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You *can* make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (and other excitements)

There’s a meme-with-a-difference going round… ask, and ye shall receive. Or rather comment, and you’ll get something in the post. As in the snail-mail, not the blog entry. Or perhaps both. For the first four supplicants.

I first saw it at Jean‘s where people were being backward in coming forward. I asked for a thick ear, and lo! here it is:

silk purse

You’re not really allowed to specify what you want but she kindly obliged, albeit with a liberal interpretation.

So now it’s my turn. The first four people to request in the comments will get either a print of a picture of their choice or a bespoke knitted gewgaw. And the duty of continuing the tradition.

Other excitements include the qarrtsiluni widget in the sidebar (far right, you might need to scroll down a bit) displaying the most recent entries of that august ‘zine. Some of which have added ear-candy. There’s still a fortnight to go to submit items on the current theme, Insecta. There are some incredible photographs there.

I put together this montage of various aspects of the fruit fly (Drosophila) from copyright free material found hanging around on the web but it wasn’t the sort of thing the (excellently) stringent editors were looking for. I like it, though 🙂 We know so much about this organism. And so little.

drosophila

It’s better bigger, so click here to see it at a reasonable size.

The latest Festival of the Trees, November Arborea, is up at Larry Ayres’ Riverside Rambles and there’s a mouthwatering quantity of photographs among this month’s offerings.

And then there’s the new banner. Over at Krista‘s. Which is exceedingly exciting. (She tells me humans see more verticals than horizontals which makes me feel better about the difficulty I had forcing myself to see sideways, even a little bit.)

In fact it’s almost as exciting as the knitting project we’ve got, um, round our necks. Almost. But not quite. Because few things could be that exciting. I expect further bloggage on the subject will be forthcoming.

And don’t forget – if you’d like a print or a knitted trifle just say so in the comments.

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I wish life was like an escalator

A smooth, effortless upward progression. Like the groovy huge new one running silently up a wall inside the National Portrait Gallery. Conveying shiny happy people up to some invisible and unimaginable shiny happy land (called, apparently, the Tudor Gallery).

Or, even more appositely, like the one in the Natural History Museum Earth Galleries that takes one, an onlooker, through the story of the planet and its place in the universe and through the centre of the earth itself.

But, er, life just aint like an escalator.

And I’m fucking tired and fed up. Because at the moment it does not resemble an escalator in any respect what so ever. It is very closely akin to having to drag myself and the children and the animals up the side of Great Pyramid of Giza. Every single fucking day. After day. After day. After day.

The steps are too big for me to clamber comfortably. So imagine what it’s like for the children. I have physically to pull them up. And their stuff. And make sure the dog doesn’t run off. And the cat is keeping up.

And there is nobody to help. There is nobody to hold the children’s hands or carry a bag or call the dog. There is nobody to help with them, and there is nobody to help with me. Nobody to say well done or never mind. And I can’t generate the required levels of internal resources all by myself all the time.

So now I’m going back to bed.

I am not depressed. I’m just fucking exhausted.

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links for 2007-11-29

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One sunset

“Are you”, the hypno-questionnaire asked, if memory serves me correctly, “the sort of person who enjoys looking at sunsets?”

I’m sooo glad I whizzed back into the house and picked up my camera this afternoon having set off on towards the school without it. There was something about the quality of light just outside the front door that boded well.

It appears that I’m the sort of person who’s perhaps over-enthusiastic about sunsets. Here are the pictures I took, all of them, in order, as the sun descended in the sky and we walked in a north-westerly direction from school to home.

Even the large bins in the park are gilded and beautiful.

golden bins

A vapour trail gleams silver against the slightly purpled sky, offsetting the gold below.

blue white and gold

The gap in the row of houses lets us see another layer of gold.

space between houses

This buddleia is just next to the railway line and Tuesday’s trees.

buddleia

Allowing Maizy off the lead in the open space we (inaccurately) call “the field” gives us even bigger skies to admire as the clouds and light change, minute by minute.

from the field

This structure used to be a church. It’s being transformed or perhaps “repurposed”. Its silhouette is if anything improved by the scaffolding.

to the south-west

Very nearly home now.

phone lines, light lines

I’ve been thinking about a sense of place since reading Jean and Dave and Whiskey River.

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anywhere to be home in a positive way. Home was, in my childhood, not a place of safety. Since then it’s generally been somewhere less bad than other places. How can one, though, feel present anywhere if one is not present to oneself? As I become more able to be with myself rather than finding ways to “not be”, it seems I’m more able to be in the world too.

The square in which most of my life takes place – nodes formed by home, school, shops, shrink – has become more like a space that is mine as I more belong to me.

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Out and about

 

I was out and about today, and took the camera.

First to St Martin-in-the-Fields for a short (very short) period of quiet for Just This Day. It seemed particularly appropriate to think about the peace talks in Annapolis. I had read Rachel’s post about hope before I left in the morning, and rather unexpectedly, it was hope that I found.

Then to the Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I managed not to be utterly depressed and demotivated by exposure to wonderful photographs. My favourite was taken by a 24-year-old who sounded, from the blurb beneath the picture, to be a complete hero. I also liked this one and this one. You can scroll through all the pictures in the exhibition from any of the previous three links.

A spot of spawn-stocking-present-shopping left me exhausted and with a very heavy bag so I retired to an excellent cheap Spanish greasy spoon and took pictures through the window while consuming hearty paella.I’m breaking all my self-imposed rules about taking pictures of people. I only asked one of the subjects shown above if I could photograph them.

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Nameless Cat is no more

No, he has not died of starvation or indeed any other ailment, self-inflicted or otherwise.

He has… a name!

Since his appetite returned in spectacular fashion (and for all you anxious googlers concerned about anorexic cats the sure-fire remedy is sardines tinned in tomato sauce – the flavour of sauce is very important – and most vets have large quantities about their premises apparently), Cat has very quickly become – gasp – overweight. Or so said the vet when I took both creatures for their jabs and she weighed them.

Sigh.

The reason for this incipient obesity is probably Cat’s major carbohydrate cravings. The other day he demolished most of a french stick, bread being one of his favourites. But he also likes sweet things, particularly cake. A swiss roll was massacred recently but not as devastatingly as yesterday’s cherry and walnut cake.

Herein lies the genesis of the name. What else can one call a cat who, if there is no bread deigns to eat cake, other than Mario Antoinette. Mario for short.

And while we accustom him to his new handle we’re calling him Mario Kat.

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Deliquescence

A light mist pearled the morning.

dandelion

No surface was exempt from damp fingers.

mrs dropple

Small drops drained together to collect in hidden places.

droplet

Leaves layered gold on gold.

layers

Where no leaves were, an alien form with a heart-shaped handle flapped from a branch.

heart

Despite earlier frosts some flowers just can’t give up, thrusting new petals from the brown carapace of the newly blighted.

thrusting rose

Poor Maizy was much troubled by the vile and verminous tree-rats who flicked their tails contemptuously in her face as she, leashed as bye-laws require, barked choked and goggle-eyed threats of violent death.

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Hypnofrabjous!

That was quick – the test was only a couple of days ago.

The measure we used during the study was the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility and is one of the most reliable and widely used measure of hypnotisability. The scores range from 0 (least hypnotisable) to 12 (most hypnotisable).

You scored 11, which puts you in the high hypnotisable range.

Please note that hypnotisability has no relation to gullibility (being fooled), giving in to being pressured by others (conformity), or believing unusual things. In fact people who are high hypnotisable have been found to have better attention and concentration than others.

So, do I fancy further guinea piggery?

Hmmm. Let me think about it.

For a picosecond or two.