School’s out

Woo Hoo!

School’s Out for Summer!

It isn’t of course, I still have my day job to go to,  but I have just finished an assignment from hell: 4000 words on a subject so vague that they served waffles in the coffee-breaks.  It is one of those topics which should be impossible to fail (ha!) and at which it is certainly impossible to excel.  “This is as long as it’s broad” I said between waffle-breaks; “do you want us to consider the subject in width or in depth, because we can’t do both.”  In depth, he said, and so I’ll be criticised for not mentioning this, considering that or discussing the other.  Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  No high marks possible here.

But enough.  It’s done.  Just proof-reading and proof-reading and proof-reading to do between now and Monday when I post the bastard; “fly-fucking” as my Danish friend described the tedious process of moving a comma from, one side to, the other.

It’s May.

It’s magical marvellous May. The leaves are fresh, the lambs are running races, the cherry blossom is out, there is more green everywhere, every day.

If I could be whoever and whatever I could, I would be 35 and weigh 10 stone in May forever.  Today the temperature was perfect, warm in the sun and fresh on the skin.  I have a garden to weed, a house to paint, curtains to sew, books to read, scarves to knit, weddings to dance at, pots to plant, parties to go to, wine to drink, laughter to share, friends to delight in, and a whole blissful summer to do it all.

I’ve not felt this giddy when sober for years.

Should I raise an invoice?

Should I raise an invoice, or do I offer my services?

An organisation called “Madrigal Communications” (which seems to be a bloke and an internet site) has lifted the meat out of one of the posts here in my blog, added one sentence at the top, and three at the bottom which are soliciting business, and put the whole thing up on-line. He did this in November, but the credit’s just turned up here. Oh, and he has miss-spelt “Behn” but there you go. Ironically, he offers proofreading services. At least he doesn’t offer ethical advice.

So, the question is, do I send him an invoice for the time I spent putting the original blog together which was a professional lifetime plus a couple of hours? You could argue “no” because what he has lifted are quotations from Einstein, Kipling, Aristotle and Lewis Carroll which are in the public domain. On the other hand, the “Questions” series is the result of a good couple of decades thought, the post he’s lifted them from is about a specific category of questions to be used for a specific kind of analysis, and I make it plain that I ask questions for a living. It seems he doesn’t, though he does write for a living and is trying to get business off the back of my blog post. Or maybe I should be grateful that he credited me at all.

Bugger the internet.

Photo later in the day, I think.

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I just received a very pleasant and honourable email saying that he’s removed the post from his site. I’ve reminded him that he can wrap his own words around the Kipling questions, and pointed him in the direction of my source material for the Carroll and Aristotle questions. To be honest, if he’s soliciting for business for his writing skills, then it would do no harm to cut out my list of questions and use the space for his own words. I do hope he does. I didn’t create the questions, just the thinking about them expressed in my post.

Photo-synthesis

I’ve just got myself a Samsung G800 which is a 5 megapixel camera with a phone thrown in for good measure. While I was NaBloPoMo-ing I found blogs which offer a photo a day for a year. I’m not up for that, but I’d going to try offering a photo a day for four weeks while I get to know my new phone. I’m not going to commit to posting daily, but I am going to commit to photographing daily.

Here’s the first one, reduced to 20% of it’s original size and rotated anti-clockwise by 1 degree.

This was a matter of point and shoot, though you can see that I had the flash as well as the natural light. On the camera, the photograph looks rather dull, but it works on the screen. I doubt it’s as pleasing when printed though.

Black cat

The little black cat is even more elusive than he was before. In the last 6 days, I’ve caught a glimpse of his back leg and tail once, and I think the one who stays over occasionally saw him on Thursday night.

I’ve not been round much myself though, so it may just be that our paths haven’t crossed. I was away for five days last week. I arranged for my neighbours to pop in and feed both cats while I wasn’t around. When I got home, I settled down to being ill for four days and spent most of the time in bed, ignoring the cat-flap and the kitchen entirely.

I did glimpse his back leg and tail disappearing behind the curtain by the front door some time over the weekend, but nothing since, and I’m still worried about him.

It’s a big, nasty cold world out there, if you are a little stray black cat.

Hopefully blogging about it will bring him back.

Live music’s dead cool

I was listening to Front Row the other day and caught a piece about an update on English Folk which “fuses fiddles and squeezebox with dub beats and sitars” which I have to admit, appealed to me. Hey. I’m eclectic. It goes with the territory. It was about The Imagined Village.

(I liked what I heard of it up until I got onto the internet and discovered it’s a “project”. Still, as countless school-kids prove every day of the summer, you can get away with owt if you claim you’re doing it for “a project”.)

Anyway, when I heard they are touring, I decided to see if I could get tickets and I realised I’d rather spend 15 quid on seeing a band live if I’m not sure about them, than spend a tenner on a CD.

Odd that.

Still not entirely sure what to make of it.

Wad some power the giftie gie us…

One of the things I love about working with people from different cultures is the insight they provide on my own.

I was on a residential course last week and one of the other attendees was a chap from Iceland who’d forgotten to bring socks.  I needed some bits and pieces myself so at the end of the first day we went into the nearest market town.  We drew a blank at Morrisons, the shop recommended by the person in Morrisons  did indeed sell socks, but it had just closed, and so we tried the Co-op.

