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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| Short Stories Squeezed out a short story of sorts today. I say that because it’s debatably a story and might really be called a joke. But any port in a storm, they say, and my storm of inability to write short stories has lasted long enough for me to use this port. My latest theory regarding the drought is that I’ve forgotten how to write the darn things. Looking back, I seem to have had no problem in previous years. But now I haven’t a clue of where to start. Maybe it’s old age catching up with me and I’ve used up my entire stock of tales to tell. I guess time will tell. Word count: 112 |
| Kubelwagen! This AI business is really getting on my nerves. I spend a lot of my time listening to YouTube videos on all sorts of interesting things and have noticed a general trend in the delivery of these ever since AI became the flavour of the moment. The allegedly human narrator seems suddenly incapable of pronouncing certain words in a sensible way. Being who I am, I find it impossible to continue without verbally interrupting the narrator with the correct pronunciation. I know he can’t hear me and that he will make the same mistake throughout the video, but I can’t help it - each offence must be met with my insistence that he’s getting it wrong. Just as an example, I watched a video about the Kubelwagen this morning. Everything was proceeding elegantly enough until the narrator decided that the way to pronounce the most relevant word was “kubel-varjen.” Now consider the idiocy of this. The blasted machine that had been chosen to read the script had obviously been told the basic information that the Germans pronounce the W as a V. Full marks for that then. But any applause for this is immediately dampened by that J instead of a hard G. Was it too much to tell the thing that the Germans would never commit such a crime? It’s pronounced “koobel-vargen” and I resent having the ignorance of AI rubbed in my face throughout the video by this stupidity. It’s worse than the video about ships that insisted on pronouncing the pointy end of a ship as the “bo,” as though the vessel were intended to be someone’s birthday present. And I’ll resist mentioning the abominations that pronounce the PS in corps. If the people who make these videos can’t be bothered to listen to them just once to weed out such annoying errors, I fail to see why I should continue to give them an ear. The trouble is, the videos don’t come with a surgeon general’s warning or anything like that. And that’s my rant for the day. For anyone that wonders, the Kubelwagen was the German equivalent of the jeep in World War II. Word count: 359 |
| Don’t Forget the Quills! Sometimes I read through stuff I haven’t looked at for a while. And, if I’m honest while seeming a bit braggartly (thought I invented that one but it seems it’s really a word), there are gems amongst the old discarded efforts of yesterday. Here’s one I would put forward for a self-recommended Quill, if only I could be bothered: "Relax"  |
| Froggy Went A-Courting I was watching a rerun of an episode of Everyone Loves Raymond when it all came back to me. This was the one where Robert’s prospective girlfriend eats a fly. I exploded with delight and recalled horror. It was as though something that I’d thought must have come from a dream had suddenly exploded into reality. How original and daring of the writers to have the idea in the first place and then go through with it. That’s the kind of thing I want and now they’ve used it and it’s gone forever. Imagine that. Imagine having an idea so far off the beaten track that you cannot be sure whether it’ll get you proclaimed in the town square or condemned as an insane maniac. Would you do it anyway? And think of the power this puts in our hands. With a few keystrokes of the ‘puter we can explode reality and defy the probable. Come to think of it, that’s the only reason I am subjecting myself to The Bradbury again - for the chance that, in obeying the order to produce, I’ll stumble across my fly waiting to be devoured. If New Year must have its resolution, that’s mine. Word count: 200 |
| Pookie Getting on for two months since I promised to finish my cat series with the story of Pookie. It turned out to be not that easy. The others were just a matter of enumerating those facets that stood out after years of reflection. But Pookie is an ongoing development, a continuing saga that surprises every day. More catlike than ever she was as a kitten, she yet conspires to educate us on the domestication of both felines and canine. The days of her teaching me to play Fetch (as if I needed such instruction but it was odd to see it in a cat) are long gone but then she’ll suddenly demand that I play the game once again for old time's sake. And then my suggestion that she’s slowing down in her old age is confounded as she hurtles down the passage just as she used to. She’s better at handling the lack of grip in the corners, too. But she does sleep much more than her younger self, that at least is true. And all with that feline instinct for the warmest spot in the house. Which is still me, apparently. So I am forced to the conclusion that it’s too early to write in summation of Pookie. There is so much still to be learned. Word count: 219 |
| The Land of Echocardiograms Lying at the end of an apparently interminable number of empty and featureless corridors, the Land of Echocardiograms is indeed like another country. Here the bustling traffic of the rest of the hospital has died away and a different, more sombre mood inhabits the air. The light is low in these more hallowed halls, deliberately kept in twilight as they are. Only the lush, liquid sounds of beating hearts interrupts the great silence of these darkened rooms, and then only briefly, as though an accidental exclamation of awe at the weight of the inhabitants’ task. Here the only ceremony is that of the jellied and slippery implement pressed ever harder into flesh, searching always the murmurs of the deepest organs, the quiet ponderings of hidden artefacts. For an hour I kept quiet in recognition of the need for this silence in the face of such mysterious processes but at last, when the deed was done and all data unloaded to the computer to be displayed in dim shadows against darker shapes, I ventured a question for the custodian of such secrets. “How many pictures did you take?” The inadequate banality of the word “pictures” sounded like an insult in that serious place, and there was a pause before she answered, without a glance from her continuing work of selection and presentation. “About seventy.” Abashed by the immensity of the task, quite clearly beyond my understanding of what was required for success, I lapsed into silence again, duly humbled by my crass ignorance. Word count: 252 |
