Squashed amphibians make me cry. French Shoes, really? I hadn't noticed...

Monday 24^th February.

Every year, usually starting in about March, Callie and I pretend we are Gussie Finknottle and begin our Pleurodelinae Protection Service. We extend this service to other local amphibians too, specifically the Anura. Imagine our surprise, therefore, to find a squashed toad on the Onesacre road this morning? Usually they aren’t about until the weather is much warmer which goes to show exactly how mild the temperature has been over the last few days. I carefully removed it into the long grass where its corpse could become food for some other creature instead of being spread into a patina on the road’s surface by passing cars and no use as food to anything but bacteria.

I lamented its demise to Laura who thought I was being overly sentimental about a witch’s familiar! Good for her. I love it when she tries to drop literary references into the conversation. I explained that this particular Paddock was way too early even to be squashed yet, familiar or not. She thinks I am silly to worry about toads and frogs but she does support my care for the newts. I told her she was being “speciesist” but she just laughed.

Callie loves the idea. I say to her, “Find them newts” and she searches the road head down, nose working away like billy-o until she finds one. Then she does the Weimaraner point until I come and shift it. She only points ones which are still alive, which I think is quite clever, but maybe dead ones smell differently to her. I then carefully pick them up and put them well away from the road. They are mainly common ones and the occasional palmate too. We have never seen a crested in the locality. If we do I will be very excited but I bet the local landowner won’t because, as a protected species, they have to be reported and monitored. Usually they have become beached in the road by the growing cold of night, so when I pick them up they are quite docile and will lie in the palm of my hand until I put them down in the grass.

The smallest one last year was about half the length of my pinkie and the longest stuck out at either side of my palm. OK, my hands aren’t plate sized but this common fellow was huge. One dreadful night in June we had ‘newtmageddon’ and I had to remove ten dead ones from the road. They had all been squashed. I ended up in tears moving them all. Callie must’ve realised I was upset as she let me walk back home with my hand on her head all the way. Something she doesn’t do very often.

All this got me thinking that if the toads are about already, we may get frog spawn and taddies in Muriel and Ken’s pond before too long. Last year they had dozens of frogs leaping about their garden as they escaped their nursery and went off in to the big wide frog world. It is almost worth putting a small pond in my garden to see if we can’t attract some too.

All of this before our early morning swim. I was teased at the pool’s counter by Loll who told Sarah I was in mourning for my Familiar. She didn’t get it so we went into a lengthy explanation about witches, Macbeth, familiar spirits and such. She just said, “I sometimes think you two live on a different planet to the rest of us!” To which I replied, “You’d better keep that quiet or the Tralfamadorian Security Service may come and neutralise you. We can’t have our invasion discovered before it’s begun!”

Her response was, “See what I mean? Completely barking!”

At work I met up with our Research Support Manager this morning. I should have done so ages ago, she tells me. [I didn’t even know there was such a person.] We had a long chat and she had a form she had to fill in about me and some boxes to tick no doubt. Afterward I mentioned it to Felice who said, “Mais, Oui. Naturellement,” and carried on with what she was doing. I thought that may be a bit of a brush off so when I asked if she had been to see this person she told me she hadn’t. This set my radar twitching so I left a message with my supervising tutor who got back to me after lunch. She was of the opinion it was probably merely routine Uni procedure but she’d not heard about the position either. 

She’d get back to me. Am I being paranoid? Are they out to get me?

Laura was at the restaurant tonight so I got on with more embroidery. I am getting to the point where, with my first panel almost completed, I will have to work out what sort of thing I need to make/buy to put it on. There is a South African embroidery woman who gives online lessons in this sort of thing and those lessons actually include a wooden Tudor Style Cabinet but it is thousands of dollars for the whole package.

I have also discovered there are groups of women [why is it never men?] who make specialist boxes from cardboard. They are pretty sturdy affairs and then they get covered in fabric. Sometimes the pieces of the boxes are covered in fabric before they are assembled. I am going to do some further research.

Tuesday Feb 25^th.

OMG. The Frog theme continues. Today “the i” ran a feature about my shoes! I can’t believe it. My lovely French Sole shoes were on display for the hoi-polloi to peruse and maybe even buy too! I was gutted. I love these shoes. I felt really pleased when I discovered them and found that no-one else whom I knew had heard about them. Now they have been splashed over one of the quality national newspapers! I am as sick as a parrot to use moronic footballer speech. How dare they expose my brilliant little secret to the entire world? I was all for putting the three pairs I have into the charity shop but Laura got me to calm down and see reason. She has told me to wait and see if anyone I know comments on them, when I am wearing them next. That seemed a sensible idea so I went back upstairs and changed my wardrobe entirely so I could wear the African Violet type pair to Uni and work today.

At uni, despite doing my utmost to flash my famous footwear to just about everyone [don’t even ask, it is so embarrassing to think about], no one seemed to cotton on that a) I was deliberately trying to draw attention to my shoes or b) they were French Sole shoes!

At XXX & Y I tried a more subtle shoe flashing approach again with nobody at all noticing what I was doing, apart from one guy in the lift [he is in conveyancing, I think] asking me if I had cramp. Again don’t ask what I was doing to elicit this response. I am so ashamed of myself. This was even more embarrassing as he volunteered to massage my foot if it would help and then dropped to one knee to do as well! Luckily no-one else entered the lift between me getting in and out. Phew. He was very gentle with his hands on my foot though…

Laura thought this was hilarious when I got home and explained my day’s experiment had proved her right. Nobody had given a damn that I was wearing shoes covered as part of a fashion feature in a local newspaper. She did shoot down my plane of relief though, by saying, “Of course, we get our papers so early [The Times and The i] maybe no-one else had read today’s edition?” Thanks a bunch you statistical little wizard. I will now have to do all that contortion and pedal display all over again tomorrow and Thursday.

