The birth of "Fat Dally"

Since about 2004, and continuing on until present day, I've been writing a series of short stories based on the adventures of my two dalmatians. In late 2006, I decided that I would morph the adventures into that of just one dalmatian, who I have named "Fat Dally"...at least for now.

Hence the illustration above. He's an original by me (though based perhaps a little on good old Snoopy, at least in body shape), and I thought that you might like to meet him.

I'm hoping eventually to have enough time soonish to sit down and revise a lot of the stories I wrote in the early years, as well as the later stuff, and see if I can make them more about this little fella, rather than about first an old female dally, and then a young male dally pup - both with distinctive (but different) personalities. I know it will take time, but at least it will give me incentive to write more!

Here's to much more adventures of Fat Dally and many more hours hard slog (umm...enjoyment) over my writing!

The haunting (and helping) of the Ancestors...

So many things happen in life to make the everyday seem mundane. I've spent the last couple of months reading, sorting out my new library, getting ready for a return to university, and all the while, other things have been lurking in the background, biding their time, before they launch themselves at me all unannounced.

To put all that into English - I've had the ancestors crowding around the back of my chair again, quietly adding their two cents worth, helping me when I get stuck on a person in my family tree, and scowling at me if I don't go off on a tangent that they REALLY want me to follow. And yes, I said Ancestors, not decendants. Those that have gone before, not those that are yet to follow.

I have, since about Christmas last year, been working on my family tree, and one of the side-effects, apparently, of "doing your family tree" is visitations from ancestors. I have a lot of friends and far-off family members who are also going through the ancestor-helping-temper tantrum throwing-scowling visitations. Sometimes it's quite a wonderful feeling, knowing that the person you are working on in your tree is somewhere around you, trying desperately to help you in any way they can. Other times it's a fair bit frustrating, because to the dead, time has no meaning anymore, so they seem to get annoyed with me when I call it quits at 3am, and tootle off to bed for a few hours kip. :-)

The last few months, I've been studiously ignorning the family tree, because it's been a rather hectic year all told, but especially as far as family goes, and I honestly needed a break. That said, I've met some wonderful family members from far-reaching branches of my tree; indeed, I spent the better part of yesterday with a couple of them, down on holidays from up north to visit their son. I'm off today out into the Darling Downs to visit another branch of the tree for a week as well. So it's all go at the moment.

Strange how, whenever I drag all the family tree stuff out of the cupboard, and open the file on my hard drive, scour my emails for messages from various family and contacts, life suddenly becomes all too hectic. The old saying "it never rains, but it pours" is definitely apt when it comes to my family tree! I sometimes wonder if it's a family conspiracy to wait until the moment when I have the least amount of time on my hands, before they all suddenly descend on me, or come out of the woodwork and demand my attention. That said, it's been a wondeful little jaunt through the annals of history at the very least, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly.

Anyway, the Lockyer Valley awaits, and I must be gone. :-)

Speaking English is dangerous :-)

Just a quick stop-over to drop a link to a rather funny little blog entry:

http://ukceramix.blogspot.com/2007/11/nutrition-and-health.html

I like the way he thinks :-)

Is it morning already?

It's cold here, and early. I have been beaten by the Sun, though only just. The insides of my windows are covered in early morning condensation, because I am hotter than the outside world, and windows are mere thin glass. But the fact remains - it is cold here.

As I sit, bundled up in my Winter wrappings, I ponder the fact that it is, apparently, Spring, this side of the pond. Ah, but it is early days yet. The shades of Winter have yet to truly leave us, and it will be a little while yet before we are properly free of them.

It's cold here, and early. I can hear the birds, all a twitter about something or other, and it makes me smile to think that there is life just out of arm's length from where I sit now, warm and snug inside my Winter quilt.

I cannot see much, outside these windows of mine, because of the moisture on them, although even if I could, there would not be much to see just now, at least, not from these windows.

There are other windows here that to look out of means looking into some wonderful and far-off land, or, perhaps, into a certain forest where lives a certain outlaw of long ago. I can see that from here, quietly, if I sit and listen and look.

