gnimmel

Upon juices, and the flowing thereof

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:32:50 GMT

I've always been vaguely haunted by the notion that we humans have all our best ideas just before falling asleep; that is to say, in that happy and almost entirely un-recallable mental interstice between wakefulness and dream-awareness. Like many of the world's notions, the survival of this one depends crucially on the fact that it isn't proveable.
However, a few months' mornings ago, I was struck with a sudden thought. I had had an idea as I was drifting off to sleep the night before. A musical idea. A good musical idea. In fact, to judge from my half-remembered flush of drowsy enthusiasm, it was probably one of the better ideas in the history of recorded sound. And it had been witty, clever and yet subtly non-novelty. The words themselves suggested a catchy and entertaining tune. I still couldn't quite remember what it was, but -- crucially -- I'd had the presence of mind to grope in the dark for a pen and write it down. Breathless with anticipation, I opened up my bedside notebook. There, in a barely readable scrawl, was the phrase Give me back my fucking monkey.

From this I have concluded two things:
a) No, we do not have our best ideas when we are falling asleep and
b) my ideas duct is clogged and requires some maintainance.

This is where you lot come in. See, the coming week is a Week of No Work. I have made a list of things from my ill-fated notebook which sound like they might be a lark to have a go at were one to, say, have a completely free week with which to get the juices flowing again. It's much easier to choose which thing to do when you have someone else's opinion to ignore. So I intend to Ask The Audience.

I have various different media at my disposal, so I shall categorise them thusly:

Paint. Lest anyone should be worried or even remember for that matter, I have not forgotten about agreeing to do a) an illustration for Bardcamp and b) a pictorial prop for the Middlemarch readthrough. Bardcamp having asked first, I formulated a plan involving various items, including egg tempera, gold ink and a hacksaw. However, having utilised the hacksaw and applied the ink, I was seized with terrible misgivings that, egg tempera involving actual egg, I was going to end up accidentally making a big smelly paint cake or come home to find the cat licking it. So I ended up using oils instead. After happily slapping on a thick undercoat and waiting awhile, I consulted Wikipedia, which told me that experts do not consider an oil painting fully dry until it is 50-70 years old. By which I mean to say: don't worry, guys, of course it's going to be ready by the deadline :)
I will be doing some of this over the next week, but I could do more or less.

Inkscape: Bless its little cotton socks, I like Inkscape. It allows me to rip off real proper graphic designers. However, I've been doing a lot of things in Inkscape of late and so it might be fun to do summat else. Nevertheless, these are the Inkscape items currently on the Ideas List:
a) A pictorial Glastonbury writeup. This is half-finished and has a pig in it. It sort-of trailed off into snit-world when Michael Eavis claimed that my sort were entirely responsible for ruining Glastonbury (or summat like that); but, it having been otherwise ace, I suspect I'll get around to finishing it somewhens.
b) I've had a yen for a while now to try out a series of things based on people's submitted phrases, a la exploding dog. Previous efforts (with animation) resulted in a large number of three-quarters-finished animations. This is because multiple animations take approximately 30% longer than my art attention span. These wouldn't be animated, though.
c) Or I'm sure I've got a bit of a webcomic in me somewhere if I strain hard enough.

Blender, which is a free professional-level 3D animation tool. Blender is worth it just for the sense of vertiginous horror you get on first opening it up and being confronted with what looks like the control panel of the Starship Enterprise. In most software agreements the clause about not using the program to run a nuclear power station is faintly ridiculous. Blender not only looks like the sort of thing which one could operate a nuclear power station from, it manages to give the impression that actually, it is running a nuclear power station somewhere, and you'd better be darned careful about not clicking on the 'withdraw control rods' button when running in node mode. However, there are online tutorials, and I can now make a stick-human with arbitrarily-resizable breasts. Next stop is lesson 2: 'make a hat'.
The Ideas List has two things to say concerning Blender:
a) 'I have begun to dream in numbers', which would be a non-animated mix of blendered-3D and inkscaped-2D vector images, and
b) 'architectural/biological machines', which would consist of the sort of animation suggesting that I've been spending too much time reading BLDGBLOG.

Garageband. Gone are the days of tinkering with *cough* notstrictlylegal music software, for I have become a mac user! and with that comes Garageband, a program which I am informed is potentially the software of choice for people who want to make music in their bedrooms that sounds like it has real bagpipes in it. Now, admittedly I never used my past-pirated booty for anything other than making animation soundtracks. And *hem* see the introduction to this post. However, I like playing with music even if it doesn't like playing with me, so there is music in the list, thusly:
a) I have been making a list of Things Which Are Good in Songs. Now, if there were any justice in the world, one could combine these things and make the awsomest song in the world ever. And with so many fine, fine ingredients, even a complete musical illiterate would be able to do it. Say, someone who'd failed grade one piano and once won their school's musical award for 'trying hard'. Unfortunately the list itself is, um, mildly subjective, and contains a number of entries which are mutually exclusive, items therein including but not limited to: 3/4 or similar time signature; the word 'dirigible'; concerning a gay love affair; mention of giant robots/lizards/cthulhu; danceable-to (non-waltz); contains at least one London Underground station and the word 'brain' in the lyrics; involves squeaking, the higher the better; harpsichord; etc.
b) alternatively, whilst in the process of making the ill-fated Glastonbury writeup, I prepared a panel containing an imaginary CD: The OMG Ponies' 'Kitten Cuddler' EP. It occurs to me that this should exist, and might be slightly less constrained, would be rather silly, and would furthermore allow for a pseudo-Wagnerian Fusion of all the Arts Except Ballet by the happy virtue of requiring a cover design.
c) (if I may digress) One of the enduring features of the rather pleasing music-getting website emusic.com is that one pays the same amount per track, no matter whether that track lasts 20 seconds or over an hour. This is great for ambient soundscapes, which tend to err on the hour-long side. And, as it happens, I like falling asleep to the sound of rain. English rain, whilst of commendable variety and range, generally draws its sounds from a limited palette. However, emusic will happily sell me any number of hours of rain-noise recorded on the continent of my choice and interspersed with the sounds of exciting parrots. Furthermore Emusic would like to sell me desert-noise, waterfall-noise and dolphin-noise, preferably after some tye-died artiste has added some synthesizer noodling on top and retitled it 'Happy Druid Hugs the Universe'. Whilst idly browsing these listings (I think I'd got down to 'the Great Om') it occurred to me that, having grown up not far from the M27, I'd probably also find motorway noise rather relaxing to go to sleep to. Emusic does not seem to offer this option. However, it does take listings from vanity-publishers, so if one were to (say) record 'Soothing Sounds of the M25' there might be a way of actually getting it into the ambient section. Nyeeeess.

The GIMP. It's now kind of fashionable to diss GIMP, but I still like it (and indeed it gets used quite a lot for things incidental to the Inkscapery). A while back I was definitely intending to do something photomanipulationy in it called (something like) Five Portraits of America which had something to do with Hitler's bicycle (NO, not in any way you might be thinking... it's all the fault of rural Illinois, and having to collate all the towns with airports nearby, for work purposes) and the town of Chicken, Alaska.

View Poll: Ask the Audience

This are serious thread

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:39:32 GMT

Dear Interwebs,
a) I have joined the Facebook and the Twitter. I believe this is what all the hep cats are doing these days. My Facebook data point is this: buoyed up with everyone's assertions that one just sets up an account and sits back, whereupon everybody in the known Universe finds your account and friends it, I set one up and sat back and something not particularly distinguishable from nothing happened. Rah!
b) However, I am unable to rectify this situation of dazzling popularity by, you know, actually adding people that I know for at least five days, since we are off to the Glastonbury, like. I am all virginal with regards to music festivals, and hence rather excited.
c) I'm really, really sorry about this.

Sometimes, one just has to do something to get the lolcats out of one's system....

A brief addendum...

Wed, 30 May 2007 21:15:15 GMT

...in honour of master strongtrousers, who suggests that there should also exist a Shakespeare Cab in which one may ask the driver to perform a speech of your choice.

Death and Taxis

Tue, 29 May 2007 07:39:30 GMT

(usual disclaimers apply; single large image behind the cut, the fluffhouse server is flaky at the moment (as was the case with the last post, now hopefully back up).

NB also: in between starting this and finishing it, it was established that:
a) Yes, there was a mouse in our kitchen, but
b) it went a little too close to the cat in our kitchen.
hence the whole matter is somewhat moot. :/

What has it got in its pocketses?

Thu, 03 May 2007 07:37:52 GMT

What have you got in yours?

Beneath ur surface, boinking ur goldfish

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:39:47 GMT

In other news: I did in the end make a rudimentary cafepress shop for Venn diagram postery goodness -- I was going to shiny it up a bit and look for a more UK-based solution as well, but OMG liek NO TIME.

The Internet is for meta-analysis

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:35:13 GMT

As any fule kno, the internet is for porn. This fact has stood, like some whacking great monument of truth, in the back of the collective consciousness of the world since the webternet began. And then -- alas! -- it was held up the the harsh light of Science and fell over ungracefully into the mud. For a while the webternet was without form and meaning. Then, gradually, it began to pick up a new identity; here and there, now and then I would see people imputing that these days the internet is for cat pictures.

This set me to thinking: surely the webternet is for many things? Should we deny the validity of Harry Potter/Chalet School crossover fanfic merely because it is neither porn nor depicts cats? And, with the aid of Science[1], I have therefore prepared a Venn diagram of the interwebs which should sort the whole problem out.

[1] Science sat on my shoulder and implored me not to do it, but hey.

ETA: version with more readable, less voluptuous font here

The big pink book of fantastic facts

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 08:35:33 GMT

This post brought to you by the realisation that inkscape, the gimp, comic life and having a camera with a timer and a tripod can work together happily to allow me to be even more up myself than usual for relatively little effort.:)

True Opinions from the Public

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 13:05:11 GMT

Me: ...but the worst band name ever was Red Box. I mean, I can't even remember any of their songs. All I can remember about them is that they had such a shite name.
Chris: I think they were the sort of stuff that used to get played on Philip Schofield's radio show -- wet music for grown-up indie kids.
Me: You mean like Coldplay for the 1980's?
...
Me: So, what do you think about Fluffymark's going-to-Glastonbury plan? I'm still deciding if I want my very own wallowing-in-shit experience or not.

Shortly after this, our conversation was interrupted by the arrival on stage of the Arcade Fire, who proceeded to play an stupendously rocking set of rockingness which I'm not smug at all about having a ticket for, despite radio 6 going on repeatedly about how hard they were to get hold of. Who else was at this small, intimate gig? Apparently, the lead singer of Coldplay and the organiser of Glastonbury.
...I bet the tall bloke I kept elbowing was in Red Box.

Mince Pyes

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 15:27:08 GMT

At approximately 11:50 last night, we decided it would be a good idea to make mince pies. We didn't have a recipe -- but then again, we had some mincemeat, and who needs a recipe for mince pies? And so now we have a little tray of pies shaped variously like sausage rolls, triangles, whales, dinosaurs without heads, &c., which probably proves that one shouldn't bake mince pies at midnight on Christmas Day.
Afterwards, we looked up recipes. To which all I can say is, that I now have a burning desire to cook a mince pie for next christmas, because it turns out that four hundred-odd years ago, the mince pye:
a) could be up to 100kg in size,
b) could contain rabbits, partridges, legs of beef, pigeons, capons, hares, liver, eggs, pickled mushrooms or indeed all of the above plus everything from a modern-day mince pie,
c) was often held together by iron clamps (see point a),
d) was banned by Oliver Cromwell, and
e) had a pastry model of the baby Jesus on the top.
But enough of pye! the main intention of this entry is to wish you all merriment and joy and suchlike, and to thank you again for being a superb friendslist over the year, and to mention that since I've not really got individual people hereon presents this year, I have instead bought you all some trees -- about a third of a tree each, as it happens. And I'll now return to my scheduled sherry and a surprisingly-circular pie. :)

HOUSEWARMING - absolutely the final missive (probably)

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:09:30 GMT

It has not failed to escape my attention that some of you would like to know where we live, seeing as we've, um, invited you to our house on Saturday. See, what I neglected to mention is that our little gathering on the 2nd is intended for telepaths only[1].

...um, what I mean to say is Disorganised, me? and that you may find our address in the original entry here (friendslocked to my f'list) or here (friendslocked to Chris's f'list, or if you're on neither or not on LJ then email me (address in user info) and I'll (probably) tell you. The postcode is CB1 2LL for users of interweb mappingthingumbobs -- this only identifies which side of the road it's on, though. It's a straightforward and short walk from the train station and only a little longer from the bus station ('turn right and carry straight on' just about covers both). Coming by car is trickier: there are a couple of short-stay pay and display car parks nearby (one is at the beginning of Gwydir Street) but the local roads are strictly residents parking only and there are usually no spaces anyway. Saturday the second is also the date of the Mill Road Winter Fair, which may mean that in fact cars can't get into Gwydir Street anyway. So I'd give Mill Road a miss, park centrally or elsewhere, and walk in.

The intention is to begin the Beggar's Opera singthrough at about 2:30 (so maybe turning up from 2?) It will be rather disorganised. I suspect the Farce of Sodom will begin at around 9:00. We have some spare copies of both scripts but as yet no spare copies of the score (but there are pdfs online). It will be rather disorganised. In between at some point there will be some food (a large fish and a Rice Thing, we are thinking); as I don't know how many people there willl be I'm making no guarantees to feed everyone, but there are astonishing quantities of takeaway food available locally.

Bring things, if you want to bring things. Wear things, if you want to wear things. Etc.

[1] Actually, I can imagine few worse things than a room full of drunken telepaths - can we cancel?

So, er...

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:36:17 GMT

MEN WHO SING!

...our housewarming Beggar's Opera (Saturday December 2, afternoon (probably 2:30ish),in Cambridge, music is not difficult and is all online as pdfs and mp3s here, is also v. good & has choruses of ruffians & whores) is a little short of you at the moment.
Chance to partake of a Very Large Fish included. And Gin. More Women who Sing also a thoroughly good thing. Also small furry beasties from Alpha Centuri who sing. Does anyone have any amiable singers hiding under the bed?

In order for this not to be the spammiest entry in spammytown ever, here is a work-related image.

Get yer 17th & 18th Century Underworld Here

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 23:32:30 GMT

So: there is to be Housewarming on the 2nd of December.
As part of this Housewarming there is to be a read/singthrough of the Beggar's Opera, and perhaps a readthrough later on (after Gin has been consumed) of the Farce of Sodom. Although the philosophy of this singthrough is that if there has to be a choice between enjoyability and quality, enjoyability should kick quality's arse, this is still less than two weeks away, so it would be wise to assign parts and such. To that end, the way I'm doing casting is as follows:

1. Both scripts, scanned pages of all the songs and mp3s of most of the songs are up on the fluffhouse server here.
2. If no-one volunteers to sing or read anything, I will personally sing and read every single song and line in the entirety of both plays. You owe it to the world to stop me doing this.
3. If you'd like a part (summaries of all the parts are beneath the cut below), comment to this post. Comments are automatically screened and will not be unscreened unless they're obviously non-casting related or you ask. You should say which parts you'd potentially like, and you can also say if e.g. there are people you'd prefer not to have romantic scenes with or suchlike.
4. I wait a couple of days, and then assign parts.
5. Giant lizards take over Tokyo.

NB. Don't be alarmed by the number of songs; they're all very short and generally rather simple. If necessary, various parts can be played by the same people: e.g. Mrs Peachum and Lucy. Pianists are also welcome, although purplepiano will be doing at least some of the piano-playing.

The characters in the Beggar's opera, in vague order of size-of-part are as follows:

SINGING PARTS:

MACHEATH: Rogue, rake, highwayman, archetypal antihero &c. Based vaguely on Jack Sheppard. In the score I have, a baritone (range F 1 1/2 octaves below middle C to E just above middle C). Sings in 15 songs.

POLLY PEACHUM: Surprisingly innocent and virtuous daughter of Mr & Mrs. Peachum. Soprano (range middle C - high A, optional high B flat). In love with Macheath. 18 songs.

LUCY LOCKIT: Slightly less virtuous, daughter of Lockit, also in love with Macheath. Mezzo (range A below middle C (optional F below middle C) to high G sharp). 13 songs.

MR. PEACHUM: Fence and 'thief-taker' (which is to say, a la Jonathan Wild, that he recovers for reward stolen goods (which have been stolen by his gang of thieves) and assists the police with the capture of criminals (when they are members of rival gangs)). Baritone (range B flat an octave and a bit below middle C to F above middle C). Seven songs. Provisionally pseudomonas.

MRS PEACHUM: Common-law wife of Mr. Peachum and mother of Polly. Mezzo (range middle C to the F sharp an octave and a bit above). Six songs.

LOCKIT: Newgate jailer and friend of Peachum. Father of Lucy. Baritone (range B flat an octave and a bit below middle C to E above middle C). Five songs.

FILCH: member of Peachum's household. One song. Tenor (range C below middle C to high G).

MATT OF THE MINT: A member of Macheath's gang (may optionally be filled in by Filch; different scores differ about who sings his songs). Same range as Filch. Two songs.

JENNY DIVER: Prostitute, previously involved with Macheath. One song. Alto (range middle C sharp to the D just over an octave above).

DIANA TRAPES: Older prostitute, now working as a madam. One song. Alto (range B flat below middle C to the C an octave above middle C). Provisionally caulkhead.

SATB chorus (Whores and Ruffians, 2 songs SA, 2 songs TB with a small amount of TTBB, 2 songs SATB)

NON-SINGING PARTS:

BEGGAR: Fictional author of the play.
PLAYER: Joins the Beggar in conversation.
JEMMY TWITCHER, CROOK-FINGERED JACK, WAT DREARY, ROBIN OF BAGSHOT, NIMMING NED, HARRY PADINGTON and BEN BUDGE: Members of Macheath's gang.
MRS COAXER, DOLLY TRULL, MRS VIXEN, BETTY DOXY, MRS SLAMMERKIN, SUKY TAWDRY and MOLLY BRAZEN: Sundry Ladies of the Night.

There is also the matter, of course, of the Farce of Sodom (script also included on the website - and mark ye well! I transcribed it from the paper copy I have; as far as I know this is the only copy available on't interweb. See, the interweb had given me so many things I thought it was time to give it something back it could truly appreciate.) I'm happy to cast it just before we read it, but just in case you want to pre-order a part, I should let it be known that the speaking characters therein are:

BOLLOXIMIAN: King of Sodom
CUNTIGRATIA: His Queen
PRICKETT: Young Prince
SWIVIA: Princess
BUGGERANTHUS: General of the Army
POCKENELLO: Pimp, catamite and the King's Favourite
BORASTUS: Buggermaster-general
PENE & TOOLY: Pimps of Honour
LADY OFFICINA: She-pimp of Honour
FUCKADILLA: Maid of Honour (has a song)
CUNTICULA: `` `` (has a song)
CLITORIS: `` ``
FLUX: Physician-in-ordinary to the King
VIRTUOSO: Dildo and Merkin maker to the Court
VOICE: (non-speaking, has a song)
YOUTH: (non-speaking, has a song)

Various non-speaking parts, e.g. catamites, demons (who sing)

and that if you're offended by any of the names then you really don't want a part in it. The songs do not yet have tunes -- we'll probably just set them to any pre-existing tune that fits the metre.

