I was woken up at 5am by screaming from the chin room. I went in there and had a quick, half-awake look around but couldn’t see anything wrong in particular, nothing obvious. Nobody had run out of water, no calls fro room service while I was in there. I put the calling down as being from Bramble the ultra-violet, probably screaming at the misbehaving triplets she is currently nursing. Later, in the early afternoon, whilst I was cleaning the cages out in the chin room I realised what it might have been. Zia was sitting awkwardly. As I looked closer I realised she’d had a baby earlier in the morning. It was her first. The baby was female and a black velvet, quite big and with silky dark fur. She looked sleepy but healthy and Zia was doing everything right.
As I continued to clean the chin room I could hear popping sounds. Next door had set up a firing range along the back wall of the garden and had started shooting at pottery and cans that had been lined up with and air rifle and what I can only assume must have been lead shot. I watched for a little while from the upstairs window not feeling particularly pleased, but it’s their garden, and I didn’t want to intervene at that point. I sometimes do archery but only with blanks (rubber stoppers on the ends of the arrows) and only at a pretty big target. The boys next door chatted for a while, then aimed just above the wall of the neighbours the other side of their house and started tracking, pausing for a while. I walked away from the window and and heard a sound which could only mean that they’d either hit something or come pretty close. Then it went quiet for a while. They must have gone inside.
Eventually I needed to take a break from cleaning the chin room and had to take 3 binbags downstairs and outside. J offered to carry the first and I followed downstairs with the second. I caught up to him in the kitchen. “There’s a seagull outside” he said. I heard what he said but it didn’t completely register. Was he suddenly afraid of gulls? I opened the door and indeed there was a gull right outside. It was lying on its belly on the floor spread-eagle, awake, alive, trying weakly to flap with one wing and then the other in order to get up but it was unable. Its breathing was strained, anaerobic breaths. The boys must have shot it down.
“I just said, there’s a dead gull outside,” J said.
“It’s not dead,” I replied.
One of the boys from next door came out of his kitchen into the back.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What do you expect me to do with that?”
“What?”
“That.”
I signalled to the floor and he looked over the wall. He was pretty embarrassed by the situation, and the fact that the gull was in its death throws and not dead yet made it worse. He went to get a bag to put it in to get rid of it but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do while the gull was still alive. It was on its way out, beyond help. I folded its wings towards its body, scooped it up and carried it up some steps and laid it on the patio table in the long grass. I could not find an entrance wound. The lead shot was poisoning its blood. It lay there in the sunlight until the warmth of its body seeped away.
I went down there for a little while and it was a bit busier than usual. I hadn’t been down to the island for a little while. They held the radio show in the Dolphin to a small audience of pink-wristbanded public that had been hanging around since the early afternoon. I had come home early from work but had arrived there too late to pick up a pair of wristbands. I didn’t know what Scott Mills looked like but once I had seen the photos I realised that I had walked past him, another guy and a photographer a little earlier in the afternoon. They had taken some good photos for the Radio 1 website. The pictures gave the place a sort of glossy-magazine look. Barry Island doesn’t usually look as nice as that to me, but maybe that is down to familiarity.
SAN FRANCISCO MAN BECOMES FIRST AMERICAN TO GRASP SIGNIFICANCE OF IRONY – Jay Fullmer, 38, yesterday became the first American to get to grips with the concept of irony. “It was weird,” Fullmer said. “I was in London and, like, talking to this guy and it was raining and he pulled a face and said, “Great weather, eh?” and I thought “Wait a minute, no way is it great weather.” Fullmer then realised that the other man’s ‘mistake’ was in fact deliberate.
Fullmer, who is 39 next month and married with two children, aged 8 and 3, plans to use irony himself in future. “I’m, like, using it all the time,” he said.
“Last weekend I was grilling steaks and I burned them to shit and I said “Hey, great weather!”.
(This joke was copied from Cardiff City FC forum, ’cause it was funny!)
I took Friday off, and although I was a but nervous before I went to the show in the afternoon, inept, but I was really glad I went and came back feeling inspired. I had stopped doing what I loved because of bad things happening to me and around me, but as it was pointed out to me, I have grown up a lot since I was in college. I’ve had to. You take some knocks, get a bit damaged, and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, at least once you’ve shrugged off your complexes. Ok, it’s taken a while but I feel more happy with myself than I have for a long time. At the party afterwards I got to catch up with some old friends, re-establish a few ties, and although I haven’t had a lot of luck recently I am actually not that bad at what I do and I actually left feeling quite appreciated. I’m afraid I had to do a Cinderella, leaving when the night was still young in order to catch the last train home, but in doing so I was spared the mother of all hangovers.
Saturday was a relaxed day. I browsed round the charity shops, bought some magazines, cleaned out the chinchilla cages, went to PC World because my new Mac software required an operating system update, went to Blockbusters, 2 DVD’s, chips on the way home and a quiet night in. Fantastic!
Sunday started with a lie-in, followed by a long walk around a car boot sale in glorious sunshine. I caught the sun on my arms and nose a bit. I brought back a rough surfaced tray for trying felting on, a few candle sticks, a book, some small glass bottles with cork stoppers, and… a spinning wheel – I am so excited over that! I will take a photo soon.
