Family (well, two members thereof) and Friends

1. This morning I received this photo of my father and sister, taken a couple of weekends ago. My father’s hair used to be auburn, hence the reddish colour of my sister’s dark hair. My mother was blonde – now greyey-blonde – which is why my brother and I are fair-haired. My other sister, the one with the back trouble, has darker hair, too.

I don’t know why I’m explaining this, other than that no one ever believes my sisters and I are related.

Personally, I think the family resemblance is strong – and strengthening as we age.

He probably looks like a perfectly nice chap to you, doesn’t he?

2. The sister in the photo is currently the only one of my siblings who is speaking to our father (other than me, and I’m only speaking to him because I’m thousands of miles away and can safely communicate with him via email).

Why are my brother and younger sister not speaking to our father?

Because 18 months ago my niece, Beatrice, was born to my brother and sister-in-law. My father not only didn’t bother to visit his first and only grand-child, the child of his only son, he didn’t even send a card or make a phone call of congratulations. He still hasn’t.

Inexplicable. I have tried, believe me, to come up with a plausible reason as to why he has behaved this way – but I am completely stumped.

My poor brother (who, by the way, is the kindest, most generous and best of all of us by quite some margin) is understandably upset and angered by this. Not just for himself, but for the perceived slight to his wife and daughter.

Nevertheless (and this shows you just how wonderful my brother is), when my father needed assistance recently and asked the above sister to help, my brother stepped in and helped her to help him. And insisted she not tell our father where the help had originated.

Seriously, its getting like an episode of Home and Away…

3. Which brings me to dinner last night with one of the cast of the aforementioned show. He’s the friend of a friend who prepared the roast dinner to end all roast dinners last night at her (much coveted) home. It was delicious and he was funny, sincerely in love and genuinely interested and interesting. So, that’s another one of my unfounded prejudices blown away. I always assumed all successful actors would be arrogant, vain and rather stupid. Not so, I’m delighted to report.

4. Oh, and yesterday I gave some detailed dating advice to a male friend. The irony of which is not lost on me. 

“Just don’t get into the ‘friend-zone’”, said I, from so far within the friend-zone that I’m not sure I even remember what direction the ‘potentially-more-than-friends-zone’ is in. *sigh*

Plight of the Predator

…Sharks evolved 450 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs, and have survived five major extinctions [Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic and Jurassic]. They range from the 9″ pygmy shark to the 40′ whale shark; most live for between 20 and 30 years (some, like the spiny dogfish, up to 100). Far from being the solitary hunters of mythology, sharks are intelligent, social animals, many living in schools with more complex migration patterns than birds. Out of more than 360 species, only three have been involved in a significant number of fatal, unprovoked attacks on humans: the tiger, great white and bull sharks.

But now, thanks to the shark fin [soup] trade and unscrupulous [industrial scale] fishing methods, sharks are facing their greatest ever threat. The shark specialist group of the World Conservation Union claimed recently that almost every species of large shark found in European waters is heading for extinction. There are 13 species classified as critically endangered, meaning their numbers will decrease by 80% within three generations…. estimates that 90% of sharks have disappeared in the past three decades, with up to 100 million being killed a year.

Why should we care?

As apex predators as the top of the ocean’s food chain, sharks are not evolved to be preyed upon, and their lifecycle – slow growing, long living, late breeding – makes it hard for them to cope with sustained attack from driftnets, longlines and bottom trawling.

By removing the top predator we are pushing the ocean ecosystem which we rely on to regulate our climate into an unknown future, which could be potentially disastrous for man. More than 70% of the world is made up of oceans and they are home to algae – plants that range in size from single-celled organisms to massive crops of kelp – which through photosynthesis remove carbon dioxide from the air and produce oxygen [more than all the rainforests on earth]. 

Climate experts such as Sir James Lovelock have declared that algae is perhaps the single most important cooling element on earth… by killing off sharks, smaller sea creatures [ordinarily eaten by the sharks] will flourish and consume greater quantities of algae. The shark is essential…

(Excerpt from an article by Tom de Castella, from the Telegraph Magazine)

If you get chance to see Sharkwater in the cinema or rent it on DVD, do.

Welcome Hugo Friedrich

Hugo Friedrich was born yesterday, after nine hours of being crushed and squeezed through an unfeasibly narrow aperture. He, and his Mum and Dad, are doing as well as can be expected when the Whole World has just changed completely.

Fag books

Fag books

Originally uploaded by norwichrocks

I am more disturbed by this the more I think about it.

In Which There is Just So Much Happening Here I May Have to Lie Down

1. My younger sister has to have an operation on her spine to remove pieces of cartilage which have split and are now poking out from between her vertebrae and aggravating her sciatic nerve, hence her recent leg and back agonies. She is scared, in pain and trying to be brave. I’m not there, but wish I were. Again. 

2. Remember a little while ago I said that three of the women I work with were trying to get pregnant? Well, as of this morning, all three are with child. One without medical assistance but after 2 years of trying, one after a particularly painful and unpleasant cycle of IVF and one after her fourth cycle of IVF – this time with donor eggs as well as donor sperm. She has the official blood test tomorrow so please send her all your positive vibes for the embryo to stay good and stuck in there until term. She has had several unexplained miscarriages in the past and she really, really, REALLY wants this child.

3. Another friend is due to give birth to her first baby any day now…

4. One of my friends in the office is not sleeping. Proper insomnia, weeks of it. She’s at the end of her tether with exhaustion because she has been working extremely long evening and weekend hours at a second job since before Christmas – any suggestions? 

5. I’m not sure whether to be bothered by the fact that every month I seem to get at least one Facebook ‘friend request’ from someone who purports to remember me (presumably from school or university or a previous job) but of whom I have no recollection whatsoever. I ignore them: feel a brief prod of guilt and return their names to the dark, cobwebby corner of my brain which is storing them.

6. It has been raining heavily all day. My feet are still wet from my walk to work this morning. Come on Australia, sort it out! Had I wanted cold, wet jeans clammily sticking to my legs all morning I could have stayed in Anglesey with my parents.

7. This is precisely the kind of thing which reduces me to a rabid rant in under a minute. Illustration is not a hobby, it is a livelihood: pay professional illustrators for their work, Google, dammit. I bloody well bet all the marketing and PR people who dreamt up this charade of a skins campaign are being paid for their time and ‘expertise’. Grrrrr

8. And don’t start me on Ken Done…

9. Team training for the City to Surf road race is going well. So far, no injuries, and on Monday night we made it all the way to the Opera House and back (including all the steps) without keeling over, clutching our chests and gasping for breath through blue lips.

10. I have a jar of nutella on my desk. Yesterday it was full. Today, not so much.

The Only Slightly Less Grand Canyon #2: An Armchair Hike

Prepare for an armchair hike. Here are the photos from our walk in the Blue Mountains last weekend:

At the start, the flora looks like this – eucalyptus forest with grevilleas, banksias etc – some blackened by bush fires:

Then, as we followed the track down the steep sandstone sides of the Grand Canyon gorge -

and when I say steep, I mean it was all rough-cut steps

- the flora rapidly changed from dry sclerophyll forest to dripping wet rainforest of enormous tree ferns and myriad different fungi: 

Halfway down we stumbled across some work in progress:

Which is undoubtedly timely – the almost constant stream of water run-off from higher up is visibly eroding the steps.

These stone blocks are apparently air-lifted in by helicopter and then manhandled into place by a race of giants (those large white bags contain their vegemite sandwiches).

