I thought the world should know about this amazing fish I bought, with markings on its side that look like a heart!
It caught my eye in a big tank of Comets in an aquarium shop. You should have seen me trying to point out this one (as opposed to all the others) as the one I particularly wanted. No-one seemed to see the heart, or care that it was anything special.
He is alive and well, and the heart is keeping its shape as he grows.
His name is Valentine.
This is as bad as people posting photos of their dinner, so I’m sorry, but I bought myself this lovely vase on a car boot sale the other day, and I just think it looks so nice with these striking spray carnations.
I recommend a nice bunch of flowers as a way of cheering yourself up!
Just went to see the new 3D Jungle Book film.
Well I don’t think I’ve ever before seen a film that makes me feel like it should be one of the ‘seven wonders of the modern world’. The fact that we’re able to create such a thing – imagine what all previous generations would have thought if they’d seen it. It’s magical, wonderful.
So, Jurassic Park had occasional computer-generated dinosaurs. Things like the Narnia films had some talking animals – Aslan, etc, and lots of animals in the battle scenes. The Life of Pi had a very realistic tiger, but it was only in the second part of the film. The Golden Compass has lifelike talking Polar Bears, but they still share the screen with a mostly human cast of characters. But this films is pure CGI animals beginning to end. The only live character is the boy Mowgli (and glimpses of other humans). Probably the backdrops were all computer-generated as well. Certainly I don’t think there’s even a glimpse of a real animal in it. They are pure technology, and yet these days so very cleverly, perfectly done. The way the panther walks and leaps, the fur of the bear and of the wolves. Fantastic fight scenes between the animals, and the monkeys in the temple, all different sizes, scurrying about.
There must be some reason that there aren’t films featuring deceased human actors yet. If they can make such a perfect panther and bear out of bits of computer program, surely they can make a passable Elvis Prestley or Marilyn Monroe?
As soon as I realised it was all computer-generated animals though, I had a dreadful feeling that, that’s it – now we can create whatever creatures we like on the screen, the real animals out there are doomed. That will be the future. Real tigers and wolves and bears will be extinct, and there will only be electronic versions. They will become like dinosaurs – recreations only. Children won’t know the difference between a real panther and one in a film that talks – they’ll think they were all like that.
Anyway, I thought it was a very impressive film. Loved the 3D touches, especially when something is ‘pointing’ right out of the screen at you, like a snake’s head or a pangolin’s nose.
It slightly jarred that the boy had such a broad American accent – in old live-action versions of the film he’s always an Indian boy with an Indian accent, but I guess that’s old-fashioned and defunct; and it’s so far removed from reality anyway, that he’s actually conversing with the animals.
Don’t leave before the credits, which are fun.
I’m always struggling with food issues and a few years ago came up with this idea of two horses in a chariot pulling in different directions – please see my poem The Compromise Chariot.
Like there’s one horse that wants to go on the correct, sensible route, but the other is out of control and pulls off in a different direction. I am the charioteer who has to control them both and achieve some sort of compromise between their needs.
Now I’ve been sorting out books and by chance the other day came across the following regarding the philosopher Plato (429 – 347 BC), in a book called ‘A Classical Education – The stuff you wish you’d been taught at school’ by Caroline Taggart.
“Plato … considered humans as … beings in whom reason was always fighting to control desire and emotion (he uses the image of the charioteer – reason – struggling to control two horses, one of whom – emotion – will listen to reason while the other – desire – can be restrained only by force.)”
I was amazed by this. I absolutely swear I wasn’t aware of it and hadn’t ever come across it before. So I am now rather stunned and proud of myself – because I have independently come up with the same (or a similar) metaphor to a famous philosopher, writing two and a half thousand years ago! Okay, perhaps it’s rather an obvious idea for a metaphor and I’m sure lots of other people have thought of it too.
But now I feel like there’s a connection between Plato and me! (I’ll have to look him up – I’m afraid I didn’t get a classical education.)
So I find myself in the beautiful English countryside, walking along a path through the fields, and for the first time in years, possibly since childhood, I hear a skylark singing.
I scan the sky to try to spot him, so as to watch him plunge, like I used to years ago when I went on walks through the country with my (late) father. I don’t see him, but the sound is so clear, and like a shock to my system. In my brain, a dormant file is accessed. This is such a familiar sound, though I haven’t heard it for decades.
I had a conversation with one of my hosts about city dwellers who have genuinely never seen a cow before; about children who think a cow is one inch high because they’ve only ever seen pictures in books. I find myself wondering how many Londoners would recognise and identify the sound of a skylark.
