Fishy update
It has indeed been a long time since I posted about my aquatic darlings. The fact that there actually have been some changes in the last month makes that even worse… not that they’ve been huge changes, but still – this blog was begun with the intention of writing about fish and what happened to them, given the dearth (at the time, at least) of info for beginning fish-keepers… anyway, enough of that!
So, a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to put a few more fish in. I bought a herd of neons, because they were on special. They went into the quarantine tank, which I had finally cleaned up and started the tank in again. Sadly, they didn’t last very long – only a few days. The point was for them to break the tank in, without the time of fishless cycling… turns out they were remarkably fragile little neons, and they didn’t like that idea. So, I am fishless cycling.
I also bought three cloaches, I have been wary of getting them, what with getting too attached and then them dying too easily. (Might seem weird to buy fish at the same time as preparing the quarantine tank, but really, cloaches are better off going into a mature tank anyway, rather than a new one). These three have been fantastic! One – I presume it’s always the same one – spends most of his time under the rock, as our previous cloaches have, but the other two are generally out and about and being all cloachy: shimmying around the tank, nosing around, and basically being all adorable and cute. I love my cloaches.
Dr Zhivago
I am watching this tonight, in bits and pieces, trying to find appropriate bits to show the kiddies tomorrow – preferably the parts about the Civil War, and the privations suffered under War Communism and the Bolsheviks. I would quite like to watch the whole thing – I think the only time I have was about a decade ago, and I remember liking it then… but it’s just so long! I simply can’t watch the whole thing tonight, and the thought of watching a 3-hour movie just seems too difficult these days.
Omar was quite devilishly handsome in his day. I’ve just got to the part where Zhivago is about to meet Lara… terribly exciting. Truly, it is a grand narrative.
Random Stuff about the UK: places we stayed
So we’ve been home for a number of months now, and sometimes I feel like we never went. So I’m going to start trawling through my diary* and write up a few bits and pieces. I’m going to start by listing all the places we stayed, with a couple of words about what I thought of them.
# Started in Sheffield, because that’s where J’s relatives are – we stayed there for a week over Christmas. The ‘burbs we were staying in were very nice; the city – basically just like any other city.
# Windemere, in the Lakes Country. World’s Biggest Tourist Trap. Nice enough town, but expensive… the lake itself was quite nice. I’m sure it’s lovely in summer and even more expensive and crawling with even more tourists.
# Dumfries. Once we managed to find somewhere to stay – long, and annoying, story – a nice enough town. Had a very cool bridge in the middle of town, built at some time just to transport some huge gun.
# Haltwhistle. Very little border town. Not much to say about it, really. Nice pub; Newcastle fans to the max.
# York. I loved York – because we stayed within the walls (at a scummy backpackers’… more about that later). I loved the Shambles – they were beautifully crazy, cool little shops, and the Minster’s spire above it all.
# yeh, then we went back to Sheffield for a night, to do some washing…
# Llanberis, in Wales (so glad we stayed somewhere with the aspirated l). Lovely little town in Snowdonia; surprising variety of food, and J fell in love with the bike shop.
# Abergavenny – another lovely Welsh town. And another glorious bike shop for J to moon over. This was a really nice town, in general – pleasant ‘burbs, nice town centre… I could probably live there.
# Crosley Heath. The weirdest place we stayed, simply because we were staying in the post office and the owner of the house… well. Old and a bit crotchetty, but quite nice to us; we got weird looks from people down the pub when we told them where we were staying… and the farmhand dude was a bit odd, too. The house itself was nice. The town was really a village.
# Oxford. As a city, my least favourite place in the entirety of the UK. Dirty, congested, impossible to park in the town centre – and maybe I’m a bit biased because we nearly didn’t go there, due to not finding somewhere to stay. Crazy bikes, crazy motorists…
# Cambridge. As opposed to Oxford, probably my favouritest town in the entirety of the UK. The town centre, anyway – didn’t spend any time in the ‘burbs. The colleges and the Backs are glorious… the Heath is wonderful, to have such a huge space for anyone to use… it was just so liveable.
# Canterbury. A very nice town – small, easy to get around.
# London! There is absolutely no way I could ever live in London. The ‘burbs are more like separate towns that just happen to connect – funny, that’s just what they are. Inner London was entertaining, for a short period of time, but I couldn’t live there or work there. Way, way too many people. And cars. And pollution. But it was fun.
* I kept a diary every day. Every Day. It became quite a chore by the end, but I’m glad I did it.
My dad would be so proud
My dad could talk to anyone. And did talk to anyone. He truly had the gift of the gab. Me, not quite so much. Too shy and introspective, sometimes just too disinterested.
Tonight, coming home from dinner with J (he had his bike to ride home), I got a taxi driven by an Ethiopian man. I know this because when I got in he changed the music station from one playing African music to Fox, and I told him he could turn it back. I then got up the courage to ask whether he was from Africa originally, which part – because he just said east, at first – and then I said something about having just read a little about Ethiopia, about when the Italians invaded.
We proceeded to chat for the whole ride home – only about 10 minutes, I grant you, but impressive for me nonetheless. Helped that he did most of the talking. Apparently, the reason why Jamaicans revere Hali Selase (?sp) so much is that he made it rain, when he visited during his round the world tour, including being the first black African leader (?) to visit the White House. And it seems he also had a mark on his palm like a stigmata.
Fascinating. Maybe I should try this random conversation thing more often.
Oh the joy
I have finally found someone else who likes BSG! Hallelujah!