The men of this period became birds

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 21:10:37 GMT

After about a week, the mountain obsession turned into another one; a strange vision, wholly related, but one which made my physicist heart revolt. Simply relating it makes it sound a little daft. Perhaps I should provide a little backstory as to why it seemed a logical step to make.

See, when I was a teenager I decided I'd rather like to be Tolkien. Unfortunately for me, this was a profession which had only ever had one post, and this post had, alas, already been filled by (as it happens) one Prof. Tolkien. The fact that the original incumbant had since died did not seem to have created an opening in the field. So I was stuck in dubious-career-expectations land with nary a handbook to point the way, and (like many other teenagers who had independently decided they wanted to take a shot at being Tolkien) decided to start world-building anyway, dammit. I was very thorough with the world-building (it had several languages, all of which co-incidentally had very simple syntaxes; a range of maps at varying levels of resolution, from 'solar system' to 'village'; a variety of races and species; one detailed and several less-detailed mythologies; a number of cursive and formal scripts; plate tectonics; poetry; and an actual song with actual music which I would hum when feeling insufficiently Tolkienish). Unfortunately I was so thorough that by the time I'd got onto other things (such as university), I'd grown up and changed my mind entirely about what a world should consist of. To say that the start and end of the work didn't match doesn't really convey what I'm talking about. They were unrecognisable as the same world. They went together like bats and ocean liners.

So I set all that aside, with some relief; apart from some of the myths, which I still think of from time to time. And perhaps this time it was all that thinking of mountains, and of death and mysticism, which jogged my memory. I found myself idly thinking of one in particular. It was a worlds' end myth; a sort of gentle, formalised Revelations. The earlier details are not particularly important. What did matter, though, was that a particular (and on the outward face of it innocuous) act would start the end times; and, the unknowing participants in this happening being near water, shortly thereafter a silent, uncrewed, unknown ship would sail from the horizon's edge to berth itself before them, and they would board it, and be taken to the edge of the known world. What was this ship? It had never occurred to me to ask; I had told myself these myths when quite young, and (though the others had been built up on better foundations) this one had become lodged in an unquestioning place in my head. These days I have a more critical eye. If one had been brought up in this world, I thought, one would surely know the myth; and Unless one lost all free will as soon as Great Happenings were afoot, or unless by the end times people had come to desire the end of the world, who would ever board such a ship? A more approriate response to the arrival of the Last Ship would be, I felt, to take a deep breath, utter a heartfelt cunting hellfire! and run for the hills. But the Ship, of course, was not susceptible to reason; the Ship was the blunt instrument of a higher power. If you ran for the hills, would it patiently wait for you? Or would it follow? And if it were to follow, the sea would have to follow as well; and if one were to run for the mountains, the sea would have to follow there; and, like the Ship itself, it would progress silently, slowly, unstoppably. If one were to run for the highest mountains, the rising of the sea would cover all else, and one would have come de facto to the edge of the new known world; a few tiny, frozen islands in a huge ocean of drifting ice and mist. And, technically speaking, the old world would indeed have ended. And still the Ship would wait.

But anyhow, this was the end result: suddenly my mountain-reverie had been derailed by -- of all things -- an archetypal flood myth. I had slipped over to the high peaks of a fantasy world, and that fantasy world had responded by submerging everything but the high peaks in a cold, silent ocean. Honestly, haven't you heard of conservation of mass?, I said to the fantasy world; and, unsurprisingly, the fantasy world shook shook its little head and said nope.

Then the fantasy world took me out for a drink and showed me cryptic glyphs which said such things as:
'Atonatiuh, Water Sun, third Cosmosgonic Era, called Quiauhtonatiuh - Rain Sun. The Sun at this time is Tlaloc, God of Rain, and ended in a cataclysm on a day Nauhiquiahuitl - Four Rain - when Fire rained down from the Sky. The men of this period become birds.'
It told me of Uta-napishti, who Gilgamesh sought on an island at the edge of the world, and how he was warned by the gods to build a boat to save his household from the oncoming deluge; and how at the end of seven days of rain his boat came to rest on the peak of a mountain; and he and his wife were given immortality and repeopled the world. The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, said my fantasy world, abruptly switching to Noah; who, it reminded me, had also survived in a boat a flood that had covered all the high hills and mountains. It told me then that the Greek Deucalion had done such a thing as well, although he at least had neglected to fill his boat with animals; and his flood had lasted nine days, and he had come to rest on some mountain or other. The Menominee Manabus, it said, had shot two of the gods and in consequence was chased by the waters to the peak of a mountain. The Caddo, menaced by four giant monsters, hid themselves and pairs of good animals in a giant reed, so that when the flood came to drown the monsters they might survive. Manu was warned of the flood by a fish, who towed his boat to a mountaintop when the waters rose. Need I go on?, said my fantasy world. And I conceded that it might not have been a particularly original thought after all and that yes, mythology was rather fond of floods overtopping mountains, particularly where there were boats involved. One might even, I supposed, surmise things about the need for survivors of disasters to find reasons why they were spared, combined with the Chinese whispers of ten thousand years, combined with a few historical misadventures of water. But, I told the fantasy world, my accidental flood myth was at least in the future -- all the others were tales of the distant past. At which point the fantasy world rolled its eyes, said You might want to read a few more things like this, then, and left.

Ungrateful bloody mythology. Still, it has a sort of a point. Sea levels have risen in the past. Sea levels are rising now, and if I have learnt anything in my brief time flitting around climate science it is that we do not know how high the waters may reach; other than that, if all the ice in the world were to melt, we would be 60--75 metres deeper in ocean. I think of the fens, much of which are kept dry by pumping stations as it is. I think of the highest peak in Tuvalu; not particularly lofty, but in danger of being submerged in the forseeable future.

And since Venice I have been thinking of drowned cities (and there are many drowned already), serene like dead Ophelia or Fuchsia (as if the process of drowning were serene or pretty; as if a drowning city would not belch oil and sewage, as if the last to leave would not be looters and madmen). This morning Debussy's Sunken Cathedral was playing on the radio. I would think of the murky waters of a submerged London, but this is hardly a new idea. And I have been reading J. G. Ballard's Drowned World, in which London is a hellish riot of heat and swamp, of skyscrapers overgrown with creepers, of deep lagoons through which one can see the old city streets receding benath silt. At least the brief idea of worlds' end I had was serene and cold; some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

You know who else had a flood myth?, interjects the fantasy world one final time, Tolkien. He had dreams about it: of the ineluctable Wave, either coming up out of a quiet sea, or coming in towering over the green inlands. Oh, and by the way, the being-Tolkien corporation is not hiring.

