Checking in

I'm not being very good at regular blogging this month.  Or last month.  Or the one before, or..... well, you get the point.  June was quite good, though, wasn't it?

Today I have mainly been tasting wine.  And then I bought some of the wine I tasted.  When I say "some" , I mean "quite a lot".  Then I lost my tasting notes, which means I have NO IDEA which wine I bought, or why I bought it. 

I got a free bottle of prosecco for placing an order, and also a discount, which basically paid for my entry ticket to the tasting, but even taking that into consideration: I have had more successful days than this one.  It was good fun, though.

Birthdays

Today's birthdays:  Sigourney Weaver (real name Susan; she pinched the name Sigourney from a list of dinner guests in The Great Gatsby), Matt Damon, Kool from Kool and the Gang, one of the Ramones, Chevy Chase,  R.L. Stine who wrote the Goosebumps books (go and ask a ten year old), Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan, Dr Christian Barnard, World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, and Steve Perry of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. 

Also one of my oldest friends on the planet, who is none of the above.

"The Cherry Poppin' who now?" I expect you are asking.  The Cherry Poppin' Daddies.  They are ace.




See?

Gauguin*, king of the one night stand

I am in one of the reading rooms of the British Library at the moment. I've hung out in the BL before, but never used the actual library part, so this afternoon has been quite exciting in a geeky kind of way.   I went and registered for a library card, requested some books, put my worldly belongings (except pens, which aren't allowed) into a library-issued plastic bag and now here I am, at desk 2071, engrosssed (sort of) in the history of primary schools in in Britain since 1944.  I feel all proper.


Or at least I was until about twenty minutes ago; now I am trying very hard to look all clever and serious, when in fact I am having silent hysterics and trying desperately not to collapse in a fit of giggles.

If you are just in the market for an alpaca, or just want to read some quite brilliant advertising copy, may I suggest a quick visit to http://www.alpacastation.com/.  Since the main buyers of alpacas are people who want to breed them with other alpacas (I am guessing) the advertisments read a bit like dodgy personal adverts.

For instance, meet Ivano.

 He is a  "pillar in the Canadian alpaca industry", having been handpicked by renowned alpaca screener Cameron Holt, from literally hundreds of alpacas taking part in the last Peruvian importation.  (Those Canada-Peru alpaca trade ties weren't on my international economics radar before now.  I will be keeping a close eye.)

In case you can't tell from the photo, he has " a perfect conformation, head, ultra dense and fine fiber with large testicles."  You probably spotted the head.  May have missed the enormous testicles. 

Also, and you definitely can't tell this from the photo, "at 12 he still breeds like a true macho, breeding multiple females in a day. We have recorded multiple conceptions in a day as well."

What sorts of alpacas might these multiple conceptions produce, you are probably wondering? Well, numerous show winners, ranging in colour from black to white (read: mostly grey.) Ivano's kids are also being pimped out on the website:

Pepano has a merino-type fleece, which is "one of those fleeces that just becomes enormous when you get it off the alpaca - it hardly fits into any size bag!

Oh, one of THOSE fleeces......

Turk is a dark chocolate brown with perfect confirmation and a proud stature. His fleece displays great lustre with crimp and character from skin to tip and consistency from his front shoulder to rear hip. As well, he does not display any medullated fleece even on his chest area and has a very soft handle.

I bet you're thinking what I'm thinking.  Especially if you are thinking "alapcas have handles??".  Also, there is nothing worse than mudullated fleece.

Then there's Gauguin who is, as canny readers may already have realised, the reason I stumbled across the website in the first place, and is far too clever for his own good:

Gauguin was kept busy during the 2003 breeding season with his first progeny now due during the summer of 2004. He has proven himself to be an excellent breeder with no repeat services required on our females throughout the season

My guess is Gauguin wishes sometmes he wasn't quite so excellent, especially when the female in question was quite pretty.

I know it is ridiculously childish to find all this so funny, but I do; and I haven't even mentioned studs (*snort*) or the fact that William Wallace will be a corner stone in their breeding program next year.

*not the artist

Uncultured, or just fussy?

There is a new Gauguin exhibition at the Tate Modern. The people at Tate Modern are pretty excited about it, if their website is anything to go by.  So, it would seem are lots of other arty and important people, some of whom have described the exhibition as 'brilliant' (in the Guardian); ‘the show of the season – in fact of the whole year’ (in the Times)  and '* * * * *'  .  That last one was in the Telegraph, and because it's the Telegraph, but also because I can't think of any 5-letter swear words, I'm pretty sure they mean they are giving it a five star review and not being all rude and sweary.

Something I foud out today : I am not a Gauguin fan.  It took me about 20 minutes to get around the entire exhibition, and for at least 18 of those minutes, the main thought in my head was "meh."  Call me uncultured, and please note that I'm not saying for a blind minute I could do any better, and to be fair there *was* a still-life in one room which made my heart skip a beat (which is where the other two minutes went), but mainly: I don't quite get what the fuss is all about.  Is it just me?

A Snail is Vanquished

Stand down, Team Barnacle. Your work here is done.  Meet Australia's Top New Species*:

You will have noticed, it's not my Mum's barnacle.  It is a fish with hands, and fair play to it.  After all, I expect it gets quite a hard time from the other fish in the playground for being a bit different. And just imagine what it must be like to be a boy handfish; as if coping with those weird hand-like fins wasn't bad enough, there's also the small matter of being bright pink to deal with.

But what of the epic battle between my Mum's barnacle and that ridiculous tree-dwelling snail named after Steve Irwin? Well, on that front I have good news.  The Opera House barnacle, discovered by my Mum, came third with 14% of the vote.  Crikey steveirwini, meanwhile, came in fourth, with only 13.5%.  Full results, if you are interested, can be found here.

So it's official: My Mum is better than Steve Irwin.  And, let's face it, that's the contest which really mattered.  The result couldn't have been closer, which means every single voted counted.  If yours was one of them, thank you from the very bottom of my heart. My mum says thanks too.



*Some context for newer readers: my Mum discovered a barnacle a while ago which was nominated for this title.  Other contenders included a tree-dwelling snail named after Steve Irwin.

Those Crazy Russians

Sputnik I launched today.  I mean today in 1957, obviously.  I just thought I'd mention it, because no one else seems to have, and that surprises me a bit.  After all, it was a pretty big deal; first man-made object in space, start of the space race, contribution to rising cold-war tensions and all that.  Given that today has been a pretty slow news day* I thought someone might have picked up on it.

That's a picture.  It's a lot smaller (the size of a beach-ball, not counting those pointy bits) and faster than I realised; it took about an hour and a half to orbit the earth which, when you think about the maths, is crazy fast.

*So far.  If something really really important** turns out to have happened today, and you are reading this post with that knowledge, please assume it hasn't happened yet.

** Really important (in this context)  = more important than public outrage over choice of X-factor finalists, nasty tube-strike, and child-benefit cuts. Just to set some parameters.

Sunday Night Music Club

Been a bit quiet round here lately, I know. Sorry and etcetera.  I haven't had a great week, but am just about done with wallowing in a pit of gloom, I think, which is what I've mainly been doing instead of blogging, so normal service should resume tomorrow or thereabouts.

In the meantime, I've had this in mind for SNMC for a while, and tonight seems as good a Sunday as any to get around to it.