| Transport “Seven, seven,” he said, without explanation or prior reference. It was an unusual thing to say in any circumstance but especially coming from so unimposing a figure, a slight man known usually as no more than Transport. He stood by the gurney, awaiting my reply. Suddenly I understood. “Yes,” I replied, “I’m seventy-seven.” It was no evidence of superior insight or gifted ability but merely information contained in the hospital’s recognition code of name and birthdate. If anything, it demonstrated a certain dexterity in the maths required to deduce age quickly from such data. I climbed onto the gurney and lay down. “You’re doing well,” he commented. “Yeah, I guess I’m lucky to be reasonably mobile still,” I replied. “For your age, you’re looking good.” I snorted. “Well, you’re the first to notice in that case. I would have said something less complimentary.” “Not for you to judge,” he countered. “I’m better qualified.” I thought of the years and aged faces he’d seen in that time. “Guess that’s true,” I admitted. We set off on our journey to the Land of Echocardiograms. It was one of those conversations that revealed much more than it stated. There was the fact that old age finds itself with little to think about but the passing years. In all that hospital, the vast majority of older clients were engaged in assessing and understanding old age. And the approaching death, of course. Life becomes much simpler when its end draws near. If there are any experts at all, the most common are the aged, as focused as they are upon their own circumstances. Indeed, the hospital itself was like a concentration of such lives and thoughts, a teeming soup of the study of age. Word count: 289 |
| Kiwi Kiwi was our first kitten. She came to us as a tiny creature of soft, black fur wrapped around a core of total confidence. She had been discovered in an elevator without any indication of where she might belong. Why we should be chosen to be her caretakers I don’t recall but we loved her from the start. The naming of her was easy. She was, after all, completely midnight black in colouring, bringing to mind the New Zealand rugby team who played in gear of similar persuasion. And so were called the All Blacks. ‘Tis hardly a leap of genius then to cotton to that other name for New Zealanders - the Kiwis. Perhaps it was her colouring that made Kiwi such an excellent hunter. It must surely have been an advantage to be so effectively camouflaged in the darkness of night. The evidence in the form of mice from the fields was produced as tiny gifts to us in the most unexpected of places. I shall never forget the look on my son’s face when he discovered one such token in his Wellington boot. The foot is very sensitive at such times. The type of mouse habitually taken by Kiwi was indicative of her character. She was an athletic little thing, always off outside and hunting in the yard or the fields beyond. And the mice she brought to show us were always beautiful, little, striped ones, never the drab, brown house mice. That was Kiwi, the queen of the great blue yonder, guardian of the garden, and ferocious defender of her patch. I’ve seen her chase off many an inquisitive dog as well as interfering cats from neighbours. Why they were so frightened of her I don’t know, unless it was that wild streak in her that one sensed even when she was accepting the usual feline advantages of being the house cat. There was an enormous confidence about her, as though she were twice her actual size. That is the lesson Kiwi taught us. It’s not size that matters in this business of social hierarchy - it’s confidence. And that was Kiwi. For a long time I thought she was the perfect cat, a mixture of the gentle and the fierce, the domesticated and the wild. And then I met our present cat, Pookie, and a new standard was set. Word count: 392 |
| Annie And so we come to Annie. As previously mentioned, she arrived with Fritz as a prize from emigrating friends. Even so, she was all that Fritz was not. She was small though he was large, she lacked confidence, which Fritz had in abundance, she was crazy while Fritz was soporifically sane. In short, Annie wasn’t very good at being a cat. Her balance was a little off so she would often fall off perches where she’d dozed off. She was a shorthair but anything but smooth. And her colouring too was hard to describe, being blotches of various shades in no particular pattern. But the ruling fact about Annie was that she was an orphan. Which is why she was called Annie, of course. All cats are orphans once taken away from their mothers but this had happened to Annie at too early an age. She was in constant search of her mother as a result, pawing at any available human and producing so much spittle that she left damp patches on their clothing. This made people wary of showing her too much affection and that made her even more hungry for attention. She was indeed poor little Orphan Annie struggling though life and never really making it. We tried our best with her but it was a thankless task, with any kindness shown her just producing an overreaction of infantilism. Her problems were too deep-seated for us to mend. She settled in with us comfortably enough and, in her later days, became less frenzied in movement. That was something she got right eventually, the cat ability to spend long periods dozing in the sun. We became used to the occasional crashes as she fell off window sills and the backs of chairs. So that was Annie, crazy and demanding, but as part of the family as any of us. She died a couple of years earlier than Fritz and for many years after their departure we had no more cats. But it’s hard to stay catfree forever. Word count: 338 |
