Cats with black tails.

Here's something I've wondered about for years. I wonder about the black spots on white cats.

When I was little, we had a large fat, rather ugly, and bad-tempered cat called Jenny. I loved this cat devotedly for many years. She was white with a black tail, black patches on the back of her legs, a large black patch on her side, a black patch over one eye and a black patch over the opposite ear.

Today I saw a black and white cat. Its black patches were also on its face, side, and tail. So I wonder if there is some biological reason why black and white cats have black tails.

Dull post about musicals

Most of you will not be interested to know that I have been watching Silk Stockings. It's one of the last Arthur Freed MGM musicals,. It stars Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, who is a ballet dancer, famous for her long legs. It's a really peculiar film. Some of the dances are fabulous, but the story is very very strange and some of the dialogue is - dated is not right, neither is abysmally, uncomfortably dated.

The film is a remake of Ninotchka and stars Cyd Charisse as a Russian commissar who has been sent to Paris to bring back an eminent composer who is threatening to defect and write music for a popular film producer, played by Fred Astaire, who is by now rahter old and unconvincing as a romantic hero. Perhaps it's mocking attitudes and stereotypes about Russia and the Cold War, but - and I think this is more likely - it is in fact acting out all those stereotypes in a way which now seems acutely painful and wrong. Or absurd and funny, if you have a stronger mind.

For example, one of the songs:

Fred: Paris loves lovers, for lovers it's heaven above
Cyd (in harmony): Capitalistic
Fred: Paris tells lovers, "Wake up, it's spring, and something and make love"
Cyd: Individualistic
Fred: Only in Paris one discovers the urge to merge with the splurge of the spring.
Cyd: They should be atheistic
Fred: Paris tells lovers that love is everything
Cyd: Materialistic.

It's best to laugh at the end of this. Or else you'd cry.

This brings me to the Marv theory of musicals. Very few musicals are good all the way through. Most of them have at least one dodgy number and the most have lots wrong with them. You have to concentrate on the good bits and remember how hard they are to make and how few people have the ability to even try. "can't sing, can't dance, can't act, the triple threat"

I think it's also true that the bad bits of musicals for some reason are more hideously embarrassingly bad than almost any other art form. But usually, among the mediocre or the painfully bad moments, are some hidden gems.

In Silk Stockings, even though some of the dialogue creaks like an old house, the dance numbers are great. There's a witty number about Vista Vision and all the other colour technology that was coming in when the film was being made and some of the scenes satirising an Esther Williams style swimming star are really funny.

The American musical should stay away from Russia. Paris, yes. Moscow, no. It will all end badly.

Boring post number 20001

I did a load of washing and forgot to put the powder in the machine. So I did it again. I am staying up past bedtime waiting for it to finish. At least it wasn't a wool wash.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Tomorrow we are going to spend all day talking. We'll have our team meeting all morning and then do worthy exercises in the afternoon, talking about images from the collection or some such.

Anything that doesn't involve entering data on a database is a waste of time really.

I like my new job.

Wimbledon news

I won the tennis again. 6-1.

Calling Rence.

Rence, how tall are you?

Reading and other matters

I am reading Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams. I bought it because it includes a chapter about kakapos. There is a lovely picture of a kakapo standing in a hole under a tree and some very amusing descriptions of kakapo behaviour. Kakapos have forgotten how to fly, but have also forgotten that they have forgotten. Sometimes they climb up trees then fall out.

I am also reading Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. It's very good.

We are going to play tennis this afternoon. I thrashed James last time, 6-1. He was struggling to remember the rules.

The sun is shining. I am learning to play Constant Craving.

Next weekend we are going to Aberystwyth on the train.

Is James weird? You decide.

After the gig, we found ourselves wondering whether James is weird or not. I said he wasn't, fooled by his mild-mannered and amiable American persona.

"Of course he's weird," said Pete. "He's a cartoonist."

Cartoonist and gremlin spotted at music event

We went to a gig with Pete on Friday. Pete liked it, as he says here I enjoyed myself too. "That's what I should have been doing when I was 14," I thought. And even James thought it was better than a night in drawing cartoons.

I wish they'd had events like this in darkest Oxfordshire in the 1980s. But I can't see Erotic Volvo coming to our Village Hall. I spent most of my adolescence in Middle Earth. It was much safer than darkest Oxfordshire, despite the ringwraiths and orcs.

This post carries a health warning.

This is the worst joke I have ever made up. It is painfully bad. Fortunately I was lying on our bed when I thought of it, so I could laugh hysterically.


Q What do teenage giraffes do on a first date?

A Neck!!


I do apologise for my utterly terrible sense of humour.

Kakapo inflight shocker

Another kakapo chick has hatched, bringing the total to five. That's the lot for the next couple of years at least. Kakapo breed every 2 to 5 years, depending on the availability of key food supplies and if they can be bothered.

Four chicks have been flown to a secret location in Auckland to be hand-reared. Apparently the rimu trees didn't produce enough fruit, so the chicks weren't gaining weight fast enough. The web site noted the irony of transporting a flightless bird by plane.

There are now 88 kakapo in the world. Everything about them is completely bizarre and marvellous. They smell of fruit and have very soft feathers and wander around on their own in the middle of the night. I am so glad people are putting all this effort into saving them. They should be saved. But they don't make it easy for their saviours.
link

For once, I look nice in a photo

Keith 's party. Very jolly affair

Warning: boring photos below.

Here are some photos of the family, mostly taken during our week off. We went up to Nottingham. We had a very nice time. It has a good castle and the town has very interesting history. So we didnt' get too bored.

