Omar's Diary Monday 2nd Feb 15 - gets serious while man servant perfects the Rickman

My cover picture shows me being serious and intellectual - all with very little effort

After my breakfast this morning I heard lady servant say something about going away. I do hope not as I am just getting used to them being around again.

Both of them were around home today apart from a trip into town. I heard man servant say when they got back that he wished lady servant would be a bit more concentrated when she goes shopping. He described that in one shop he was beginning to get a ‘Rickman’. I watched the movie ‘Love Actually’ with them last weekend.  Alan Rickman repeatedly played pained anguish brilliantly while he was waiting for a shop assistant to finish wrapping a present before his wife, played by Emma Thompson, found him at the jewellery counter. Man servant quite often gets a ‘Rickman’ when both of them are trying to get away and he has to wait for lady servant to finally leave the house.  I am sure lady servant does the female equivalent of a ‘Rickman’ when man servant cannot remember where the car keys are.

Lady servant located herself upstairs in the office. After yesterday I thought it best to leave her alone as she had her pen in her mouth and looked to be concentrating.

Man servant was located downstairs at the dining room table. He did look to be struggling for a few minutes. His pen would rush across the page leaving a trail of words. He would read it, draw lines through it and start the process all over again. Eventually he showed signs of pleasure and relief. Presumably it was something to do with the words on the page.

‘Three hundred words’ he exclaimed ‘that should explain why the EU and NATO have not aggressively intervened in Ukraine’.

Apparently in the local paper, Ringwood and Fordingbridge News, someone had taken up most of one page with a letter expressing his disenchantment with the EU. He linked this disenchantment with immigration, economic recessions, bureaucracy and the EU not having a collective military response to Russia.

If you know my man servant, what he calls ‘tabloid’ comments like this really annoy him. He always believes that people should have their opinions and should be free to express them. But he really likes to have seen some thought supporting what they are expressing. I regularly hear:

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought – John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Man servant read his letter out loud to himself. He always does that as a final check on anything he has written and I must say, I found it a bit disconcerting the first time I heard him after I took up residence here. I thought he was bit crackers but I have got used to it now. I still think he is just a bit crackers but that is just my opinion.

I heard him say that even if Ukraine was entitled to collective security through full membership of the EU and NATO that it would be highly unlikely either international body would help defend its territorial integrity aggressively. To make this sort of commitment would seriously increase the risk of a wider and more destructive conflict with Russia.

My domestic contentment was shattered when I saw lady servant get her black holdall out and start to pack it. Damn! If lady servant is going away then it is highly likely that man servant will be going as well. Much relief later in the evening when servants discussed transport for the morning and from that I understood that man servant was not going away. I do not like him as much as lady servant but when there is no one else around to cuddle he will just have to do. You think my snoring is bad?

I do enjoy my comforts and I do not have to put too much thought into them as all of that is taken care of by the servants. It must be time for dinner now……ahhhhhh here it comes……salmon tonight…..a meal perfect for a prince.