Dog-walking at Termonfeckin

Yesterday morning we joined in the weekly Drogheda Animal Rescue Centre walk on Termonfeckin beach. Jessica brings along all the DARC dogs from her kennels, and people who have DARC dogs in foster (like us) bring them along too and we all walk or get pulled along by our dogs for an hour. It's great fun and you get to meet some really sound people, as well as some really sound dogs.

I mostly walked Elk yesterday. She had been surrendered to the pound and Jessie took her out. She's a lovely dog. It's no coincidence that a lot of the dogs that rescues end up with are big breeds (lots of GSDs and pointers and lab crosses) that have passed the cute puppy stage but not reached the sensible adult stage, and are hard to control and pretty strong. These are obviously the dogs people bail on. Funnily enough, these are exactly the kind of dogs I'm attracted to.

There was a greyhound there as well, called Ellie. I knew greys were beautiful, but I'd no idea their coats were so soft, like thick fur rather than hair. Just lovely.

Then all four of us came home for some big nap action. Result.
Original comments
Sounds nice. How lovely to see a photo of you!!

Queenie
xx
Posted by on Jun. 25 2005, at 9:59 PM

Another exciting instalment of...

... why play with the toy when you can play with the box it came in?

I love how Milo, a thin, well-cared for dog, manages to look like a fat slob in this photo.

Fat Comic and the Milky Bar Kid

On Friday afternoon our shop was robbed and loads of cash stolen from the till. Luckily, no-one was hurt or even threatened, but we'd had a good day in the shop and there was a lot more money than there usually is.

Ed to the rescue. He organised a lunchtime fundraiser in Cleere's for us, starring himself, Dara, Colin and Max. It was a brilliant gig. All four comics reckoned it was the best one they'd had in the festival and Colin got ten minutes of new material out of it. And we raised enough to replace the stolen money twice over.

Hurrah for the sad clowns.
Original comments
You must tell us when Dara is next on in Dublin, we keep meaning to go see him.

Posted by Ray on Jun. 07 2005, at 11:24 PM
I just keep forgetting, because I don't go myself most of the time.
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Jun. 08 2005, at 7:37 AM

29: Oh well, back to sleeping with the light on

I was amused to discover yesterday that I am not the only person who knows which room in my house is the safest place to go in case of zombie/vampire invasion. Friends Dara and Susan have recently moved to Chiswick and have, like me, selected the attic as their place to escape from demon hordes. Of course, they have a Velux window in their attic and I don't, but I'm thinking about getting one. You never know.

I am Legend is part of the the Gollancz SF Masterworks series. It's the third one I've read and every one has been a winner so far. When it came into the shop I remembered having heard the name somewhere, and as I settled down to read it I realised on page one that I was reading the book that inspired The Omega Man, a film that scared seven types of fuckery out of me on more than one occasion. The book is short, and combines SF and horror in a tightly frightening little package. I can't say enough good things about its commentary on the human condition past and present and its ultimately uplifting and profoundly atheistic message.

You should definitely read it.
Posted Jun. 07 2005, at 10:11 AM

28: Hard-boiled Galway

I don't read a lot of crime books, but recently was trying to shift a bunch of them out of the shop and started reading about Ken Bruen. He turns out to be a very interesting man (everyone but me probably knew this already) and highly respected among international crime writers. His books don't show up in the shop very often, so when one did, I jumped on it.

The Magdalen Martyrs is not a happy book. It is crime fiction of the most hard-boiled type. In fact it's boiled, then soaked in brine for a while, then air-dried, then baked, just to ensure maximum hardness. The main character has a drink, drug and general fucked-upedness problem (he also listens to Van Morrison, which I just can't identify with), but he's funny and well-read and doesn't scare the shite out of me in the same way as, say, everyone in a James Ellroy novel would.