My Powerbook is now completely full to the point where there isn’t much space left for updates. That’s what I get for adding all those mp3’s. I’m trying to copy the contents off onto an external drive so I can wipe it and then start again. I’m using Tiger, not Leopard, so no Time Machine. The problem is that copying the files off is turning out to be a bit of a pain in the backside, because I am having to transfer files via a PC. The external hard drive is NTFS, and that has caused some accessibility problems. It would probably be so straight forward otherwise. Whenever a long file name is found everything stops. It doesn’t give you the option to skip that one file, everything comes to a grinding halt and then you don’t know what has been copied over and what hasn’t. Start again… Grrr!
Earlier I watched the Big Brother launch. I probably won’t watch the rest but this evening’s telly has been quite entertaining.
On Wednesday a O’Neill’s pub in Cardiff burned down in a fire started by a chip pan. People didn’t realise there was a fire straight away because there has been a lot of dust kicked up from the building works nearby. Most of the staff were on a trip that day so only skeleton staff were manning the pub. Thankfully the pub hadn’t opened for lunch yet by the time the alarm was sounded. The nearby shops, indoor market and department store were all evacuated. Business has been closed in many places today because their stock is smoke damaged. The structural integrity of the shell of the building that burned down cannot be checked yet. I haven’t been into town yet, I will be there tomorrow, and apparently the area still smells a lot from the smoke.
I’ve decided I will go to the exhibition tomorrow, I signed up earlier this week and I’m taking a friend with me. I’ve taken the day off, it’s going to be ok and I’m going to enjoy it!
I do have a bad habit of obsessing over relatively small and unnecessary things, stressing and blowing them out of proportion.
I’ve put a new stylesheet on my website and given it a quick update with larger images. I’ve also uploaded my AutoCAD work. I’ve been feeling a bit better recently.
Success and achievement are two completely different things. I’ve achieved one or two things but career wise I’ve never managed to get into my ideal job. I thought I did at one point but I was given the Alan Sugar treatment and that left me feeling a bit phased for a little while afterwards. In what I have done I have been fairly successful, that is, appreciated for unskilled work. It’s nice enough but I feel like I’m going to waste.
I had a job interview yesterday but at the moment I’m not holding up much hope about it. I was nervous about it and it showed. I was as honest as I could be. I had a task to do during it but but I didn’t complete it. They had been running late, I’d sat in reception for half an hour before they were ready for me, I was the last to be interviewed and they wanted to go for lunch. I walked away feeling like a jerk, but hopefully my website will carry me through a little. If nothing else, it gave me the motivation to shine that up a little. I know I was only up against another 3 people, so 4 of us altogether. That’s better odds that I’ve had previously, where 32 people went for 1 post (I came in 3rd, no medal, no cigar, but that’s because part way though I’d decided it probably wasn’t for me and didn’t sound as desperate maybe as some of the others).
During question time one of the questions threw me.
“What have you done recently that made you proud?”
Um…
Proud is something I don’t usually feel. I have had it hard-coded into me that I don’t have a lot to be proud of, and that pride comes before a fall, and that pride is fairly stupid. I didn’t say that of course, I picked an example from a while ago that made me happy. I do the things that I am compelled to do, that I feel the need to do, because they would annoy me if they were not done! They don’t always get me anywhere but at least I have a go.
Speaking of which, the annual Glammies show is next Friday. GCADT are moving from Glamorgan Uni. to Cardiff UWIC, to the Atrium so in effect it is the last Glammies show. I’m torn between signing up and taking the day off to go along and meet everyone again to catch up because I do like my old friends even though I don’t get to see them that often, and not showing up through utter embarrassment at never having managed to get to where I wanted to be. That happened on a previous occasion and there was a point where I had to go out and get some air (hide because I was about to start blubbing). I’m actually scared by it. I’m a wuss, aren’t I?
It has been cold and wet all day today, made less comfortable by the boiler breaking down, so no heating or warm water. There’s not much that’s better than a pair of pyjamas when you’re cold and don’t have to be anywhere, except, perhaps 2 pairs of pyjamas one on top of the other! I’ve been huddled up on a chair conserving my energy and spending too much time looking at Facebook, that is, when kids haven’t been playing `Knock and Run` at the door. They’ve been making sure I get some exercise.
In the news today it said that someone called Rob Knox, aged 18, was at a club called the Metro Bar in Sidcup. He got caught in a fight and fatally stabbed. He played a character called Marcus Belby in the upcoming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” film. People will know his face after the film comes out. It’s all very sad and unnecessary, but it’s a sign of the times.
I’ve just seen a film on telly called “Arthur and the Invisibles”. It started off a little slowly, but then it developed into something like Labyrinth / The Dark Crystal / Brian Froud / Myst / World of Warcraft. All I can say is it’s absolutely brilliant!
I loved it!
I got an e-mail on Wednesday for Gems of Celtic Story, an evening with Robin Williamson.
“If you knew him then, you will love him now with his own storytelling
show. He was the first to concentrate on the renaissance of Bardic
style storytelling with harp, continuing to develop in his unique
style to this very day.”
Well, I’d never heard of the guy, so I thought, why not and went along yesterday evening. It was an enjoyable evening. He sang, recited poetry and retold Celtic stories from the Irish Cycles, Fionn McCool and also from the Mabinogion, including Culhwch and Olwen, a story about the nephew of King Arthur eloping with the daughter of a giant.
The stories were very enjoyable, but I found that some of the songs were not to everyone’s taste. Still, all round it was an enjoyable evening.
Sadly, Portsmouth beat Cardiff City in the FA Cup yesterday, but the hype was fantastic and we didn’t mind, because getting as far as we did was rewarding enough.
This is how the flower shop at the end of my road showed their support for Cardiff City on Friday night and Saturday Morning. They made special football themed floral displays:
