- 09:52 Ice on the puddles, a cormorant flying upstream; natural blonde on a bicycle, pale eyelashes squinting into february sun, gunmetal grey.
- 09:37 Suddenly freaked by the man waiting to shoulder surf me into the building. Hope this doesn't presage a day of weird paranoiac imaginings.
- 14:49 Increasingly annoyed about lost mug, doubtless put in dishwasher by helpful colleague after I went home sick on friday, now gone forever.
- 14:52 She also didn't find our errant leaflet delivery, tracked it to a snowy loading bay this morning after refusing to take huh?? as an answer.
- 15:58 By 4pm, my mug is back in the dishwasher. Now recovered and full of catering coffee. Mmm! I may take to storing it in my top drawer again.
- 21:33 Hmm, I left chili on my hands after cooking tasty paella. Cat demanded half of eclair, got a small lick of cream, with a teeny chili kick.
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jinty for obtaining for me a copy of the new Complete Perrault from OUP. Illustrations by Doré, the verse and the stories, each with their moral, and Red Riding hood eaten up at the end of her tale, not saved by the improbable axe of a woodcutter.To my delight, it included the tale of the Donkey Skin Girl. This rather horrible story, with its central theme of familial abuse and intergenerational incest (not to mention skinning a magic donkey and wearing its hide) was a great favourite of mine as a child, despite the fact that it seldom made it into collections and my mother found it upsetting. The version I read was a little different from Perrault's, and illustrated in that garish, folk art inspired style that was so popular in the seventies.
Donkey-skin girl was originally a princess, until her father, mad with grief after the death of her beautiful and much-beloved mother, decided that the best way forward was to marry his own daughter. Under the advice of her fairy godmother -- or the magic donkey, as it was in the book I read as a child -- she said she would marry him when she had a dress as beautiful as the moon. He made her a dress as beautiful as the moon. Too bad, said the godmother, the donkey -- ask for a dress as bright as the sun. He duly produced it -- cloth of gold and rubies and yellow diamonds. In the garish picture book I remember, the dresses fairly glowed on the page. The final dress was blue as the summer sky, an odd let-down to the modern mind, coddled by chemical pigments. The skin of the donkey (more famous for shitting out gold coins than giving good advice) was demanded next -- I remember well the surreal scene of the talking donkey telling her not to worry and that he and his magic would be with her always, and on went the donkey skin and the mud and the muck and off she went to look after pigs rather than become her father's wife. All week she rolls in mud and humilation, but every Sunday she turns the key in her door and dresses in her jewels and her dresses, one by one, like some high church ceremony of glamour. Later on there's a prince, and a party, and a ring that only fitted her finger -- a sort of low-rent Cinderella with more peeping through keyholes. They all live happily ever after, and Dad comes to his senses just in time to bless the couple, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear; although she doesn't go home until she's safely engaged to be married.
Perrault draws many a moral from this tale but my favourite is this:
Again: young ladies may be fed
On nothing but the coarsest bread
Provided that, besides such fare
They have some pretty clothes to wear
also, this:
- 12:08 Oxford bus company - please tell us if you're going to randomly stop at a stop for ten minutes I was on time for work damn it #tellus
- 12:10 Imaginative shop window displays + all the mannequins have headdresses made of fabric flowers, ribbons and artificial birds #tellus
- 14:17 Head cold - no way I can stay at work today. Sneezing all over the place. Hopefully haven't infected colleagues with rhino #tellus
- 14:32 Rainbow maker + takes sunshine, makes it better #tellus
The answer, I suspect, goes back to shortly before Christmas when I was chopping down chunks of the trees out back to let more light down into the back garden. I chopped lelandia and laurel, neither a likely food-plant for an overwintering egg or larva, but there were also passion vines strung among the branches. A delicious evergreen food plant strung among cosy evergreen trees, facing the morning sun? What could be more congenial for an overwintering butterfly egg?
Chopped and tucked into my green recycling bag, it hatched in the warmth of my shed, and gorged on chilled but still tasty leaves, away from the frost and snow while for almost a month my green waste lay uncollected, recycling lorries kept at the depot for fear of ice and snow. Like a caterpilllar in a jam jar it grew fat and fast.
The morning they finally came to collect the green waste, though, was brutally cold. Shaken from its cosy bag it chilled and died. By the time I got home in the evening, something had made a meal of it. Mmmm! Caterpillar slush-puppy.