The story is fairly simple and doesn't twist and turn like a twisty turny thing, so you can almost disregard it entirely and just immerse yourself in the seamy underbelly of, er, Galway. It's a quick read, it's fun, and I highly recommend it. If you come across Ken Bruen in an airport, definitely take him on holidays.
Posted Jun. 07 2005, at 10:04 AM

27: yarrr

I'm amused to see that the new edition of Scurvy has had its subtitle changed from "how a surgeon, a master mariner, blah blah solved the greatest medical mystery in the Age of Sail" to "helped Britain to win the Battle of Trafalgar". Now that's a pretty good cash in on an anniversary, no?*

Anyway, this book isn't really as interesting as you might think it's going to be. It has plenty of opportunity to be interesting, given that it gets to cover

* the symptoms of scurvy (unpleasant)
* the prevailing medical theories at the time (a bit daft)
* the living and working conditions of mariners in the Great Age of Sail (appalling)
* the career of Captain James T. Cook (brilliant)

But somehow it still manages not be a very interesting story. I think the problem is that the author tries to present it as a narrative, and it doesn't make that interesting a narrative because it's a bit like once upon a time there was scurvy, and some people tried to cure it using X, but it didn't work. Then they tried to cure it using Y, but that didn't work either. Then they tried to cure it using Z, and that did work but it was too expensive to use on a daily basis, so they didn't use it. Then England went to war and decided that scurvy really needed to be cured, so they cured it. The end.

I suppose the most interesting thing about that is the notion that governments only bother their arses trying to cure fatal diseases when there's a danger that the national economy and/or security will be compromised because all of the able-bodied men and women who are working/defending the country are dropping like flies.

Hmm, I wonder if there's any comparison to be drawn between this and the HIV/AIDS epidemic? Hmm.

*This year is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

26: BB bollox, back to books

I've been putting off blogging this book since I came back from holidays, because I'm not really sure how I feel about it or what to say. On the face of it, it's the kind of book I like, because it describes a single life-changing event that takes place on a single day and it goes into huge detail describing that day. On the other hand, it's a book that's described in its blurb as being as much about poetry as prose, which normally makes me Run Away!

Because it's an "arty" type of book, any failing I've spotted could well be intentional. For example, all of the characters in the book live together on the same street and do not have names, so you need to remember them by their descriptions and house numbers. Which is fine when the character is The Boy on the Trike or The Old Couple. But some of the younger characters meld together and it's hard to tell which is which. But maybe that's deliberate. It seems, for a book that's trying to be very realistic in its descriptions, to have a lot of very wacky characters in it. But maybe that's deliberate too. Sometimes the timeline seemed a little muddled to me. But maybe... you get the picture.

Overall though, despite my reluctance to embrace anything which isn't a linear narrative, I enjoyed this book. It is beautifully written, the major characters are interesting and I cared about what happened to them. And sure, what more can you ask for in a modern novel?


Posted Jun. 07 2005, at 7:58 AM

Time to paint my name on my shell...

and climb into my hibernation box. Yes, it's the end of May, and for me that means only one thing. It's been nice knowing you all. See you in August some time.

Original Comments
What the hell happened to 'read more books, watch less telly'?

Queenie

25: Tudor groupies

I don't know why I consider Philippa Gregory to be trashy reading. Maybe it's because she wins awards for romantic fiction. Maybe it's the blurb on the back. But it's probably because her books grab me in a way I've rarely felt since I started reading Stephen King all those years ago. The Other Boleyn Girl is the story of Ann's sister Mary and her affair with Henry VIII, and how she was supplanted in his affections by Ann, and once Ann was gone, if the Boleyn-Howard family could have stuck another woman of theirs under his nose, they would have.

But really it's a book about the special powers and powerlessness of women in that time, and the special freedom and servitude of courtiers, especially courtiers to someone as notoriously capricious as Henry. Gregory gets over very well the idleness, the gossipy flirtations that never went anywhere, the huge sums of money won and lost at cards and games while elsewhere people's livelihoods were being ruined for no reason. She is also great at ramping up the tension in a situation where you already know the outcome, but a part of you is hoping that maybe she'll change history, just this once.

But that's another genre altogether.

24: Slender book

Muriel Spark could sure teach modern novelists a thing or two about the soul of wit. The Girls of Slender Means is only a short book, less than 200 pages, but it contains a whole world, a whole social whirl of World War Two and the Blitz and the freedom that young women were beginning to experience and the constraints there still were upon them and their movements and their expectations for the future.

There is a cosiness and a sisterhood here, as well as sadness, wasted potential, seething jealousy, sexual tension. And there's a huge tragedy in the offing.

Somehow the tragic events that are ominously foreshadowed throughout the book and then revealed at the end are not really necessary to give this snapshot of young women living in a "club" for girls of slender means a doomed aura, but the tragedy is there anyway. It's pretty guessable and slightly disappointing, but the rest of the book is perfectly judged and timed.

