The cats bring me gifts; they leave them outside the door: lizards, locusts, snakes, birds, eggs, embryos, feathers…
I’m never sure what I’ll find on the verandah in the morning. Never sure if it will be alive or dead, complete or dismembered.
So when I found this lovely creature the other morning, I assumed he was only in one piece because the cats had got bored and abandoned the game when he died of shock.
When we first moved here, the village seemed to be home to a surfeit of satanic and unholy animals. Some belonged to neighbours, some were just wild visitors.
Emilio had a half a dozen goats and his lad used to herd them across the unfenced part of our land to graze in the olive grove: an enduring image is that of a sleek black goat poised, watchful, on a rock or stone wall, or up on two legs under an olive tree. ( I am glad to say that despite the ease with which he assumed this vertical posture, I never heard the horned one speak.) Continue reading “neighbours and other animals”
Cricket Tests are renowned for how long they last, but the BBC news to the right seems to imply they might go on for weeks: if Anderson was the fourth to take 300 wickets in the first Test, then three others had done so before him.
Just how long does it take for 1200+ wickets to be taken?
I’m travelling at the moment, and only intermittently connected to the web, so it’s tricky to find time and opportunity to update the blog, especially as there are all too many other priorities when there actually is a connection.
One of the things I’ve been trying to research during my intemittent interconnectedness in the last few days is postgrad writing courses.
The idea of going back to (semi) formal study is a subject that has cropped up again after a long period when I was sure it was the last thing I wanted to do. I’m not going to go into the ins and outs here, but I will quote from a course handbook I was reading yesterday:
Assessment
A portfolio of 10,000 words (45 CATS), or 8,000 words (36 CATS) 6,000 words (30 CATS) or 5000 words (20 CATS).
I might manage to write 45 poems with cats in them – indeed, perhaps I already have – but I thought poetry was a condensed form. In which case, surely more words isn’t necessarily a Good Thing?
(Additionally, I am reminded of those “binders full of women”, not to mention that even 20 cats are almost certain to be very smelly.)
don't confuse the narrator 