuckoos were tagged in Wales. The only female among them became a victim of a predator before she left Britain. Two of the remaining birds have successfully crossed the Sahara. One of these, aborting his first attempt to cross the Mediterranean, had almost reached the coast of Libya when he must have intuited he had not built up sufficient body to allow him to continue his journey. After a round trip of 3000 Km he returned to Northern Italy and spent weeks there before undertaking a successful flight south. A third male bird is still in the Po watershed in Italy, a favoured feeding ground among cuckoos, having spent some time zigzagging over southern Europe. The only individual tagged in Wales, who is currently giving cause for concern, reached Libya before his tag stopped transmitting. All of the birds from Wales headed south-east. One even went as far east as the Balkans.

Five canny, or perhaps just lucky, cuckoos were tagged in Scotland. All five headed south-east (one was detected in Montenegro) and all five crossed the Sahara, although the tag on one has not been transmitting recently.

The overall impression is that 2012 has been a much tougher year for migrating cuckoos. Of the thirteen male birds tagged, there is evidence that only eight are still alive. Perhaps they will find respite in the Congo before starting the long journey north in early 2013.

Before the Velvet Revolution

When he wrote his play, Temptation, in Czechoslovakia, before the Velvet Revolution, Vaclav Havel was inspired by the legend of Doctor Faustus.

Dr Henry Foustka, the central charcacter, is employed by a scientific institute, whose purpose is to detect and counter, in society, and especially among the young, any interest in the supernatural. Although he vehemently denies it to his gossiping colleagues, Foustka is secretly engaged in a private study of hermetic literaure. When Havel’s Mephistopheles figure, Fistula, enters his life he is given an opportunity to become involved in black magic at a practical level. Fistula, a tramp with smelly feet who is unexpectedly articulate, offers himself as a subject for study. In return he expects Foustka to protect him by testifying that he has put himself at the disposal of science.

Vilma is Henry’s girlfriend with whom he has been playing jealousy-arousing games. Fistula hints that she has really been unfaithful, but promises that he will capture the heart of Maggie, a pretty and innocent Institute secretary, at the social that evening. As others dance, he finds in himself an unexpected eloquence, with which he convinces Maggie of the existence of the human spirit, winning her heart as well as her mind before the end of the evening. The consequences for the unhappy Maggie soon become apparent.

This is a play with an involved plot. The Director of the Institute makes advances to Foustka, but what mischief is he scheming? Foustka is repelled by Fistula, yet he makes a pact with him to liberate himself from moral responsibility. His efforts to save his skin involve him in a battle of wits with both Fistula and the Director with whom he has made a different pact. Dr Koterly is a scientist who ingratiates himself with the Director and the latter has a male secretary who repeatedly appears on stage to whisper something in the latter’s ear before exiting.

Temptation is a very entertaining play, but one where the dark side of human nature is uppermost. Suspicion, deceit, jealousy, betrayal and treachery poison the people who appear to work and socialise amiably together, while the pure of heart languish in mental institutions. This is a play about the predicament of a writer in a society where atheism is the official doctrine; but it is more than that, transcending time and place.

Timbuctoo

Africa, Slavery and the British Regency were what John O'Neill Walsh and Robert Adams, the hero of Tahir Shah's first novel had in common. Inspired by a true story, Timbuctoo tells of a young American sailor, shipwrecked off the west coast of Africa. Captured by Moors, he begins a nightmarish journey through the Sahara, enduring privation, brutality, loneliness, terror and temptation. He manages to survive only because he succeeds in keeping alive hope of reaching home and being reunited with his dearly beloved wife, Christina.

When he is eventually redeemed from slavery by the English consul in the Moroccan town of Mogador, he is still unable to return directly to his homeland. England is at war with America, but it is through London he is fated to pass. Picked up, while destitute, by a wealthy Viscount, he is brought before the Royal Committee for Africa to relate his story. It was a time when the interior of the Dark Continent was still unknown. There was an illusion that everything in Timbuctoo was made from gold, and a lust to find the fabled city and exploit its wealth.

