Category: About Writing

Lego …

Bag 1 is done.

After balcony gardening for an hour this afternoon, playing with Moggy in between ten or twenty moves, thought I’d start on my Lego new project.

It’s my first set aimed at adult fans and promises to show me some new building techniques among other good things.

Now to try and fit it into Bosley & Co’s world. I bet there’ll be some disbelief, and even resistance. Because this thing looks bigger than any place they have up to this point.

Still, who could resist a …?

Cat Diary 7

Now that I’ve proven that I know how to play, the old woman is constantly thinking up new games. My favorite one so far is hunting kibbles.

Round about her lunchtime she’ll wander around with a small handful of kibbles and drops them tinkling into the various little plates and bowls she has hidden around the unit.

I know she means me to listen for the sound of them hitting the china but why would I? I just watch her bending over here and there to pour them from only a little height.

Then … this afternoon … she totally tricked me! We had a parcel delivery this morning that came in a cardboard box. After unpacking it, she set it in the living room.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Find out what’s in it. You should be able to smell them.”

First I just walked past it. It smelled new. Cardboardy. After her lunch I walked past it again. Hmph, still new and cardboardy.

By mid afternoon I’d worked it out though I continued lying around. A box with flappy bits—like that—seems like they’ll jump up and get me if I try to jump in between them.

The old woman weakened and lay the box on its side. That’s when I made my move …

Cat Diary 6

I’ve been here a month now and thought I knew the old woman’s habits pretty well. At 9 p/m she says “Bedtime!” And shuts me up in the shed. I’ve struggled but so far she has won. That could change today.

See me lying strategically in front of her on the couch? Right where she can see me at all times, to remind her that she hasn’t filled my kibbles bowl. What she usually does after cleaning my litter tray?

Before she sat down she set three bowls each with three kibbles in them as far apart in the unit as she could find, it seems like. Huh?

Oh wait! Last night when she caught me up trying to escape the bedtime routine, she said, “You’re getting to be quite the heavyweight. Is it possible for a cat to put on a kilo in 30 days? Guess you don’t get much exercise!”

I bet the new kibble bowls are a strategy to get me to walk more. I ate the ones in the kitchen. She did not leap up to give me more. I’ll just go and sit beside her on the couch. Maybe I’ll get some action then.

Cat Diary 4

Would you belive I’ve been here for almost two weeks?

This is me at my breakfast. The old woman gives me canned salmon for breakfast and dinner. Sounds special, I know. She thinks I’m too bony, the breeze will blow you away she said.

But she gives me titbits to try out at lunch time and if I don’t like them she’ll hide them in the fish at dinner time.

The other day I ate a scrap of omelette I’d politely left at the side of the bowl. She does not take no for an answer. One on her scorecard.

Mind you, I had a bit of cooked chicken today and it was delish. Bring it on. Right mow she’s out there on the balcony.

At her gardening. Where’s the garden I might ask, when it’s just leggy plants in pots, so elongated they might run away. We’re waiting for grow-lights to come in the post.

Lodestar’s Anuboids = ‘Centaurs’?

I literally just posted Lodestar 57 and tripped over this … There’s now a word for Anuboids, also known as ‘nubies’ in Lodestar, a novel I began roundabout 15 years ago. They might even be ‘reverse-centaurs’.

I’m gob-smacked, though I shouldn’t be. I’ve been overtaken by both science and the public domain. Now by Cory Doctorow, which is a kind of thrill.

“A centaur is someone whose work is supercharged by automation: you are a human head atop the tireless body of a machine that lets you get more done than you could ever do on your own.” from https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/02/despotism-on-demand/