We decided to name all the snails Albert except for one who we called Albert. Remarkably eighteen out of the twenty are still alive and the two that died were probably dead already – one had a nasty dent in its shell and one was, well, quite literally just a shell. Although the fish have shown interest in them, Klutz and Schmuck are as their names suggest rather stupid whereas we seem to have bought the most intelligent snails to even walk… slither… trundle along the planet. The snails, which are hermaphrodites (not asexual as I earlier suggested), have laid eggs but the fish are at least more cunning that stationary spawn and these have got gobbled up.
As for the functionality of our snail population, our tank has gone from being lined with a thick layer of green algae to being spotlessless clean in the space of a week. We thought it would take a while – naturally these things move at… well, snail’s pace.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Ouch, that smarts!
Physical pain isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, but eventually it consumes all the joy in everything else. Which is why I need to make a doctor’s appointment; there is a difference between stoicism and martyrdom. You have to have some decent cause if you prepare yourself to suffer. Not wanting to take more powerful drugs or admit that at least one aspect of my condition has changed for the worse aren’t really good enough to pin my colours to. Of course, a true stoic would just get on with this and not mention it, but I have been struggling with the decision to ask for a review.
I am also at a loss as to why things may have become worse. One explanation is that I have somehow become used to my painkillers. I have no idea whether this is possible or likely. Another explanation is atrophy, but I haven’t been dramatically altering my activity levels; surely even if my muscles are wasted, they would be accustomed to these kind of levels and only complain when I attempted to increase my amount of exercise? Plus actually because my brain is working well and I have a sense of having energy, I am moving about quite a lot despite the discomfort. I can’t do distances and I can’t stand still for any length of time, but I get up and move often throughout the day.
Another explanation is that things have got worse for some other unknown reason. This prospect is just depressing, but at least my brain is okay. I am still moving on with my book, a 1000 words a day most days. If I can do something about my pain and still have the lucidity to write life shall go on and everything will be all right.
Anyway, today I am listening to Contraband by Velvet Revolver, a band which includes Slash and Duff McKagan from Guns'n'Roses and Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots among others. It is a good album, very catchy tunes. Not sure I'm in the right mood for it today though alas. I think I need a particular track by John Cage today...
I am also at a loss as to why things may have become worse. One explanation is that I have somehow become used to my painkillers. I have no idea whether this is possible or likely. Another explanation is atrophy, but I haven’t been dramatically altering my activity levels; surely even if my muscles are wasted, they would be accustomed to these kind of levels and only complain when I attempted to increase my amount of exercise? Plus actually because my brain is working well and I have a sense of having energy, I am moving about quite a lot despite the discomfort. I can’t do distances and I can’t stand still for any length of time, but I get up and move often throughout the day.
Another explanation is that things have got worse for some other unknown reason. This prospect is just depressing, but at least my brain is okay. I am still moving on with my book, a 1000 words a day most days. If I can do something about my pain and still have the lucidity to write life shall go on and everything will be all right.
Anyway, today I am listening to Contraband by Velvet Revolver, a band which includes Slash and Duff McKagan from Guns'n'Roses and Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots among others. It is a good album, very catchy tunes. Not sure I'm in the right mood for it today though alas. I think I need a particular track by John Cage today...
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
In slow motion the blast is beautiful
Sorry, but I’ve been listening to the album The Final Straw by Snow Patrol. I am really excited about this album. It strikes me as being in the same league as Automatic For The People, Abbey Road orOK Computer - definitive. I only wish the band had come up with a better name before producing such a work of genius. What’s more they released the one duff track on the album How To Be Dead as a single. It’s a mediocre song. The rest is almost perfect. I love this album. Not like Keane’s Hopes and Fears which I haven’t listened to since I wrote about it and am about to give away to my friend. Download the single Run from iTunes if in doubt. Although this may well be the best song on the album, what a song! I know this album came out last year but I’m a little slow on the uptake, okay?
I managed to write my final few paragraphs yesterday and they rocked. I can’t share the whole thing because it gives a lot away, but the last sentence is;
Are you blown away or what? Okay, I know what you mean but like I say I can’t share with you everything I write or you would get an entire novel in a rather strange order. The important news is that all my strings tie themselves up rather neatly. I mean, not too neatly, I don’t use the phrase happy ever after but everything ends neatly enough. I don’t have any disappearing characters as I did in the first draft. Seriously, I had one character who left his house half way through the novel, the main character’s brother no less and was never seen or mentioned again even though we spent much of the story in his house. None of that, so that’s good. Progress is being made.