23:Set sail for...

It's impossible to talk about Cochrane: Britannia's Sea Wolf without talking about Jack Aubrey as well, so I won't bother taking that approach. And indeed, on the back of the book you are warned to have read your fill of Patrick O'Brian and C.S. Forrester before you open this book, for once you look upon the deeds of Lord Thomas Cochrane, all fictions will pale by comparison.

And to an extent (a very large extent), this is true. The things that Cochrane did were truly amazing. He took on and beat French ships twice his size. He took so many prizes on one mission that he had only 23 men left on his own ship, not enough to man a gun crew, and then he took another ship by firing only the bow chasers at her, because her crew reckoned that only a maniac would come after them if he didn't have an enormous crew.

Cochrane was that maniac. A fighter in all things, a scrupulously honest man, he was also a parliamentary reformer and (sadly) a bit of a mentalist. He was an inventor and a man to hold a grudge. He was a man at sea on land, just like Jack Aubrey. In fact, many of the scrapes and escapades that Jack gets entangled in come from Cochrane's life.

But take heart, even if you've read this book and are thinking about reading some Patrick O'Brian. This book isn't funny. There is no choosing the lesser of two weevils here. There's no Stephen, no intrigue, and no real character portraits of any of Cochrane's faithful crew (well, you'd be faithful too if you were taking the kind of prizes these guys were), who surely must have been a huge help in carrying out his lunatic plans.

What there is, though, is an excellent account of the life of an extraordinary man, an interesting overview of the senseless waste and corruption that was rampant in Britain at the time, and some fantastic sea battles to re-enact with your cruet set whenever you have friends over for port.

Contestant number three, you are the weakest link

Rizzo (or Beauty, to give her her real name (big points for that. It's almost as original as Lady)) has gone home to her Mammy who got a new name tag for her and a lecture on brushing her bloody dog.

Original comments:
Hey, I'm pretty sure you read a lot of books while we were away. Where are the reviews, huh?
Posted by watchdog on May. 24 2005, at 2:40 PM Delete

Here's contestant number three

This is Rizzo, or at least that's what we're calling her. We found her wandering around our estate for hours on end yesterday and we took her in while we figure out who owns her.

Three dogs is hard work. I don't know how they made it look so easy on All Creatures Great and Small.

Oh wait, they lived in the telly. That's how.

Phear teh CUTENESS

I didn't intend to turn this into a dog blog, but sometimes it's hard to resist.
Original comments
They look like a lot of fun, except Keith tells about the 5.30 wake up calls
Posted by Caelen on May. 11 2005, at 3:29 PM

That is true. But ahhhh, look. Ahhhhh.
Posted by perfectlycromulent on May. 11 2005, at 4:20 PM
I'm amazed you're in any position to worry about other people being woken up early, Caelen
Posted by Ray on May. 11 2005, at 4:46 PM

22: Less is more

I remarked on I Love Books that I was not enjoying John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure. One response I got said

"If you don't have a big interest in food, France, classic detective fiction, the Ripley books and so on it would probably seem a bit pointless."

I was forced to admit that I had an interest in none of those things, and so I found the book completely boring (hey! Just like I found The Talented Mr. Ripley completely boring!). Once again, if the blurb on the back had been better written, it could have alerted me to this similarity and I would have avoided the book.

The story concerns a gourmand and bon viveur, a man fond of the sound of his own voice (which is very tiresome and littered with French phrases) and his own opinions on the subject of Art, specifically, what is great art? He is envious of his brother, deluded in his view of the world, lazy and shiftless, and generally a thoroughly dislikeable person. Which would be fine, except that I didn't just register his dislikeability, I actively disliked him. Bit of a problem.

I'm not saying this is a bad book. I just, well, didn't like it.

Dog's life

Really, don't you wish you could spend your days like this?

Sheriff Cody

This is Cody, who is a nine-month old retriever/spaniel cross we're fostering at the moment. He's a bundle of fun and he and Milo are getting on really well. Of all the dogs we've fostered, he's the only one (apart from Milo) who I've really fallen for. It will be a wrench to give him up when the time comes.

21: Simon vs. Simon in the search for popular history

Simon Garfield is trying to muscle in Simon Winchester's turf, is he? Simon against Simon? Well, not really. Simon Winchester is more your natural phenomena end of market, while Garfield, with his previous book about the first death on the trains, and now this book about aniline dyes and chemical discoveries, is more of your industrial revolution type.

