Moonlighting

Brigadoon is a Scottish village that appears once every hundred years, and the rest of the time is unfindable. They say it’s fictional, but that’s a lie, because I live there. I know this because everyone who tries to find our home gets lost. Our hamlet is not on the map. If you use a GPS, you’ll end up somewhere completely different. Giving directions is a dead loss, because we’re not specifically anywhere: we’re on the way to various places, and scattered among fields. It’s so spread out that any visitors who make it to our door are forgiven for thinking we have no neighbours at all.

Current Location: Scotland
Current Mood: busy

We cleaned out our first impacted anal sac today. It was a two-person job, involving warm water, vaseline, cotton pads, pet shampoo, kitchen roll, bad smells, and soaked clothing. The sac in question belonged to Twogoose the guinea pig, whose back end has been looking odd lately.

The gory details, if you want them, are at my new Wordpress blog Tea Time at the Zoo.

Here is Twogoose with his nice clean anal sac. He doesn't look all that grateful, does he?

Current Location: Scotland
Current Mood: accomplished

I can't write this poem about you.
I can't write it about you,
in case you die.
I can't give you a name,
in case I wake to find ant origami
feigning life at the stirring of my breath.

I can't call you Betty.
A name could make me love you,
and what then?
What if I loved you, Betty,
and you died?

I couldn't sleep for thinking of you, Betty.
I thought of how, in the afternoon,
you crooked yourself around your eggs
and lay still. You drooped.
I thought of you waiting in the dark
where I had trapped you,
where you have your home
with all your daughters ready to be born,
you knowing only that you're alone.

Before the dawn, I peeked
beneath your shield on the mantelpiece.
You hadn't moved.
I am sorry I woke you.
I tipped your tube for you to drink.
You gripped your eggs bravely-- stood your ground,
though not a thousand of you could have brought me down.

Tiny Queen Betty,
if I loved you--
Betty, if I had,
my heart would have swollen,
if I already thought,
Betty, I love you.

Current Mood: in denial

It was a strange city, and seemed to have been cast up in the valley one winter's night like some prehistoric creature that was now clawing its way up the mountainside. Everything in the city was old and made of stone, from the streets and fountains to the roofs of the sprawling age-old houses covered with grey slates like gigantic scales. It was hard to believe that under this powerful carapace the tender flesh of life survived and reproduced.

The traveller seeing it for the first time was tempted to compare it to something, but soon found that impossible, for the city rejected all comparisons. In fact, it looked like nothing else. It could no more support comparison than it would allow rain, hail, rainbows, or multicoloured foreign flags to remain for long on its rooftops, for they were as fleeting and unreal as the city was lasting and anchored in solid matter.

It was a slanted city, set at a sharper angle than perhaps any other city on Earth, and it defied the laws of architecture and city planning. The top of one house might graze the foundation of another, and it was surely the only place in the world where if you slipped and fell in the street, you might well land on the roof of a house--a peculiarity known most intimately to drunks.

Yes, a very strange city indeed. In some places you could walk down the street, stretch out your arm, and hang your hat on a minaret. Many things in it were simply bizarre, and others seemed to belong in a dream.

[from Chronicle in Stone, by Ismael Kadare, translated by Arshi Pipa.]

Current Location: Dreamland
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Kaba-Zhani Struga

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to learn to sing one song in tune. To begin with, I went with the Fleet Foxes' White Winter Hymnal.

Current Location: Scotland
Current Mood: musically inspired
Current Music: Calon Lan

The other day, since my health was improving, I filled the rabbit hutch with bedding, fitted a plastic window to the door grille to keep the rain out, and released five of our guinea pigs into it. The hutch is a large El Cheapo rabbit hutch I bought from Aldi; last year I added cavity insulation, an interior compartment with a second floor, and an exit-hole so that the guinea pigs could wander out into the garden whenever they liked. The pigs have spent the winter living inside the house, and now that it's spring, I've been feeling guilty about their lack of green grass and sunshine. So I turfed them out. Colin and Clive stayed in the house because they don't get on with the other five, and I need to build a separate hutch for them.

I was all nail-bitey during their first night outside. As soon as it was light, I went out to feed them. It had rained all night, but warm air poured out of the hutch when I opened it, and sleepy chirps emanated from the bedrooms. I felt reassured. The rain continued the next day and the next and the next, and the guinea pigs didn't venture from the hutch at all. Whenever I took food out to them, they made little noises, but not the loud chorus of chirps they normally make at feeding time, and they were increasingly skittish. This morning at dawn, there was no sound at all when I called them, so I put their food in the hutch and left them to doze. In the afternoon, I took some carrots out to them. There were two sprays of blood up the interior wall--and only four pigs in the hutch. I found the fifth one, Doctor Orkney, standing miserably on the cold paving underneath the hutch. I examined them all for injuries, and found that Doctor Orkney and Barry had several very nasty bite marks on their rumps and ears. I felt terrible. They had been stuck in that little dark hutch for four days, getting cabin fever, and now they had had a big fight. It must have been really traumatic for them.

I carried Barry and Orkney straight back indoors and let them run around the living room for a while to warm up and relax. Then I brought all of the other guinea pigs back in. The five from the hutch went into the pen that takes up most of the living room. They all seemed very stressed and disorientated.