Anyway, here’s some they made earlier – further down the track at a point where the path again crosses one of the streams which feeds the river at the bottom of the gorge:

Shortly after this, the path disappeared into a tunnel:

We emerged, several metres of blackness later, to this watery ghost:

A little way further down and we were at the bottom of the gorge, which was all enormous tumbled rocks and rilling water:

There was a fair amount of scrambling and clambering inelegantly:

And then a little light yodelling for the echo:

We admired the rock forms shaped by millennia of moving water:

and we spotted a few little yabbies:

as well as some lovely abstract eddy patterns on the water’s surface in a quiet little side pool:

Then we began the long climb back up and out of the canyon. I didn’t take any photos because I was too busy concentrating on breathing.

Oh, except for this one of an Eastern Spinebill, because he was new to me:

 

However, when we reached the top and saw this, it was all worthwhile:

Thanks are due to the indefatigable Tim, who guided us with unfailing patience and good humour, even though he was missing Gabby very much (she is in Stockholm on a 3 month exchange program with our parent company – our lovely Swedish yodeller is the other half of the exchange).

The Only Slightly Less Grand Canyon #1

Last Monday was a holiday here in Australia, in honour of Her Majesty’s birthday (may god bless her and all who sail in her etc), and I spent it hiking in the beautiful Blue Mountains, about an hour and a half’s drive northwest of Sydney.

Several amusing things happened, as these things do when one is on hols with chums. They are, of course, rather more likely to occur when one of the party (that would be me) is incapable of not saying the first thing which pops into her tiny head.

To whit…

{Scene: breakfast in a small cafe in Katoomba. The interior is made entirely of wood, and the cafe was built and is run by a local Community group}

Beardy Man: So, where are you from?

Us: Canada, Sweden, England, Ireland and Adelaide.

BM: Whereabouts in England?

Me: Er, Norfolk. Its on the east coast, you may not know it, its quite rural and out-of-the-way…

BM (eagerly): Do you know a place called Thetford in Norfolk?

Me: Thetford? Yes, of course, its a town I know well. Breckland. Nice bridge over the river Thet. Used to have a castle and a priory, but they’re just ruins now. Have you been there?

BM: My surname is Thetford! I’m a Kiwi*, but my ancestors came from Norfolk. I can’t believe you know it!

Me: How extraordinary. Yes, it was founded by the Iceni, I think, and used to be rather an important town, right through the Roman occupation and up to the end of the late Medieval period. The 18th century radical Thomas Paine was from Thetford, the chap who wrote ‘The Rights of Man’. There’s an unprepossessing gilt statue of him in the town centre which I believe was a gift from some American society or other… [warming to my theme]

BM: Really? A radical? That’s interesting. Our Community will find that interesting…

Me: What flavour of community are you? Are you a self-sustainable, eco kind of community or more of a religious type group? 

BM: [Looks uncomfortable]

Me: What’s the name of the Community?

BM: The Twelve Tribes.

Me: Like Battlestar Galactica! 

BM: Er, no.

Me: Oh. [realising my error from his crestfallen countenance] Ah, well, if you’re a community of religious believers then perhaps that’s your Norfolk heritage? Afterall, many of the early Pilgrims to the New World were from Norfolk. Norfolk had a big Dissenting community in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as the whole Kett’s Rebellion débacle in 1549 or thereabouts…

BM: Yeah, yeah, totally, like the Mayflower? We really identify with the Pilgrims, but not with the Puritans.

Me: But… [not wanting to burst his bubble but HIS HISTORICAL FACTS ARE WRONG] the Pilgrims were the Puritans. That’s why they left England. They were escaping persecution under the newly Catholic monarchy of James II…

BM: [leaves]

 

 

* Kiwi = from New Zealand

Soup as Metaphor for Life

Lunchtime. I know there is celery in this soup, lurking at the bottom; despite being a tomato soup, there are unmistakable signs that celery has infiltrated the broth. I dislike celery almost as passionately as I loathe pineapple. And blue cheese. And anchovies. And those ghastly chocolates with orange or strawberry cream centres.

But I digress.