Not Frodo

A_01_024
Originally uploaded by Marvin Marblesons.

A very nice photo of James

A_11_014
Originally uploaded by Marvin Marblesons.

Marv makes friends with Will Scarlet

A_14_011
Originally uploaded by Marvin Marblesons.

Larking around at Nottingham Castle

A_17_008
Originally uploaded by Marvin Marblesons.

Dad stands next to a tree

Dad stands next to a tree
Originally uploaded by Marvin Marblesons.

This tree seemed like the perfect setting for Dad.

Are you thinking what we're thinking?

These posters really get on my nerves. I'm sure lots of people pass their time thinking of witty ways to improve them. Here's a link to some top graffitti(spelling please James?)by some enterprising folk.

I suppose these posters work because I remember the slogan.

I suppose they don't work because they make me think that I must vote to keep the Tories out. I remember all the years of Tory rule when there was no hope.
link

Kakapo concerns

According to the kakapo home page, there are 11 fertile eggs left. I can't make the chicks and eggs on the nesting chart add up to 11. It's very perplexing.

here's the kakapo home page thank you very much enjoy yourself

Books that cure insomnia

I've been sleeping very badly and having awful dreams. This inspires me to post a list of books that cure insomnia:

1 JRR Tolkien The Silmarillion (first 5 or so chapters)
2 Henry Fielding Joseph Andrews
3 Dante The Inferno

Note use of numbers - aren't I daring?

Question for someone clever: how do I search my blog? the blogger search doesn't seem to work. (i've asked James already and he didn't know)

Let's file it in the middle of the pond

We haven't been to the middle of the pond for a while, but we were swept back there tonight.

Matt and Marv finish their dinner.

Says Marv to Matt, "I have put the papers about selling the house in the black folder, marked Selling the House."
Matt picks up said black folder, opens it, and stares in puzzled fashion.
"How do you use this? We don't use them in the States."
Marv, slightly taken aback, wondering if he is in earnest, "You press this little clip and then lift the lever to take the papers out."
"Why do you need the little clip?"
"It stops the papers sliding around when you move the file. I think."
"Oh."
"What do you have in the States?"
"We have files with 3 clips."
"Oh."

Cheese. It's nice.

Here's a link to a genius and very unhealthy recipe. I do approve of the writing style. It reminds me of Mr Bashford's marvellous travel diaries.

link

Winner!

Jerome's horse came in second in the Grand National yesterday. He was £25 up. He celebrated by putting his fruit machine winnings back in the machine.

My horse was fifth. I lost £5. That's half an hour's work.

I do not understand the gambling mind.

Friday night

It's Friday night, kids. I've finished my first week at work. Quite bizarre and tiring. I know a lot more about Jewish life in Birmingham than I did on Monday. I am working with 2 people who can talk the hind leg off a donkey (how exactly do you do that anyway?) which I quite like because I'm not the most talkative person.

There are no new kakapo chicks. One egg had a star-shaped hole in the shell, but there's no hatchign news.

I'm going to have a really lazy weekend.

What kakapos like to eat

Odd things we say

A quick disclaimer. I am not the spelling or grammar police. I know several people who enjoy picking up mistakes in others' grammar, logic, or spelling, but i try not to be one of them. I have discovered during the nearly 2 (argh) years that i have been blogging that I have forgotten how to use the semi-colon and the colon and I have also forgotten how to punctuate direct speech. So I have absolutely no right to preach. My advice to anyone who wants to write well is simple: for God's sake have something interesting to say.

Here's a list of odd things we say (I was going to number the items in the list, but probably I won't be organized enough to keep up the numbering, see my best ever post:

to be honest

A peculiar way to start a sentence, if you think about it. I'm sure when people say "to be honest", they don't mean "I am a habitual liar but this time I am telling the truth". Or when they say "To be honest, I prefer chips to new potatoes", they mean that they usually lie about the fry/boil/mash choices presented on the average pub menu.

How it's going so far

A quick bit of news to push the picture of me at my wedding further down the page. I feel rather sad for finding an excuse to post that picture yet again. It's because of the scarf. It looked very nice and kept my neck warm.

After my second day at the new job, I am still optimistic. I have seen the archive i'll be working on and while it's quite big (about 10 bays or 140 standard archive boxes - every archive's idea of 'standard' is different, by the way), it's not huge and there is a box list, and it is all in boxes. I can't tell you what a boon it is to have an archive ready boxed. You can move it around, write notes on the boxes, do a quick box list before you decide how to arrange it and it feels so much better than confronting 8 years' worth of accessions heaped on the floor, or 4 huge bundles of miscellaneous records tied up with string which turn out to include letters from rather eminent Zionists. So I don't feel too scared. Maybe the terror will come later.

Although I've been enjoying things so far, I've been sleeping very badly and had terrible dreams last night. But it's all very exciting and worthy and my boss is really dynamic and nice.

Another kakapo chick is hatching and there are 11 fertile eggs. There are beautiful photos of the little kakapos.

The only way is up, baby...

Here's a post by Chrissy Wissy, which continues our conversation about our favourite subject, fashion. Some time ago, I wrote this relevant and rather amusing if I say so myself post about my favourite clothes

I have been trying harder recently and I think things have improved slightly.

They didn't mess it up, thank the Valar

Doctor Who was relaunched last Saturday weekend following a 16-year hiatus.

With 9.9 million viewers, it beat Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.

link

Gyppo

Gyppo
Originally uploaded by rence.

Rence's stately home