The ladder with no human end

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:48:20 GMT

There was a time, a few months ago, when I dreamed of mountains. I am not entirely sure why. Perhaps I had read something on the subject. The complexion of my daydreams changed -- just for a week or two -- into a sort of strange and wistful pining, an unrequited wanderlust which went away as quickly as it had come. Perhaps it was just the names; the uppermost places of the Earth cluster, almost without exception, in the Himalayas, and the names of those places have a mystical, assonant ring to them, like the sound of bells coming from an impossibly distant height. Annapurna, they say; Dhaulagiri, Karakorum, Kangchenjunga, Shishapangma, Lhotse, Nuptse, Makalu. It was summer, when I dreamed of mountains, and I dreamed of cold, clear air and white snow and peaks encompassing the horizon. Of course, climbing mountains is not like that, not that sort of mountain; it is dirty, and technical, rather dangerous and hard. And I do not understand the way that mountains work, not in my instinctual heart; I don't understand their sudden storms or their thin air. Even in the lower hills of Scotland (and I do not think I have ever climbed anything with snow on it) there have been moments of perplexity. Walking up the slopes behind Blairmore house in bright woodland sunshine, Chris and I came out onto the first hill's bald peak -- and instantly our benign sky was all wailing winds and hail. We went back down, and the sun returned. But every time we tried to go back up to the peak, foul weather arose from seemingly no-where. I am stubbornly drawn to the heights, sometimes, and it worries me that this lack of understanding does not worry me, if that makes any sense. That I think mostly of the cairns and the clear water and the ponds of the hills which reflect only sky, and have a strange love for strange places that are dangerous.

The other thing about the high places -- the highest places of all, the holy grails of climbing -- is that they make you stupid. Again, I do not understand this; not on an instinctual level. There is a certain height beyond which humans cannot survive very long, and it is in that height range that some of the more fearsome peaks lie. Earth's atmosphere is a thin thing, up at the top of the world. Without enough oxygen to breathe, it is not unknown for people to simply drop dead, or to fall asleep and not wake up; quite aside from the cold. I think to myself, well, one must watch for the warning signs, of course, and be sensible. And that is what everyone thinks, beforehand. The point is that another one of the bits of you which just doesn't work very well in the high places is your brain. And this, in part, is why there are dead people -- several of them -- who sit like frozen milestones on the path to the peak of Everest, and why every few years some capricious storm or other comes in and wipes another handful or two of climbers off the face of the mountains, or leaves them stranded in the frozen dark with no way home and only radio to say goodbye. These events are called tragedies, which I think is not quite true. Everyone knows beforehand that there are deaths. This knowledge is woven out into a whole tapestry of whispers and rumours and superstitions -- that K2 has a curse upon women, or that one may succeed in one's summit attempt more readily if it falls upon an exact date when previous successful attempts were made.

When instinct touches on the mountains, and intersects with death and superstition and peculiar weather and the like, one comes out instead with another meme -- that the mountain is sacred, that its anger is the anger of the gods, and that it should be left well alone. Or perhaps that it should be meddled with; for after all, Aleister Crowley spent not a little portion of his life trying to climb K2. These days the tallest unclimbed mountain in the world is not so because of difficulty, but because it is a a sacred place, and climbing is forbidden. And some say that Everest is sacred, and should not be insulted; although it had to wait until the 1960s to have a Nepali name at all, much less one of a goddess.

Now, here's another thing: Everest, or Sagarmatha, or Chomolungma: it is the tallest mountain in the world.
But it is not the tallest mountain in the solar system.

In fact Earth's mountains are entirely ordinary. There are mountains over half the height of Everest on the moon, and innumerable volcanoes on Io. Maxwell Montes on Venus is 11km tall -- somewhat more than Everest; and in addition its highlands are covered in a thin but shiny layer of weathered lead. There are mountains on Mercury and maybe on Titan. The solar system is, quite frankly, riddled with lumpy rocks.

And then there is Mars. Mars does not have tectonic plates; the slow dance of Earth's continents means nothing to it. Form a volcano on Mars, and that volcano will stay exactly where it started, until the end of Mars. Form a volcano which grows over time, and -- well. You might end up with Olympus Mons, a mountain so huge -- and so flat -- that if one could stand on its peak the rest of Mars would be invisible behind its horizon.
Olympus Mons is three times the height of Everest. Of course, it would be ludicrous to climb such a mountain -- there is not even a breathable atmosphere at its base. But I was raised with the bright, hopeful sci-fi of the Fifties in my ears, a creed which says How hard can it be? and Whyever not? to such hubristic concepts as terraforming, and thus it is not so unimaginable after all that such a place might one day -- oh humanity! -- have an atmosphere that one could breathe. And though there is a terrifying mile-high cliff at the base of Olympus Mons, thereafter the slope becomes rather shallow. It would not be a difficult climb, perhaps. Once one had been hauled up that terrible cliff. It would be a saunter, a gentle hill walk. Except that at the summit there would be very little between the climber and the black airless depths of space. Except that at the summit it would be impossible to survive.

And I was thinking again of sacred mountains, of the dead bodies on Everest and the high holy places. Would that be the function of Olympus Mons, on some far-future terraformed Mars? It would be the pure, cold dangerous climb ad absurdam, the pilgrimage without a concievable homecoming, the prescripted tragedy. Undertaking this pilgrimage, one would climb until one fell, in the high unmapped unguessable places, and one would fall on the gentle slopes amongst the frozen pilgrims of the past and there remain.

It is rather warm down here of Gwydir Street, and I have stopped dreaming of mountains some time ago. I am not entirely sorry to see them go.

