(Well, not technically, as she was spayed long ago.)
SCULLY: Ah, about time. Excuse me...
HUMAN: Hello, Scully.
SCULLY: Excuse me, waiter!
HUMAN: Hello, sweetheart. Did you miss me?
SCULLY: What? No. Listen, I was served my starter --
HUMAN: Aren't you good? Patient little cat.
SCULLY: Yes, quite. Listen, I was served my starter at 6:30 this morning, and I'm still waiting for my main.
[HUMAN makes strange kissing clucking noises.]
SCULLY: Stop that. And well, I can't help noticing that it's 5:30pm now.
HUMAN: You're noisy today, aren't you?
SCULLY: I have to warn you, I don't consider this adequate service.
HUMAN: Chatty little cat.
SCULLY: If you take this attitude I shall be forced to complain to the management in the strongest possible terms...
HUMAN: Isn't she a chatty little catling?
SCULLY: ...just as soon as she gets home.
[HUMAN starts on the clucking noises again.]
SCULLY: God, the staff they take on in these places.
[SCULLY stalks off in annoyance, leaving HUMAN bewildered.]
Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts
07 January 2009
25 November 2007
But Scully's the Sceptic...
Last night, while B. and I were playing a board game, our cat Scully leapt suddenly and violently out of her basket, looking terrified. We assumed she'd had a nightmare (we're fairly sure that both cats experience something like dreaming, although at what level it's difficult to tell), but she spent the rest of the evening very unhappy.
This morning she was still spooked, refusing to be stroked, cowering when she walked and hiding behind things. She's started calming down a bit now (and a phone call to the vet established that there's probably nothing physically wrong), but she's still quite nervous.
This spontaneous reaction of terror to something non-existent sounds a lot like the behaviour of animals which pet-owners describe when they suspect their houses are haunted. I'm not a believer in ghosts (see footnote [1] for a more nuanced statement about this), and we've lived here for over three years without encountering anything else out of the ordinary. In any case, Mulder remains completely at ease. Which makes me suspect what these owners are describing is, in fact, an unusual but mundane cat behaviour.
What's odd -- and might well strike a cat-owner as evidence of something quite out of the ordinary -- is that it's so out of character. Scully doesn't get this upset when something traumatic has actually happened, like going to the vet's. She's normally self-confident, vocal and demanding of attention to an extent that borders on the tyrannical. Whatever it was the poor love thinks happened, it must have been terribly distressing.
[1] When I say I don't believe in ghosts, I'm not professing a strong disbelief in them. I do disbelieve, on theological as well as common-sense grounds, that spirits of the dead wander the Earth seeking closure with their children or hiding other people's socks, but I'm open to the idea that some of the phenomena which have been labelled as ghosts have an objective existence.
They may be as-yet-unrealised products of known scientific laws, or result from causes science has yet to categorise. There's an outside chance they may be symptoms of a large-scale seam of irrationality in the universe which science as currently constituted wouldn't be equipped to cover. However, Occam's Razor means I'm hardly going to adduce as-yet-unknown phenomena to explain something which, however unexpected, is explicable by a known and loved cat suddenly going a bit dappy.
This morning she was still spooked, refusing to be stroked, cowering when she walked and hiding behind things. She's started calming down a bit now (and a phone call to the vet established that there's probably nothing physically wrong), but she's still quite nervous.
This spontaneous reaction of terror to something non-existent sounds a lot like the behaviour of animals which pet-owners describe when they suspect their houses are haunted. I'm not a believer in ghosts (see footnote [1] for a more nuanced statement about this), and we've lived here for over three years without encountering anything else out of the ordinary. In any case, Mulder remains completely at ease. Which makes me suspect what these owners are describing is, in fact, an unusual but mundane cat behaviour.
What's odd -- and might well strike a cat-owner as evidence of something quite out of the ordinary -- is that it's so out of character. Scully doesn't get this upset when something traumatic has actually happened, like going to the vet's. She's normally self-confident, vocal and demanding of attention to an extent that borders on the tyrannical. Whatever it was the poor love thinks happened, it must have been terribly distressing.
[1] When I say I don't believe in ghosts, I'm not professing a strong disbelief in them. I do disbelieve, on theological as well as common-sense grounds, that spirits of the dead wander the Earth seeking closure with their children or hiding other people's socks, but I'm open to the idea that some of the phenomena which have been labelled as ghosts have an objective existence.
They may be as-yet-unrealised products of known scientific laws, or result from causes science has yet to categorise. There's an outside chance they may be symptoms of a large-scale seam of irrationality in the universe which science as currently constituted wouldn't be equipped to cover. However, Occam's Razor means I'm hardly going to adduce as-yet-unknown phenomena to explain something which, however unexpected, is explicable by a known and loved cat suddenly going a bit dappy.
14 August 2007
Largely Random Observations
Or, What I'd Be Blogging About If Only I Had The Time
1. I must stop mentioning the weather in my Surefish column. When this month's number goes live it's going to start "Gosh, isn't it marvellous that summer's finally started after all that miserable rain we were having earlier?" Aargh.
2. B. and I have been married for eight years as of today. Hurrah for us! Eight years is Sodium, if I recall correctly.
3. Thanks to the aforementioned balmy summer weather, I spent today wandering about the office in:
4. Trisyllabic words that should rhyme but don't: "kilobyte" and "trilobite".
5. When I was growing up in Worthing, my parents had a lean-to shed which they referred to -- in an act of 70s middle-class pretension which Margo Leadbeatter would have baulked at -- as "our loggia". It was only when I read A Room with a View that I realised that what I'd always heard as "losure" was an Italian word, rather than being short for "enclosure".
