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Random ramblings that will hopefully benefit my writing somehow |
| I have often been told that a blog or diary is one of the greatest assets to a writer, enabling them to note down any random thoughts or ideas that may eventually serve to inspire a piece of writing. This blog will be nothing more (or less) than a splurge of happenings in my life, and the opinions and thoughts that go with it. Hopefully it might help someone with their writing. |
"Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change." Thomas Hardy I have just been talking to a friend about the way in which time passes without us noticing until something makes us think about it. For instance, a most arbitrary time marker: the release-date anniversary of a film whose release is in some way connected in our minds with a particular period of our lives. In my case, Disney's The Lion King is a big one for me this year, because I remember so clearly going to see it as a child, with my parents, and this year it is 20 years old. In some ways this is a scary thought: have I achieved everything I could have done in the intervening years? The answer is undoubtedly not, but does that matter? I have achieved what I have achieved and that's just the way it is: I can't go back and achieve anything more, so there's no point considering what I could have done. Sure, I can look back and learn from the periods where I perhaps didn't make the best decisions but then I'm not sure I'd necessarily make the same ones now anyway: each decision and its results has shaped the person I now am and adjusted my responses to future choices. Perhaps that's why, in most ways, the passage of time doesn't bother me at all. It's scary only in an abstract sense: an acknowledgement of how much goes by without me noticing it. Aside from that, time just is. It was my birthday on Sunday and I know that some people hate birthdays and hate to admit or even think about their age, but neither bothers me. I am 32 years old. It's just a fact; just a number relating to me, much like the fact that I am 67 inches tall, or that I have ten toes. Perhaps I'll feel different when I turn 40 or 50... or perhaps not. I'll just have to wait and see and, in the end, isn't that part of what's so exciting about life? The fact that these anniversaries are suddenly upon us when we were so busy with the minutiae of our daily lives, giving us an opportunity to stop and reflect on the years that have passed, and everything they have brought us, or indeed taken away? Perhaps more than that, aren't anniversaries an opportunity to think ahead and consider what we might want to be looking back on when the next anniversary rolls around? And if we're looking back on something completely different by the time we get to that anniversary? Well, then we've deviated from what we thought we wanted but we've done something else instead, and anyway, what did we know ten years ago, hey? "You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that rules, time is our gambling partner on the other side of the table and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand, we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives.” José Saramago |
"The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats" Albert Schweitzer I was reading through the comments that people made about my blog in the past, and I noticed that quite a few of the commenters seemed to be interested in my cats. I therefore thought that perhaps a good way to re-introduce myself on the sight was to introduce my cats! As an aside, I don't entirely agree with Albert Schweitzer's quote, above: for me, the pleasures of a good book or film and writing would have to be up there as escapes, and life really isn't that miserable, is it?! Since I was last active on here, I have become a lot more involved with music, now singing with two choirs in our area, both very different. One is a Gaelic choir that is very social and all about keeping Gaelic culture alive and spending time with other people who have a passion for Gaelic culture; many of the members can't read music and have no choral background. The other is much more serious and we are expected just to be able to open our books, be given a starting note and then sing, making the ability to read music an absolute requirement. Their repertoire is correspondingly serious: Mozart, Beethoven, etc. and mostly in Latin or English so very much easier for me than the Gaelic music. I love both choirs but for very different reasons. Anyway, back to the cats! When I was last active on here, I had four cats: two moggies and two pedigrees, all neutered and strictly pets. In the intervening years, my other half (still the same one - Richard) and I 'found' the world of cat showing and, having fallen in love with the Asian breed group, particularly the semi-longhaired Tiffanies, began breeding pedigree cats. I bought our first Tiffanie as a gift for Richard back in 2008, not because she was a Tiffanie, but because she was a black cat and Richard had always fancied a black cat. I'd seen her when visiting a friend who bred them, and ended up booking her as a surprise present for Richard. Her pet name, Annas, is Gaelic for 'surprise', though her official name is Rushbrooke Kahlua Over Ice. Actually, to give her full title, she is Champion & UK & Imperial Grand Premier Rushbrooke Kahlua Over Ice: the highest-titled Tiffanie in the world, and we weren't even interested in showing when we bought her! We got into showing by chance and discovered a new passion. A year later, we got our first two Tiffanie breeding queens, one a half-sister to Annas, from the same breeder, and the other from someone I happened to come across online. The Tiffanie is the semi-longhaired member of the Asian Group, the other breeds in that group being the Burmilla (shaded shorthair), the Asian Smoke (smoke shorthair), the Asian Self (single-colour shorthair) and the Asian Tabby (tabby shorthair), and all members of the group can be freely bred to each other or to Burmese. They are supposed to be Burmese in other colours and patterns (and hair length, in the case of the Tiffanie), so should look identical to Burmese aside from their coat colour/pattern. We had our first litters in 2010 and have just had our third litter of great-grandchildren of those first two girls. Our current cats are, in order of age: Jinny - 14 years old this year and the matriarch of the household. She is a longhaired rescue moggy who had been abused before we got her, to the point that she would literally empty her bowels where she stood if you walked into the room too fast. What a long way she's come in the intervening years: she's been Best in Show Household Pet on numerous occasions and now comes to greet all our visitors, bless her. Her name is an old Scots word meaning 'white wave', and we called her that for the flowing white fur on her tummy, though she is otherwise a brown tabby. Ali - nine years old back in April, he is a shorthaired rescue moggy from the same sanctuary that Jinny came from. I fell in love with him as a tiny kitten when I was volunteering there, and he's been with us since he was six weeks old (his mum had rejected him, so there was no good reason for them to wait any longer than that before letting us take him home). As it happens, he'll soon be leaving us, because although on paper he is my cat, in his heart he belongs to my oldest friend and former housemate, who is currently in the process of moving to Brighton and will be taking him with her. Ali is short for Droch Ailig, which is Scots Gaelic for 'rascal'. Annas - seven years old this coming December. She is a black self Tiffanie (meaning black and nothing else), with the most stunning yellow eyes. You've already heard about her, though. Dàrna - five years old back in February, she is one of our original two breeding queens, though now neutered into hormone-free retirement. She is a chocolate tortie silver shaded Tiffanie, and her official name is Imperial Grand Champion Dayjoy Orla - she was only the sixth Tiffanie to win the Imperial title (Annas having been the first). Dàrna is Scots Gaelic for 'second', because she was our second breeding girl. She has the biggest purr on the planet and loves everyone, and we're so lucky to have started our line with her, because she's passed that temperament on to all of her descendants. Ironically, the only reason she was still with her breeders when we got in touch with them is because the person she was supposed to have gone to, as a breeding queen, had visited her a few days previously and decided that they didn't want her because "her tail wasn't plumey enough". More fool them, because when her coat had grown in fully she developed the most fabulous plume. Their loss, our gain! Tia - four years old yesterday, she came to us as a two-year-old because her owners were giving up breeding and I managed to persuade them to let me have her rather than lose her unique pedigree from the gene pool. Her proper name is Champion Skampaws Ashputtel Galatea, Ashputtel being the prefix of the people who were kind enough to let me take her when they stopped breeding. She is a chocolate silver shaded Burmilla, and is an absolute sweetheart with the most beautiful face and a huge purr. She's currently pregnant with a litter of Dàrna's great-grandchildren. Fiona - four years old in September and Dàrna's daughter from her first litter, she is an apricot silver shaded Tiffanie and was the first of our own kittens that I fell in love with. She's a bit of a comedienne but also one of the cuddliest of our cats, with