Last night, I dreamed...

... oh yes. Just as every newspaper columnist eventually gets round to writing a column about how difficult they found it to write their column this week, so every blogger eventually gets around to telling you about their dream they had last night.

Well, last night I dreamed I was having an affair with David Attenborough. Proper David Attenborough, as he is now, like, not some dream version of him where he is labeled "David Attenborough" but actually looks like Jon Hamm. I can think of several reasons why this is appealing.

First, who doesn't love David Attenborough? Would his voice not bring you out of a coma, if you were in one? And he's taken on a new, battling persona since the news emerged of the hate mail he receives from creationists. He's also the guardian of all animals in the world, as we know, and is on personal chatting terms with many endangered species, many of whom I'm very worried about at the moment.

David Attenborough is also the king (inasmuch as we believe in kings) of the non-speciesist humanists. He is always at pains to point out that although we appear, to ourselves, to be the pinnacle of evolution, we're nothing like it. It's this kind of talk that makes me more convinced than ever that people like Giles Coren are wronger than someone who answers "fourteen" to "what's ten plus two?" when they express the belief that pets are unnecessary and should be discarded.

I can get behind the point of activists like Peter Singer that it's wrong for their sakes to keep animals, but I am sentimental about animals (which I realise is a stupid trait, but hey, some people believe in God or football teams. We all have our coping mechanisms). I also believe that it's good for people, and indeed, other animals, to live with different types of animals. I believe it teaches you something. Even if all it teaches you is that you don't like people very much sometimes. Particularly when they send threatening mail to David Attenborough.

Word to your larium

Some of you may remember that I spent the summer of 1991 in Berkeley, California, living in a shared house with a bunch of Berkeley students, getting stoned, and watching a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is a summer that retains a very special place in my heart, even though, obviously, I can't really remember a lot of the actual details. Indeed, three or four years later, when myself and Older Brother Monkey went to Berkeley for the weekend, I couldn't find my way around at all.

In the last couple of weeks, I re-engaged with a couple of people from those days through the magic of Facebook. Even more excitingly, it turned out that one of these lovely people was going to be in Dublin for the first time ever for a brief visit this week, so he asked me if we could go out for a pint. Of course I agreed, but then, also of course, spent the time leading up to seeing him worrying that I had remembered everything all wrong and he was going to ask me for money, or even that I wouldn't be able to recognise him when I saw him.

Neither of these things turned out to be the case. He remembered that summer much as I did, and we told Mister Monkey some stories. Then we spent the rest of the night talking about Middle Eastern politics, American foreign policy, and behavioral science. Plus we had some good food.

All in all, it was a top night. Now I know how people who actually liked the people they went to school with must feel when they go to their reunions.

Glinner's right, you know.

Why is this story not enormous? A 12-year-old is accused of prostitution and assault, having been beaten to shit by some police officers? WTF?

Lulu update

I know that many of my younger readers only tune into this blog to find out how my dogs are doing. So, for those younger readers, here's the update:

Lulu is still completely adorable. She does still occasionally pee on the floor in the living room, and she will still shred cushions or whatever else you've got lying around if she's bored. But since we came back from Glasgow and took them out of the kennels, she insists on sleeping in the same bed as Milo, so we've had to take his small bed out of the kitchen and replace it with a larger bed so she doesn't crush him. She wrestles with Marvin, she's the sweetest girl to Mrmonkey, and she still comes back whenever you call her. We do NOT want someone to adopt her. EVER.

She particularly likes kids. Just in case any of you younger readers would like to make friends with a dog.

Economy's crap, isn't it?

Some friends of mine, who are married to each other, were recently laid off by a company they have worked for pretty much since they left college. This company is not in any financial difficulty whatsoever, it's just a slave to its shareholders, and it's gotten greedy. Bunch of tossers. That's the last one of their phones I'll be buying, that's for fucking sure.

Here in Monkey Mansions, however, things look a little bit more solid. Mrmonkey was informed that it is highly unlikely that his company will close its engineering office in Dublin, and I've actually got overtime on! I know!