6. Heroes is -- so far, at least, which from our point of view synchronises with BBC3's advance showings but not with The Sci-Fi Channel -- pretty great.
7. Cryptic crosswords are surprisingly difficult, though. I've been making a vague effort to start doing them regularly, given that sources as diverse as B.'s granny and Toby off The West Wing inform me that they keep your brain supple well into old age. I'm finding the bastards almost impossible, though, suggesting that I've already descended too far into senility for any non-miraculous intervention to be effective. Oh well.
8. I can't work out quite why anyone would want to visit Ashton Court for the Bristol Balloon Fiesta, given that there are better places across Bristol's multiple hills for watching the launches and flights. On Saturday our preferred vantage point (and that of around 2,000 other people, most of them under the age of six) was up the cliffs near Clifton Observatory, where the balloons pass pretty much overhead. (Sometimes they dip right down into the Avon Gorge first, which apparently is Just Showing Off.) It seems particularly perverse to drive to Ashton Court just as some godblighted football match is finishing at Ashton Gate Stadium, which is what the entire population of Southern England bar those 2,000 were doing an hour or so before the launch.
9. The other day I read an ancient Dilbert strip which included the words "Now I have to hug this guy so it won't seem awkward." Five minutes later I had "Purple Haze" going through my head.
10. After nearly nine years of very occasionally killing mice or other small vertebrates, then sitting and watching the corpses in the forlorn hope that they'll start moving again, Mulder has finally worked out what being a predator is actually about. Or so the mouse B. found on the living-room floor last Wednesday would suggest... if it had any front half left to squeak the news with.
1. I must stop mentioning the weather in my Surefish column. When this month's number goes live it's going to start "Gosh, isn't it marvellous that summer's finally started after all that miserable rain we were having earlier?" Aargh.
2. B. and I have been married for eight years as of today. Hurrah for us! Eight years is Sodium, if I recall correctly.
3. Thanks to the aforementioned balmy summer weather, I spent today wandering about the office in:
- wet trousers.
- a wet shirt.
- a wet tie.
- wet underpants.
- no shoes, because they were wet.
- dry socks, because I keep a pair at work.
4. Trisyllabic words that should rhyme but don't: "kilobyte" and "trilobite".
5. When I was growing up in Worthing, my parents had a lean-to shed which they referred to -- in an act of 70s middle-class pretension which Margo Leadbeatter would have baulked at -- as "our loggia". It was only when I read A Room with a View that I realised that what I'd always heard as "losure" was an Italian word, rather than being short for "enclosure".
6. Heroes is -- so far, at least, which from our point of view synchronises with BBC3's advance showings but not with The Sci-Fi Channel -- pretty great.
7. Cryptic crosswords are surprisingly difficult, though. I've been making a vague effort to start doing them regularly, given that sources as diverse as B.'s granny and Toby off The West Wing inform me that they keep your brain supple well into old age. I'm finding the bastards almost impossible, though, suggesting that I've already descended too far into senility for any non-miraculous intervention to be effective. Oh well.
8. I can't work out quite why anyone would want to visit Ashton Court for the Bristol Balloon Fiesta, given that there are better places across Bristol's multiple hills for watching the launches and flights. On Saturday our preferred vantage point (and that of around 2,000 other people, most of them under the age of six) was up the cliffs near Clifton Observatory, where the balloons pass pretty much overhead. (Sometimes they dip right down into the Avon Gorge first, which apparently is Just Showing Off.) It seems particularly perverse to drive to Ashton Court just as some godblighted football match is finishing at Ashton Gate Stadium, which is what the entire population of Southern England bar those 2,000 were doing an hour or so before the launch.
9. The other day I read an ancient Dilbert strip which included the words "Now I have to hug this guy so it won't seem awkward." Five minutes later I had "Purple Haze" going through my head.
10. After nearly nine years of very occasionally killing mice or other small vertebrates, then sitting and watching the corpses in the forlorn hope that they'll start moving again, Mulder has finally worked out what being a predator is actually about. Or so the mouse B. found on the living-room floor last Wednesday would suggest... if it had any front half left to squeak the news with.
09 July 2007
Because You Can Never Have Too Many Blog Posts About Cats
Since I last updated this blog, I've spent a day at my work's annual staff conference, disposed of the first mouse Mulder's brought down during the three years since we moved to this house, written another (as yet unpublished) column for Surefish, and taken both cats to the vet for their annual checkup and booster vaccines.
(The mouse was dead. I don't like handling dead mice, but I like it a lot less when they turn out not to be dead after all. So that was something of a relief. We're probably going to have to find a bell for Mulder's collar, though.)
Sunday I divided between car travel, attending a barbecue and being a bed for kittens. The kittens have recently been adopted by the little sister-in-law and her chap, and look like this:
I shouldn't be remotely surprised if more such photos arrived on Flickr soon.
The rest of the week I'm taking off work, and pretty much everything else. I intend to spend the majority of it sleeping, reading and watching TV. However, I may also update this blog further, once I've finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I may even finally get round to uploading those pictures of gorillas. And more of the kittens, I shouldn't wonder.
(The mouse was dead. I don't like handling dead mice, but I like it a lot less when they turn out not to be dead after all. So that was something of a relief. We're probably going to have to find a bell for Mulder's collar, though.)
Sunday I divided between car travel, attending a barbecue and being a bed for kittens. The kittens have recently been adopted by the little sister-in-law and her chap, and look like this:
I shouldn't be remotely surprised if more such photos arrived on Flickr soon.
The rest of the week I'm taking off work, and pretty much everything else. I intend to spend the majority of it sleeping, reading and watching TV. However, I may also update this blog further, once I've finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I may even finally get round to uploading those pictures of gorillas. And more of the kittens, I shouldn't wonder.
