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Birds
Today I went in search of a sleeping pelican, as sleeping pelicans are pretty much the best thing ever: great big pelican lumps, heads turned backwards and beaks buried in feathers, and then they wake up and gradually unfold, swivelling out and blinking open their glaring peevish eyes ( Read more... ) -
Adelaide, still
More things about Adelaide that I'd forgotten:- Hard rubbish week - the special week when garbage trucks will pick up sofas and bookshelves and tree-branches and broken-spring folding beds and what-have-you. Within a few minutes walk of where I am now, I could pick up an artist's palette on wheels or any one of three different basketball hoops. (It' ( Read more... )
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Things I had forgotten about Adelaide
- Fences made, for some reason, from dry twigs.
- Despite this, a heightened awareness of fire hazards.
- So many front yards thick with oleanders. Hard matte leaves, pink and white flowers, and fretful warnings from parents. There was a boy who touched an oleander and didn't wash his hands before lunch, and he DIED. Oleanders are bright and hardy, which ( Read more... )
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"Daring? Well yes, I suppose it was daring."
This week's best thing ever: recordings of suffragettes going back to 1937.
The Holly-and-roz-mcclure Society of Feminists Who Suddenly Feel Bad About Not Fighting The Patriarchy With Airships particularly recommends:
Muriel Matters, who sounds wonderfully as if she's reading out a children's book to a class of eager five-year-olds. It was quite a little ( Read more... ) -
Keeping warm in winter
From Oliver Goldsmith's letters:A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his tobacco. You must know, Sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats; and at this chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe.
And from Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: ( Read more... ) -
I know this is not technically your fault but
Why did nobody tell me about Black Hearts in BatterseaSo okay, it's a children's book set in alternate-history London - written 1965, set around 1825. There is Battersea Castle, built for ludicrous fake-historical reasons. There's a Battersea crest ("two squirrels respecting each other, vert., and az., eating mince pies"). There is a tunnel. There ( Read more... ) -
Things that should be large: another list, a thousand years later
Squirrel tails. Bumblebee bottoms. The eyelashes of llamas ( Read more... ) -
Reading Jan to June 2009: non-fiction
Brief reviews of non-fiction that I remember reading in the first half of the year.
( I enjoy pillows, am ambivalent about scandals, and don't like David Foster Wallace. ) -
Books to halfway through the year: YA
Every six months or so, I realise that hey, reading is great!, and I decide to keep track of books as I finish them. Last time it happened was January this year, which of course means I posted one entry about it and am now seven months behind ( Read more... )
