Fickleness, thy name is Feline

I’ve just spent an odd, feline-free night.

I got to sleep immediately without having to shout ‘will you @%&ing settle down!’ seventy-three times. I woke when the beepy alarm clock went off, not when the purry alarm clock went off two hours too early. The flat was oddly quiet this morning. Their equipment had gone too. There was no trace of them.

I will be off to the airport in under an hour, the beasts are already holidaying in Sörnäinen with Joel. They reacted to their change of scenery as expected: Sir immediately greeted all, investigated every nook and cranny of his new territory and bagsied the best sleeping spots; the Nefer hid under the sofa. I stayed for a few hours until Nefer emerged, lured out by a hunting game – she can’t stand it when others have fun without her.

And then I left, almost unnoticed. Sir was watching traffic. Nefer had gone back under the sofa.

Fickleness, thy name is feline!

Love in the Time of Cholera

Normally, I would be quite happy to be compared to anything even vaguely connected with South American literature or magical realism. In fact – by a how very extraordinarily amazing coincidence – only a few hours before reading anna mr’s post, I’d picked up just such a volume as my in-flight read to India.

And speaking of not drinking the water, if I were a novel, a little quizlet tells me that I’d be:

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Fine. No probs. Cool book, cool title. Then I read the blurb that goes with it. Everyone else has been saying how strangely apt theirs have been. So... How exactly did those six questions end up here?

‘Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give consent! This creates a strange quandary of what love really means to you. On the one hand, you've loved the same person your whole life, but on the other, your actions barely speak to this fact. Whatever you do, stick to bottled water. The other stuff could get you killed.’

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

the standard half marylin

You sometimes ask yourself why you pay so much for your hair. And then you’re reminded: to avoid looking like this.

But needs must when the Devil filches from your purse to score salted liquorice: I needed a cheap root job to make my hair manageable in India and I needed it fast.

I knew something was up when the hairdresser said, ‘Gosh, the colour took quickly.’ I was aiming for a golden match, but my roots now encircle my head like a platinum halo. In the sunlight, I look positively beatific!

She offered to darken it, but I thought it was safer not to get any more volatile gunk slapped on my head while it still wasn't green. Goldilocks doesn’t look so bad from the front, but ... I know the multicolour look is currently in, but not when it looks like a result of standing out too long in peroxide rain. Hopefully gentlemen prefer accidental blondes, too.

However, at least I can now provide an answer to Kani’s question – if not the where, then the why: because you always need to find another one.

So Bo-ho

An exceptionally odd week, even for a Finnish July, with only one appointment in my calendar – and that for the cat! (Although I did initially mix up our vaccination appointments, the worst that happened was that I got up two hours earlier than I needed to: I’m not protected against cat flu.)

With no work either, lousy weather and a disturbingly full refrigerator, I decided to hole up at home doing the writer thing. No hair washing or leg shaving, and only popping out briefly just before midnight – in a long skirt mind you – when I remember I’ve almost forgotten the photo of the day.

I’d been finding the final nicks and tucks to the script prohibitively tricky; but a few days isolation gave me the leisure required to sufficiently re-immerse myself in the Mourning Primrose world. The characters – and one in particular – gave me a good scolding and told me what they’d been trying to say if only I’d bloody well listen.

For days, the only conversation I’ve conducted has been with fictional characters and cats. Yet now the weekend looms and it’s time to break free of this unhealthy clowder.

The concrete terraces of Leppävaara await! Er, I'm just so bo-ho...

Eight Left

Only eight left. Eight and a half if I manage to fix it. Death hit the floor at 1:14.

The cats are not normally that destructive, but this has been a gloomy week on page two. A quirky piece of furniture, a ten-year-old suede jacket, my glasses, a souvenir from Prague – why can’t they pick on the heaps of cheapo replaceable crap littering my place? No, feline taste is primo.

Or should I say, Nefernefernefer’s taste. Sir contributed to the jacket in his own urethral way, but I’m sure it was She, Sutekh’s young apprentice, that dragged it to the floor in the first place. I should be proud of my architecturally talented moggies. While Monsieur concentrates on waterscaping the bathroom, Mademoiselle is focusing on redevelopment of the domestic environment.

Open plan is all right in theory, but I see that I’m going to have to install some sort of sliding door in my new place ASAP. The Paw of Evil looms over everything. Coming home to find a chewed laptop fizzling with cat piss is not top of my wish list.

Limericks & Prayers

This week I have mostly been writing limericks and prayers! And insults.

I never ceased to be amazed by the unlikely directions in which my writing projects take me. The limericks are finally done and approved for The Mourning Primrose score by our Mr Music. The prayers – yes, Kani, I hear your panicked squeal at the unexpected plural – are still causing random frustration. Bloody sebum-sucking son of a plucked chicken Act Two is all I can say!