We are celebrating this fact by getting some work done on the house before we do get made redundant, because I know if I do get laid off, I'd rather spend my period of unemployment sitting in a nicely landscaped back yard than in some scrubby back garden. Mrmonkey was slightly concerned that our neighbours would think we were flaunting our employed status (our next-door neighbour got laid off from his construction job some months ago and is now working a shitty night-time delivery job, which he hates). But if nobody hires anybody to do any work, then the economy will never get going again.

(I am right, right? How would you feel if you lost your job and the people next door to you were having their garden landscaped? I think I would only care if I was a garden landscaper and they hadn't asked me.)

No snow over Edward's house

It has been a cold winter here on the flat shores of Laytown. We had a lovely spell there where it was crispy cold, like I imagine it to be in more impressive countries that are something more than the plaything of the North Atlantic and its zephyrs. Now it is snowing everywhere, it seems, except over our house. While Dublin airport closed down and the radio predicted "heavy snowfalls and severe weather warnings over the north and east of the country" I would stare out my window and see only trees bent double in the ever strengthening wind. Because you can be sure, if you're having snow, we're having a knifing wind here in the 'town.

Secretly, of course, I'm glad. The only thing to recommend snow is that it makes for good photos, particularly if you're the kind of person who has turned to making her own cards because she doesn't knit and is therefore always looking for a good photo to put on a Christmas card. Actually, there's one more thing to recommend a heavy fall of snow, but it's slightly lame. And it is that it would keep mrmonkey at home from work and we could spend the day together, because I like that.

Also, the dogs bloody love snow.

Okay, so there are a lot of things to recommend it. But we haven't got any, so there's no point in delighting in the fact that there are no snowballs for the local kids to throw at us, and there's no chance of me wiping out on the path while walking down to the beach.

Sadly, however, our lovely crispy cold has been replaced by a horrible, typical damp cold that chilled me so much today that I had to stand under a hot shower for longer than is probably good for the environment.

I would take snow over this.

More crime books

I believe I may have pointed out before that I don't read many crime books. I had another go a couple of weeks ago with Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace. Eoghan gave me this book for Christmas 07, and I just got around to it now. That gives you an idea of the rate at which I'm ploughing through books.

Anyway, I didn't like Tokyo Year Zero. His writing style irritated me. It was too sing-song and repetitive; too much poetry and not enough prose. I know that's the point. I know it was probably supposed to signify something about feeling trapped and the claustrophobia of the destroyed city and the endless grind of being a police investigator, but it was too much style and not enough content for me. It also had that feature of crime novels that I hate, when there's some really important and pertinent piece of evidence that will tie the whole case together, and it's hinted a lot, and everyone knows what it is except the reader. That always seems kind of lazy to me, like using pure coincidence to drive a story forwards all the time.

So I gave it up after about 100 pages, and I decided that I would give the George P. Pelecanos book that I bought months ago a shot at the title. If I don't like this, I thought, that is officially it, I will officially give up on crime books.

And now I'm wondering why I'm sitting here blogging about this, when I could be READING GEORGE PELECANOS.

It seems we have bought a bank

This is great news, given that we are currently €50 overdrawn after Christmas, and will have to buy this week's shopping on the credit card.

Oh, hang on a minute...

I've just been informed that this is not how it works.

Still, what could possibly go wrong, eh?

Ukulele update

Last night I learned a new chord, and acquainted myself with three others. That's four chords I have full knowledge of now, and can play and everything, even though moving between them still takes a little longer than is decent in polite society.

I can now play "Happy Birthday" and "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain" and can slowly finger-pick my way through part of "Wipeout". This is the most proficient I've been on a musical instrument since I learned the tin whistle in second class (aged seven, for those of you who don't know what second class is).

Now I want to learn grown-up songs, but I don't understand this tablature thing, and I still can't read music, so I can only learn to play songs I already know. I'm thinking that "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" would be a good candidate, because it's actually got a pretty simple beat, even though the melody is quite complicated. If anyone knows where I can get the ukulele chords for this song, please let me know. If you also know any songs that just have C, C7, G7, F, and Dm, please tell me, because these are the chords I know best.