22 June 2007
Penguinage
I'm still catching up with the Bristol Zoo photos, including these splendid penguins:
Most of these are African penguins, but there are also some little blue penguins, as mentioned in Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine's Last Chance to See.
We also offer some blurry pseudo-underwater photos of seals...
...plus yet more of my cats.
The baby gorilla's next, I promise. Full Bristol Zoo set here.
(Meanwhile I've changed my profile photo back to the well-worn previous one, at conjugal request. If you particularly enjoyed the inverse goatee, you can still admire it here.)
Most of these are African penguins, but there are also some little blue penguins, as mentioned in Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine's Last Chance to See.
We also offer some blurry pseudo-underwater photos of seals...
...plus yet more of my cats.
The baby gorilla's next, I promise. Full Bristol Zoo set here.
(Meanwhile I've changed my profile photo back to the well-worn previous one, at conjugal request. If you particularly enjoyed the inverse goatee, you can still admire it here.)
28 May 2007
You Can't Leave That Lyin' There
B. and I visited Bristol Zoo on Saturday, for the first time in a while. Apart from anything else I'd been neglecting my parental duties towards the two-toed sloth whom goddaughter E. adopted for me back on my birthday. We also knew that one of the Zoo's female gorillas had a baby back in December, and thought that May would be a good time to see it.
I have lots of photos of various animals, but they're taking an age to upload, and I really want to spend some of today doing other things. The baby gorilla photos will have to wait till later, as will the baby prairie dogs, moorhen chicks and various less cute adult animals. (None of the sloth, though.)
For now you'll have to content yourself with photos of the shy sand cat,
the elusive red panda,
the stately lioness,
and the noble capybara.
Full set here, with more to follow later.
I have lots of photos of various animals, but they're taking an age to upload, and I really want to spend some of today doing other things. The baby gorilla photos will have to wait till later, as will the baby prairie dogs, moorhen chicks and various less cute adult animals. (None of the sloth, though.)
For now you'll have to content yourself with photos of the shy sand cat,
the elusive red panda,
the stately lioness,
and the noble capybara.
Full set here, with more to follow later.
14 March 2007
Photo Tropism
I mentioned ages ago that my admirable and generous parents had given me a spanking new digital camera for a combined birthday and Christmas present. It's only now, having sped my computer up appreciably by changing my antivirus software, that it's been practical for me to install the software to run the thing, and to actually do stuff with the photos I took in December.
Behold, therefore, my Flickr account. It's not very full as yet, but I have lots of plans for things I want to take photos of in Bristol, next month when it's sunnier and I've less pressing calls on my time.
The bits of reality which I'm really interested in capturing visually are the places where urban spaces go non-linear -- the gaps between the infrastructure, the weird architectural interfaces between radically different styles of construction, sites of sweeping vertical or historical disparity.
Blimey, hark at me. This is why I want to take photos, though, as the sensation these places give me isn't something that's easy to put into words (although Of the City of the Saved... made a stab at it). The shockingly inept photos I took of Manchester using B.'s camera last June should give you some idea of what I'm aiming at conceptually [1].
Horsham in December isn't really the best place in England to observe this kind of stuff, but I rather like this one, taken on my Dad's birthday:
I've monochromed it because I tend to think buildings look better that way, unless the colours themselves are the interesting aspect.
I've already identified three cardinal rules:
1. Busier is not better.
2. Wait for the people to get the hell out of the way.
3. And the cars.
Given that I'm a blogger, another vital motivation is of course to take photos of my cats and inflict them on the world. Aaah.
1. Edit to add: They also look so much better now, after I've run them through the software that came with the new camera. These ones look better in colour than in monochrome, if only because the light is so bleached. The third one in particular I'd be rather pleased with if only I could get rid of my bloody finger.
Behold, therefore, my Flickr account. It's not very full as yet, but I have lots of plans for things I want to take photos of in Bristol, next month when it's sunnier and I've less pressing calls on my time.
The bits of reality which I'm really interested in capturing visually are the places where urban spaces go non-linear -- the gaps between the infrastructure, the weird architectural interfaces between radically different styles of construction, sites of sweeping vertical or historical disparity.
Blimey, hark at me. This is why I want to take photos, though, as the sensation these places give me isn't something that's easy to put into words (although Of the City of the Saved... made a stab at it). The shockingly inept photos I took of Manchester using B.'s camera last June should give you some idea of what I'm aiming at conceptually [1].
Horsham in December isn't really the best place in England to observe this kind of stuff, but I rather like this one, taken on my Dad's birthday:
I've monochromed it because I tend to think buildings look better that way, unless the colours themselves are the interesting aspect.
I've already identified three cardinal rules:
1. Busier is not better.
2. Wait for the people to get the hell out of the way.
3. And the cars.
Given that I'm a blogger, another vital motivation is of course to take photos of my cats and inflict them on the world. Aaah.
1. Edit to add: They also look so much better now, after I've run them through the software that came with the new camera. These ones look better in colour than in monochrome, if only because the light is so bleached. The third one in particular I'd be rather pleased with if only I could get rid of my bloody finger.
24 January 2007
Not Chuffed
I can't say I approve of the recent protest by my fellow commuters in Bristol and Bath against First Great Western. Apart from anything else, making sure that your consumer action group gets as much publicity as possible on the very day it's breaking the law by using a publicly-funded service without paying for it, isn't a terribly impressive way of claiming the moral high ground.