I always find final acts to be a bit of a bastard. Wrapping up plays is worse than wrapping up Christmas presents: there’s always cat hair in the sellotape. After further musings on feedback, I’ve decided that cutting an entire scene, adding a second prayer and rewriting the first – and jazzing up the whole package with some general nips and tucks ribbon – should just maybe possibly hopefully do the trick. (Un)luckily, I’m experiencing a sudden lull in the work department, so I hope to whip act two into shape and finally circulate the script by the end of the week.

If work continues to be minimal, next up on the scribbling pad will be this fortnight’s writing society exercise. The autumn production is going to require immense amounts of time and energy, so I’ve been umming and ahhing about whether or not to do Poetry and Jazz this season. I (un)fortunately seem to have been inspired by a combination of the next meeting’s word and the Poetry and Jazz theme. If my short series of poems Comestible Form comes to anything, my decision would appear to have been made for me.

And in case anybody's wondering, yes, that is a pig's heart.

Side effect: Amphibrachitis

After various interferences from my real life, I’m almost ready to send out the script for The Mourning Primrose.

The sailors’ song has been the bottleneck. The original lyrics were too difficult to fit to a shanty tune. Rewrite attempts were only partially successful, so music man Matthew suggested that the best way to solve all our problems was to use the limerick form: an easy beat to set to music and well suited to bawdy lyrics. I was in full agreement and said yarr, bring out the cat o' nine tails, I’d whip them into shape in the next couple of days, no problem.

Limericks are deceptively difficult to write, aren’t they? After various frustrating attempts to morph the existing words into the new form – and an afternoon lost due to an unfortunate incident involving my suede jacket and the cats – I decided to scrap my old ideas and start from scratch.

It was still tough going, but I managed to complete two of the three versus before it was time to take my first malaria tablet. Then I got a bit distracted, but at least I was practising:

A lady who’s practically a Finn
was forced to ingest some mefloquin.
She didn’t go crazy
just felt a bit hazy
and Larium ain’t yet done her in.

Pull out, pull out, you’ve hit an artery!

So says one Far Side mosquito to the other. Don’t remember the strip? Shame on you! This Gary Larson panel is so famous that in Suwon City, Korea, there’s even a mosquito monument based on it! (Whether officially or unofficially, I am unable to ascertain.)

Tomorrow I begin my preventative medication for malaria. After reading the guidelines, I fully expect to start hearing mosquitoes talk. Sometimes you wonder whether the prevention is worse than the disease.

The side effects section starts out on a reassuring note: if using this medication to treat malaria, its side effects can be difficult to distinguish from the symptoms of the disease. Side effects are common, the standard ones being nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Neuropsychological ones – headaches, both drowsiness and insomnia – are also typical.

There’s a warning against taking this drug if you have a history of depression or other mental disorders. Side effects include: mania, restlessness, anxiety, depression, mood swings, panic attacks, sleep disorders, confusion, hallucinations, hostility, psychosis, paranoia, amnesia. Reports of suicidal tendencies have been rare, and any potential connection to the drug has not been proven!

And those are just the mental side effects. The rest of the (long) page details how this medication can fuck up just about every part of your body, too. I won’t start listing how: you name it, it’s on there.

But if you do happen to notice any side effects they haven’t listed, they ask you to please get in touch…

Whether the Weather

Whether the weather was rainy or fine didn’t matter a jot to me from Monday to Thursday. Both days and evenings were filled with work or other tasks and chores that kept me largely indoors, excluding the occasional hop from place to place. Apart from the odd ominous rumble and one brief torrential downpour, the days have been hot and sunny.

Today, I was to knock off early and picnic in the park. The weather? What else but overcast skies and a strong, chill wind.

Sometimes weather has a profound effect on mood. Especially when it ruins something relaxing that you've been looking forward to throughout a stressful week. I definitely feel as though I got up on the wrong side of the clouds this morning.

Nefernefernefer

Both of my cats came with names, neither of which I liked that much.

Lord has naturally become His Lordship, Sir, and various other honoraries. No problem.

Andromeda always ended up as ‘Andro’, which never quite gelled with me. After two months of not really thinking about it, I was suddenly inspired. She’s growing up to have very oriental looks: her profile is the spitting image of an Ancient Egyptian cat statue.

Nefernefernefer is the beautiful but heartless courtesan in Mika Waltari’s most famous novel, The Egyptian. One of her most striking features is the greenness of her eyes.

I’ve always wondered about Waltari’s personnel life, as his books are brimming with treacherous temptress that ruin their male protagonists’ lives in some fashion. Nefernefenefer is one of the worst. I don’t remember her having any redeeming qualities.

Somehow I think this name fits the evil little beast very well.