I held Barry and Orkney in my lap and put ointment on their cuts. All their tameness had gone, and they were worried and scared. Clive, who was furious at the return of the other pigs, was making things worse by galloping up and down the living room, swearing loudly at them all, chewing at the fence, and rumblestrutting. I finally calmed everyone down with a generous scoop of muesli, and now they're settling back into their old territory. Bunty has gathered a couple of cages from the garage, in case we need to separate some of them, but so far things seem to be getting better. Just now, Bunty crackled a bag in the kitchen, and all the guinea pigs started enthusiastically chirping. Sounds like they're getting back to their old selves.

Current Location: Scotland
Current Mood: bad mother

Yesterday evening, as a gale was gathering force outside, the electricity went off with a bang. Perhaps a falling tree had brought a line down. Having no light, no heating, no internet and no phone, we decided we might as well go to bed. We kept our clothes on, because it was so cold, and I felt glad that our various animals were all safe inside the house, bundled up on their cushions and their wodges of hay. All night, the wind kept rising. I awoke in the wee small hours to the sound of it roaring outside; I was freezing cold, and a strong draught was coming straight through the double glazing onto our motorcycle-balaclava-clad heads. My hot water bottle was a heat-eating lump of cold in the middle of the bed.
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Current Location: Scotland
Current Mood: relieved

My lovely sister,

You asked me why I won't use my real name online, and so this blog entry is dedicated to you.

I know my insistence on nicknames must seem petty and strange. I'm putting my reasons here because I have many teenage friends, on the brink of their future careers, who use their real names online; they could all do with reading this. So here it is...

If I type "Snailrind" into Google, it comes up with 1,190 entries about me. Type in "Martha Tidville" and there are 122 more. Anyone who knows my online names can find out pretty much everything about me: my health issues, details of my sex life, my political and religious attitudes, my shopping habits, my drink and drug habits, my level of personal hygiene, where I live, and how much money I make. They can see all the online conversations I've ever had, all my blog entries, reviews, photos, everything that other people have said about me, and all quotes by me that have been taken out of context and used in other people's blogs and conversations. They'll see a lot of false information about me, but have no way to tell the difference between that and the truth. I have no control over this information: even if I delete it, it is still stored by Google.
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Current Mood: earnest

My phobia of hairdressers began when I was 14. My hair was down to below my waist, and, being shy, I loved the protective feel of it around my arms and shoulders. I loved the way it flowed behind me when I swam underwater; the way it clung to me when I emerged onto the beach. I felt like a mermaid. And I loved the fact that people found its length remarkable.

My mother said to me one day, "here's some money. Go to the English hairdresser in Corfu town and get your fringe trimmed."

The look on the hairdresser's face when I walked into the salon was one of glee. She had never been offered so much hair to play with. She wasn't at all happy when I asked for a simple fringe trim. She insisted that she should trim the back, too, to tidy it up, so I let her. I couldn't believe it when I stood up afterwards to see six-inch coils of my hair lying on her floor. My head felt light, and what was left of my hair moved strangely as I turned to view it in the mirror and saw that it reached the bottom of my shoulder blades. I felt violated. It was as though she had lopped off a part of my self.

"Oh! It looks lovely!" she trilled.

And so, for 22 years, I didn't visit another hairdresser.

I visited one today.

Actually, I had been to several salons over the past couple of years, thinking that it would be nice to do something about my hippie-geek hair. But every time I stepped into one, I felt overwhelmed. Their catalogues of hairstyles were full of glossy women standing in front of electric fans, with bunches of hair caught up at bizarre angles. It was impossible to tell how the hairstyles would look on a normal person on a normal day, after brushing them in a normal way. And every damn hairdresser looked at my ass-length hair with that psycho gleam in their eyes that said, "when I start cutting that, I'm not going to want to stop".

                                                       

Current Location: Stirling
Current Mood: relieved

I've avoided blogging for months and months, for a completely stupid reason. A door in my life closed and another opened; I am living such a different life now that I've wanted to write an entry that bridges the gap--that takes stock of the past and explains how I got to where I am now, before allowing subsequent entries to carry me into my future.

I forgot one very important thing: it's a blog, fer cryin' out loud. Not my life's masterpiece. Only about 3 people read it. Sheesh...

So here's a wee list to stand in for the Amazing Stock-Taking Literary Masterpiece.

• Take risks.
• Travel on impulse.
• Get stuck or lost in places and cope without help.
• Collect animals on impulse--no matter how many legs, fangs, or offspring they have.
• Encourage ants and other invertebrates into the house by feeding them.
• Invite anyone I please back to the house, even if I've just met them; even if they're crazy or high.
• Kiss anyone without upsetting anyone else.
• Fall in love periodically without it being an issue.
• Dress like a jumble sale.
• Squat in the middle of the road to look at bugs without embarrassing anyone.
• Sniff objects during walks, with people who want to sniff them too.
• Climb things not made for climbing.
• Manage my health my way.
• Handle kitchen knives. Even scarily sharp ones.

Current Location: Bonny Scotland
Current Mood: ecstatic