Wishful Drinking

ComedyB and BuntyB bought me this for Christmas. I wanted to like it very much, for two reasons. a) I really love Carrie Fisher and think she's a good writer; b) it's a long time since someone bought me a book that I'd never even heard of, but that would be so much up my street.

Sadly the book's not great.

It grew out of her one-woman show of the same name, and as such is very conversational and breezy. She talks about her family life, her addictions, her bipolarism, her marriages, and, of course, being Princess Leia. Many of the stories are very funny, and her confused style of writing (which she attributes to the fact that she's had electric shock treatment, which has messed with her memory) is enjoyable. However, none of the Star Wars stories she tells are new, and there's too much gushing and recapping for a book; this might be fine on stage, but in a 115-page book (maybe she wrote it as her nanowrimo book?) it takes up too much space.

In other words, it's a book that makes me wish I'd seen the show. But I'm glad to have it. I'm glad to have Carrie Fisher.

Resolution update

I got last week's work all done in the allotted time. It was great. I spent the whole weekend ARSING ABOUT with Mister Monkey instead of scrambling to get work done.

And I got all today's work done in the allotted time also.

I reckon if I keep this up I will deserve a holiday somewhere nice. Perhaps in June sometime. Perhaps.

Crime books I read

I don't usually read crime books. There has to be some special reason or gimmick, like they're set in Galway or they're written by someone I know. This year I read two crime books with gimmicks or hooks attached. The first was Michael Chabon's fine The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which is set in a fictional Alaskan present. In this fictional present, President Roosevelt's idea to have the displaced Jews of Europe come and live in Alaska was fulfilled, but they are all about to be displaced again because Sitka, which they were given as a homeland, is about to revert to being a U.S. state, and residency is not guaranteed for all. Into this complex situation comes a tired police detective, a dead heroin addict, and the world's greatest pie. It's a fine book, as you'd expect from Chabon. Heaps of atmosphere, fun, the usual American hangups with fathers, and detective work.

The second book, which I got so bogged down in that it actually took me months to read, was Andrew Taylor's DULL AS FUCK The American Boy (of course, it didn't help that every time I picked it up, the Estelle song ran around my head).

This book is set in London in 18-bippety something, not long after the Napoleonic wars and the war with America. It concerns a young school teacher who is assigned to accompany two of his young charges to London, but OH NOES! one of them is Edgar Allan Poe. DO YOU SEE?? Creepiness can only ensue. Except it doesn't really. There are a couple of murders, I don't care. There is a bit of flirting with young women, I don't care about that either. And there is rather a lot of language that, I'm sorry to tell you, I'm fairly sure is lifted from Patrick O'Brian. I know they're both old-timey and everything, but there's just something about a few of the exact phrases that seemed awfully familiar. "I tried to move, but my legs wouldn't answer," and the good old "I should like it of all things". It suffered a lot from tell-don't-show, and also from the fact that the protagonist basically does nothing, things merely happen around him that he witnesses or falls over. It's really dull. However, I understand they're planning on filming it, and it probably would look good on screen.

(By the way, Edgar Allan has absolutely no bearing on the plot at all. The whole thing is a mess.)

Ways in which dogs are like children, No. 1 in an occasional series

If they find a noisy toy in the kitchen in the morning, then you don't get to hear the radio.

The new year is coming. Look busy, everyone!

This time last year I posted my list of resolutions for 2008. Naturally, I kept very few of them.

Did I read 50 books? I'm not sure I even read ten this year, and blogged even fewer than that (what is with the not reading thing? I don't understand it, I truly don't).

Did I get my week's work done in five days? No. And frankly, I'm shocked at how long my crappy work habits have been going on for. Over a year now! That's bad, and it needs to be addressed or, even more frankly, I could lose my job if jobs are around to be lost.

I also failed to write a new novel, although I did get about 30,000 words of a Nanowrimo novel written, and although it might not have been very good, it was sufficient to scare the bejesus out of me. So, possibly there's scope for another crack at it this year.

I did, however, manage to start volunteering again. I've been working in the bookshop on Thursday afternoons this year. It has been difficult, though, and maybe it's contributing to the not getting my week's work done in five days business. I also (well, we also) started dog fostering again, as astute readers will have noticed. And I love doing that. Somewhere in there I also tried to help this unfortunate crazy lady in the community, but it didn't work out. She is too far into whatever her particular thing is for me to help her, and she asked me for the key back because (I suspect) she was afraid I was going to take her cats away and give them to the rescue, something she's very afraid of. So I gave it back, and that's the end of that.