I managed to write my final few paragraphs yesterday and they rocked. I can’t share the whole thing because it gives a lot away, but the last sentence is;
Now I thought of her from time to time and that was all.
Are you blown away or what? Okay, I know what you mean but like I say I can’t share with you everything I write or you would get an entire novel in a rather strange order. The important news is that all my strings tie themselves up rather neatly. I mean, not too neatly, I don’t use the phrase happy ever after but everything ends neatly enough. I don’t have any disappearing characters as I did in the first draft. Seriously, I had one character who left his house half way through the novel, the main character’s brother no less and was never seen or mentioned again even though we spent much of the story in his house. None of that, so that’s good. Progress is being made.
Monday, March 07, 2005
The climax of the story
Today I am working on the final chapter of my book. This doesn’t mean I’m nearing the end of this draft, I just feel the need to straighten out the ending at this stage so that I am sure about exactly where I’m going - I daresay I will have to rewrite this when I arrive at it a second time.
I am not very good with endings. I prefer asking the questions early on in the book. And endings are more fragile; you can really screw things up. Everything comes to an end very quickly, almost by accident or luck in my book and I’m not confident that this is going to satisfy the reader. Then again, if the climax didn’t involve any element of good or bad fortune, then it would be very predictable.
Plus, I really struggle to make life or death decisions about my characters. In the very first draft, the ending came as a big fight in which most of my characters were killed one way or another. It was a ridiculous fight really. At one point someone chopped someone else’s head off - I can’t believe I wrote that now, it was just so over the top. Subsequent drafts have made the ending far more subdued and hopefully more believable. I just hope it’s not a total anti-climax.
Oh, this is such hard work.
On a more positive note, I feel confident that I have successfully disabled one of my characters. Of course it is my ambition to get published and go pro, but primarily I wanted to write the sort of book I wanted to read and right some of the wrongs I see in books and other forms of story-telling. I wanted to include a strong realistic Disabled character whose disability was totally incidental to plot. This week I’ve been checking my facts with my friend Bob and feel quite confident that I have pulled this off.
I pray to God this is my final draft. Nobody asks me how it is going anymore, I have been doing this for so long. In a way I am glad they don’t because there’s not much I can say about it, but in a way I feel entirely unsupported. Then again, I know I always ask others how they are getting on at work and what else they are up to and perhaps this is not the way others operate. I am always a little paranoid that because I am ill and everything moves at a slow pace for me, nobody actually gives a monkey's what I do with my time.
Then again again, I know this is partly to do with the people I chose to talk to. There are various family members especially, who sometimes talk for hours about their work, the petty intrigues within their social circles, minor health problems and gardening projects but are pretty keen to get off the moment I volunteer a snippet of information about my own life. It is difficult in such cases to work out whether it is because I am extremely boring or because they are.
I am not very good with endings. I prefer asking the questions early on in the book. And endings are more fragile; you can really screw things up. Everything comes to an end very quickly, almost by accident or luck in my book and I’m not confident that this is going to satisfy the reader. Then again, if the climax didn’t involve any element of good or bad fortune, then it would be very predictable.
Plus, I really struggle to make life or death decisions about my characters. In the very first draft, the ending came as a big fight in which most of my characters were killed one way or another. It was a ridiculous fight really. At one point someone chopped someone else’s head off - I can’t believe I wrote that now, it was just so over the top. Subsequent drafts have made the ending far more subdued and hopefully more believable. I just hope it’s not a total anti-climax.
Oh, this is such hard work.
On a more positive note, I feel confident that I have successfully disabled one of my characters. Of course it is my ambition to get published and go pro, but primarily I wanted to write the sort of book I wanted to read and right some of the wrongs I see in books and other forms of story-telling. I wanted to include a strong realistic Disabled character whose disability was totally incidental to plot. This week I’ve been checking my facts with my friend Bob and feel quite confident that I have pulled this off.
I pray to God this is my final draft. Nobody asks me how it is going anymore, I have been doing this for so long. In a way I am glad they don’t because there’s not much I can say about it, but in a way I feel entirely unsupported. Then again, I know I always ask others how they are getting on at work and what else they are up to and perhaps this is not the way others operate. I am always a little paranoid that because I am ill and everything moves at a slow pace for me, nobody actually gives a monkey's what I do with my time.
Then again again, I know this is partly to do with the people I chose to talk to. There are various family members especially, who sometimes talk for hours about their work, the petty intrigues within their social circles, minor health problems and gardening projects but are pretty keen to get off the moment I volunteer a snippet of information about my own life. It is difficult in such cases to work out whether it is because I am extremely boring or because they are.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Snail Mail - Literally!