Nonetheless, I am most displeased with F.G.W. For weeks now they've been saving money (and raising those all-important shareholder dividends) by running underequipped and overcrowded train services, charging commuters extortionate prices for the privilege of being crammed into carriages like cattle. (Albeit cattle in suits and ties, who instead of being taken to abbatoirs to be electrically stunned and slaughtered will be spending a day behind a desk in an office, staring at computer screens, mooing and chewing the cud in a perplexed kind of way.)
Yesterday my train to work was so crowded it couldn't physically fit me on board. People were standing all the way up the corridors of both carriages, crammed in around the doors and apparently in the toilet as well. (I didn't even know that the service in question had a toilet, but evidently no expense had been spared. Oh, wait.) Of the half-dozen people waiting at our little branch-line station, four managed to squeeze on board after some shoehorning by the guard, while I and one other were turned away. I had to take the bus to Bristol Temple Meads to get a later train, arrive at work an hour late and forego my lunch hour in order to catch up. Grr.
Petty law-breaking and catchily-named pressure groups aren't the way to go, however. Instead, I urge everbody in the South-West to participate fully in the spirit of the free-market philosophy espoused so fervently by this government and their marginally less liberal predecessors, by refusing to give another penny of your money to F.G.W., and instead granting your custom to one of the many comptetitors of theirs who run trains along the same routes.
...Oh, that's right. You can't, in fact, do either of those. Because while the Government passes out marketarian propaganda with one invisible hand, it's using the other to hand over functional monopolies to companies along with millions of pounds of public money, thus effortlessly combining the worst aspects of a state-run monopoly and a profit-driven private company.
That it then makes pathetic excuses for them, instead of enforcing basic standards of customer care, helps to ensure we don't for a moment mistake its sheer corrupt contempt for the public interest for anything so naïve and charming as incompetence.
[Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are not endorsed by anyone other than me. Even the cats are looking dubious, actually. But honestly. T'ch.]
Nonetheless, I am most displeased with F.G.W. For weeks now they've been saving money (and raising those all-important shareholder dividends) by running underequipped and overcrowded train services, charging commuters extortionate prices for the privilege of being crammed into carriages like cattle. (Albeit cattle in suits and ties, who instead of being taken to abbatoirs to be electrically stunned and slaughtered will be spending a day behind a desk in an office, staring at computer screens, mooing and chewing the cud in a perplexed kind of way.)
Yesterday my train to work was so crowded it couldn't physically fit me on board. People were standing all the way up the corridors of both carriages, crammed in around the doors and apparently in the toilet as well. (I didn't even know that the service in question had a toilet, but evidently no expense had been spared. Oh, wait.) Of the half-dozen people waiting at our little branch-line station, four managed to squeeze on board after some shoehorning by the guard, while I and one other were turned away. I had to take the bus to Bristol Temple Meads to get a later train, arrive at work an hour late and forego my lunch hour in order to catch up. Grr.
Petty law-breaking and catchily-named pressure groups aren't the way to go, however. Instead, I urge everbody in the South-West to participate fully in the spirit of the free-market philosophy espoused so fervently by this government and their marginally less liberal predecessors, by refusing to give another penny of your money to F.G.W., and instead granting your custom to one of the many comptetitors of theirs who run trains along the same routes.
...Oh, that's right. You can't, in fact, do either of those. Because while the Government passes out marketarian propaganda with one invisible hand, it's using the other to hand over functional monopolies to companies along with millions of pounds of public money, thus effortlessly combining the worst aspects of a state-run monopoly and a profit-driven private company.
That it then makes pathetic excuses for them, instead of enforcing basic standards of customer care, helps to ensure we don't for a moment mistake its sheer corrupt contempt for the public interest for anything so naïve and charming as incompetence.
[Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are not endorsed by anyone other than me. Even the cats are looking dubious, actually. But honestly. T'ch.]
05 January 2007
Festivity and Christmas Spirit
Well, my last substantial post here was on 21 December. Since then the final panicked stages of Advent have been followed by Christmas, which -- being technically not over until tomorrow -- has also incorporated New Year.
During this time I've:
I should also mention the generous and exciting gift of a digital camera from my parents, although that happened during our visit before Christmas. I'm currently trying to un-bloat the contents of my hard drive so I can download the software and start transferring actual photos. I'll probably post some here, although I may be required to start a Flickr account at some point soon.
During this time I've:
- Wrapped my Christmas presents and distributed them to various relatives, friends and a wife.
- Had people round for pre-Christmas drinks, with much mulling of wine, cracking of nuts and mincing of pies.
- Spent a lovely Christmas Day here in Bristol, starting with a generous Christmas breakfast and punctuated by a pleasant trip across the city to exchange presents with our goddaughter and family.
- Jointly prepared a vast and decadent Christmas dinner with B., then found that (very likely due to the aftermath of that bout of food poisoning, or just possibly the generous breakfast) we both had insufficient appetite to do justice to it.
- Packed in a hurry then headed to B.'s parents for Boxing Day lunch, followed by four days' stay with said in-laws.
- Received a gratifying number of Christmas presents, including The Prisoner scriptbook volume two from B., The Absolute League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2 from her parents, Revolver and Rubber Soul from her granny, Inferno and Genesis of the Daleks on DVD from her big sister and a Dalek T-shirt from her little sister (plus respective boyfriends).
- Returned to Bristol to unpack, comfort the cats and watch Godzilla (one of my presents to B., the other being King Kong. We both enjoy gigantic monsters tearing cities apart.)
- Picked up my brother and sister-in-law's delayed presents from the post office, including the splendid-looking two-DVD edition of Dune.
- Watched somewhere in the region of seven hours of Doctor Who and its spinoffs, which I may be writing about on Parrinium Mines at some point.