| The Cat of a Thousand Names Yesterday I had what the medical people call "a procedure." Whilst not as draining as an operation, this particular procedure was still enough to dispose of any energy left after so long a life and I am unlikely to write anything of real import today. I still feel the nagging insistence of the blog, however, and it so happens that I have an old essay that enables me to continue the series about cats I have known. This is longer than usual for this blog but its subject was rather large for a cat, which makes it fitting, I think. Hopefully you'll enjoy it the more as a result. The Cat of a Thousand Names Fritz came to us from some old Zimbabwe friends, Patrick and Eleanor (not their real names). They lived in Milton Keynes at the time and so were the reason I came to know that fair city. Patrick was a little older than myself and belonged in what I think of as "the Alcohol Generation" whereas I am firmly in the "Psychedelic Generation". Which is all entirely off the point, since I intended to speak of the Cat of a Thousand Names. When Patrick and Eleanor decided to emigrate to Tasmania, we were chosen as the lucky winners in the contest to receive their cats (actually, we were the only entrants and did not realize that we had entered until informed of our prize moments before the cats arrived). The cats were named Fritz and Annie. As in most pet names, there were reasons; Annie because she was an orphan, Fritz because Patrick loved the film Fritz the Cat (not the old cartoon character but the much later pornographic version). I was never happy with the name Fritz, partly because I had not seen the movie and so did not get the joke, and also because I felt that anything with the name Fritz ought to have at least a tenuous connection with things German. The whole family set to work on devising a more apt handle for the unhappily-named one (Annie escaped this, probably because she was completely indescribable). At first, we tried out mutilations of the word "Fritz". "Furtive" was an early attempt that stuck, even though the cat was not furtive at all, being rather large and indolent, certainly never energetic enough to think of hiding his great bulk. "Ferdy" followed soon after and was accepted immediately. An aberration was "Frrt", an attempt to imitate the sound he made when asking a question (he was a talkative cat), rather than anything to do with his given name. "Frump" had a brief period of popularity. There were variations on a theme, "Firtle" supplying alternatives like "Firtleheim" and "Firtlebaum", and even "Fritz" produced the odd but attractive "Fritzenjammer". But none of the growing list ever managed to win out over the others and be adopted as the ultimate name for our tabby friend. As the list expanded with fresh inventions and variants, all became quite acceptable and were recognized as referring to the feline presence amongst us. This process continued for his entire life and I could not vouch for their being no new suggestions on the day that he died. It was a few years before that sad time that I gave recognition to what was happening by christening him with the title "The Cat of a Thousand Names". It was no exaggeration. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Fritz (I use the original name from now on so that no confusion arises) was that he knew instantly when he had been given a new name. He would come to any of them and never took offence at this game that we played. And this led me to the realization that he resembled a dog in many ways. Very few cats ever learn their own names, let alone come to them. Fritz did both, in spite of the severe handicap of constantly changing goalposts. He was definitely canine in his ability to understand human speech. It came to me then that, with a little training, Fritz could be helped the rest of the way and become a real dog (yes, Pinocchio, now you are a real boy). We began with the easy things like food. And Fritz responded with a will, happily accepting any food that he saw you eating, just as a dog will do. Every dog I have owned has enjoyed a banana and Fritz was no exception. He tried potato chips and, in spite of some difficulty in getting them to an edible state, he professed a great liking for them. His favorite was yogurt, however, and it became a crime to lick your own yogurt top, Fritz being recognized as chief yogurt top licker of the household. We progressed from there to more complex behavior. The game of "fetch" never appealed to him on account of his laziness, but you could see in his eyes that he understood the principle perfectly. It was just too much trouble to demonstrate his grasp of the game by physical activity. "Chase the cat out of the yard" he was good at, however. His technique was unusual but just as effective as the frantic barking and rushing about that a dog will do. Fritz relied more on his impressive bulk to achieve the same end. He would lie in the yard, apparently asleep, and wait for the offending cat to approach. At the moment when the prey was close enough to appreciate just how large he was, within a foot or so in other words, Fritz would wag his tail once, thumping it down on the ground with suitable aplomb. Most cats never recovered from the fright and would not enter our yard again. There was one lesson that Fritz never managed to get right, however, and so failed in his valiant attempt to be a dog. It was "barking" that defeated him. Fate had decreed that he should have a light, squeaky voice, totally unsuitable for producing the gruff and staccato sounds that a dog makes so effortlessly. He tried, poor fellow, but was defeated every time by the curse of his vocal chords. Never did he manage to achieve more than a pathetic mouse-like squeak. I gave up in the end and allowed him to live out his life, far above the normal run of cats but just short of dog-hood. He was happy enough with what he'd achieved, his good nature letting him smile at how close he'd come. And there was always one thing about being a dog that he got right every time. He would greet you at the door and let you know that you were the most important thing in the world to him. Not many cats ever get that right. Word count: 1,019 |
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