a huge purr like her mum. Her proper name is Champion Cagaran Beannachd-Fionn, Cagaran being our prefix, meaning 'Darling' in Scots Gaelic, and Beannachd-Fionn meaning fair-haired blessing in the same language. We started out naming our litters in alphabetical order and they all have Gaelic names unless that isn't possible (our 'H' litter, for instance had to be named in old Scots because there are no Gaelic words beginning with 'H'). Lhasa - four years old in November, she is a brown smoke Tiffanie. Like Tia, she came to us as an adult, because she has a unique pedigree that I didn't want to see wasted when her breeder gave up. She is much more serious than a lot of our others, but very into cuddles and loves being a lap cat. Her proper name is Champion Adelfsh Amar Stella and she is also pregnant with a litter of Dàrna's great-grandchildren at the moment. Apollo - four years old in December, he is an apricot silver Burmilla and the only one of our cats who lives outside, because he sprays to scent-mark his territory and therefore has to have a run in the garden. His proper name is Champion Kagura Apollo, though he is usually known as 'Peachy'. He's a really soppy boy who rolls around on his back for belly rubs when we visit him in his run. Donny - three years old in August and the first boy that we kept from our own breeding. He is a brown Asian Smoke from a mating between Dàrna and a Burmese boy who has since sadly passed away, another reason we've kept him: his pedigree is absolutely unique and unrepeatable. His proper name is Grand Champion Cagaran Deathach-Donn, the name translating as 'Brown Smoke' - not very original, but he suits Donny. We are extremely lucky that he has never started spraying so he is able to live in the house, though we keep him in either the bathroom or the kitchen so that it would be easy to clean up if he ever did decide to start! He's an absolute sweetheart, who will stand on his hind legs on the chest of drawers in the bathroom or the backs of the kitchen chairs to give nose-rubs to anyone who'll let him. He's just fathered his first litter of kittens out of Tilly. Sonia - two years old back in January, she is a Usual (black ticked tabby) Somali, our only example of that breed, though she is now spayed. Her proper name is Champion Gowlaren Sonia Cagaran and she is very much Richard's cat - she's been suspicious of me since the day we met her at her breeder's house! Unfortunately, when she went off to stud last year she picked up a gut parasite and although that has now been completely cleared up, she developed the habit of toileting inappropriately and we've therefore had to move her out to Apollo's pen. Since they're both entire, she had to be spayed to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but they're both very happy together, and it's great that he's now got a companion, so it's worked out well in the end. Eiteag and Ayla - littermates who turned two last month, they were from Fiona's first litter and are therefore grandchildren of Dàrna's. They are both Tiffanies, but Eiteag is a cream silver shaded Burmese pattern male and Ayla is a chocolate tortie silver shaded Burmese pattern female. His proper name is Champion Cagaran Éiteag-Bàrr, which means 'Cream Quartzite' and hers is Champion Cagaran Eala-Bianach, meaning 'Furry Swan'. I fell in love with Ayla the moment she was born and wasn't planning to keep Eiteag, but somehow he just didn't end up leaving when their siblings did and his type just kept getting better and better so we decided to have a couple of litters from him. Like Donny, he has never started spraying, so he shares with uncle and one of Ayla's sons. Eiteag is the sire of the litters due to Tia and Lhasa, and if there is a suitable boy in one of those, Eiteag will be neutered. Both Eiteag and Ayla love riding on people's shoulders and have given quite a few people a fright by suddenly launching themselves onto a passing shoulder! Tilly - two years old in October, she is the only descendant that we have from our other foundation queen, Katie, who sadly died of a bacterial infection a couple of years ago. Luckily, we had allowed one of our friends to have a daughter from Katie's second litter, and our friends let us have one of Katie's granddaughters back. Tilly is very like her granny, though a little bit less serious and a lot more talkative. Her mother was sired by the same boy as Eiteag and Ayla, so she is their half-niece. She is currently in the nest with her first litter, sired by Donny - four gorgeous kittens in four different colours: black smoke, chocolate smoke, brown or chocolate silver shaded and chocolate shaded Burmese pattern. Her proper name is Anizz Tilleadh gu Cagaran, Anniz being our friend's prefix and the rest meaning 'Return to Cagaran'. Small - a year old last month, Small was Eiteag's first daughter and is a cream shaded Tiffanie. I wasn't planning to keep her, which is why we gave her the name 'Small' (she's huge - it was bad irony), but we fell in love with her and by the time we admitted to ourselves that she wasn't going anywhere, 'Small' had stuck. Her proper name is Champion Cagaran Fileánta, which is Gaelic for 'Poetic'. She is very purry and very cuddly and loves to come under the bed covers and cuddle up to the back of our knees. She's very close with her granny, Fiona. The final two are Zuko and Hailey, who are our 'cinnamon outcross' kittens: Zuko is nine months old tomorrow and Hailey is a month younger. He is a spotted tabby and she is a classic tabby, but critically, they both carry the cinnamon gene. Cinnamon is a full Championship colour for Asians, but the gene is vanishingly rare: I know of only about a half-dozen carriers, meaning that if you want to breed cinnamons (which I do - I love the colour), you would have to be prepared to inbreed quite heavily. I don't like that idea, so have instead embarked on a programme of outcrossing (breeding to a different breed) to bring in the cinnamon gene. It's a five-generation process to get back to the point where you have a cat that is registered as a full Asian and can be shown, the intermediate generations being known as 'F1 Cat of Asian Type', 'F2 Cat of Asian Type' and so on. Zuko is Ayla's son by a cinnamon Australian Mist and Hailey is Eiteag's daughter out of a cinnamon Ocicat. When they are old enough, they will be mated to pass the cinnamon gene into the next generation and four years from now we will have the possibility of producing our first full cinnamon Asian! I think that's probably enough for now, though if you want to know any more about what we're up to, our website is www.cagaran.co.uk. |
| I have just started writing again after many years away from it (life got in the way). As a result, I feel that I ought to start recording interesting thoughts that I have that could perhaps one day lead to something interesting in writing. I'm not planning to edit this as I go through: instead it is a sort of splurge of thoughts that have come out of a film I've just watched and subsequent discussion with my other half. I don't know whether any of the opinions herein will be offensive to anyone, so apologies if they are! Incidentally, I should perhaps note that I am talking about UK society here, and not the wider world. I’ve just watched the film Belle and it started a discussion between Richard and I on the differences in societal values not only since the time portrayed in the film, but also in our lifetimes. For instance, the change in the Royal Family’s attitude to appropriate marital station: they realised the mistake that they made with Princess Diana and sensibly decided not to repeat it with William and Kate Middleton. Having said that they made a mistake with Princess Diana, I do, however, believe very firmly that she was responsible for introducing to the Royal Family the ability to make that sort of decision. She brought with her a humanity that wasn’t there before; an ability to connect with the ordinary people. To be honest, it’s probably been the saviour of the Royal Family as an institution: they have a fine line to walk between being ‘royal’ enough to have a point and being ‘common’ enough to be understood by the people who would make the decision as to whether or not they should exist. That particular societal pressure – to marry someone of appropriate station, that is – has obviously been a very long time in changing, as, I suppose, any societal norm would be. We also discussed the change in acceptance of interracial marriage, homosexuality and religious freedom, as well as the simpler matter of blasphemy and ‘bad’ language. In terms of interracial marriage, we feel that in most quarters, a marriage between people of different races would no longer be something worthy of comment. Clearly, there will still be pockets of racism in which such a marriage would be considered entirely inappropriate, but across society as a whole, we think this pressure has been lifted. If it hasn’t quite reached that point yet, it won’t be very long before it has. Likewise, prejudice against homosexuals: I believe that this is something that will completely disappear from society’s consideration in our lifetimes. That’s not to say that there will be nobody with a prejudice against homosexuality – those people will perhaps always exist – but that society as a whole will no longer hold that prejudice. Just as racial acceptance has become commonplace within the lifetime of our parents, so that now there are only isolated individuals who exhibit racist behaviour, yet when they were children the reverse was probably true: only isolated individuals wanted