Lucy is now six and a half years old. She’s certainly showing the signs of ferret old age, but with the help of regular steroid injections she has quite a good quality of life.
Lucy
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Rehearsing
The Swan
Part of the Carnival of the Animals suite, The Swan is just beautiful. I’ve been listening to the whole album:
I only discovered Saint-Saens after wondering who wrote the theme for the vile Mr Tourette from Modern Toss. Mr Tourette is the opposite of beautiful, but in a good way.
Shantaram
I’ve finally finished reading Shantaram, on my third attempt to read it to the end!
The Good
I really enjoyed the travelogue aspect of it which took me back to India. I loved the parts set in the slum. He’s clearly spent a lot of time with Indians and has a great deal of affection for them.
The most unpleasant parts of the plot were the best written. His term in jail, the war and the murders and violence were all compelling.
It’s a good story with plenty packed in and has the feel of a number of books of different genres all shuffled together.
The Bad
I didn’t like any of the characters apart from Prabaker. Partly that was because there were just so many characters and he didn’t develop them very much so you didn’t get the chance to know them. Having said that I didn’t like Lin either. He always seemed to be boasting about himself: how he could speak all these languages, how he was a good fighter, how he healed people, how well he did at making money for the mafia etc. I also didn’t like the way he described how close he was to some people towards the end of the book and yet they had hardly been mentioned before that point.
The Ugly
The worst bits were the philosophical discussions (couldn’t stand all that rubbish about God being the ultimate complexity) and Lin’s romantic feelings for Karla and Lisa which made me cringe. I was also going to add all the supposedly clever stuff that people like Didier and Karla spouted but at least Lin pulled Karla up on that at the end of the book.
Summary
I’m glad I read it. It’s not the kind of book I usually go for but it was a remarkable story and made me want to go back to India.
Books I’ve read in 2011
Books read in 2010
The Boy With The Topknot by Sathnam Sanghera
Sathnam talking about it on Radio 4’s Bookclub
The Rotter’s Club & The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe
The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Sex and the City
Mr W couldn’t believe that I’d never watched SATC so he obtained it for me and I’ve been making my way through the seasons over the last few weeks. I’m completely hooked. I love everything about it: the fashion, the characters and the city of New York. There’s a bit of every character in me. Above all I’m very happy to be watching something where strong women and their friendships take centre stage.
4 Jan 2012
Having now seen the films, I’m particularly pleased that Carrie, the main character, is child free and living a fabulous life. You just don’t see enough of that on mainstream TV.
Limitless
This film looks stunning, has Bradley Cooper, De Niro and Beth the lesbian from Brookside in it. What more do you need?
The Hangover & The Social Network
The Hangover is a great film to watch when you have a hangover, which tends to be the state of affairs on a Saturday daytime. I loved this film. It was so silly and just what I needed yesterday afternoon. One of the best parts was when Mike Tyson makes the guys listen to his favourite part of the song In The Air by Phil Collins:
I’ve been listening to In The Air on Spotify this morning and giggling.
EDIT (27 Nov 11): I hadn’t seen this before but In The Air has another comedy incarnation – The 2007 Cadbury advert:
Yesterday I also watched The Social Network. It was very enjoyable; it was fast paced, I had to concentrate to follow all the dialogue (a good thing) and I liked how unusually unlikeable the characters were. But the fact that Facebook was created by shallow, dysfunctional people only confirms my own negative thoughts about Facebook: I feel shallow and dysfunctional when I spend too much time on it.
Same Same
We had to have Same Same put to sleep yesterday morning. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in May 2009 and was only expected to live a few months. However, he did extremely well on prednisone for far longer than that. At the end of November last year he could still get himself upstairs with no assistance, even though he’d lost a lot of weight and was swollen with fluid by then. He continued to deteriorate slowly but as late as Sunday (13th) night he was moving around, eating and drinking. On Monday morning I found him lying completely flat in his cage unable to move, his swelling was noticeably bigger than the night before and he felt cold to the touch. We took him to the vet who said he had fluid or cancer growth in his lungs that was preventing him from breathing properly and advised us to have him put to sleep straight away to end his suffering.
When the ferrets were young I used to complain about the smell, the biting and the time they took to look after. They are not easy pets. But they found their way into my heart and we had so much fun. We’ve still got Lucy but now that both Same Same and Different are gone, the house feels empty. I’ll miss Same especially because he was very cuddly and used to give Mr W and I little ferret kisses. This behaviour earned him the nicknames ‘Mr Kissy’ and ‘Dr Love’. However, he could be relied upon to bite absolutely everyone else, commonly hard enough to draw blood and leave a scar.
This is Same last October. He used to go upstairs to sleep in a spare duvet I’d left on the carpet with the intention of donating it to my parents.