It is a window that shows a great deal. Especially early in the morning, before the Sun has properly risen, and no one is about. If I am quiet, then the forest that sits behind me becomes many things. Sometimes I fancy it is the Hundred Acre Wood, where live Winnie the Pooh and his friends, other times, it is the Enchanted Forest, and I wonder how far in the Faraway Tree sits, and whether Moon Face and Saucepan Man live there still, and yet other times...it is Sherwood Forest, and I fancy I see a glimpse every so often of Little John, or Robin Hood. Sometimes I am traipsing along with Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves on their long trek to the Lonely Mountain and the dragon. And still other times it is a land of my own making.

Ah, but it is cold here....and early. Today I am not much in the mood of creating a world to visit. Today I wish nothing more than to retreat back into my warm Winter wrappings, close my eyes, and nod gently off.

Culture is having orange feet at a funeral....

It's amazing what you remember at a funeral, during one of the greatest moments of stress a body can withstand, and yet, it seems, there are always certain flashes of memory that stick out from days like that. For me, at my cousin's funeral last year, it was the fact that one of my aunts had orange feet. Obviously the result of a home tanning kit that went horribly wrong, although I didn't have the heart to ask her at the time, and now we shall never know whether my guess was justified or not :-)

Not that it matters, of course. But it is strange that I can remember her feet, yet I can't remember a lot of actual details about the day.

Stress does odd things to a person. Just now I am experiencing different levels of stress due to different stressors in my life. Of course, one of the biggest is my return to study, which brings in itself many smaller stressors: will I be able to write the two large essays required of me? will I pass my exam? will I find an invigilator in time who won't let me down? can I even dare to compete with students young enough almost to be my own children?

I have other stressors, of course, because I am older. The stresses involved in the upkeep of a house and pets, daily life struggles, and general incendiaries that life is always throwing at you.

Another is the slow dawning of being terribly lonely in my little house, and the unwilling notion that my biological clock is fast ticking to an end; my chances for procreation being few and far between, partly from the belief that I do not necessarily want to "go it alone", and partly because I have yet to find a man worthy of that kind of act. That is, of course, not to say that I don't like the practice involved, because I do. I am human, so that is only to be expected. :-)

However you look at life though, there is always going to be a certain amount of stress at some level. Life is like that. It simply adores throwing you into the deep end without any floaties and waiting to see if you will sink or swim. While most people invariably figure out how to swim (although a hell of a lot of them almost drown in the process), there are always those that never work it out for themselves, and either have to be rescued, or simply drown of their own free will. Note I said "own free will" here, meaning they had the same choice as everyone else, but chose not to take it. I suppose that is where the individuals are separated from the sheep. Free will is for individuals, collective following is for sheep. I, for one, choose not to be a sheep.

Over the years, I have let stress get to me, to the point where I pretty much asked the world to stop so I could get off. I retreated from every day life, and it is only recently that I have begun again to find my feet. And yet, even now, with that tenuous finger poked outside the bedcovers to see if it is safe to come out or not, I find it is a seriously scary place out there, and I am not at all ready for it.

My first subject at university is about Culture. Primarily, Australian Culture. You would think, having been born in the Great Southern Land, that this would be a fairly easy subject, as it is about a society I was born into, grew up in, and am currently living in, and yet....

If this subject has taught me anything (and we are only now into Week 2), it is that I know damn all about Australian Culture as it currently stands. The great Aussie Culture of the 1970s and 1980s - sure. Not a problem. I was a small child and a teenager then. Even the 1990s. But these days? I've been living in my own little world for the past decade, only coming out to visit British and American sites and to read about European culture. Not even my Anthropology studies could help to re-orient me with my own people. And so now, I am left wondering about Australian Culture and all that this subject takes for granted that I must know. I honestly don't know where to begin, and it scares the shit out of me.

The first proposition posed to us is that "Culture is Ordinary". The article we read last week, goes on to state that not only is Culture ordinary, but that Learning is also ordinary, yet I have my doubts. My anthropology training tells me otherwise. My wistful thinking also tells me otherwise. One thing I do know about my homeland is that we are a multicultural country now, so I do not think that Culture can be classed as "ordinary" if a general stroll through down-town Brisbane at lunch time is anything to go by. Everywhere you go, there are little subsets of differing cultures, all mingling, clashing, consuming each other, in the mixing bowl that is Australian Culture as a whole.