- Spent New Year's Eve in a pub with Bath Festivity and some very nice single malt whiskies to hand.
- Gone back to work, which has admittedly been a rather less celebratory experience.
I should also mention the generous and exciting gift of a digital camera from my parents, although that happened during our visit before Christmas. I'm currently trying to un-bloat the contents of my hard drive so I can download the software and start transferring actual photos. I'll probably post some here, although I may be required to start a Flickr account at some point soon.
25 October 2006
Love Is Blind. It's Also Cupboard.
Blogspot isn't letting me access my account at present, so I'm composing this in Word on Wednesday afternoon. Heaven knows when I'll be allowed to post it...
You’ll be thrilled to know, possibly, that both Collected Works and Time Signature quite definitely exist in book form. I've seen them both in Forbidden Planet, and very pretty they look too. Hopefully my contributors' copies will turn up from Big Finish at some point in the not too distant future.
This past week’s been a tad trying, as B. and (latterly) I have been redecorating our kitchen: papering and painting walls, painting and re-handling cupboards, putting in new shelves and blinds and all kinds of faff and fiddle. The results –- still incomplete though they are –- are looking good. Whereas before the kitchen was coloured
with
cupboards and a big patch of bare
plaster beneath waist level from when we had a damp course put in, now it's like totally
with cupboards that are all
and chrome fittings which are like
. Only more reflective.
(One day you'll be able to set the reflectiveness of your computer screen to any level you want. We'll have to think of a new word for mirror websites.)
As I've mentioned before, I don't react well to having my habitat mucked about with, so I've found all of this fairly stressful. (On the plus side, though, this has provided an excuse to eat plenty of cheese and chocolate -- which, on the minus side, my waistline hasn't been inclined to accept with any sympathy.) The cats have been very clingy, as well, and are suspicious of the way things smell in there now.
In particular, having the blinds missing for over a week has made me feel surprisingly vulnerable, although I'm quite sure none of our rearward neighbours has any interest in watching me cook, eat, or indeed screw (which I've been doing quite a lot of over the past few days -- there've been a good many fixtures and fittings to attach to things. Ho ho ho, I bet you all thought I meant "screw" in the sense of "copulate".)
Now, though, we have shiny venetian slatted things up instead, which are far nicer than the dangly fabric things we inherited from our predecessors. They're so reflective that they make the room feel daylit even when half-open, which is fantastic.
The whole thing's a big improvement, naturally, but I can't help feeling it's involved an great deal of effort. Still, that's just me -- certainly B.'s very happy with the whole thing, which is good, and she claims it will make the house more saleable when we move. So three cheers for that, even if they're rather weary and stressed cheers.
[Edit 29/10/2006: Better approximations of colours, courtesy of B. Although I'm not sure about the plaster, to be honest.]
You’ll be thrilled to know, possibly, that both Collected Works and Time Signature quite definitely exist in book form. I've seen them both in Forbidden Planet, and very pretty they look too. Hopefully my contributors' copies will turn up from Big Finish at some point in the not too distant future.
This past week’s been a tad trying, as B. and (latterly) I have been redecorating our kitchen: papering and painting walls, painting and re-handling cupboards, putting in new shelves and blinds and all kinds of faff and fiddle. The results –- still incomplete though they are –- are looking good. Whereas before the kitchen was coloured
with
cupboards and a big patch of bare
plaster beneath waist level from when we had a damp course put in, now it's like totally
with cupboards that are all
and chrome fittings which are like
. Only more reflective.
(One day you'll be able to set the reflectiveness of your computer screen to any level you want. We'll have to think of a new word for mirror websites.)
As I've mentioned before, I don't react well to having my habitat mucked about with, so I've found all of this fairly stressful. (On the plus side, though, this has provided an excuse to eat plenty of cheese and chocolate -- which, on the minus side, my waistline hasn't been inclined to accept with any sympathy.) The cats have been very clingy, as well, and are suspicious of the way things smell in there now.
In particular, having the blinds missing for over a week has made me feel surprisingly vulnerable, although I'm quite sure none of our rearward neighbours has any interest in watching me cook, eat, or indeed screw (which I've been doing quite a lot of over the past few days -- there've been a good many fixtures and fittings to attach to things. Ho ho ho, I bet you all thought I meant "screw" in the sense of "copulate".)
Now, though, we have shiny venetian slatted things up instead, which are far nicer than the dangly fabric things we inherited from our predecessors. They're so reflective that they make the room feel daylit even when half-open, which is fantastic.
The whole thing's a big improvement, naturally, but I can't help feeling it's involved an great deal of effort. Still, that's just me -- certainly B.'s very happy with the whole thing, which is good, and she claims it will make the house more saleable when we move. So three cheers for that, even if they're rather weary and stressed cheers.
[Edit 29/10/2006: Better approximations of colours, courtesy of B. Although I'm not sure about the plaster, to be honest.]
31 August 2006
Festival Blog: Day 3A
Still recovering from Greenbelt -- immense fun though it is, the persistent lack of sleep and constant need to wander aimlessly around the festival site destruct-testing your socks can have deleterious effects.
My reports from Greenbelt for Surefish are missing the actual, rather than speculative, events of my final day-and-a-bit of festival. So, after filing my copy for "Day 2" and (the entirely hypothetical) "Day 3", this is what I actually did:
1. Went back to the petting zoo, where B. and I cuddled a duckling and a guinea-pig, stroked a donkey and some goats and admired two pigs.
2. Spent a while listening to Reem Kalani at the main stage. Despite her astonishingly powerful voice, her wailing violin-accompanied singing was unexpectly soothing. Or maybe I was just very tired.
