With four lions to guard me

[sovay]

Last night as soon as I was out of the shower, I made the mistake of sitting down at my computer to make a note about one of the movies I had watched earlier that evening. Autolycus hopped promptly onto my lap and refused to vacate the plentiful towel nest provided thereby. He tucked his paws underneath himself. He purred. He concentrated his weight to make himself immovable. Finally it became clear that I was either going to have to cruelly displace the cat or do something ridiculous, so I did the ridiculous thing and stood up while still hammocking him in the towel. I expected him to spring out, affronted. He was completely cool with it. I felt like some kind of Caravaggian allegory. spatch got exactly one work-safe picture, presented here as contemporary illustration of those twelfth-century cat-slave poems.



I had to carry him over to the couch and hold him on a level with its cushions before he would disembark. He is such a good cat.

Comments

[reconditarmonia]

Our landlord has said no to a cat; he might be persuadable, but we also haven't really projected out the changes to our lifestyle that a cat might entail (less putting of things on surfaces). We both do really want one someday. At the moment, we get visits from the neighbor's cat, which is great; I'd just taken my laptop out to the porch yesterday before my weekly department meeting and she came and fell asleep on my lap. Meant I had to hold the computer in some interesting positions, but worth it!

Was the cut text a reference to "I live in Trafalgar Square"?

[sovay]

I'd just taken my laptop out to the porch yesterday before my weekly department meeting and she came and fell asleep on my lap. Meant I had to hold the computer in some interesting positions, but worth it!

Oh, excellent cat!

(It is true that a household with cats in it is a house with limited horizontal storage space.)

Was the cut text a reference to "I live in Trafalgar Square"?

Yes; it's another one of the lyrics, and a reference also to the fact that I was wearing a towel.

[reconditarmonia]

*facepalm* I just took another look at the post and noticed that you'd listed the music. The version I know is Richard Thompson's off 1000 Years of Popular Music, which was also my first exposure to "When I am laid in earth" from Dido and Aeneas and therefore partly responsible for my opera obsession, to "Blackleg Miner" (I thiiiink I knew his version before Steeleye's?), and to "There is beauty in the bellow of the blast" from The Mikado, and which also contains the best version of "Oops! I Did It Again."

[sovay]

I just took another look at the post and noticed that you'd listed the music.

I tend to take my post titles and cut-text when relevant from my current music, unless the post is a review, in which case they're usually quotes. This tradition evolved over time, but I'm sticking with it.

The version I know is Richard Thompson's off 1000 Years of Popular Music, which was also my first exposure to "When I am laid in earth" from Dido and Aeneas and therefore partly responsible for my opera obsession, to "Blackleg Miner" (I thiiiink I knew his version before Steeleye's?), and to "There is beauty in the bellow of the blast" from The Mikado, and which also contains the best version of "Oops! I Did It Again."

That album was not my introduction to any of the other songs you mention, but it was the first place I heard "I Live in Trafalgar Square," too! And I adore that version of "There is beauty in the bellow of the blast.”

I've been listening over the last few days to YouTube rip of John Foreman's If It Wasn't for the 'Ouses in Between (1966), which I found via the title song and which just this afternoon led me to the discovery that "Married to a Mermaid" is a solid century older than I'd thought. (This delights me.)