The story goes like this:
Friend happens to find out we have been watching it – not sure how; maybe I confessed I was tired because we were watching it too late at night. He then admits that he got hooked on the first season. But – and here is the tragedy of the story – he doesn’t have broadband and didn’t know that the second season was out on DVD. So you know what he’s been doing?
Oh yes. Reading the scripts.
So I fed his addiction and gave him season 2 – which he watched in the holidays – and then season 3. He just finished season 3 last night, so we were able to have a good old yak about it today. It was so nice to talk to someone else about it!! Somehow talking to the person you watch it with – that is, J – isn’t quite the same as finding someone who has watched it independently.
Mermaid madness
Cassiphone has started Mermaid Madness Month. In honour of that, I thought I would post my very first picture from the UK trip… this is from York. I took it for my friend Kate, who once wrote a story about mermaids with inflatable bosoms (how they manage to bob around on top of the sea, don’t you know), and with whom I saw a play that included a song with the words: “Mermaid fillets: kiss one end and eat the other/ Mermaid fillets: high in protein, low in blubber!”
… and then I wasn’t able to upload any pics. Will have to rectify that.
Have they not learnt?
Just caught a snippet of Hack, on Triple J. It was obviously about ANZAC Day, asking young people what they think of the day.
I don’t know what the actual question was, but the responses I heard were along the lines of ‘I don’t agree with it because it’s, like, glorifying war and stuff (?) (the ? is because of the upwards inflection at the end of the sentence…’.
I don’t much care what your opinion of ANZAC Day is – well, I do, but I respect your right to hold any opinion (with all the usual caveats of respectfulness), but truly – have you not learnt? Do you not understand? There are so many things wrong with that statement – how could commemorating ANZAC Day, initiated to mourn the dead, celebrate war? And I thought that the aftermath of the peace protests against the Vietnam War had taught people to divorce soldiers, doing their job, from war as a concept – it has become trite, listening to American protests, but it really is possible to support and sympathise with soldiers while still protesting the war they are fighting.
I was mad at the ignorance. Now I’m just sad.
BBC History March 2007
Good thing I finished this recently, since April just arrived!
Just a quick review of this issue, looking at some of the articles that I really enjoyed:
“Bomber Boys,” by Patrick Bishop, was fascinating – I had no idea that the bomber crews had got a rough ride after the war, but it does make sense (not that they should have, I mean, but the way it was done, or not done… does that itself make sense??). The sheer statistics of artillery and casualties and damage done, by and to both sides, was staggering. And the picture of Cologne in 1945 is … well. Devestating.
David Okuefuna looking at Albert Kahn and the photographers he patronised, in “Bringing Colour to a Pre-War World,” was brilliant. The pictures themselves are amazing, and the stories of the photographers just added poignancy to the stories of the subjects. I am a firm believer in the idea that knowing about the producer/author/artist can, indeed, add to your understanding of a piece of art – at least give it context, if not enrich it greatly.
I didn’t reliase that there was some ‘cash for peerages’ scandal surrounding Tony Blair. How interesting. The double-page spread looking at the precedents for that sort of thing was illuminating (bad, bad James I and Bill Gladstone!).
I loved the article about Mr Stanley. All I really knew about the man was his “Mr Livingstone, I presume?” – which he probably never actually said, surprise surprise. I had no idea he had been reviled as cruel and so on, although I am terribly surprised by that, either. And sometimes, I just love revisionist history.
Cannibals! And medicine! And Europeans! Never knew that powdered corpse had been used for medicinal purposes, But, with the idea of sympathetic magic – I mean, medicine – it’s no huge leap, I suppose.
I had never heard of the Hottentot Venus. Truly people did (do) weird and bizarre things when they thought (think) they were (are) superiod racially etc… I wonder if there is antything that ‘rational’, ‘moral’ beings do today that will be reviled in 200 years?
The booklet about the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade was brilliant – worth getting this issue just for it. The background to the law being passed, the stress of getting it passed, and the consequences… plus people reflecting on its ramifications, or lack thereof, and the legacy of slavery today, was riveting. I have to admit – and I apologise to Toyin Agbetu for this, and thank him for pointing it out – that I had been thoughtless of my terminology up to this point: it is very easy to keep referring to Africans who were enslaved as ‘slaves’, rather than ‘enslaved Africans’ – a small but, I think, vital difference.
And then there’s “‘I Defy Them All!'” – about 17th century women; particularly the Verney women. Illegit pregnancies, fiance-stealing, blackmail… they did the lot. I appreciated that at the end Adrian Tinniswood concedes that this may not have been the norm, since up to that point I wondered if that was what he was driving at… it is interesting to think about just how many, and how much, women at the time ‘broke the rules.’
Lots of reviews. Places to go, but too late since I won’t be going back for ever such a long time.
Good issue.
How to Know that You’ve had a Long Day
Number 1: you have make-from-the-box-fajitas for dinner. And beer. And maybe chocolate too.
Of course, this could also represent the end of a fairly good day. Never said it was foolproof.
Year of Reading Dangerously
So I’ve got together with three other people – Alisa Krasnostein, Ben Payne, and Tansy Rayner Roberts – to try and read all the Aussie short stories published in 2007 and most of the overseas ones as well. Woohoo! Go us.
Are we nuts or what?
Thanks to Ben, the community where we will be discussing the very best we will come across is called Not if you were the Last Short Story on Earth, which I’m quite fond of, myself. Come along for the ride! Read good and useful reviews! Watch us crack under the pressure!
Randomly Yours, Alex 