Twenty snails arrived in the post today. Honest. I ordered them on-line a few weeks ago but they were apparently delayed by the weather (?). They are perhaps the most unusual thing I have ordered on-line except for a brood of chickens for a family in Africa on behalf of [...]'s nephew at Christmas but naturally the chickens didn’t come to our address.
The snails, some of which are yet to be named, will help to keep the fish tank clean as they trundle along eating algae and fish debris all day long. They also mate when left to their own devices, but with Klutz and Schmuck about, any eggs or offspring are liable to be eaten. In fact, the fish will attack the snails, which is why we’ve got twenty; we expect at least some of them to get sucked from their shells in a gruesome mollusc massacre.
There are two sorts of water snails, ramshorn snails which are kind of ammonite-shaped, flat coils if you like and stagnails which are curvy conical.
I buy most things on-line for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that I don’t get out much (you’d noticed, right?). I buy all my groceries on-line at Tesco, I buy most of my clothes in the world wide jumble sale they call eBay and I would never dream of buying any CDs or DVDs in shops – they’re always so expensive compared to places like 101CD and Play. The first thing I ordered on-line was a bra from Bravissimo and my mother became very anxious about my bra size being accessed by hackers, apparently unconcerned about the security of my credit card number. I have been ordering most things online for seven or eight years now and have had no major problems. But no live organisms before now.
In case anybody else wants to purchase water snails, check out Paul Bromfield Aquatics.
The snails, some of which are yet to be named, will help to keep the fish tank clean as they trundle along eating algae and fish debris all day long. They also mate when left to their own devices, but with Klutz and Schmuck about, any eggs or offspring are liable to be eaten. In fact, the fish will attack the snails, which is why we’ve got twenty; we expect at least some of them to get sucked from their shells in a gruesome mollusc massacre.
There are two sorts of water snails, ramshorn snails which are kind of ammonite-shaped, flat coils if you like and stagnails which are curvy conical.
I buy most things on-line for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that I don’t get out much (you’d noticed, right?). I buy all my groceries on-line at Tesco, I buy most of my clothes in the world wide jumble sale they call eBay and I would never dream of buying any CDs or DVDs in shops – they’re always so expensive compared to places like 101CD and Play. The first thing I ordered on-line was a bra from Bravissimo and my mother became very anxious about my bra size being accessed by hackers, apparently unconcerned about the security of my credit card number. I have been ordering most things online for seven or eight years now and have had no major problems. But no live organisms before now.
In case anybody else wants to purchase water snails, check out Paul Bromfield Aquatics.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Goldfish Facts #5 (not really many facts though)
I had almost forgotten about this! Ah well, truth be told that this week I only have one goldfish fact;
- Dry fish food can make a goldfish constipated.
- The Goldfish Chronicles "Recording the attention span of a... oh look, a javabean"
- Blue Goldfish "discovery, journalling and conversation - primarily about culture, religious issues, and American politics"
- The Goldfish Bowl "Graham Tyler's thoughts on SharePoint, Live Communications and Office" (yawn!).
- La vasca del Goldfish I don't know what this one is about as I have no Italian but Altavista Babelfish translates the title as The Bathtub of the Goldfish and the bit which I think is the description as "In an pleasant evening housewife, to the eve of three days via for Passover, it is finally reached the moment of one carried out epochal for mine blog:" Okay...
Virtual makeovers
I need to get a hair cut. My hair is long and thick, is a bother to wash and more significantly takes an age to dry. I don't have the strength in my arms to blow-dry it. Plus it's rather dull and boring to look at. However, it's been like this for ages. The hairdresser isn't convenient for me and my last visit was about seven years ago. So being nervous about change I bought a Virtual Makeover CD, where you put in a digital image of yourself and put different haircuts on you, different colours. Even makeup but I make about as much a mess of that as I do with make up on my own face.
This is great fun and I'm half inclined to publish the results and put them up for a public vote. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I could cope if everyone wanted me to have a blonde perm and naturally I can't grow a beard, although I now know what I would look like if I had one.
Otherwise I am beavering away on the book or else sleeping. Shall report again soon.
This is great fun and I'm half inclined to publish the results and put them up for a public vote. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I could cope if everyone wanted me to have a blonde perm and naturally I can't grow a beard, although I now know what I would look like if I had one.
Otherwise I am beavering away on the book or else sleeping. Shall report again soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)