the removal of racial prejudice. Religious freedom is slightly more complicated, because the mere practice of religion will naturally build boundaries between individuals. There will always be tensions between one major religion and another because it is an inescapable facet of the holding of religious beliefs that your beliefs will differ from someone holding the beliefs of a different religion. That being said, I believe that in my lifetime society will move to a position where it is acceptable for any individual to believe whatever they wish to believe. The conflicts and tensions between religious groups will still exist, but society as a whole will not attempt to influence religious choice. As a final discussion point, the increased acceptance of blasphemy and ‘bad’ language is, I think, indicative of the general relaxation of societal sensorship on the individual. We are now freer than we have ever been – at least in the current civilisation – to having the freedom to do, say or think whatever we wish. Obviously, there are laws in place to ensure that such freedoms do not get out of hand, but in terms of societal pressure there is now very little that society says we cannot or should not do. Actually, thinking about it, even the societal pressure to look a certain way seems to have reduced in our lifetime. Perhaps by the time we die, there will be no societal pressure in any way: wouldn’t that be a fabulous thing to aspire to?! |
"Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others" H. Jackson Brown, Jr. Why is it that everything always comes at the same time? It's like the all-pervasive law of mankind: if we've got lots of time, we've got nothing to do. As soon as we have deadlines and plenty to get done, a million and one other things will come along to try and push you off-track! The way things are at the moment, I certainly have very little time to think of my own life, let alone anyone else's. However, I think that Jackson Brown is wrong: I want to be able to criticise. As long as what I am giving is constructive criticism, then surely that is time well spent? If I was so busy 'improving' my own life, I would never have time to come on here and read and review. In fact, if you ask me, that in itself would automatically invalidate his comments. A major part of my life plan is to improve my writing. Nothing does that so well as receiving constructive criticism from others. If I do not give any reviews, how can I expect any in return... Ha! Point made.  ~~~ Speaking of reviews, I read a great one today: it actually brought a tear to my eye. Silly, I know, but it's so nice to hear something really, really positive about your work once in a while! I am very good at beating myself up (aren't we all at times?!), and not so good at recognising a job well done. I am therefore going to take part of that review and put it here so that I am reminded of it every time that I look back through my blog. You evoke such drama and beauty from the surrounds of Ghigha that I could almost taste it - a true example of 'showing' rather than 'telling' Beautiful imagery, fantastic decriptive narrative and good use of English literary devices (personification of time, simile etc.,) A perfect example of well constructed writing The piece flowed at such an organic pace that I didn't notice it flag anywhere. Inspired writing and I have saved you as a favourite authors on the strength of this alone. God bless Acme! Acme  I joined this site to look for constructive criticism, but I sometimes forget that blatent admiration can give just as much of a boost. If I received praise like this in every review, it wouldn't help to improve my work any. However, receiving this once in a while certainly helps my confidence and, yes, it does make me feel pretty good!  ~~~ Having said that we all need reviews to develop, there are a couple of pieces that 'need' looked at:
This is not my work, but Terandiel very kindly reviewed the piece below, and is needing this piece reviewed by the 24th. It is an assignment that must be handed in.
This is the story of how my family business started. At the moment we are working incredibly hard to get our new product off the ground. Part of that is the website, and I wrote this piece as an 'interesting' part of our history. There is a more conventional 'about us' page on the site also. Any reviews will be very much appreciated, because it has to be good. We really need things to go well for a while! On that note, I'm away home for tea. It is getting on for 8:30pm and I've not left the office yet - I have both the website copy and at least the bones of a seminar to write by Thursday/Friday of this week! Incidentally, I have just uploaded my first interactive story - please contribute a chapter! I will leave you with a quote that I really hope comes true for us: "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it" Henry David Thoreau |
"Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude" Katherine Mansfield Until today I didn't like fantasy. This wasn't because I hadn't tried to like it. Believe me, I had. Carrie is an avid reader of fantasy, and extols its virtues. I believe strongly in always trying something new. I also believe in trying to see a virtue in everything. I have tried reading fantasies by a variety of authors. Some I finished. Some, I couldn't even get past the first page. I like reality. That isn't to say that I only want to think about my own reality: I love nothing better than to immerse myself in someone else's life. No, it would be more fitting to say that I like realism. When I read, I like to think (or know) that what I am reading could really (or did really) happen. That has never been possible for me with fantasy. Until today. Ironically, it wasn't one of the famous, published authors that brought about this change of attitude. It was the work of two authors on this site: Arakun the twisted raccoon   and tailennionIn particular, these two items:
The second isn't even a completed piece of work, and yet it is so beautifully crafted that it has achieved what Richard Adams, Adrian Cole, Kate Elliott, Fletcher Pratt, Jonathan Stroud and countless others could not. It has persuaded me that fantasy can be realistic. Both of these pieces are art. They are not just writing: they capture something of the breathlessness that is brought on when viewing an incredible painting, or a magnificent sculpture. Both of these authors have taken their words and moulded them around something born of their own imaginations. Something so completely developed that it becomes real. Somewhere there is a world where people turn into birds and fly to work. There really are animals that can communicate with their 'familiars'. I have finally found some fantasy that I like. Some fantasy that I would read again. Some fantasy that I would recommend to other non-fantasy-fanatics. As a child I had an incredibly active imagination. Perhaps, after all, there is a reason to let it roam! "Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning" Lucius Annaeus Seneca *** As you may gather, I have been doing some reading this evening. I finished work a bit early (20:00  ), and came in search of something to relax with. In my off-line world I am currently reading Sir Robin Day's autobiography. It's pretty heavy-going, and I was looking for something shorter and lighter. Something that I could think about and, indeed, review.I must confess to having got quite into the idea of reviewing. I haven't done that much of it yet, but it is such a great way of getting involved. I am sure that it also helps to improve my writing. In evaluating what works and what doesn't in other people's work, surely I must start to learn the same for my own? I also discovered the 'active reviewers' page today, and was rather thrilled to discover that I am #136 on the list. Okay, so 135 people are ahead of me, but still, I'm pleased! For those who do like reviewing, or want to do more of it, you should read this:
I think it says it everything that should be said about reviewing. Every reviewer should have read something like this at some point (yes, I know that there are other similar pieces out there). *** On that note, I am going home for my tea (it is now after 9pm), and to think on my change of opinion. There is a train of thought that says I am now more intelligent: "I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic" Lisa Alther in Kinflicks, 1975 |
"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all" Sam Ewig I have worked until after 9pm both of the last two evenings. One of the most important things that I have done since joining the company is to take music4Uonline through a re-brand. The final step in this re-brand is to roll the new branding out on the website. That is what I am currently working on. Our marketing agency has developed the layouts for the pages. Our web designers know what is required of them and have the layouts and all of the necessary elements. Except one: the copy. That is my job, and it hasn't been done yet. After two evenings of hard writing, I have now completed four pages. Only about another 25 to go! At least writing is something that I enjoy doing: this would be a real marathon if I didn't! I will hopefully get time to upload the copy this weekend, and then I can get feedback. It is true that owning your own business sometimes means having to work harder. We are the ones whose responsibility it is to take the business forward. We are responsible for the livelihoods of all of our employees. Therefore it is we who have to work late. It is our holidays that have to be cancelled. The advantage of being the owners, however, is that once we do succeed in getting this going, our business will be worth a lot more. There is also immense satisfaction in knowing that I will have been responsible for some of our success. My work will have directly contributed to the increase in value and to the security of our staff's jobs. This week my entries are likely to be shorter than they have been of late because of the lack of free time. I'm away to bed finally. Night all! "When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt" Henry J. Kaiser (1882 - 1967) |