My point was that I know there is celery in this soup. However, I am choosing to ignore it because I am hungry, skint and idle* – all factors conspiring to make it highly unlikely that I will get up, throw this away then go out and buy something else to eat.

The trick is to sup my soup with extreme caution. If I just continue to skim the liquid from the top without disturbing the dodgy lower layers, then I may be able to evade the celery ‘floater’ which haunts my imagination…

 

* I am also disapproving of unnecessary waste, of course.

Sexual dimorphism in Publishing, Yoga and How The Bloody Hell Did I Become the Designated Running Trainer Here?

1. I sent an email today to some of ‘my’ artists and was reminded, looking at the list of names, that they are almost all male. Certainly all the ones working digitally are male. And even amongst the illustrators still working traditionally – in paint on paper – only two out of the 23 I commissioned on the last big project which used watercolour artwork were women.

This is a little odd, especially given how female-dominated Publishing is as an industry. Virtually our entire office is female, from the CEO to the Receptionist. Only one of our editors is male and only three out of the 10 or so designers we contract as freelancers are male.

I sit in the middle, trying to ‘translate’ between the “monstrous regiment of women” (gotta love old Knox) and an international mob of borderline autistic male artists.

As the book illustration business moves ever more exclusively toward digitally rendered artwork, I wonder whether this will mean fewer and fewer women thrive in – or even enter – the field. I hope not. 

2. Is it wrong to admire a male fellow practitioner’s physique in Yoga class? It is? I’m supposed to be focusing on my chakras and zenly above such earthly considerations? Oh. Too late… He really does have the most lovely shoulders.

3. The City to Surf is a 14km (8.6 miles – count ‘em!) road race from central Sydney to Bondi beach. It takes place every August and somehow I seem to find myself in charge of a team of 8 colleagues who plan to enter this year in aid of a local charity. None of whom have ever entered a race before nor run more than a couple of hundred yards since school. Three of whom didn’t even own a pair of trainers, in fact.

Splendid.

We – well, four out of the eight of us – went for our first training run on Monday night. And by god they were good! We got all the way over Harbour Bridge with only one stop to stretch and two of them even managed some fartlek* on the return leg.

They apparently enjoyed it and surprised themselves with what they achieved, thanks to a little encouragement and the example of a ‘hare’ to follow… although this hare was a little more tortoise-like than hare, to be perfectly honest.

Anyway, I particularly enjoyed watching them stretch at the end; trying to bend at the hips with a straight back and touch the floor with their hands without bending their knees. Excellent stretch for the hamstrings. And really quite amusing to witness. Not often one has the opportunity to encourage one’s colleagues to thrust their bums skyward. Heh heh.

I’m now considering getting team t-shirts made. Suggestions for designs and slogans gratefully received…

 

* Fartlek: Swedish word which sounds more fun than it actually is, viz. alternately running fast and slow in order to build stamina and cardio fitness. Shattering, yes, but it works a treat.

Niall Ferguson: My Ideal Man and Zardoz.

1. Yes, folks, I identified Historian Niall Ferguson as my ideal man some time ago – after reading his books Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power and Colossus: Rise and Fall of the American Empire in fact.

While I don’t necessarily agree with every one of his conclusions, he argues extremely concisely and cogently, drawing on clearly-presented evidence from different cultures and periods and with a writing style which is a pleasure to read. 

Also, he is hot.

Of course, he’s happily married with three children.

My only regret about turning down the undergraduate place I was offered to read History and Philosophy at Jesus College, Oxford, is that shortly after I would have arrived he took up a position as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History there. I would have attended his lectures. I could have seduced him instead of an Italian tutor of Ancient Greek Philosophy and Logic in Edinburgh. Gah!

I have often thought how useful a time machine would be and now I know EXACTLY what I would use it for first. Fuck the dinosaurs.

2. And while we’re nowhere near the subject, here is Sean Connery as Zardoz. Why? You may well ask. We certainly did. No answer, however, appears even remotely sufficient to explain this.