What species, though? I'm guessing one of the commoner whites.
- 15:09 Oxford Farmers Market+ apple and cider doughnuts, award-winning scotch eggs, quiche lorraine of the local gods #tellus
- 16:39 Bach flower remedies in Boots - boo hiss this nonsense I do not need to see when I'm fixing my cold and my sore knee #tellus
- 20:32 @rich_trenholm Where are the pole dancing robots? TELL ME!
- 20:34 Asking people how does that make you feel? on news programmes - if I was interested in people I'd be watching reality TV not news #tellus
- 19:01 Herons + saw a perky terrier chase off a heron from next to his boathouse this morning; it lifted up, on improbably vast wings. #tellus
- 19:04 @mondoagogo I am re-entering gardening duties for 2010 on Sunday @jinty 's so we will both be at her place, but also busy for the afternoon.
- 22:08 BBC iplayer+ thanks for high aerial views of trade winds and jet streams and close-ups of desert pavements on How Earth Made Us #tellus
- 23:44 itunes- makes me download another update, doesn't even open itself, never get round to looking up the song I might have bought #tellus
In other news, a .it email address of the type usually used for those bogus Italian lottery win phishes sent me this small, yet infinitely dense, email:
We write to inform you that the Federal Government of Nigeria incollabration
with United Nations have agreed last week to refund US$4.5M to every scam
victim with immediate effect. Also, to inform you that we are paying you by
CERTIFIED CASHIER'S BANK CHECK. The following information is needed from you.
You’re Name, Private Telephone and address. For urgent delivery to you.
Best
Regards
Rev.Dr Paul Williams
Director Payment Monitoring Agency
That apostophe crime is like the final slap in the face of sanity.
- 18:09 Hurray for Marks & Spencers! I'm looking at a pair of studded jeggings. I mean laughing. No, i mean they're actually not bad. Lusting? Ono!
- 21:51 Tim: I saw the barrel of the cat tank protruding from under kitchen table and thought ohmygod one of the cats's done the biggest poo ever!
Certain things (my credit card bill, the prospect of an upcoming terrifying energy bill, that kitchen sink that needs replacing) are whispering to me: yesssssssss this is what you must do. Be frugal! It's only a short month. So, here goes:
Feb 1st - Haggled down from spending £60 at the Videosyncratic closing down sale to £13. This meant leaving most of my pile on the desk, but hey -- it certainly saved some money. DING!
Feb 2nd - Didn't buy the pair of studded jeggings I saw in M&S even though they practically mugged me and demanded it. Oh, and now I am going down the pub. DinG! (collapse)
- 10:04 Weird soft hail-snow all over the ground. Snail? By the bridge, a heron hunts snails and small fish in riverbank shadows, spear and swallow.
- 13:31 Lunch = bacon sandwich from bicycle-based bacon stand outside Oxford station. Contained more bacon than bread, also free cheese. Massive win
- 18:39 Videosyncratic sale's a madhouse. Still, unwelcome discovery that we must haggle for graphics cuts my expenditure down to a safe thirteen.
- 08:13 I look into the future and all I see is a kitten jumping into a box, endlessly.
- 09:05 In Chez Geek, you get extra points if you have the cat and the bubble blower ... this week's strip: tiny.cc/032E2
- 09:08 @katejenian She has an extra large box at the moment so she can get in it with her buster collar on (which is keeping three stitches safe).
I feel like I'm just posting strips about cats at the moment. There are a few more built up, but they're kind of depressing. I'll get to them.
Speaking of depressing: alas, poor Spirit... now a stationary research station.
 |
| Silver Age - detail Kitten, bubbles, cute. |
- 20:01 Two girls late night shopping with dizzy grins; the brunette in a batman sweatshirt, blonde in a superman hoodie, shopping superheroines.
- 21:52 A sudden flash of joggers pass, one trailed by a tiny speedy terrier, a red bike light shining terminator-like from under its eager chin.
- 22:23 Currently yelling, "What? Hello? This happened!?" at the television. Thank you Charlie Brooker. I think. Next: it's owl-man's tour of NZ.
stylosaurus rex
Originally uploaded by Jeremy Dennis.
Zara children's shop window has reached some sort of apotheosis of minimalism. Does that even make sense?