"The poetry of the earth is never dead" John Keats On Thursday evening Richard and I left at about 19:30, and headed off towards the west coast. We drove out on the Stirling 'Drip Road' across the flat expanses of former peat bog, which are now covered in crops and cows. We then headed onto smaller, more windy roads as far as Balloch at the South-West corner of Loch Lomond. After that we turned up the road that runs along the Eastern edge of the loch. That is a beautiful road leading up into the start of the Highlands, with the mountains of the Trossachs visible on the right the whole way from Stirling to Tarbet. At Tarbet we turned away from the loch and headed out towards the coast, traversing up and down the sides of several lochs, past Inverary and Loch Gilphead. At places along the route, the old road can be seen weaving away to the side of the newer expanses of tarmac; single track and with beautiful, sculptural old bridges that are too weak to take the volume of today's traffic. From Loch Gilphead it is not very far to Crinan, where we were linking up with my family to bring the boat back through the canal. The last stretch of the journey is along single-track roads with passing places, weaving along the side of the canal itself before breaking away around the back of one of the promontories of rock and approaching Crinan from the opposite side. By the time that we arrived it was almost dark, and was well past the point at which headlamps become a necessity. We parked the car in the almost-empty carpark at Crinan, where there were so many spaces that Richard couldn't decide where to park. Getting out of the car, I was struck by the familiar feeling of 'coming home' that always greets any arrival on the West Coast of Scotland. In that area in particular, the air almost buzzes with history, and much of the landscape has remained unchanged for thousands of years. My parents had sailed over to Crinan too late to make an entry to the canal, and the fishing boats wished to unload in the sea-lock so the boat was tied up on the pier. That much we had managed to ascertain via text message, after several failed attempts at a phone conversation. Mobile phone signal in Crinan is virtually non-existant, and Dad had wasted his longest period of connection by telling me that he didn't have a very good signal. He was promptly cut off again, leaving me sitting on the other end thinking that he could at least have told me where they were moored! As we walked down to the pier, the boat was lit up throughout, and we could see several people onboard. My sister was in the wheelhouse with two guys that I didn't know, one of which I assumed must be her elusive boyfriend (every time that I had hoped to see him, something had prevented a meeting, but I knew that he should have been there this weekend). There were more people in the saloon, and when we got on board we discovered that there were even more people down forward, where my Mum was in the process of giving a guided tour. Dad told us that we were to be staying in the port cabin, and we went below to deposit our bags. Below decks, we met Mum in tour-guide mode, and found that the visitors were the family of one of my brother's tennis-friends. Richard had been round to Mum and Dad's house in a gap between clients earlier in the day, and had collected mail for my siblings. One of Calum's items we knew would be his Standard Grade results. The assorted family and guests suggested that Calum should open his results immediately. Kirsty and her boyfriend, Neal, were particularly insistant, and I later learnt that this was because Calum had promised to go for a swim, fully clothed, if he didn't get straight A's. Sure enough, he had achieved his straight A's, although this was no great surprise considering the amount of work that he had put into them earlier this year. I spoke to one of the Assistant Rectors at the school a couple of months ago and she asked how Calum was getting on. I could only reply that he was working a lot harder than I ever did. Mum said that I went for the strategy of "simply letting [my] natural aptitude shine through". Well, it was something like that! As a short aside, and whilst on the subject of school, there is a story in the papers today about one of our 'rival' schools: Glenalmond. Apparently, some of their pupils dressed up in 'fox-hunting' gear, while others dressed as 'neds', or 'non-educated' persons. They then proceeded to record an enactment of the neds being hunted using hounds. The video was then posted onto u-tube. I make no comment one way or the other on the rights or wrongs of this activity. The thing that struck me was the slant taken on this by the paper (in this case the Mirror). They cite this as clear evidence that class divides still exist in Scotland, but I would seriously dispute this conclusion. When I was at Dollar, it was not uncommon for people to go 'neeber-hunting': chasing the locals with or without low-calibre weapons. The whole thing was a light-hearted tradition on both sides, and I know of no instance where anyone was anymore harmed than they would have been in a game of rugby. I also very much doubt whether those same 'neeber-hunters' would have walked past one of their 'victims', had they passed them fallen at the side of the road. In fact, I believe that a greater percentage of my school-colleagues would have stopped than would among the general public. As Carrie rightly pointed out, as Private School Pubils travelling to and from school by bus, we received far more abuse from passing locals than we ever gave. If anything, we are all agreed that there is much more of a class divide created by lower classes against the upper than the opposite. Anyway, that random aside out of the way, I will carry on with my weekend. The weather reports for Friday were a bit patchy, and we weren't sure whether we would have rain. Come Friday morning, however, we were greeted by a bright, clear morning; sky covered in pale grey clouds with patches of blue sky showing in between. There was very little wind, and the surface of the bay was barely ruffled. Neal had to be in Ardrishaig by about 1pm, in order to catch the bus back to Glasgow. He had made an error in his dates (again: told you that something comes up every time I am supposed to meet him), and realised that he had rugby on the Saturday. We therefore wanted to be in the canal by about 9am so that we could get as far as Cairnbaan in time for Kirsty (my sister) to take him into Ardrishaig. Kirsty had driven up to join Mum, Dad and Calum the previous weekend, and Mum had brought her car round to Crinan when the others sailed the boat across on Thursday. While Mum prepared breakfast (scrambled egg, sausage and bacon: a rare treat to give us plenty of energy for working the locks), Dad and I took the two cars (Kirsty's was in the same car park) along the canal. As we passed the set of locks leading down to the Cairnbaan bridge, Dad pulled over and came back to say that he was actually going to leave the car in the carpark at the first of that run of locks just in case we didn't get as far as Cairbaan in time. This we duly did, and headed back along to Crinan, leaving my car in the carpark there before returning to the boat. As we crossed the upper of the two hydraulic locks there, Dad commented on the fact that one of the lower sluices was up in spite of the fact that the lock was not yet in action. We soon heard that there was a problem with the hydraulics on one of the locks (presumably this one) and that the lock-keepers were waiting for the repair engineer to come out and have a look at the gates. We ate breakfast and discussed whether or not to proceed with our intention to go through the canal. The weather was fine and we could therefore sail around the Mull (of Kintyre), rather than taking the shorter route through the top of the penninsula. This would make the shifting of the cars more complicated (one would probably have to be left at Tarbert rather than just relaying along the canal) and would mean that Neal would have to be run to Ardrishaig before we left, as the 11-hour sail could obviously not return him on time. In due course the gates were fixed, and we should have been the first ones into the canal (having been there since the night before), but the lock-keepers had forgotten us and therefore let a couple of newly arrived sailing yachts in first. We decided that we would stick with our plan to go through the canal and were eventually admitted to the sea-lock at about 10:30. The first two locks require little effort on the part of the crews, due to their hydraulic operation. This does, however, allow a much-needed easing into the rhythm of the canal, giving us all a chance to get used to the handling of the ropes and fenders without also needing to think about the movement of sluices and lock-gates. Crinan's status as something of a tourist destination does tend to result in something of an audience, though, so it is just as well that no mistakes were made. Sailing along the first reach, I decided to