My customary profundity kicks in. Thirty years living in London and never hearing skylarks – and yet the sound feeling so familiar and so special when heard again. It’s like a sudden reminder that – wow, the countryside is still here! It’s been here all long, like a parallel universe. That I can choose to visit, or return to, whenever I wish.
A skylark singing – a joyful, continuous, trilling song, high up in the air, so unlike any other British bird.
The sound of the countryside.
The sound of England.
The sound of Spring.
The sound of my childhood.
The sound of forgotten memories.
The sound of the past.
The sound of life.
Skylark poem
A skylark sings high in the sky
Reminding me of times gone by.
How many men, long years ago,
Have stopped to hear him singing so?
What does he think, as he looks down,
At people heading off to town?
Perhaps he calls on them to stay,
So they can hear him every day.
And as for me, I’ll be back soon
To hear his joyful country tune.
Have arrived alone at a hotel in the country, on my way to somewhere.
Walked into the room – which is split level and with a balcony outside overlooking a lovely green valley – to be confronted with two beautiful yellow (greeny-yellow) chairs, standing side by side. The chairs have brought on some weeping. Impossible not to be thinking how it should be me and him sitting in them, not just me alone. A dreadful awareness of loneliness and grief – especially because it’s so quiet and rural, with wind in the trees and birds of prey circling overhead.
I must force myself to focus on living in the present, and enjoying the here and now. There’s nothing I can do about his absence, so I will just take in and enjoy things myself – the yellow chairs, the shiny curtains, the balcony, the view, the wind. The daffodils, the primroses, the palms. The swimming pool.
I’m becoming a connoisseur of hotel swimming pools – I’ve been away quite a bit and I keep choosing hotels with indoor pools, as it gives me a chance to get some exercise in a nicer environment. I’ve been using local public pools also, one of which in particular is modern and nice, but hotel pools are a different experience. No groups of noisy schoolkids, generally fewer people, and often with nice facilities, like jacuzzi, sauna and steam room. I do tend to find such places relaxing and escapist, which I suppose is the idea.
The one in this hotel has a spa pool with these sort of metal beds in – you lie on them and it bubbles up strongly under you. Wonderful! A new experience for me. I had four goes!
In the changing rooms, like in most places I’ve been, there’s a spin drier, to remove water from your costume. The other day when I tried an inner city gym, I asked a woman whether there was a spin drier anywhere, and she gave me such a bemused and incredulous look, like such an idea was quite ridiculous. I felt embarrassed but incredulous myself that someone had never come across a spin drier in a swimming pool changing room before. I guess maybe I’ve been spoilt by private pools.
After my swim and a wonderful shower, I return to my room – but have to try not to look at the two yellow chairs, so demanding of two people.
I’ve been engaged in a long and major sort out of ‘stuff’, and am now opening boxes of things from my past, which all (well mostly) seem very dear to me. (When you first lose someone, all things seem worthless, because you would’ve given every last possession to save someone’s life; but now I feel like my possessions are precious – I haven’t got him any more, but I’ve still got my things.)
I’ve found lots of old children’s books and have just re-read one called Wish For A Pony. I can tell from my own handwriting in the front of it that I read it very young, yet the writing style seems so adult and highbrow, you can’t believe a child would have understood it all. Look at some of this vocabulary:
“The girls’ eyes paid silent homage to…”
“…no room in their burdened minds…”
“…with hearty determination.”
“…until it was abruptly terminated…”
“…wallowed placidly forward…”
“…handing over the disreputable parcel…”
“She rummaged obligingly…”
“Tamzin trailed dejectedly…”
“I’ll guarantee them as absolutely immaculate.”
So I’m reading this, when in my kiddy handwriting I’ve misspelled ‘white’ as ‘whight’? I guess that’s how you learn the language and become literate, though, by learning new words from the context.
Maybe it’s just that the writing is old-fashioned, compared to today:
“’I say!’ breathed Rissa on the threshold. ‘This is smashing!’”
Anyway, there are two girls in the book and they ride two ponies at a stables on the beach – one called Sea Pie (bay), the other Cobweb (grey).
On the same day as I found the book, I also came across two little souvenir ponies/donkeys from Corfu, made out of leather. One is brown and one is grey, so naturally they have become Sea Pie and Cobweb.
It’s sad how I’m reverting to childhood. It’s something to do with needing/getting comfort wherever you can.
I sang chorus in a Scratch Messiah before Christmas, and found another one just before Easter, so went to that also. It’s about occupying my mind, and being drawn to familiar things.
I found an amazing website for choral singers that plays you all the parts separately, to help you learn them. How times have changed – what a wonderful resource. Easier than trying to pick out all the notes on a keyboard yourself (especially when you no longer have any sort of keyboard).