Hell
3. Attended Fundamentalism, Ikon's alternative worship (or rather "experiment in theodrama"). This was every bit as remarkable as I expected. Ikon's deliberately destabilising, questioning, deconstructionist approach to worship is oddly reassuring, in suggesting that God is present in doubt and absence as much as in faith and revelation. Some people (including, inevitably, some of its members) go so far as to describe the group's worship style as "pretentious", but its intellectual foundations are a good fit for my own current musings about God. And the group demonstrated that they're by no means humourless by picketing their own service with signs claiming that everyone involved was going to Hell.
I'm now reading Ikon founder Pete Rollins' book of theology, How (Not) to Speak of God, which I picked up at the Greenbelt bookshop. It is, again, remarkable. I may say more about it in due course.
3. Stopped briefly by a much less successful (read: "a bit bollocks, actually") experiment in "scripture meditation", then went to bed.
4. Got up early and went with B. to R. and J.'s wedding in Staffordshire. As I've said here this was generally lovely, but the high density of children in the congregation made it surprisingly difficult to hear what was going on. It was the first second wedding (as it were) of a friend that I've been to, and the minister (assuming I heard her correctly) said some very wise-seeming things about renewal, transformation and second chances.
Knob
R. and J. themselves were very happy, R. looking particularly gorgeous in a strapless silk wedding dress thing [1], and there were some people there it was lovely to see after so long. Unfortunately we had to scarper back to the festival after the Pimms and canapés, but our brief time there was very nice indeed.
5. Arrived back on site in time for the Othona Community's One World worship, which I came away having very mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I was delighted to find an even vaguely interfaith service at Greenbelt, which often seems to have a blind spot in its liberalism when it comes to learning from non-Christian faith traditions.
On the other hand, Othona's worship style seemed to revolve around improvisational chanting and interpretive body-movement, which I couldn't possibly participate in without feeling a complete knob [2]. This came as something of a disappointment, frankly.
6. FAFFED ABOUT and entirely failed to do any of the various other interesting things I could have done until about 8:30, when B. and I managed to stumble upon a very funny act by Paul Kerensa, who was on his way home from performing his comedy show Back to the Futon at the Edinburgh Festival. We particularly appreciated his account of being caught speeding at 88 mph in a DeLorean, and his use of (what he assured us was) his joint degree in Mathematics and Film Studies to prove that 99.6% of men were called Malcolm [3].
His warm-up act also had a joke which will entertain vigornian, if no-one else:
8. Slept in a tent. It's difficult to emphasise sufficiently what a huge achievement this was without sounding like a complete wimp, possibly for the obvious reason.
Suffice it to say that at Greenbelt in 1993 a combination of torrential rain, strong winds and calf-deep mud gave me such a horrendous experience of camping that I foreswore it, and Greenbelt itself, for the next ten years. Only the location of the modern festival at Cheltenham Racecourse, and the availability of bed-and-breakfast accommodation on a nearby student campus, succeeded in enticing me back.
Organic
Unfortunately, this year I'd booked my accommodation when I thought I'd have a job to get back to first thing on Tuesday morning, so when it became clear I could stay the Monday night, the only place available for actual sleepage was the tent B. was using.
The cramped space, muddy exterior and disturbing, almost organic softness of the walls caused me some minor palpitations, but I managed to sleep OK, which constitutes a personal milestone. It didn't persuade me not to B&B it next year, though.
9. Helped B. to pack up said tent, got a train home while she drove (there being no actual space for me in the car with all the camping gear), comforted two bereft cats and slept for not nearly long enough. Got up, went to bed and did the same again.
10. Typed this.
Now I'm going to eat some food, probably, watch some TV and go to bed again. With luck, I'll perhaps be not-tired-any-more in time for the Organic Food Festival on Saturday.
[1] R. was, incidentally, the bride.
[2] Ho ho, yes.
[3] Clue: His starting premises were "Malcolm X = 1992 film" and "X Men = 2000 film". You start by solving each equation for X...
My reports from Greenbelt for Surefish are missing the actual, rather than speculative, events of my final day-and-a-bit of festival. So, after filing my copy for "Day 2" and (the entirely hypothetical) "Day 3", this is what I actually did:
1. Went back to the petting zoo, where B. and I cuddled a duckling and a guinea-pig, stroked a donkey and some goats and admired two pigs.
2. Spent a while listening to Reem Kalani at the main stage. Despite her astonishingly powerful voice, her wailing violin-accompanied singing was unexpectly soothing. Or maybe I was just very tired.
Hell
3. Attended Fundamentalism, Ikon's alternative worship (or rather "experiment in theodrama"). This was every bit as remarkable as I expected. Ikon's deliberately destabilising, questioning, deconstructionist approach to worship is oddly reassuring, in suggesting that God is present in doubt and absence as much as in faith and revelation. Some people (including, inevitably, some of its members) go so far as to describe the group's worship style as "pretentious", but its intellectual foundations are a good fit for my own current musings about God. And the group demonstrated that they're by no means humourless by picketing their own service with signs claiming that everyone involved was going to Hell.
I'm now reading Ikon founder Pete Rollins' book of theology, How (Not) to Speak of God, which I picked up at the Greenbelt bookshop. It is, again, remarkable. I may say more about it in due course.
3. Stopped briefly by a much less successful (read: "a bit bollocks, actually") experiment in "scripture meditation", then went to bed.
4. Got up early and went with B. to R. and J.'s wedding in Staffordshire. As I've said here this was generally lovely, but the high density of children in the congregation made it surprisingly difficult to hear what was going on. It was the first second wedding (as it were) of a friend that I've been to, and the minister (assuming I heard her correctly) said some very wise-seeming things about renewal, transformation and second chances.