A trick done with mirrors and doors

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 20:17:28 GMT

It is an odd situation that I find myself in. To say that a lot has happened since the last livejournal entry of any substance is an understatement: I have, in point of fact, got married, moved house, changed both job and academic field and spent time on three continents, not to mention crossing the equator twice and the prime meridian nine times. Moving week itself was changeable: that was what the weather forecast said; we were on the chaotic cusp of autumn, and hundreds of birds wheeled and gathered over the road, black against the sunset, as we took our little Yaris back and forth along the A428. Forget that the fenlands have no appreciable scenery for hundreds of miles, forget that the sulphurous odour of cabbage fields hangs over them like a wet fart off the North Sea -- what they have in abundance is sky, and as we carried out our own small migration that sky was a Turnerian fantasy world of cumulus rising, clashing, huge thunderheads building up and breaking catastrophically, shafts of crepuscular sunlight striking out like an announcement of the second coming. We were very little beneath it all; somewhat less than the birds. But in our little way we're no longer Bedfordians. Everything over, we have ended up here: in Gwydir Street, in Cambridge, with all sorts of wonderful things a few minutes' walk away. I am quite off balance. It's all rather lovely.

How to describe where we are? We have bought a teapot which is rather too large for two people to use. I have baptised the front door with gin. We still don't have enough bookcases. Our local shops sell pigs' blood, black salt and pea aubergines. And then there are the doors....
See, there is a measure of poverty which states that a non-poor household should have more rooms than people; a condition we only just edged into in the Mew, assuming bathrooms to be countable. More remarkable was our position in the depths of abject door poverty. There were only three in the building, including the front one. If one included all cupboard doors, that number stretched to a generous eight. It wasn't something I felt strongly about, at the time. The Mew was a house with no hidden corners. We used its space efficiently. And now suddenly we're in this strangely large old Victorian house; a house with crannies, with a mysterious locked attic, with a door in the middle of the bathroom wall which swings open as you are brushing your teeth to reveal a mirror which reflects your arse, with big wooden cupboards smelling of old sap; and which almost certainly has a hidden entrance to a basement, probably beneath the stairs. When you walk to the front door, a very small mirror reflects the movement of your feet, as if there is someone else in the room; and another mirror turns the line of curtains in the front bedroom into a cloistered corridor to mirror-land. I went to a conference last week at the Royal Aeronautical Society; afterwards, walking along the edge of Hyde Park in pursuit of a particular bookshop, I had a sudden moment of confusion in which it seemed that the chirality of the world had been switched. I have never been very sure of my left and right and east and west, to be fair. But would it be easy, in a mirror-world, on a stage with a suitable number of mirrors and doors, to turn a Bedfordian modeller of stars into a Cantabrigian modeller of air transport? And how long would have one have to stay in a mirror-world before one stopped noticing?

For all my breathless words, I can't keep down the pedant inside; who would like you to know that, though humans stop noticing pretty quickly, our chemistry might not function quite correctly in a mirror world. But I have informed the pedant that if you play about enough with mirrors and doors, you might be confused enough not to care.

Enough of this. Good people, come and have tea with us! We have a large teapot, and it ain't going to drink itself.

A rather pitiful charade

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:58:40 GMT

Oh, bother.

See, I had all these fine words fermenting and growing ripe in my head, albeit rather glacially (can you ferment glacially? It's what they were doing, anyhow) about the wedding and the honeymoon, about roses and gold and mead and tropicbirds and tortoises, there I was, mulling over all of those happy memories and letting them settle contentedly into place -- and then I was going to post some pictures of interesting rocks, and then I was going to mention that we were moving to somewhere rather close to one of the best pubs in Cambridge in a week and a half --

-- when my happy fantasy of a well-honed, meme-free stream of livejournal posts is shattered by a lucky guess in a game of charades. Tch. By the power of webternet chains, and even though I'm not particularly sure of the rules[1], it looks like it's time for, er -

* makes vertical pulling motions *

EDIT: now guessed by andrewwyld, who has taken up the baton over here.

[1] Wikipedia is my friend.

Like an enormous carnivorous cake

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:40:08 GMT

I have many, many things I want to post about: mountains and flea circuses and art and dovecotes and the rising of the sea. But these things are going to have to wait because, well, WEDDING.

Which reminds me to remind you:
1. Everyone on the f'list is invited to the ceilidh. This does in fact mean you, even if you think it doesn't, although we're assuming that we'll have relatively few attendees from, say, Australia. The ceilidh will be from around 7:00 to around 11:00 on Friday the 25th at Moreteyne Manor, Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire (more directions thereunto than you can shake a stick at). There will be cheese and cake. ~~You probably don't need to RSVP~~. We wouldn't mind knowing if you're coming. An email circular on this matter will occur shortly.

2. Those people who have been invited to the whole thing: now's about the time that we start prodding the people who haven't replied with sticks. Prod. Prod. We know of several people who appear to be making travel plans to get to the wedding without actually having told us they're coming, for example....

3. There is now a list of charities up on the not-a-wedding-list page. Apologies to those who asked for taking so long over this.

Mysterious symbols

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:34:39 GMT

There are certain shapes, sets of numbers, combinations of letters and so forth that I have looked at so frequently (it is usually, though not always, the fault of Work) that I can recognise them instantly. No context, no framing; just squiggly lines on a page. I suspect everyone has some of the same sort of thing. Currently, I know a lot about this shape:
,
and I have previously had a lot of dealings with this shape:
.
However, my prompt for revealing such shapes unto the world (other than to add to the daily quota of perplexity) is another form of mysterious incantation, to wit: the seemingly meaningless ascii conundrum. I showed this particular odd jumble of ascii to purplepiano at the weekend, in great excitement; it was the first time I had seen such a thing. Unsurprisingly, he had no idea of its import. But I suspect some of the people reading this might be able to hazard a guess....
.

Long-lost cousins in the cello section, and other illuminating tales

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:32:08 GMT

There is something about the combination of music and endurance -- something that sits rather deep in the human brain, that worms its way into ritual and pop culture and tradition alike. I am at a loss to explain why I would rather stand at most gigs than sit, given that I am not a dancer of any note; or why I have an odd feeling that standing at gigs whilst besplattered with mud, a la festival-goers in the rain, is the desirable way to go about such things. Is it tribal bonding?