The thing I liked most about this book, apart from its high I Never Knew That factor, is that it doesn't really have a thesis. It just tells you about the guy who invented mauve, and how important mauve was. And then it tells you about the process he used, and how that process was used to do other really cool stuff. And some other stuff to do with TB, the Nazis, fabric dying, the First World War, and so on. It's well written, the people it features are a pretty engaging bunch, and he doesn't try to shoehorn in a thesis like it's some kind of school project. Unlike some other Simons I could mention.

20: a third of the year gone and only 20 books read

Alexandra Fuller's Scribbling the Cat has all the hallmarks of the second of a two-book deal. The subject is similar, but not identical to the original book that made her name. She appears to have cast about for a suitable subject, and when he comes along, she jumps on him with the force of a hurricane and takes advantage of the fact that he is in love with her to get him to let her write about him. Yes, they are taking advantage of each other. He uses her to boast to, to confess to, to draw some kind of normality from, and she uses him to get her book done. It's not a particularly interesting or enlightening read, and I don't recommend it.
Original comments
The target is fifty, isn't it, so you're well on the way. Anything more than a book a week is a respectable rate.
Posted by Ray (38) on Apr. 23 2005, at 5:34 PM
I was hoping for more like 75 this year.

Why are you number 38?
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Apr. 23 2005, at 8:59 PM
I'm bragging.
But the point really isn't the raw numbers, is it? Its about how you spend your time - if you're watching less telly, but you're not reading as much as you'd like because you also have to walk dogs now, you're still coming out ahead, right?
Posted by Ray on Apr. 23 2005, at 10:33 PM

19: Books: a drink's too wet without one

Percy and Queenie don't like Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down. Queenie objects strongly to the fact that Nicey's wife is referred to as Wifey, while Percy dislikes their twee Englishness and their insistence on treating everything English as better than everything foreign. When the website was the only thing anyone could come up with to counter Percy and Queenie's accusation that the Internet was nothing but an American colony in cyberspace, Queenie and Percy became quite irate. And to a large extent they were right. Perhaps I should have mentioned the BBC websites instead.

For all that the book of Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down has its flaws (not the least of which is that its hardback form requires two hands to hold it, making it a less than ideal book for browsing while you're having said ncot and a sd), it does contain some interesting facts about tea and biscuits and hydrogenated fats and shortening and where biscuits have gone to that we all remembered from when we were young. On the whole, though, its faults outweigh its virtues, really. A small point for some, but for me it's annoying to see them talk about Kimberleys as a peculiarly Irish biscuit which can't be bought anywhere else, while failing to include them in the section on foreign biscuits, because after all, Ireland's not really foreign, is it?

There are some lovely turns of phrase in the book, and an obvious and genuine affection for the national pastime of sitting around drinking tea and eating biscuits. It's a social option that seems to have gone out the window among my peers in the last ten years or so. Time was, when we were poorer, that it was perfectly acceptable to drop round your mate's flat during the day on a Saturday with a packet of chocolate HobNobs and expect to get through a couple of pots of tea before heading home. Now everyone feels they have to either provide lashings of alcohol (which is a pain for me because I'm always driving) or they have to make dinner, which is a pain for them because it involves a lot of work. The best thing about this book is that it reminds you that there are simple and relatively inexpensive pleasures in the world. Shame that this book isn't really one of them.
Posted Apr. 23 2005, at 3:51 PM
Comments (4)
You do realise (the book refers to it quite a bit) that Wifey is Irish and Nicey was raised in Wales? Twee Englishness? I think not..

Percy and Queenie hang their head in shame. They were more going on the annoying Life in the Day article they read in the Observer about Nicey and Wifey than any in depth analysis of the website. Although they had clicked on the website. It must be said thought, that they don't like Badly Drawn Boy either - the musical equivalent of A Nice Sit Down.
Posted by on Apr. 28 2005, at 4:11 PM
Ah, you need a Scottish friend. We have a Scottish friend who scruples not at dropping round and drinking his way through a pot or two of tea, biscuits and all.
Posted by Myles on May. 26 2005, at 12:01 PM
I think I need to live less than 30 miles away from all my friends. Or get to know my neighbours better.
Posted by perfectlycromulent on May. 26 2005, at 9:42 PM