Knob
R. and J. themselves were very happy, R. looking particularly gorgeous in a strapless silk wedding dress thing [1], and there were some people there it was lovely to see after so long. Unfortunately we had to scarper back to the festival after the Pimms and canapés, but our brief time there was very nice indeed.
5. Arrived back on site in time for the Othona Community's One World worship, which I came away having very mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I was delighted to find an even vaguely interfaith service at Greenbelt, which often seems to have a blind spot in its liberalism when it comes to learning from non-Christian faith traditions.
On the other hand, Othona's worship style seemed to revolve around improvisational chanting and interpretive body-movement, which I couldn't possibly participate in without feeling a complete knob [2]. This came as something of a disappointment, frankly.
6. FAFFED ABOUT and entirely failed to do any of the various other interesting things I could have done until about 8:30, when B. and I managed to stumble upon a very funny act by Paul Kerensa, who was on his way home from performing his comedy show Back to the Futon at the Edinburgh Festival. We particularly appreciated his account of being caught speeding at 88 mph in a DeLorean, and his use of (what he assured us was) his joint degree in Mathematics and Film Studies to prove that 99.6% of men were called Malcolm [3].
His warm-up act also had a joke which will entertain vigornian, if no-one else:
Q: Why are pirates called pirates?7. Went with B. and R. (NB: Not the R. who got married, of course -- that would have been mad) to Last Orders, the late-night magazine-show summing-up of the best of the festival, where we saw Paul Kerensa again. (His jokes were just as funny the second time. Or possibly I was just very, very tired.) Left when it became clear that none of us could keep our eyes open any more.
A: Because they ARRRRRRHHHHH!
8. Slept in a tent. It's difficult to emphasise sufficiently what a huge achievement this was without sounding like a complete wimp, possibly for the obvious reason.
Suffice it to say that at Greenbelt in 1993 a combination of torrential rain, strong winds and calf-deep mud gave me such a horrendous experience of camping that I foreswore it, and Greenbelt itself, for the next ten years. Only the location of the modern festival at Cheltenham Racecourse, and the availability of bed-and-breakfast accommodation on a nearby student campus, succeeded in enticing me back.
Organic
Unfortunately, this year I'd booked my accommodation when I thought I'd have a job to get back to first thing on Tuesday morning, so when it became clear I could stay the Monday night, the only place available for actual sleepage was the tent B. was using.
The cramped space, muddy exterior and disturbing, almost organic softness of the walls caused me some minor palpitations, but I managed to sleep OK, which constitutes a personal milestone. It didn't persuade me not to B&B it next year, though.
9. Helped B. to pack up said tent, got a train home while she drove (there being no actual space for me in the car with all the camping gear), comforted two bereft cats and slept for not nearly long enough. Got up, went to bed and did the same again.
10. Typed this.
Now I'm going to eat some food, probably, watch some TV and go to bed again. With luck, I'll perhaps be not-tired-any-more in time for the Organic Food Festival on Saturday.
[1] R. was, incidentally, the bride.
[2] Ho ho, yes.
[3] Clue: His starting premises were "Malcolm X = 1992 film" and "X Men = 2000 film". You start by solving each equation for X...
27 July 2006
Intense Neurological Paint
Substantial chunks of this week have been entailed in painting the bedroom, which prior to Monday looked a lot like this...
...and now, mercifully, looks rather more like this.
I'm a territorial animal, and like the cats I get unhappy at signficant disruptions to my habitat. Having all the bedroom furniture, and in particular the books, stacked up against walls and in crates elsewhere across the house has been distressing for all of us, but now everything is back where it goes, and there's a marvellously restful lack of eye-wrenching disgust involved in looking at the bedroom walls. I thoroughly approve of it.
Unlike B. I'm not someone who sets great store by interior decorating, but it's surprising (or perhaps under the circumstances it's actually not) how much more like part of my home the bedroom now feels. Obviously being reminded of a hideously misjudged decorating decision which I would never under any circumstances have made, every time I opened my eyes in there, has had a subliminal alienating effect whose strength I never realised.
Now all we need to do is stop the bathroom looking like this...
...and I'll be happy.
...and now, mercifully, looks rather more like this.
I'm a territorial animal, and like the cats I get unhappy at signficant disruptions to my habitat. Having all the bedroom furniture, and in particular the books, stacked up against walls and in crates elsewhere across the house has been distressing for all of us, but now everything is back where it goes, and there's a marvellously restful lack of eye-wrenching disgust involved in looking at the bedroom walls. I thoroughly approve of it.
Unlike B. I'm not someone who sets great store by interior decorating, but it's surprising (or perhaps under the circumstances it's actually not) how much more like part of my home the bedroom now feels. Obviously being reminded of a hideously misjudged decorating decision which I would never under any circumstances have made, every time I opened my eyes in there, has had a subliminal alienating effect whose strength I never realised.
Now all we need to do is stop the bathroom looking like this...
...and I'll be happy.
19 July 2006
Look! Up in the Sky!
I've been sloshing cold water over myself with a flannel every so often, and I don't appear to have spontaneously combusted yet. The Met Office have now changed their tune and are predicting that tonight will be cooler even in the absence of a thunderstorm -- although I see there's one due already in Cornwall, so maybe we're supposed to be getting the benefit of that.
I've been thinking some more about the cats' divergent attitudes to rotary ceiling-fans. It seems odd that Scully should be so afraid of them, since as far as I know (and it would be a little unlikely around these parts) she's never been threatened by an aerial predator. It's particularly odd since she's usually by far the braver of the two: Mulder has a terror of strangers, doors that suddenly open, suits, plastic bags and the like which borders on the existential, while Scully's usually serenely unbothered by anything except (not unreasonably) small children.