If it is, then I guess I was out doing classical tribal bonding last night: that is to say, lured by the promise of purplepiano in the chorus and the chance of attending PastyFest (dude!) and talking photography with the incomparable andrewwyld in't morning, I went promming. I wasn't going to do it this year. I was going to be too busy. But ah, the promenade concerts! They draw you in, somehow. With all their peculiar Englishness, their pair of notable queues, their Victorian history, their slight over-fondness for Elgar, their mushroomy ceiling -- they're like the eccentric great-uncle you never had. Unless you did. But anyhow. This is how one finds oneself spending an afternoon in Kensington Gardens, reading the Pilgrim's Progress and idly watching a squirrel trying to retrieve crisps from the end of a stick, before ambling over to stake out a place in a remarkably short queue for a couple of hours. Thence followed an evening full of divers excitements, involving:
1. Being right at the front of the arena, in the middle. Yea, even unto being 3m from the conductor's bum. I generally prom barefoot, and I could feel the vibrations through the floor as Mr. Robertson jumped up and down.
2. The usual collection of glorious eccentrics. Wagner dolls, peculiar beards, alarmingly cute composers, the discovery of long-lost cousins in the cello section, discussions of exactly how many minutes long one likes one's Meistersingers prelude -- that kind of thing. Someone should write an operetta.
3. The usual enormous, forbidding and lumpen soprano (again, extremely close-by) who turns out to have a rather lovely, melting voice.
4. Some rather more unusual stuff: e.g. The Shout, an experimental choir whose members come from all sorts of different singing traditions, and
5. A huge choral piece (in size, not length) involving them and five other choirs of varying sorts. And an orchestra. And words which were a mixture of Caryl Churchill and Sumerian-sounding babble syllables -- combine this with the music, coming in in rhythmic bursts, and you have a vision of a man-made climate apocalypse which is strangely enticing. At this point (the choirs had spilled out into the stalls) I was standing at the focus of a great semicircle of singers, which was pretty fucking incredible...
6 ...and then the conductor gestured to part of the audience, and it turned out that large chunks of the prommers on either side of me were part of it as well, at which point I went slightly wobbly.
7. After that, Prokoviev's Alexander Nevsky was almost a mellow comedown piece. Well, maybe. Being merely quite large and very, very Russian, with its German invaders dehumanised by having them speak jumbled-up Latin fragments, Stalin is me best mate, &c.

So, yes. I stood up throughout, which I guess is a sign of a good prom. I suspect I'm more of a sucker for the artistic endurance event than most, or at least have a poor sense of when it's better to give up, the Ring cycle[1] and Finnegans Wake being cases in point. I suspect this is a harmless habit, if not entirely healthy. Being an human is odd, &c.

[1] Crucially, although the final few minutes of the Ring Cycle are glorious and sublime[2], although the final leitmotif, the one which appears only once elsewhere, just comes in from nowhere and crushes your heart -- they're not nearly as good if you haven't listened to sixteen hours of Norse Gods bickering beforehand.
[2] Opinions on this may differ, yes I know Wagner-the-person was a twat, &c.

An Open Letter to Muse

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:37:18 GMT

Dear Muse,
I write concerning your recent work, Supermassive Black Hole. Whilst I am sure that it represents a valuable contribution to the field, I (and I am sure many others) remain a little confused by your use of non-standard terminology and the sparse manner in which you have presented your main arguments. If you could clarify some of these matters for me, it would be much appreciated.
First, and most generally, whilst you refer throughout to an individual supermassive black hole (SMBH) you do not specify which one. Am I to assume you are discussing Sgr A*, which, due to its location in the centre of the Milky Way, is by far the most commonly-discussed individual SMBH? If so, you would do well to mention this fact. In addition, I feel that referring to Sgr A* as 'baby' and opening your argument with reference to its tendency to make you suffer and moan detracts somewhat from the scientific rigour of the work. Far be it from me to pry, but are you spending too long in the office?
Your second argument, beginning You caught me under false pretences, is most interesting. Are you referring to the high level of obscuration which blights most attempts to observe the Galactic Centre? If so, this seems to be a rather roundabout way of saying so. Combined with your earlier statement, don't you know I suffer, you almost appear to be suggesting that Sgr A* has some degree of sentience. This is a radical departure from current theory and I feel it may have some trouble gaining acceptance in the current scientific climate. Also, to cover some of your minor points:
-the gravitational pull of the earth on you rather outweighs that of Sgr A* on you, so speculation about the timescale over which Sgr A* will 'let you go' is, I feel, unfounded.
-It is unlikely that Sgr A* can hear you moan, as sound cannot travel in the vacuum of space.

It is always gratifying to see researchers expressing genuine enthusiasm for their work; however, given the sparseness of the rest of the work, do you really need to reiterate so many times that it sets your soul alight? Alternatively (I am afraid your unusual audio-based presentation allows for potential misunderstanding) you mean supersolar. In which case you should be aware that, though the common assumption is that the Galactic Centre is of supersolar metallicity, recent work (e.g. Najarro et al. 2004; Carr, Sellgren & Balachandran 2000) has suggested that solar metallicity is more appropriate for this region.

However, it is your main conclusion which I find particularly fascinating. I myself have done some work on Sgr A*'s consumption of massive and intermediate-mass stars (see Dray et al. 2006, astro-ph/0607470). Whilst 'superstar' is unconventional terminology, given the probable top-heavy IMF in the Galactic centre region I suspect you are referring to massive stars. Are you implying that their interactions with the black hole generally lead to the entire star being sucked in? If so, this is of the utmost importance for my work and I would value some further information about the processes by which you have come to such a conclusion. In addition, you claim to link this process with glaciers melting in the dead of night. Are you suggesting that Sgr A*'s consumption of loss cone stars is a cause of global warming? This would be a staggering result with profound implications for humanity, if proven. Whilst I confess I cannot see any potential mechanism by which such a link could be established, I would have no objection to the dramatic increase in funding for Galactic Centre research which might come about on the back of such a claim. The fact that your research is being so widely distributed is therefore, I feel, cause for cautious optimism, despite the peculiarities of your arguments. Perhaps you could play up the global warming aspect a little more in future papers?

Finally, given the above points, I may wish to cite you at some point. Given your unconventional distribution method, I am unsure as to the correct way to word such a citation. Would
Bellamy, M. et al. 2006, in Black Holes and Revelations, ed. R. Costey, Warner, # 3.
be sufficient?

yours in confusion,
Lynnette M. Dray (Dr.)

A reminder and a question

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:52:55 GMT

Calenders, unlike colanders, fill up remarkably swiftly; and brains, rather like colanders, forget things. Invitations are objects almost completely unconnected with colanders, but should be hitting the post shortly for the thing that people may have forgotten about, which is to say that:
purplepiano and I are getting married on Friday the 25th of August
and furthermore:
Although we won't be able to invite everyone to the ceremony and the food, we're intending a ceilidh afterwards and everyone's invited to that (the more the merrier, in fact -- ceilidhs are good with lots of people)
With that in mind, we have constructed a Logistical Website here containing details of how to get there and whatnot. Also with that in mind, um -- those of you f'listers who know about know about such things -- how does one go about getting one's hair done pre-wedding[1]? As is perhaps readily apparent, I've not been to a hairdresser since I was eleven. The same goes for finding people who will paint your face with strange unguents on your bridal morning, and all that. I'm not big with the cosmeticology in situations other than the overwhelmingly thespian, but I do vaguely remember someone mentioning the Body Shop in a positive light sometime previous.