sit on the front deck with my notepad and try to capture something of what I saw around me. This is something that I have not done for a long time, but is encouraged by the Writer's Bureau as part of the discipline of being a writer, so I thought I might as well try. It was an interesting exercise, because I recorded things that normally wouldn't be remembered even ten minutes after they had passed, and certainly not once outside the canal at the other end. The first corner would be tight in all but the smallest of boats, and ours is both long and broad. Getting her around this corner therefore requires excellent handling (which thankfully my Dad is easily capable of), and still the trees against the cliff-face slap along the side of the boat, catching on each of the hand-rail supports. Swallows dip low over the water, catching flies invisible to our eyes, and skimming the surface with their wing-tips. Occasionally the movement of a fish can be seen in the water ahead of the boat, and an assortment of birdsong can be heard throughout the journey. I have always been fascinated by the water's movement as we sail past. It is slowly pulled back as we approach and then pass; the level falling by as much as several inches. Once we have passed a section, the water rushes along behind us, falling back into the spaces from which it has been drawn. Where the sides of the canal are not hewn directly from the rock, they are generally now lined with concrete-filled sand-bags, but it is still this continuous water movement that wears away the banks. This is why the speed of vessels is supposed to be limited to 3 knots, although both our current, and previous, boats had a minimum speed of slightly more than this. On that first stretch of the canal the view to the left is pretty incredible: straight across Loch Crinan to the Moine Mhor (the 'great moss') beyond. This is an ancient peat bog that 1500 years ago was still covered by the sea. In its heart sits the hill-fort of Dalriada that was the first Scottish capital when Kenneth McAlpine united the Scots and Picts as one kingdom, in 843AD. The surrounding valley, Kilmartin Glen, is one of the most historic in Scotland; filled with burial cairns, standing stones and pre-historic rock carvings. For some reason, lock-keepers and other canal-side home-owners seem to be adept gardeners. The banks of the canal are often laden with flowers as various gardens slip by, and people will come out to see us, shouting a greeting. Shortly after leaving Crinan, there is a traditional gypsy-style caravan surrounded by signs advertising paintings for sale. From this emerged a rather loud American, clad only in shorts, his hairy chest tanned. He grinned broadly and shouted "Wow! What a big boat! Probably get about 50 people on that!" Families with young children sauntered along the tow-path, the children skipping on ahead, and cars paused on the road to look at us as we sailed past. As I sat on the front deck with the sun out and the deck throbbing to the engine beneath my feet, I enjoyed a period of stillness, broken only by the rhythmic "psht, psht, psht" of the engine exhausts throwing water out of the sides of the boat. In the wilder parts of the canal, the banks are lined by an assortment of plant species: pines; oak; ash; beech; rowan laden with bright red berries (the birds in that area certainly won't go short in the winter); ferns; clover; hazel; montbresia; heather; dandelions; and brambles, also laden with fat, juicy, glistening berries. These pass by so close in places that if I didn't mind getting my hand scratched by the thorns, I could have reached out and picked them. For much of the journey, the road runs right beside the canal, and in one place someone has put up a sign reading "hit the brakes, not the drakes". Sure enough, the pontoon there was playing host to even more ducks than it was boats! Once the sea-loch is no longer alongside, the near view is instead made up of a mass of reeds, grasses and short, scrubby bushes. At this point a sand/mud-banked river weaves through the plain and a herd of highland cows stood on its banks, two tiny calves nestling under their mothers' bellies for milk. The Moine Mhor is still beyond, with forest and then blue mountains beyond that. At the end of the reach we came upon the first set of manually operated lock-gates, black-painted with the numbers picked out in sharply contrasting white. The handles on the gates are made of huge, thick, trunks of oak, and Richard commented that there aren't many places that you can see a single piece of wood as large as that, in use. On the approach to the lock we passed a couple of mums pushing different-coloured prams, a young child running along beside them. The boats ahead of us moved very slowly through the locks, and at one point we were dreadfully held up by another hilarious American. This one had a thick, handle-bar moustache, and wore a proper 'captain's cap', with a crest on the front. He insisted on having his boat pulled into the lock by rope, rather than using his engine, causing havoc in the process. I know that this is a slightly random place to stop, but I feel that I must. If not, this is actually going to turn into an epistle, and I think that I had better go to bed, particularly as it is now after 12:30am and I have work in the morning. Today was a pretty disappointing day at work, so hopefully tomorrow I will have more news on that front. Night all! |
"We are all civilized people, which means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behavior" Tennessee Williams, from the fore-word to Sweet Bird of Youth My housemate and I were having a discussion last night about whether there is really any difference between humans and animals. The centre-point of the conversation was the fact that basically, the sole purpose of any animal species (humans included) is to pro-create. Man-kind, however, is so successful at this that the world's population is escalating to unsustainable levels. This leaves us with a dillema: do we really have a purpose? As a race, we have created for ourselves this whole set of values, and because we are capable of conscious decision-making, and the holding of morals, that supposedly places us in a realm above the rest of the animal kingdom. The bible, of course, says that we were put on this earth to rule over the rest of the animals, so for Christians, this attitude is perhaps excusable as a precept of our religion. What about other religions, though? What about those religions that state that we are equal with animals, and that nature is one body - what right do we have, then? What about people with no religion to base their status on? Needless to say, last night's conversation didn't get very far, and we just ended up tangled in a knot with more questions than we started with. This may have had something to do with the lateness of the hour! I'd be very interested to hear anyone else's thoughts on the subject, though. ~~~ Having introduced my animals yesterday, I feel that perhaps I should give a bit of background to the rest of my household. I'm a bit fed up of referring to 'my partner', and 'my housemate', and would rather be able to use names! I was born and grew up in Falkirk, in central Scotland, where my parents still live. For the first six years of school, I went to the local primary, and then went to a private school until I was 18. Incidentally, does anyone know why private schools in the UK are refrerred to as 'public schools'? They're not public: surely the state schools should be the 'public' schools?? Anyway, I finished school in 2000, and went to Lancaster Uni (in England) to study a BBA in Management, finally graduating last year. Whilst at Uni, I met my partner, Richard, who is from Loughborough in the East-Midlands area of England. He bought a small ex-council-house at the end of our First-Year, and we stayed there throughout the rest of our time at Uni. As I approached graduation, Dad asked me if I would come back and join our family business. We had always intended that I would go and work elsewhere for at least five years first, but they launched a new product last year and needed someone to market it. I was just coming to the end of a management degree, and had some limited knowledge of marketing theory from my course. To be honest, having just spent hundreds of thousands on development work, they couldn't really afford anyone else! Richard had finished Uni before me, and had started his own business as a garden services contractor three years ago. He had a small, but growing, regular client-base in Lancaster, but he decided to up-sticks and come with me to Scotland. I will be forever grateful to him for doing so, but he already wanted to move to Scotland and it has worked out rather well for him anyway! Above the office was a flat that hadn't been lived in since 1989. Some of the rooms were briefly used as offices in the early '90s, and the flat has been used as a sort of emergency accommodation whenever any of the staff had problems with their own houses. Apart from that it was only used as a store (and boy, was there stuff stored up there!). Dad suggested that we may as well use the flat, as it is there anyway, and I asked one of my old friends from home (Carrie) if she would like to join us. She agreed, and Richard and I started work on the flat early last summer. I say 'started work', because a flat that hasn't been lived in since 1989 needs a lot of work! The Living Room and one of the bedrooms had been re-decorated following treatment of dry-rot a few years ago, but even they needed flooring. We re-decorated two of the