Presumably Scully's phobia[1] is a hard-wired instinct that would have been a survival trait in ancient Egypt, where eagles and the like were considerably more common than in modern south-west England. This does, however, raise the question of why Mulder doesn't share it. Surely if it's a survival trait for one individual, it should be generally useful to the whole species?
The answer, I presume, is one of genetic diversity. Certain humans suffer from a fear of spiders or snakes or decay, a healthy range of phobias in the population ensuring that the survival of the species is protected against many different dangers, while leaving most of its members able to deal with everyday occurrences like retrieving spiders from the bath, wrestling anacondas or coping with the compost bin.
I'm not sure of the mechanics of how such a diversity would actually evolve... but it certainly means that Scully will be the better placed to survive should Bristol ever be beset by an infestation of gigantic rotating predatory birds, especially ones which specialise in hovering just underneath ceilings to await their prey.
Mulder, on the other hand, will be much more likely to survive in the event of a heatwave.
In entirely unrelated news, if we're still alive this evening we're going to see Superman Returns[2]. Hurrah!
[1] Possibly rhipiphobia, if this is anything to go by. Although "fan for making it less bleeding hot in your bedroom" isn't listed among the options.
[2] B. and me, that is, not me and the cats. I think the idea of a flying man would traumatise Scully for life.
I've been thinking some more about the cats' divergent attitudes to rotary ceiling-fans. It seems odd that Scully should be so afraid of them, since as far as I know (and it would be a little unlikely around these parts) she's never been threatened by an aerial predator. It's particularly odd since she's usually by far the braver of the two: Mulder has a terror of strangers, doors that suddenly open, suits, plastic bags and the like which borders on the existential, while Scully's usually serenely unbothered by anything except (not unreasonably) small children.
Presumably Scully's phobia[1] is a hard-wired instinct that would have been a survival trait in ancient Egypt, where eagles and the like were considerably more common than in modern south-west England. This does, however, raise the question of why Mulder doesn't share it. Surely if it's a survival trait for one individual, it should be generally useful to the whole species?
The answer, I presume, is one of genetic diversity. Certain humans suffer from a fear of spiders or snakes or decay, a healthy range of phobias in the population ensuring that the survival of the species is protected against many different dangers, while leaving most of its members able to deal with everyday occurrences like retrieving spiders from the bath, wrestling anacondas or coping with the compost bin.
I'm not sure of the mechanics of how such a diversity would actually evolve... but it certainly means that Scully will be the better placed to survive should Bristol ever be beset by an infestation of gigantic rotating predatory birds, especially ones which specialise in hovering just underneath ceilings to await their prey.
Mulder, on the other hand, will be much more likely to survive in the event of a heatwave.
In entirely unrelated news, if we're still alive this evening we're going to see Superman Returns[2]. Hurrah!
[1] Possibly rhipiphobia, if this is anything to go by. Although "fan for making it less bleeding hot in your bedroom" isn't listed among the options.
[2] B. and me, that is, not me and the cats. I think the idea of a flying man would traumatise Scully for life.
18 July 2006
Lovely and Temperate, My Arse
It's 33°C today, apparently, and not getting any cooler tomorrow, at least until the scheduled night-time thunderstorm. 35°C is frankly insane: I've been cooler than that at midday in August in Athens.
Given that I'm supposed to be spending this week broadening my opportunities for freelance writing -- from, naturally, my study -- this is not a welcome fact. The study has a tendency to become preternaturally hot and airless, and yesterday B. got home from work to find me with some kind of mild heatstroke, feeling dizzy and weak and in need of dousing with cold water, despite having had the window open and a fan on all day.
I'm posting this from inside a pair of pants and nothing else, with all the fans, doors and windows I can find upstairs opened and switched on. This is distressing Scully, who is convinced that the shadow of the ceiling fan in the bedroom is a gigantic bird of prey which can get her if she's anywhere within sight of it. (Mulder, on the other hand, is happily sitting underneath it on the bed, in the nice cool draught, proving either that he's more intelligent than her or that he's even dimmer.) The poor love's cowering in the bathroom, but there really isn't anything I can do about it: if I turn off the fan or close the door I'll overheat and collapse.
In the winter, if you feel too cold, you can turn up the heating or put on another jumper. In the summer you have no choice but to swelter, and any measures you take by way of inserting your head into sinksful of water are strictly temporary. I hope it's clear why I prefer the former state of affairs.
Given that I'm supposed to be spending this week broadening my opportunities for freelance writing -- from, naturally, my study -- this is not a welcome fact. The study has a tendency to become preternaturally hot and airless, and yesterday B. got home from work to find me with some kind of mild heatstroke, feeling dizzy and weak and in need of dousing with cold water, despite having had the window open and a fan on all day.
I'm posting this from inside a pair of pants and nothing else, with all the fans, doors and windows I can find upstairs opened and switched on. This is distressing Scully, who is convinced that the shadow of the ceiling fan in the bedroom is a gigantic bird of prey which can get her if she's anywhere within sight of it. (Mulder, on the other hand, is happily sitting underneath it on the bed, in the nice cool draught, proving either that he's more intelligent than her or that he's even dimmer.) The poor love's cowering in the bathroom, but there really isn't anything I can do about it: if I turn off the fan or close the door I'll overheat and collapse.
In the winter, if you feel too cold, you can turn up the heating or put on another jumper. In the summer you have no choice but to swelter, and any measures you take by way of inserting your head into sinksful of water are strictly temporary. I hope it's clear why I prefer the former state of affairs.
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