Niffy's Day Out

Well, I'm sure that you've all been wondering what's been going on with NIffy since last week. Truth be told, so have we - he was nowhere to be seen for a few days, and we were beginning to get worried. Turns out he was in the tumble dryer. It wasn't switched on, you understand, and even if it was it wouldn't have mattered, cos it's broken - but Niffy says he'd been out one night and got a bit moist in the rain, so he'd grabbed half a dozen bags of cat treats and a carton of milk, and climbed in there to get dry. "After all", he says, "it claims to be a dryer". And, to be fair, he did get dry in there. He just hadn't expected it to take five days...

After his little ordeal, he decided to accompany me on a trip across to the Yorkshire coast for a meeting. I'd told him we'd be going by way of Guisborough and Fylingdales, which seemed to excite him. He reckons I promised that he'd see some cows (Niffy likes cows, they do milk). I tried to tell him that I didn't mean those kind of moo-ers, but he woudn't listen.

We had a lovely time in Scarborough (well, near Scarborough really, but you know...) - I went and had my meeting, which involved eating a lovely lunch and talking with lovely people, while Niffy went off for a prowl. (It was a walk really, but Niffy reckons he sounds a bit more magnificent if I say it was a prowl). He went round to the church nearby to have a look at the work that was going on. He says there was a big trench right across the path, and it was all blocked off. There were cones sticking up from the trench, so Niffy reckons they've been burying witches. He did also say, that as they have a holey path, perhaps they could make it into a bit of a shrine and get pilgrims to come. Then they could sell indulgences to the pilgrims to pay for the works. No flies on our Niffy!

On the way home, we went past Whitby. Niffy was very excited about that because he was good friends with a cat called Whitby - until Whitby decided to move to Oxford and insisted they made his human the bishop - and he wanted to see his friend's namesake. Even if it was a town. Niffy was going on and on about having a fish from Whitby, but I said there wasn't time, and anyway there was salmon waiting at home. Niffy was very keen on that idea, and agreed that we should bypass Whitby and get back home for the salmon. (I didn't tell him it was paste!)