Some bits of it are so beautiful – I was struck by some of the wonderful answering phrases between the parts.
It’s a long time since I’ve sung in choirs, but these recent experiences have reminded me that the absolutely vital thing is to COUNT to yourself as you follow the music – it’s the key to cracking it. Now I’m sure everyone who sings in a choir would say; er yes, of course, how else to do it? But I’ve rediscovered the importance of counting, and what I mean is – as opposed to trying to follow another line and get your cue from that (confusing when the music is so often syncopated), and also as opposed to trying to picture a conductor’s beat, ie beating time with a down beat on the bar (I was doing this at first in my head but kept losing the pattern).
My tip is just to really concentrate, look at each bar as it goes along and count the beat in your head really strictly – one two three four, or one two three. You need to be absolutely sure of where you are, then you can be confident of coming in correctly. (Easier said than done of course.)
My personal objective each time was to sing the thing through and be 100% accurate, ie not get any notes wrong or miss anything out. I reckon both times I was around 95% right.
One thing made me laugh to myself on the train home. There’s a chorus which goes ‘Great was the company of the preachers…’ and I was so tired in the evening after rehearsing since noon, that once I sang ‘Great was the company of the creatures…’ Mental image of a vast number of camels, cows, deer, rabbits etc standing on a hillside.
Handel’s Messiah meets The Animals of Farthing Wood!
Went to a performance of St John’s Passion in a lovely big church in Kensington recently. The choir was very good, well worth listening to, with a lovely rich sound. I wasn’t that impressed with the tenor though; I thought his diction wasn’t clear enough, and also there was no engagement with the audience. It’s such a central role, ‘The Evangelist’, such a focal point for the piece, I would have thought it was an opportunity to really make your presence felt, and deliver it in a way that keeps the audience’s attention on you and on the story. Basically, I don’t think the Evangelist was Evangelical enough.
I enjoyed it all though. The penultimate chorus is a piece that, rather morbidly, I sometimes have to stop myself singing because I’ve always thought I’d have it played at my funeral. I sung it years ago at school and it’s got itself deep in my soul. I’ve always known it as ‘Lie still… (oh sacred limbs lie sleeping, and I will lay aside my weeping…)’. But in this translation it was ‘Sleep well’. Oh dear. I don’t think ‘Sleep well’ has anything like the power of ‘Lie still’ in that context.
I went on my own and of course it was impossible not to think about my partner (and his absence) the whole time. When I go to things like this I’m experiencing what they say about how people can be lonely in a crowd. There were loads of people there who were all obviously interested enough to listen to a serious classical piece like that, and I felt like I had something in common with them, and I belonged. At yet of course everyone is in couples or family groups, and though you sort of look at people with a smile on your face in the hope of striking up a conversation, no-one spoke to me at all.
In fact the whole of that day, my only attempt at interacting with someone was to make a comment to a guy walking a little white dog just like the one that’s recently won Crufts. I said something like, ‘Oh look, it’s the Crufts winner! Any relation?’ He didn’t really respond and the dog just pooed right in front of me.
Now I am definitely NOT going to get myself a dog. I have no experience of having had pets like dogs or cats in my life (only budgies and goldfish). It’s too much commitment. It would be cruel in the inner city – I’ve always thought I would never consider it unless I had some sort of huge country farmhouse with outbuildings. And no way am I doing the poo collecting thing – seriously not me.
However, I don’t see what’s wrong with speculating about what breed of dog one might have IF one was going to have a dog. I love dogs – aesthetically. I like some better than others. Hence my decision to go to Crufts; in order to visit the area where you can see and ‘meet’ different breeds of dog (200 according to the website).
I really enjoyed it. I saw it as an opportunity to maximise hands-on dog experience. I amused myself by considering what my top three favourite breeds are. In fact there are two different top threes – one for the dream/fantasy scenario (said huge farmhouse), where size isn’t an issue. And another more realistic shortlist. One that I just might conceivably, if I moved out of London and was living somewhere by the seaside where I could take a dog out for walks, consider as a possibility.
Fantasy top three breeds: Pyrenean Mountain Dog, Australian Shepherd, Golden Retriever.
Realistic top three breeds: Lancashire Heeler, Swedish Valhund, Pomeranian.
Last time I went to Crufts (on my own, some years ago), I fell in love with something called an Irish Water Spaniel, because of the way it FELT rather than looked, such lovely soft cuddly fur.
This year, of all the dogs I saw, I would make my personal overall winner a (I think it was) German Shepherd with a beautiful all over deep grey coat, which was doing amazing tricks and generally being charming. He won me over completely.
Cathy's Castle 
You must be logged in to post a comment.