My Viking returned to the car without any socks but in high good humour: “they don’t sell any socks” he said, “but they used to!  What is the point of telling me they used to sell socks when I need them now?”

Well, when he put it like that…  You see, I though the lady in the Co-Op was being Polite and Friendly.  Showing Concern.  Taking an Interest.

But I do kinda get his point.

Christmas Pud

One of the things I like about this time of year is Christmas Pudding.  A good Christmas Pud is far too good to eat once a year on a full stomach.  I’ve always liked it cold for breakfast or fried in butter, if you want slices of it hot.

A couple of weeks ago I bought my first one of this winter.  It was a Tesco’s Finest and wasn’t bad at all: moist, tasty, good texture, recognisable bits of fruit and large chunks of expensive nuts.

And rather a strong smell of brandy.

Which I hadn’t taken into account when I decided to have some for breakfast at work the other day.

A Quiet Wedding

We went to a lovely wedding the other day. As a family, we seem to be very good at keeping in touch with cousins across decades even if we are rather poor at keeping in touch with them month by month or year by year. As a result weddings and funerals are great assemblies. My Ma had 17 aunts, so there are rather a lot of cousins to keep track of.

The thing that I liked most about this particular celebration, aside from meeting up with the cousinage, was the laid back simplicity of the thing. It was in fact a blessing, the bride and groom had got married on a hill-top the other side of the world a month ago; they’d decided to have their marriage blessed in front of the Cousins this weekend, thus accommodating both sides of their respective families.

So it may have been the fact it was a blessing and thousands had already been spent on air fares, let alone sugared almonds, which encouraged them to opt for the simple choices. No bridesmaids stealing the bride’s thunder. The church service was astonishingly chilled for the rural Church of England. Bells rang the celebration out across the valley. The church had an almost medieval sense of community, with people settling down and turning round to introduce themselves themselves, catch up and place each other in the family tree; it filled with the sound of happy and playful children providing a clear reminder of what marriage is all about. The expression on the face of the bride’s brother as he read “when I was a child, I spake as a child” could be sold for a guinea a bottle.

But the thing that I really enjoyed, apart from the bride and groom’s obvious happiness and her parents nearly bursting with pride, was the simplicity of what used to be called “the wedding breakfast” and what is now called “Afterwards” or “the Evening”.

The wedding breakfast was in a community centre with all the necessities: champagne and bride cake, (and an ancestral sword to cut it with), with much love and much joy, but there were no sugared almonds, no chairs covered in chintz and tied with bows, no marquee, no dance floor, no band. The food was a buffet, so no silver service, (but a glorious summer pudding).

Some marriages, you get the impression, are an excuse for a wedding. The most important thing about this particular wedding, I have no doubt, is the marriage.

Popping someone’s Pratchett cherry

I came across someone the other day who sorts their books into “Pratchetts” and “not Pratchetts”. The Pratchets are on the shelf in the order that Pratchett wrote them, the rest are in any old order at all.

(That’s nothing by the way. You would not believe the number of people who sort by size. And then there’s the couple who sort by owner (a shelf for His and a shelf for Hers). And those are the sane ones. What about the person who sorts his books, all his books, in the order they were first printed? Or the girlfriend of mine who sorted hers by colour? And an upsetting number of people don’t sort them at all.)

I distracted myself on my way to the point, there. Sorry.

The point is that I have a colleague who hasn’t read any Pratchett at all and in this case it’s a shame, because he’d like them. He tried The Light Fantastic once, and found it irritating so gave up which is fair enough: the first two are irritating plotless and, to be honest, not particularly good.

So I have taken it upon myself to pop his Pratchett cherry - but where to start? The early ones are weaker, the later ones assume a certain level of familiarity with the Discworld. The Witches series go down better with the girlies. The Watch series are better read in sequence. The Death series are just a little too odd to start with. Hogswatch is too dark. Pyramids too lightweight. The Truth and Going Postal too fair to middling. Small Gods too unusual. Monstrous Regiment is really too unusual, and Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Carpe Jugulum and Thud all have the same plot anyway.

It’s an onerous responsibility, choosing someone’s first Pratchett.

So I’m re-reading them to work out which one would be best.

I may be some time.

Stray cat

I have a visitor each night who comes in to see if there is any spare cat food.

There is, unless he’s eaten it all already, because I make sure that there always is. He eats his way steadily through great full bowls of the stuff but runs out of the house if I move and make eye contact. Nervous as he is, he was considerably worse at the start of the year. He no longer bolts the food down though he doesn’t waste any time either, and he now sits on the kitchen steps for - oh - 15 or 20 seconds after he’s finished eating instead of shooting off as soon as something spooked him. Tiger ignores him completely.

I’d assumed for a while that he was an opportunist trying his luck away from home the way that opportunists do, and in fact I used to clap to get him to go home. But he was so persistent and seemed so hungry that I lost the heart to do that.

However, it was only this week that it finally dawned on me that he is most likely either feral or a stray; sometimes I can be very stupid. He doesn’t have the tatty look I associate with entire toms - he certainly doesn’t spray in the house even though I know he beds down in the living room of a night sometimes. His coat’s shiny and he looks to be in fairly good shape, but then again he should be - he’s getting through a bowl of IAMs a day.

Oh my goodness - awful thought - maybe the reason SHE is so hungry is that she’s pregnant?