bedrooms; laid a new floor in the Living Room; carpeted another bedroom and a good portion of the hallway; completely re-decorated the bathroom including tiling, flooring and a new bath; laid a new floor in the entrance-way and gutted and re-fitted the kitchen, which also involved getting sparkys (electricians) in to do a complete re-wire. As he clearly wasn't going to be doing a full season of gardening in Lancaster, Richard told his clients that he would be leaving, and instead signed on with an agency. At the time that we were decorating the house, he was working a shift pattern of four-days-on, four-days-off, with 7am-7pm shifts when he was on. In order to have the maximum amount of time to work on the house, I would drive us up here as soon as he finished work on the last day of a shift, and then we would drive back down on the evening of the day before he started back on again. This meant diving up and down the M6/M74 (trunk-route motorways between Scotland and London) every four days. When we properly moved up here in June of last year, Richard gave up his agency job to work exclusively on the house. We stayed at my parents house (we're only 15 minutes drive away), and would be here from early in the morning until late in the evening. I think the earliest that we were here was about 7am, and the latest 4am, but we were normally here from 8:30/9am until after midnight. That was a knackering summer! Enough of that, though; back to Richard and Carrie. I started work with the company on the 1st of August last year, but for Richard the house was still his full-time job: we only got the heated-towel-rails up in the bathroom a few days before Christmas, the toilet-roll holder and a shelf only went up a couple of weeks ago (just before Richard's Mum came to stay!), and we've still not quite finished the tiling! In January of this year, we finally succeeded in selling the house in Lancaster (the sale had fallen through once already) so Richard started planning to re-start his business up here, and attended the business start-up course at our local Enterprise centre. In March, my mum noticed a small advert in the local paper for a gardening business that was for sale. We got in touch with the seller (Eddie) and had a meeting with him to discuss the business, which turned out to have been running for 10 years, and had a regular client base who had all been with Eddie for several years. Eddie already had someone interested in buying, but they had no previous gardening experience, and he wanted to ensure that his clients would be well looked after. When he heard that Richard had years of experience and had already been working as a gardener, Eddie told the other chap that the business was no longer for sale, and he and Richard signed a deal. This has enabled Richard to start up with almost completely full books, instead of having to spend a couple of years building a client-base. In addition, the rate of pay is higher here than it was in Lancaster, so, as I said, the move has worked out quite well for Richard after-all. Carrie and I have known eachother since she we were children, and our families go back at least three generations together. My grandpa's father was one of 10/11 children, and the eldest were therefore having children of their own around the same time as their younger siblings were being born. Grandpa's cousin, Fiona, is only two years older than my dad, and she is best friends with Carrie's mum (June). The two of them are both around 5' tall, but they tell hilarious stories about "wee Finlay" (my dad, who is almost 6'), because they still remember him in his shorts and school blazer when they were two years above him at school! Before June and Fiona, Carrie's gran was good friends with another of my grandpa's relatives, Grace. Carrie also went to Dollar (the private school), and although we had been friends since we were small children, we became very good friends only in my last couple of years there. When I went to Uni, we spoke regularly, and would see eachother whenever we were both in Falkirk. Ironically, we got together even more once she had moved further away to go to Uni, and she became my closest friend. When she left Dollar, Carrie went to Dundee Uni to study an MA in Politics and International Relations, and she also graduated last year. This year, she has been doing an MSc in Criminology at Edinburgh Uni, and will be finished in a couple of weeks. Having vacated her flat in Dundee to move back to central Scotland to do her second degree, Carrie needed somewhere more local to live. Our flat is ideally situated for her, both for getting the train to Uni, and for driving to work. Thankfully, Richard and Carrie have always enjoyed eachother's company, and our little trio seems to work rather well. We all share many of the same opinions (though we disgree just enough to keep things interesting!), not least in our preference for cats over kids. In the spirit of whoever coined the acronym 'DINKYs' (Double-Income-No-Kids-Yet), we have therefore christened ourselves 'The TINKS': Triple-Income-No-Kids. Full stop. No yet! The negative conortations of the word 'tink' are not lost on us, but we just find it amusingly ironic. Feel free to disagree: none of us have ever claimed to have a conventional sense of humour. In fact, we've never claimed to have a conventional sense of anything! The other day, I mentioned the importance of having people with whom you can just be, and I seem to be very fortunate in having a few such people: "If you have one true friend you have more than your share," Thomas Fuller I count myself very lucky! For those who like quotes, these are some of those that best illustrate our collective friendship: "A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down," Arnold H. Glasow "It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us," Epicurus; 3rd century BC "The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you," Elbert Hubbard, in The Notebook, 1927 "Constant use will not wear ragged the fabric of friendship," Dorothy Parker "A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world," Lois Wyse ~~~ I am going away, this evening, to spend the weekend on a boat. I may be able to get online via wireless at some point, but in case I don't, have a great weekend all! I know I've already probably overdosed you all with quotes, but I'd like to finish today with three of my favourite quotes on the subject of friends. In reverse order of preference: "Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down" Oprah Winfrey "A true friend is one who thinks you are a good egg even if you are half-cracked" Author Unknown  "True friends stab you in the front," Oscar Wilde  Such a cynic  , but undoubtedly one of my favourite writers! |
"Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms" George Eliot (1819 - 1880) - from 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story,' Scenes of Clerical Life, 1857 I must confess to having been surprised that people are reading my blog. Silly perhaps, because that, presumably is what folks normally do with blogs, but still! I want to keep my 'readers' happy, so, as a few people have now requested more detail about my animals (fine, if you don't want to hear about me... see if I care! ), I will try and answer those requests today.I'm sure it wasn't intended to be funny, but the above quote amused me greatly. From personal experience, I would say that it is complete nonsense. My cats are certainly capable of asking questions and passing criticisms; even my fish are capable of issuing a perfectly clear admonishment if we are tardy in feeding them. Okay, I should probably start by giving you some background. Our 'menagerie' consists of four cats, four rabbits, two guinea-pigs and an assortment of pond, coldwater and tropical fish. ~~~ The eldest cat is a longhaired rescue moggie; probably a persian cross. She is 6 1/2, and is called Jinny, which is old Scots for 'white wave' (when we adopted her, she was called Moppit!). She has the softest fur imaginable, and ridiculously warm: if you wrap her fur around your hand, it starts to feel uncomfortably warm almost instantly! The fur on her back, tail and legs is a mottled mixture of light and dark browns and a sandy colour, while her tummy, paws, chest and jaw are the purest white. The fur on her tummy has a slight curl to it, which is very cute but can be a pain for getting tangled. As I mentioned, Jinny is a rescue cat, and I've no idea what her previous owner(s) did to her, but she's obviously been mis-treated in some way. She is very flighty, and when we bought her, she regularly made a mess of the floor if someone approached too rapidly. Even today, if she gets worked up about something, it's a wise precaution to hold her over a litter tray! For my feelings about Jinny's previous treatment, see "Lament of a Second Owner"  .When I was at Uni in Lancaster, I used to volunteer in one of the local animal sanctuaries, and that is where I came across Jinny. She came in with her brother, but they hated each other, and were both independent, so we were allowed to take one without the other. I wanted a female rather than a male, because we had another male cat at that point, who wouldn't have been happy with another male in the house. Jinny is also one of the prettiest cats imaginable, with her flowing fur, and big green eyes. That, combined with her funny chattering through the fence at the sanctuary, just made me fall in love with her! We had just found out that there was a possibility our existing cat might have cancer, so I begged my partner to let me get her 'just in case', and