She then asked me the one question which put it all into perspective: “Erm… Why does it matter so much Vic?” 

Right on the button question. Why does it matter? Even if matters; does it matter that it matters? Am I being silly and irrational? The answer to the last couple is a resounding YES.

Wednesday 26^th Feb.

Arrrggghhh! Another squashed toad! I don’t believe it. What have we got living in the pond up there, the North Sheffield Anura Seppuku Division? To be fair it was a fair bit smaller so maybe this was the Juliet Toad out looking for her long lost Romeo Toad. Maybe I am getting silly.

At the pool today I asked Sarah if she’d heard of French Sole shoes. She hadn’t. Laura took that as proof that I was being over the top about them. After swimming we asked Sylvia when we picked up the newspapers. She hadn’t either! Laura was quietly going “Laura Two, Vicky Nil.” I decided I wouldn’t wear any of mine to work today but merely ask every one if they’d heard of them. I was going to claim that I had seen the piece in the paper about French Sole Shoes and wanted to know if they were really any good or not.

I now owe Laura a tenner or a meal out somewhere. She made a bet that fewer than the number of digits on one had would be the number at work who had heard of them. She was right. Nobody had at all! I couldn’t believe it. Not one single woman I asked had heard of French Sole Shoes! I am gobsmacked and out of pocket. Laura said it was a matter of statistical analysis in action. They are quite an unusual shoe brand at the moment, only those who have bought some already are probably likely to know the name. The newspaper article would be glossed over by 50% of the readership anyway (being male) and of the women who read it only a few would be people who cared about brands given the i’s demographic. Coupled with the fact that its circulation is only about 300, 000 out of 60 million, statistically the chances of meeting someone else who had seen the feature are pretty remote.

She actually though Uni might prove more likely as the nature of the i’s readership tended to put them in the better educated, independent minded thinkers – like students at a University, rather than the great unwashed out there. The majority of whom don’t buy the i or any other quality newspaper because they are too dumb to cope with the polysyllabic language and serious concepts espoused in these publications.

She is so mathematical at times. I love it. It I so unlike me and the way my mind works at all. I am much more driven by feelings and emotions; she uses logic, reason and statistics. It is no wonder I love her so much. If only she wouldn’t squeeze the toothpaste tube from middle. That really makes me wonder if she actually does use logic after all.

Once again she was at Dominic’s place tonight and I did some catching up with my notes and e-mails, especially to Australia. I have had quite a few from acquaintances in Oz looking forward to me coming out in the summer and chiding me for not seeing them last year. I had to tell them the truth, there are so many of them and so little time.

I think I may have found a box-making group who meet fairly locally, so I am going to go along to one of their classes to see if what they do may be useful for my cabinet. They meet somewhere near Halifax, which is only a little way up the road(!).

Thursday February 27^th.

Yaay! No squashed toads, frog or any other kind of amphibious life on the road this morning. I am so pleased. I do get upset when I find any. The worst is finding rabbits. That makes me cry. I know it is completely stupid because I am one of those heartless bastards who takes her dog out shooting and will kill and eat rabbits and pheasants and the like; yet to see one run over seems such a stupid waste. [I don’t think I’m a heartless bastard, BTW, I think I am doing my bit for the survival of the fittest and also anything I shoot and eat has been living a happy normal free life until I bag it for the pot, unlike all those farmed chickens and pigs and cattle whose whole life id destined for the plate. At least Peter Rabbit has a chance I will miss and he can go on raiding Mr Gregor’s garden to his heart’s content until next time.

After swimming and breakfast we decided I would ask as many people at Uni about French Sole shoes. I would keep a tally of gender, approximate age, Undergrad or graduate or employee. Laura was going to do the same and use it as a piece of analysis to work out the actual benefit of a piece like the article to the company who manufactures my shoes. She is thinking of sending the results off to the company.

Laura Thomas’ research data: Thurdsay 27^th Feb 2014 collected between 0900 and 1600hrs.  Total number questioned 326; m 116, f 210. Students 268; ug 197, g 71. Staff 58; m 18, f40.

Knew what French Sole was; 54. Knew what French sole was and had seen the article; 29.

Breakdown 54 = 47 f, 7m. 31 ug, 18 g, 5 staff.

31 ug = 29 f, 2m.  18g = 14f, 4m. 5 Staff = 4f, 1m.

My data: Same dates roughly the same time frame. Total questioned 62; m 8, f 54. Students 33; ug 23, g10. Staff 21; m 6, f 15.

Knew what French Sole was; 21. Knew what French Sole was and had seen the article: 13.

Breakdown; 21 = 20f, 1m. 6ug, 3g, 12 Staff.

The only male was a Staff member.

She is going to get busy with this and a lot more details I haven’t included to come up with a correlation between our establishment and other, similar, places and arrive at a conclusion. It does my head in just to look at the numbers! I think I have copied them down correctly. If not, the fault is in the transcribing of them; not in the statistics I have been copying from. I can sort of see why a little exercise like this can suddenly grow to something totally huge and I think I understand the buzz Laura gets from playing with all those numbers.

I asked if she thought the road deaths on the lane would be as interesting but she said there weren’t enough variables to make the figures dance. Mmmm….

Once again she was at the restaurant tonight. I did not work but sat and read Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the city” again. I have been selected as a world book night giver and this will be the book I am giving away. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the tale in advance of April 23^rd. I discovered, on line, there was a TV serialisation of the book. It is available on DVD. I may have to have a swift visit to Amazon once I have re-read it.