The more I re-read the first article, the more I am bothered by the proposition that "Culture is Ordinary". It grates. I find it hard to fit into my nice little way of thinking, though perhaps that is part of the reason it is included there - to make a person uncomfortable, and primarily, to make them THINK.

Thinking outside the box is a very good thing indeed.

Old books, new books, words...and chocolate.

I've been reading quite a great deal recently. Everything from Enid Blyton to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and very much in between. Yesterday, for example, I read a book (cover to cover) entitled "Rhoda - a Tale for Girls". It was written in 1905 by an authoress, Eleanor Louisa Haverfield, who was born around 1870, in England. She, according to the title page of my 1905 copy of Rhoda, is also the authoress of various other books, though a Google search on her produced very little except books up for sale and auction on eBay. Given the book was written in 1905 (or at least, published then), it is typical of the time, in that the women of the story need to be rescued by gallant men as they are unable to succeed without "manly intervention". That said, it's a nice little story, though rather sad at times, and yet, to my somewhat trained eye, also lacking in certain places as far as storyline and attention to detail goes. But that's me being me, I guess.

I also had the pleasure of reading a book entitled "The Mystery of Maybury Manor". This time, it's an adventure book for boys, and written a little more recently (1920, though my copy dates from 1929). It's a rousing little adventure, set in a typically English boy's school (not that I've seen many of those, you understand), and is quite good to begin with, though it has a rather rushed feel towards the end, as though the writer suddenly considered the fact that he had only a chapter to wind everything up in, and yet found himself still barely halfway through the set up to the story.

Of course, for old books, there is no beating Robin Hood, in any of its varied forms. One of the copies I own, and I will admit to being a fan of anything Robin Hood, dates to 1928, and is by S. Percy, and being of the title "Tales of Robin Hood". At the very end of the book are a few other little stories by other authors that have nothing at all to do with Robin Hood, and are rather curious in their inclusion in this little book. However, they all make for a good read. In perusing yet another book I own, I came across a story at the very end of the book (it being a Hamlyn Story Library book called "Exciting Stories From The Past", published in 1977) that made me laugh a little, as it was a story about Robin Hood. I have no idea who the author of the story is, as the book only lists Editors, but the story (The Phantom Archer), was quite a good read.

Books are amazing creatures, though, when you sit down to consider them. Since I started reading regularly again - I'm in the process of painting my newly-built (and purpose-installed) library in my garden shed, so while I should be cataloguing all my thousands of books, I am instead, getting waylaid by various titles and covers, and so I spend an inordinate amount of time going "ooohhhhh....gotta read that!", and not really getting much painting...or cataloguing...done - I find that my vocabulary has improved greatly. Not, perhaps, that it shows much in the above italic bit :-)

I do find, however, that the more I read, the more I love this language that we speak almost the world over now. English is, apparently, the hardest of all languages to learn, and so I am very glad indeed that I was born in an English-speaking country, as I have had enough hassles learning it in English, without learning it in another language. Having learnt other languages besides dear old English, I know how hard it can be to have to mentally translate things between English and the other language, and I have a fairly good grasp on English (I hope!), yet I still find it easier sometimes to think in one of the foreign languages I speak, than to try and translate it into English, and I'm a native! That said, I DO love English. It is a rich and varied language. It has a way of making me think of chocolate and good coffee when I read a well-written thing, of days spent at the university coffee shop with good friends, discussing everything from Philosophy, to God, to Mechanical Engineering, to Music and Art, to Physics and Maths. Even to Winnie the Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood. What I mean, I guess, is that it sends tingles down my spine and I get all excited and overly joyous and I just want to take pen to paper and set my own words down for all the world (or at least, my sister) to see. Just as a visit to the university at which I am a sometimes-student awakens in me a desire to get back to my studies, so does a well-written book awaken in me a desire to return to my writing.