eventually he relented. Jinny's meow is the funniest thing you've ever heard; seriously. She doesn't so much meow as 'meep'. If she gets excited, she'll sit there going 'ma, mya, ma, ma, ma', very fast. It's probably most akin to the noise that terriers and other small dogs make, except in a much higher pitch. ~~~ The next eldest is a Maine Coon male, at 2 years and 4 months. We bought him as a kitten, along with Ali, who I will talk about in a minute. His name is Call (pronounced as in the name Callum), which is gaelic for 'mischief', although his pedigree name is Elmcoon Basil. Call is a brown classic tabby, and is huge: about four feet long from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. He is a gorgeous rich reddish-brown over most of his body, with just a few paler swirls on his sides, and a creamy-coloured tummy. With his size, his long fur and his colouring, Call looks a lot like a wild cat, although when his fur gets tousled (for example when he's just woken up), my Mum says he looks like a 'moth-eaten carpet'! Maine Coon's are well known for being intelligent, and Call is highly intelligent in certain ways, but he's also a complete muppet. He's the one who'll figure out how to turn on a tap, or open a tub, or use a door handle. He's also the one who'll fall off the back of the couch, spill juice on his head and try to actually use the door handle. Using a door handle might not sound like 'muppetry', but in a situation where any 'normal' cat would just push a door with their head, Call insists on trying to stand on his hind legs and use the door handle. This normally results in him falling into the room as the door flies open. I recently fell foul of Call's large size. We don't often wash the cats, because none of ours are show cats, and they generally keep themselves clean. Jinny has been washed many times because of her habit of getting in a mess. Before a few weeks ago, Call, on the other hand, hadn't been washed since he was a kitten. My partner's Mum was coming up to stay for the weekend, and Jinny got in a mess again on the Thursday so I washed her. After washing, we always dry them with their towel (light brown with dark brown paw prints all over it!). For the two longhairs, just using a towel doesn't tend to get them particularly dry, so they end up having to be locked in the bathroom for hours to avoid having wet furniture. Recently, we have therefore purchased a dog hairdryer. This has two barrels with separate controls, meaning that you can gradually step up the level of the dryer to minimise distress to the animal. As the rescue cat, Jinny tends to be the most aggressive of the four, so I carefully wrapped her front end in the towel while I dried her back end with very little struggle. When I removed the towel and moved on to her front end, she put up a bit more of a fight, but basically I had no problem. On the Saturday morning, Call was looking particularly foosty (you need to say that with a Scottish accent, really), so I decided to groom him. This is much easier if the fur has been shampooed and conditioned first, so I decided to give him a wash. This went off without a hitch, and I towel-dried him and fetched the hairdryer. At this point, it is probably worth pointing out that Call is generally the biggest softy in the Universe. He's never really been known to put even a claw out of place, so I didn't expect much trouble from him. I wrapped his front end in the towel exactly as I had done with Jinny, and turned on the hairdryer. He went mental. He stuck all of his claws (and I mean all - I had four sets of scratches) in my legs, threw himself backwards out of the towel and bit my hand. Hard. I tried to hold onto him, but he was going crazy, and I ended up getting bitten a second time on the same hand. Anyway, the bites wound up getting infected, I ended up at the hospital and having to have treatment, including a doctor deciding to use a scalpel  . Needless to say, I won't be trying that again!~~~ The next oldest is Ali, a moggie who came to us as a kitten, from the same sanctuary as Jinny. Again, I came across him in the course of my volunteering. His mother and her sister (both feral) were brought in pregnant. Ali's Mum gave birth to three kittens, while her sister gave birth to two. I don't really remember the other litter, but Ali had two brothers, one the same colour as him, and one a ginger tabby. At the time, I had just lost my ginger tabby to oral cancer (see "My beautiful Tiger" ), and although I already had Jinny, my partner had said that I could get a kitten to 'fill the void', and I was keen to get another ginger tabby. I therefore watched the development of Ali's litter with interest, and was in to see them whenever I was up at the sanctuary.I had also looked up listings of different cat breeds, and decided that a Maine Coon had a personality most similar to Tiger's, so was looking at different breeders. I originally went to Call's breeder to look at his ginger brother, but Call insisted on following me around, and sat next to me on the sofa, so I ended up falling in love with him instead. Anyway, back to Ali! As he and his brothers grew, it became obvious that the other two had inherited far more of their mother's feral fear of humans, and that Ali also had a much more prominent personality. He was an absolute rogue, and a real escape artist, who was forever coming up with new schemes to get out of his 'kitten room'. He once attached himself to the back of someone's belt in an attempt to ride out of the room. On another occasion, he hid in the food cart when the staff were putting down a feed, and the staff member only found him once she was out of the room. As Ali approached the age at which he could be reserved, I became more and more attached to him. My partner and one of our friends came up to see him one day, and they both adored him too. I had already committed to buying Call, though, and he was also a lovely kitten. Eventually, I persuaded Richard to let me get both kittens, which actually turned out to be a blessing: we had Ali for a week before we got Call, and it was a nightmare. Neither of us had anticipated the amount of time that a kitten will want to play, and we had huge trouble getting Ali off to sleep at night. Obviously he was used to sleeping curled up with his two brothers, and he kept us awake at night by crying in his room (the kittens had a room to themselves). We ended up having to get a furry hot-water-bottle and put him on that and then stroke him until he went to sleep. I've just realised that I haven't actually described him! Ali is a black classic tabby and white, and he is a particularly contrasting tabby. His sides have perfectly formed black swirls on a greyish-beige background, and like Jinny, he has white mittens and a white tummy, chest and chin. In Ali's case, though, half of his tummy isn't white, and it has the cutest line of black spots. Ali is the only one of our cats whose weight we have trouble keeping correct. Initially, this probably occurred because he was fed with Call, and tried to eat at the same speed as him. Since he started gaining weight, though, we've fed them separately, and Ali gets 'diet food'. The only problem with this arrangement is that Ali doesn't approve of his diet food, and will sneak off and try and steal any other food that he can get hold of. He is adept at breaking into food cupboards, bags and tubs! While Gealbhan (more in a moment) was a small kitten, he was supposed to have food down at all times, and we have had nightmares keeping Ali off it. I eventually devised a system of feeding Gealbhan in a box with a tunnel entrance, so that only he could get in, but Ali has a real good try, and succeeds whenever he gets a bit slimmer (very annoying, because then he's not slim anymore!). 'Ali' is short for Droch Ailig (pronounced Droch, as in loch, and Alick), which is the gaelic for rascal. Aptly named he is, too! ~~~ Finally, the youngest of our cats was only purchased this year. He is now about nine months old, and is still an absolute monster, particularly since he's an abyssinian, so is completely hyper! He is a sorrel, and we called him Gealbhan (pronounced Gell-van), which is gaelic for 'little fire'. His pedigree name is Pontaby Zeppolle. His pet name refers both to his personality and his colour. Abyssinians are ticked tabbies, meaning that although there is very little overall pattern, each hair is has at least three bands of different colour. In Gealbhan's case, the colours are the beigey-cream ground colour and a rich cinnamon. This gives him a fiery ginger-brown coat, which certainly suits his temperament. From a showing point of view, Gealbhan would be useless, because he has flawed markings: he has a locket, anklets and necklets. A locket is an area of white, and is an automatic fault in a show; Gealbhan has one on his throat and we think it's the cutest thing in the world! The only permitted tabby markings on an abyssinian are on the face; lockets and anklets are tabby markings around the neck and legs respectively, and Gealbhan has both. Perhaps not much use for showing, but we think he's all the more gorgeous for it. Abyssinians look like your archetypal cat: lithe, slender, flexible, muscular, graceful... When Gealbhan walks, you can see the muscles ripple under his sleek fur, and he is capable of the most phenomenal feats of balance, flexibility and physical skill. At the same time, though, he is a bit unusual as Abys go: he doesn't have an aloof bone in his body. Gealbhan loves nothing better than curling up on the sofa, and at night he is usually to be found either curled up