I like the nifty little skellingtons. Preferring shop fittings to product happens more and more as life goes on. I was shopping for a new laundry basket last weekend. The best match was a display unit being used for cushions. Grr!
I've been making too many lists. They're starting to make me feel guilty and sad. On the bright side, though, Harlequin has just killed a plastic dinosaur almost as big as she is. It's destined for the garden, after I take some pictures.
Oh, and a trio of Red-breasted Merganser. Merganser are fish-eating ducks, diving saw-tooths with long, slender, serrated bills. Of all the ducks, they have the most of the dinosaur about them. The light was not good, they were skittish, and feeding on the far side of the Thames. But they looked much like these. The male has a bright raggedy green iridescent head; the female is a sparky redhead.
Inland and south isn't their natural home; more likely to see them on the Scottish coast, or in lakes. I worried briefly that they were escapees from a collection. Ornamentals are often kept in threes to increase the chance of breeding. But then they spotted me and flew downriver; definitely wild. Tourist ducks.
- 13:51 The light winter sun shines outside. I am inside, thinking about grebes. They dive! you stop to look but they see you from underwater, hide.
- 19:45 Looking at veils on ebay, chatting to my sister on Facebook. Wedding shopping is so much better when you can do it in two or three tabs.
- 22:08 @hagenilda My little sister's getting married in October, is buying svarowski-studded veils off e-bay. Colour theme (and hair) will be plum.
- 22:11 Have verified (to my sadness) that Videosyncratic vids + comics is up against the wall, going down, and selling off everything from Monday.
However, I noticed that last week, unable to eat, walk and generally pitiful in all other ways, my knees were markedly better. Swelling down, no pain. Almost back to normal! Saturday night I'd recovered well, and we had friends round,
timscience cooked them delicious food, wine was consumed, etc. etc. Sunday brought excruciating pain, mostly in the knee joints, but also shooting down the legs. Bad enough I ended up putting my feet up while I waited for the painkillers to kick in, bad enough that I was staggering. It was as if, I thought (from a pleasantly clear head, it has to be said) I have a hangover in my knees.
Ah. Now. There's a word for that. And while it's not traditionally applied to pre-menopausal women, if it's applicable to Julie Burchill, could it be applicable to me? Almost invariably, the answer to that question is "no", but it has to be said ... could it be the dreaded g-word? Bane of restaurant critics with bad circulation? Could it be... (say it small) gout?
This, obviously, needs to be put to the test. I will, therefore, over the next couple of months, be following a careful regime of experimental drinking and eating, checking in detail the effect of rich food, different types of alcoholic beverage and general overindulgence on my poor, abused knee joints. If anyone feels able to help me with this, I'll be very grateful, and of course name them in the research paper.
Obviously I'll have to do some control sessions of abstemiousness and exercise, but it hardly seems fair to expect any friends to suffer alongside me so that I will do alone. Possibly in a hair shirt (I have one to hand, having just cut my hair).
Harlequin is still in her buster collar. From the right angle, it makes her look just like Lady Gaga.
- 13:32 A child rides by in his push-chair staring at the shopping centre through binoculars shaped like the head of a (fantastic mr?) fox.
- 23:23 Excitement at the Magdalen Arms! We end up buying Flo a drink after the several friendly policemen have left. Also, great chocolate cake!
Afterwards I was supposed to be keeping her quiet, but a badly-folded blanket and an ill-timed pee meant she needed rearrangement, so we made a brief diversion to
mr_snips's castle of cobwebs and cosy warm fires, where she wandered in wibbly circles for a bit, too out of it to know where she was.Getting home was further complicated by rain, and when we finally got there, Harlequin celebrated by running up and down the stairs a few times, wandering in wobbly circles, seeking out hard surfaces and drafts, trying to jump, and finally fainting. On the pile of blankets, thank goodness. I heated her a wheatbag triceratops in case she'd got chilled, covered her over and let her sleep.
She woke up in an instant when I started feeding Teasel, staggered over, ate, staggered back and fell asleep again. This state of affairs was not to last, however, and we are now living with this:
Yes there are more photos if you click through...and trying to persuade her that it might be a better idea to give it a few days before she starts full-body pouncing on Teasel, jumping up onto the wardrobe and hopping up and down on her hind legs. With mixed success.
Harlequin, I'm sure, would like to point out that it's just three stitches and she's absolutely fine. Fine!
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