I have also been donating stuff to Oxfam, and will continue to do so.

So, do I have new resolutions for next year? They're more like revised ones. Here they are, look!

Two books a month
Get my work done in five days
Learn to play a song on the ukulele (did I mention I got a ukulele for Christmas?)
Finish the zombie novel
Get a zine into every Franks mailing

That's it. Simple. Let's see if they're doable.

By the way, does anyone else notice just how hard it is to italicize and then normalize fonts on Blogger?

Happy Christmas everyone

Here's Lulu

Lulu was picked up outside Homebase on the Donore Road last Wednesday. She might have strayed from somewhere, but it's also possible she was dumped. She's the right age for it (about seven months, which means she needs to be spayed soon, which is expensive and troublesome), it's the right time of the year for it, and she's terrified to get into the car. Drogheda Animal Rescue are still hoping that her owners will come forward and reclaim her, although I kind of hope they don't because, hey, they don't deserve her.

She's a sweet little thing, a leggy collie type who just wants to be your best friend and cuddle up to you. She has had no training of any kind that we can discover. She doesn't know how to sit, she is not housetrained, and she can't walk on a lead to save her life. But she loves to be praised and she comes back immediately when you call her name, so I'm hopeful that she'll be easy to train when she settles down a bit.

She is going to make Christmas Day a little tricky, because we can't bring her to Mrmonkey's parents' house, so she'll just have to stay here and make a mess. But, oh well.

Make sure your Christmas goes up to 11

With thanks to Sinead Mac, and to the people at Optophonic and Phonic Studios.

Dear Dublin City Council...

...the more I look at it, and the more depressing the recession becomes, the more I come to the conclusion that your idea of a Christmas tree is unacceptable. A big pile of lit up razorwire balanced on top of a public toilet cubicle is not a Christmas tree.

Busy, busy time

I have been helping out in the local community, feeding the cats of an unfortunate old woman who lives in a container down in our village. She had many cats once upon a time, but now she's down to three. She may have to go into a nursing home soon, and then we will have to find homes for the cats, because my house is full. Also, one of her cats has cat flu, so I can't bring him into the house or all of ours will get it.

I tell you what, though. I have seen my future here, and it's not pretty. Maybe I should have had a child when I was younger, so I could guilt it into taking care of me when I'm old. I'm certainly getting rid of all my cats by the time I'm 60. For some reason an older woman living on her own with cats seems tragic. An older woman living on her own with a dog seems less so.

It is hard work trying to help someone like this, who is used to being on her own and is perhaps not as in possession of all her faculties as you would like to hope. I'm not really sure of what I'm doing, even, or if I am actually helping at all. I wonder if I shouldn't just let her see how bad it is when she tries to do it on her own, so that she will go into the nursing home sooner. I don't want her to depend on me. I am not a dependable person.

We've also had a short-term foster dog. He is a setter cross called Jack, and is the most beautiful dog I've ever seen anyone throw away. Neutered, vaccinated, microchipped, trained, and beautifully behaved. I can only imagine how much it must have hurt his owners to leave him into the pound to be put down, because someone obviously loved him. He's off to Sweden in the morning. Maybe he'll meet up with Woody and they'll be best friends.

By the end of this week we should have another dog.

Man, my life has just not panned out the way I thought it would. Not at all. But let's hope the animal thing is as weird as it gets.

Nanowrimo FAIL

I did not succeed in getting my novel, The End of Innistown, written by the end of November. In a way, this is no bad thing. I don't know anything about creating suspense or writing action sequences, although maybe I could learn. In another way, though, I feel that the novel could have made a substantial contribution to the zombie literature, because I had a couple of good ideas in it that even I was proud of.

Oh well. There's no point in saying that I'll finish it, because I won't finish it. But I did enjoy writing it. I'm pleased to see that now that I've stopped taking Lexapro, I've started being interested in writing again. Hooray!