around someone's legs under the covers, or curled up on somone's chest on top of the covers. When the three boys get together, all hell breaks loose. Maine Coons are not fully mature until they are about four, so Call is basically still a kitten, and he and Gealbhan regularly charge around the house. They make the funniest pair, because Call's so large and fluffy, while Gealbhan is so dainty and sleek. Ali isn't quite as playful (he is fully mature and needs to maintain his dignity, after all), but sometimes he joins in the games. When that happens, the three of them tear round the house: up and down the scratching post; on and off the furniture; up and down the stairs; in and out of rooms and back and forward along the corridors. I work in the office below our flat, and at times I can hear them crashing around so loudly that I have to stop myself going up to find out what's going on! ~~~ The rabbits that we keep are Chocolate Tans. These have a dark chocolate-brown back, and vibrant ginger on their tummies, chins, under their tails, around their eyes and inside their ears. They are beautiful, lively and inquisitive rabbits. As pets, they are not much given to sitting around docilely, preferring to get involved in everything you are doing, but they are not averse to a cuddle and love being stroked. We used to keep a Black Tan (same ginger, but a black back) as a house-pet, and he used to come and tug on the bottom of your trousers with his teeth, if you didn't stroke him when you walked in. The four that we have at present are Kíla (pronounced Kee-la, gaelic for 'lovely') and three of her offspring (un-named, because we don't want to get too attached). Before we moved from Lancaster, we used to breed them for showing, and the three youngsters are the remaining three from her last litter of five. We haven't had time to show since moving, and didn't have the heart to put them into a pet shop. They are such a striking breed that someone is likely to go "oh, I've not seen one of them before: I'll take it", when they don't have a hutch or food for it. Instead we hoped to find them homes privately, but with the move and our work levels since, we've only had time to find homes for two. The remaining three are two boys and one girl. I think we might keep the girl, because she had a false pregnancy at one point, and built a beautiful nest, which should mean that she'll make a good mother when we start breeding again. The two boys are our friendliest rabbits: both come to see you when you put their food bowls in, and one of them loves getting cuddled (the other prefers just to be stroked). Incidentally, if anyone knows of someone in Central Scotland who is looking for a rabbit, we've got at least two gorgeous ones here!! ~~~ In Lancaster, we had two guinea-pigs who were brothers with fairly long, tufty hair. One was called Cappuccino, and was a rich coffee-brown with cream patches, while the other was the reverse, and we called him Caramac (that's a pale-coloured caramel bar, in the UK). Unfortunately Cappuccino died last year (as did Kíla's 'husband', Galaxy), so then we just had Caramac. About three months ago, my little cousin's hamster died, and his Mum bought him a guinea-pig. Surprisingly, he turned out to be allergic to this, although he'd never had a problem with the hamster. My aunt asked if we would take their guinea-pig (Fudge), and of course, we obliged. Fudge is a smooth-haired, with a mixture of brown, white and sandy colouring, and one black, one white and two brown paws. The guinea-pigs currently live in separate hutches, because they seem only to be able to share peaceably for a couple of days before a fight breaks out. Having not been kept together from birth, it's not overly surprising for two males to fight, but it would be more useful if they could share. ~~~ In a pond in the garden, we have one Ghost Koi (we did have a second koi, but a bird got it), four goldfish (and around five baby Goldfish at about an inch long and still brown: I presume they are last year's babies), two Shebunkins (no idea how you spell that) and a Blue Orfe. In the kitchen, we have a tank at 21ºC, with a Common Plec, a Weather Loach, a False Siamese Algae Eater and six White-Cloud Mountain Minnows. This tank is eventually also going to house some small fantails. In my room, we have a tank that is technically our quarantine/hospital tank, but as it would not be in use otherwise, is currently housing two female guppys. In the study, a small tanks holds five male guppys bred by us, with irridescent blue/green sides and canary-yellow, floaty tales splashed with orange streaks. We have two tanks in the livingroom, side by side to form one 'tankscape'. This enables us to hold fish that could not be kept together, but look good as part of the same 'display'. Each tank has a False Siamese Algae Eater, and a male Siamese Fighting Fish. Apart from that, one houses three female Siamese Fighting Fish, two Opaline Dwarf Gouramis, a black lace Angelfish, three Corydoras Sterbai, three Zebra Loaches, six Neon Tetras, five Black Neon Tetras and six Glowlight Tetras. The other tank houses the aforementioned plus a Royal Plec (gorgeous black and white stripes and bright orange eyes), ten Kuhli Loaches, five Zebra Danios, five Silvertip Tetras, two Congo Tetras, two Black Widow Tetras and three Emperor Tetras (one male and two females). The thing I love about a fish tank is its constant movement. It's like having a picture that is ever-changing. Some of the fish also have real personalities, and others are just plain funny, whatever they're doing, like the Kuhlis. The plecs get hilariously grumpy if you don't feed them at the expected time (about 10 minutes after the lights go out), and the Angelfish sticks its lips against the glass if it thinks it's due a feed. The gourami's spit water out of the tank at you if you're too late feeding them. ~~~ Although some people may feel that we have a lot of animals, we'd love more. Our next purchase will probably be a Sheltie (Shetland Sheepdog), although we may get chickens before we get to having a dog. At some point we'd also like to keep a Barn Owl and a general aviary. I think it helps that we don't have kids: our cats are our kids, so we've got plenty of time for them. I can't imagine life without all my animals, and there's plenty of room for more! "It's a lot like nature. You only have as many animals as the ecosystem can support and you only have as many friends as you can tolerate the bitching of" Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 16th August, 2005 |
| We've almost finished the roof now; if the weather is good after work tomorrow, we might even be able to let the cats out tomorrow. What a relief that will be: I can't wait to be rid of smelly litter trays and dusty cat-prints all over the hallway (and my work shirt (black), when I forget to check their paws before cuddling them). We were out working on the run tonight, and I was thinking how funny the rabbits and guinne-pigs look, because they are all fascinated by our activity. They all sit there and peer out of the edge of their hutches, trying to see what it is that we are doing. The guinnea-pigs even put their front paws up on their mesh to try and get a better look. One is cream with brown splodge on his back right quarter, and the paw there is also brown, while the others are pink. The other is a mixture of browns, whites and beige, and has one black paw, one pink paw (the front two) and two brown paws. I was commenting to my partner that it's weird that our skin doesn't seem to take the pigment of our hair. If you look at an animal, their skin tends to be the same colour as the fur over it. Shave a cat, and the skin underneath reflects the pattern of the fur (you can see this on 'hairless' cats like the sphynx). Likewise for guinnea-pigs. Why are humans not the same? Why do black-haired people not have black heads, and red-haired people have red heads (literally, not figuratively)? That made it sound like I routinely go around shaving cats, didn't it? I don't, but it would be quite funny if I did: if you've ever seen a shaved cat, you'll understand what I mean! *** I've been reading through a book of weird newspaper stories, and I've come across one that is absolutely ridiculous. Apparently, a 4ft-long porpoise was once discovered propped up in the gents lavatory in Glasgow Central Station. One guy told the Times "we had heavy rain and there was flooding, but this is ridiculous". As someone who has spent a lot of time in and around Glasgow Central, I really can't understand how someone could get a porpoise into the station without anyone noticing. I mean, if you passed someone carrying a porpoise up the street in the middle of a city, would you not wonder what the hell they were up to? Besides which, why exactly would you want to carry a porpoise into the centre of Glasgow anyway? I have been going through some of my old emails, and finally tracked down some old pieces of my work. Whilst at Uni, I spent an Industrial Placement year working for BAE Systems, as a project manager. I used to get my partner to set me prompts for my lunch breaks, in the hope of improving my writing by getting me to try things that are a bit different. Most of the work is pretty shocking, having been done quickly and 'forced' to focus on a particular subject, but it was a good exercise for writing purposes. I now cannot remember what all the prompts were, but I still have the work, and am going to put it up here. I would appreciate any feedback that people feel like giving. Cheers. |
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