As Adams waits for the war between England and America to end, and for a ship to take him home, we are drawn with him deeper and deeper into a Regency London, convincingly depicted in great detail, but not quite the historical city of the time. We meet the rich and powerful with no conception of work, the numerous servants upon whom they rely but who are considered unworthy of notice, the scientific and literary elite represented by Joseph Banks, Lord Byron and Jane Austen, street urchins and ordinary Londoners who earn their living sometimes in very unorthodox ways. We find ourselves inside the doors of some of the grim institutions of the day, Bedlam, the Marshalsea prison, prison ships anchored in the Thames.

Timbuctoo has all the ingredients of a great story: unpredictable events, vivid description, unforgettable characters, humour, mystery. Like Shah's other work, it is rich in symbolism, but its unexpected twists and turns defeat the attempts of the rational mind to decode it. This is a book to be enjoyed while its wisdom is allowed to surface in its own good time.

Tahir Shah decided to publish this book himself, and those of us who looked at his Facebook page could follow the process. There is an electronic edition which costs less than a weekend newspaper. To accompany it there is a very well designed, visually appealing website (timbuctoo.com). The limited edition hardback, recently published, is unlike anything produced by conventional publishers for a couple of centuries. It weighs 2Kg, is made of top quality paper, has marbled endpapers, a silk bookmark and six maps each of which was folded by hand. This is a book which, not only has as its themes Love and Endurance, but was itself created through Love and Endurance.

The Oldest Book in the House

Always read an old book before you start a new one, C S Lewis once advised. About a week ago I found myself going to the shelf where the oldest book in the house stood unnoticed between dustings.


It's the book John Hawkesworth (1715 – 1773), writer and editor, was commissioned by the British Admiralty to write about the first voyage of Captain James Cook in the Endeavour to the South Seas. Given Cook's papers, but also the notebooks of ardent naturalist, Joseph Banks who was also on the voyage, he created an entertaining story told in first person as the commander. Cook returned in 1771, the book was published in 1773 and John Hawkesworth died the same year. He was aged 58, distressed, some would say, by the reception his last book received. Through his accounts of the customs of the people those on board the Endeavour met, he was accused of undermining public morality. Perhaps Cook's assertion that people with minimal material possessions appeared to be as happy as his wealthy compatriots, was also considered subversive.


This is a book that was published before the French Revolution, before the American War of Independence, before the rebellion of the United Irishmen. It comes from an age when sailors were flogged for petty theft and when marines jumped overboard rather than face the anger of fellow soldiers, who felt their honour was sullied by someone who stole a piece of pigskin. It also comes from a time before print was standardised. Capitals are occasionally written with great flourish, where ct occurs, the top of the c is joined by the finest of curves to the tip of the t, but the most striking difference to modern print is the existence of two forms of the letter s. The modern s occurs only in the terminal position in a word. Elsewhere s is denoted by a letter very similar to the modern f. This can be very confusing to someone from the twenty-first century. I was taken aback, when reading a passage about cooking a cuttlefish, until I realised that the organs on its tentacles were suckers.


This book also held surprises unconnected to the voyage of the Endeavour. Inside the leather cover, at the top, were two lines written in firm, male, forward-slanting handwriting. Although it is now barely legible I could read:
At the Halfmoon, Halfmoon Alley, Bishopsgate, London.
I took down my Visitors' London and found Bishopsgate in the East end, but there was no Halfmoon Alley leading from it. John solved the problem when he discovered that Liverpool Street Station now occupies the site where the Halfmoon and Halfmoon Alley once were.


The other surprise was a tiny piece of paper with the name, Thomas Graves, Royal Navy, written in fine Italics on two lines. Thomas Graves, born in Belfast in 1802, entered the navy in 1816. As Lieutenant in Adventure, he travelled to the South American Station before surveying Lough Neagh in 1831 and 1832. By 1836 he was in charge of his own ship undertaking survey work in the Mediterranean. He was a keen naturalist and brought with him someone who shared his passion, Edward Forbes.
In 1853 he was made Superintendent of the Ports of Malta, and it was here he died in 1856, stabbed in the stomach by an aggrieved Maltese boatman whose boat he had ordered to be tied up for fifteen days for having overcharged a passenger. The planks of the boat had dried up making it unseaworthy, and depriving its owner of a means of earning his living.