[1] Yes, I get the general idea: you ask a hairdresser. But I have no idea what is Normal in the world of hairdressing, and that would be good information to start with.

White stones and water

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:39:00 GMT

In Naples, they believe that the octopus is fond of the colour white -- I cannot think why, as octopuses turn white when they are agitated, but it seems to be so -- and so they may be caught by the following method: a fisherman fills a white amphora with white stones and places it on the bed of a shallow sea. When an octopus comes along, it sees the white amphora and decides to make its home therein; so it empties out the stones and gets into the amphora itself. The fisherman, on seeing the stones scattered about the sea bed, retrieves the amphora and, with it, the sleeping octopus.

To my mind, the telling of this story implies one important fact, which is to say that a recent burst of book-tidying has once more placed the Penguin Companion to Food[1] in a place suited to idle browsing. I am therefore supplied -- nay, oversupplied! positively brimming, in fact -- with peculiar tales to do with things at least marginally edible. And in thinking of white stones and water, another of those stories comes to mind; which is that of the blind coconut. Most coconuts have three pores at one end, see. Soft and rather useful places which one may pierce with a corkscrew to let the juice out. The blind coconut, being a freak of nature somewhat like the matreshka egg or the two-headed tortoise, is hole-less. In their place (it is said, for this affliction affects fewer than one in a million coconuts and it is hard to be sure) there forms a hard, milky stone, like a pearl but somewhat larger. This is the coconut pearl. They are (of course) without price. And of course, such stones are said to have magical powers -- healing, luck, the taming of fevers -- and of course if one lurks round long enough on the internet one may be sidled up to and offered a green coconut pearl from a nut with seven eyes, just as one may be offered a red bezoar from the stomach of a cobra, fossilised tiger testicles for virility and pearl-of-cat for the removal of negative energies; or a scaly ball of condensed dragon-spirit for three thousand dollars. But then again, the internet has always been the sort of place where one could purchase a half-dozen mummified squirrel heads on an idle afternoon. It's why I'm rather fond of the place.

But coconut pearls, though. Perhaps the entire world's supply -- impossible to gather together, insane to try -- might fit into a very small, very white amphora. And what sort of octopus could one capture then?

[1] A name which somehow conspires to suggest that the book comes ready-supplied with a large flightless bird to sit at your right hand in restaurants and encourage you to order the trout.

Cat news is no news

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:40:04 GMT

Vet's diagnosis: dunno. Cat's diagnosis: dunno (only it was expressed in a more mew-ly form). In short, we are waiting and medicating. And no more blood has come out of the cat, which can only be a good thing.

Anyhow: as the proud owner of Pet Insurance, the Nug was allowed to take her medical notes home in support of a claim. These proved to be surprisingly entertaining. For a start, she was officially happy snoozing and was purring too much to monitor respiration on the morning she was sent home. The rest of the notes are written in some sort of strange code only comprehensible to the Veterinary Elite or those with access to online glossaries, but confirmed that the lumps remained unidentified, most vital signs were NAD (no abnormality detected) and that various cellular investigations had turned up only rbcs (red blood cells).

Doctors are famous for writing like this, of course. It's amazing what insulting detail you can hide in in acronyms. Suffered a UBI? That's an Unexplained Beer Injury to the cognoscenti. Apparently. Unless it's the Union Bank of India, or United Business Institutes. Looking at a glossary of medical abbreviations reveals more of the same confustigation. Within the medical field alone, 'AAA' is Annual Accountancy Agreement. Or Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm. Wow. That's a mistake you really don't want to make. Let alone mistaking Canadian for Cancer. When you have all the words in the world at your fingertips, abbreviation and acronymisation are longer safe sciences.

Now as it turns out, most plausible two- and three-letter acronyms already have at least one meaning. But such is the alphabetical crowding in this modern world that many have two or three well-known meanings. Which got me to thinking: if the following letters were entirely devoid of context (and I'm aware that at least one of these polls has been done before) --

View Poll: What would you think of first when you hear...

Bad Cat News

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:52:31 GMT

The Nug, unfortunately, is not well. In the way of most cats, she chose to manifest this by behaving entirely normally, up until the point that it was no longer possible to hide; which was when I came home from work on Thursday and found a great deal of blood that should have been inside her all over the banister, stairs, floor and the like. It was coming out of her nose and mouth, a fact that she was trying rather hard not to reveal.
As you might imagine, I freaked out like a chicken on speed at this point. Emergency vet phonecalls were made. I left some panicy voicemail on Chris's mobile (in Spain). But, in predictably cat-like fashion, she stopped bleeding shortly before seeing the vet, began behaving even more like an animal with nothing wrong with her, and even managed to show that she was defecating normally by doing so in the taxi on the way there. It is good that vets are clever people and not fooled by cats. In the end she stayed there for a couple of days, and they took a lot of X-rays, which were all normal; and she didn't bleed any more; but looking up the back of her nose with an endoscope they found some swelling and lumpiness, and they also found a small lump under one leg, and that doesn't sound like good news, really. :(

But however it be, she's home for the moment. And we have a pile of pills to give her.
Now, I have never given a cat a pill before. The felines I lived with as a child were uniformly well up until the age of 18, whereupon they uniformly expired without the need for intervening medication. And such people as choose to give advice on pill-giving tend to have a rather nervous jocularity about them that I find quite off-putting. Ho ho, they say, Giving a cat pills? Don't forget your suit of armour and industrial pliers! I have some horse tranquillisers you can borrow. Did you know cats can spit out medication with sufficient velocity to put your eye out? Hey, would you like to see my scars? Our steadfast Encyclopaedia of the Cat advised that one should merely wrap the cat in a towel, lubricate the pills with plenty of butter, perform a particular sort of complicated Vulcan grip (illustrated in three steps) to open the cat's mouth, drop the pills directly down its throat and hold the mouth shut until they'd gone down. But just how do you get an un-cooperative cat into a towel? The Nug was having none of it. Perhaps one of us could gently stroke her whilst the other one wrapped the towel around? Or maybe we merely had to be faster than her? Or perchance....

Whilst we were wondering this, the cat strolled up to the plate with the pre-buttered pills on, had a good sniff, and then ate them. That's one good thing, at least.

Back at the vet's tomorrow.