So, we’re still trying to work out what they like and don’t like for treats.
Corn, they ignore. Bread, they will eat out of your hand.
Raisins…well, let’s just say they get a bit enthusiastic.
Here are the girls getting their evening treat.
After coming back from an afternoon viewing of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, we discovered that the chickens have started settling in quite nicely.
Just look at those eggs!
LOOK AT THEM!
Today, we drove down to Outgate Poultry and bought ourselves some chickens. It had to happen, really. We had already spent almost £400 on an Eglu, and God only knows how much else on bedding, feed, grit, diatomaceous earth and other chicken-keeping necessities and sundries that would have made not buying chickens a financial disaster.
The smallholding we bought them from was a little bit far away, but it was really worth making the trip down there because the guy running the place was very experienced and very helpful. We arrived nice and early, and he was able to give us lots of advice on settling the chickens in and looking after them – much of it both of us had read already, but it was nice to hear it confirmed and to get the chance to ask questions.
What I wasn’t aware of when we bought our three birds is that they are self-packing:
The Blue on the right is called Kerrigan, Queen of Blades. The Black, below and on the left is Commander Shepard. The youngest bird, the Ranger at the top, is Alexstrasza the Life-Binder.
Yes, we are that sad.
When we got home we gave them a quick chance to run around a little (an hour in a cardboard box can’t be good for anyone’s nerves) and then picked them up (took one or two goes to get hold of Alexstrasza) and put them in the run. They need to stay in there for a few days at first so that they become habituated to living in the coop and run. Eventually they’ll get command of the whole garden but this first bit of captivity is essential, apparently.
I might let them out for a little bit later on, though.
Kerrigan and Alexstrasza check out their new house. I went out to check on them a few minutes ago and discovered Shepard squatting obstinately in the nesting box, Kerrigan trying to take all of the bedding out one piece at a time and Alexstrasza trying to devour the same leaf she had been picking at three-quarters of an hour earlier.
Shepard staring intently at a piece of completely featureless land trying to find something of worth. Kind of like the mining in Mass Effect 2, really.
Normally when linking stuff I try to think of something new to say that goes with it, but this kind of stands by itself. As a source of insight into the Japanese mindset, I think it’s a very telling document.
So, last week I went on holiday with Lisa and her family to Croatia, a holiday to celebrate Lisa’s father’s 60th birthday.
The destination was the island of Pag, and we stayed in a beach-side apartment complex about 9 km from the town of Novalja.
If you’re looking for a holiday away from the bustle of everyday life, then there’s a lot to reccomend in a trip to Pag. There’s not a great deal there, and the principal sights could be encompassed in a single day if one were so inclined.
Personally, I have a limit to which I can sit out in the sunshine doing not a lot. I can’t read for long, because the glare makes my brain start to feel loopy, and if I run about I invariably injure myself, and I worry constantly and intensely about how many more moles I’m going to have to have the doctor cut out of me (two to date). So, naturally, I went off on my journey with no small amount of trepidation over when, exactly, I was going to crack.
So we’re off to Croatia for a week! Hooray!
More specifically, we’re going to the island of Pag, which is (in my opinion) an awesome name for an island. It is famous for salt, lace and tasty, tasty lamb.
Not taking the laptop with me, so there won’t be any updates for a few days. I am sure the internet will survive quite capably without me.
Tonight we sat down and watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford.*
Lisa was firmly of the opinion that the movie, weighing in at two hours and forty minutes (approximately the same amount of time it takes to write the title out longhand), was a good hour too long for the actual amount of story there was.
Normally I’d agree, in that any movie that drags out a fairly thin slice of narrative past the two hour mark will start to make me itchy all over and I’ll have to take a break from it (someday I’m going to write a huge blog post on why the cinema is shit and you’re all going to hate me forever). However, in this particular case I was captivated by it.
The movie is composed almost completely of silence and stillness. The palette is muted, the cinematography flattened and obscured. We see characters in the distance, at rest, hidden or distorted through lenses and the thick, puddling glass of roughly-cut windowpanes, we see them in mirrors, or through their own viewpoints. There’s not a great deal of gunplay, or action, and when the violence comes it, too, is heavily cut-down – a thick-palmed slap of furious motion, then the long, drawn-out consequences that follow.
And even though there’s not a great deal of dialogue, not much being said out loud, the film is absolutely drenched in drama. The acting, from Casey Affleck especially, is superb. The camera lingers on each character’s face for far longer than any normal filmmaker would dare, and for a time you can barely bring yourself as a viewer to meet Ford’s eyes: his frustration, that simmering, impotent rage that turns over in his belly is right there in those heavy-lidded glances, and the bitter, oily twist of his grin.
Pitt, too, is very good in his role, although he gets less room to show his skills. James, iconic and enigmatic, remains largely so throughout the movie, and it’s only through the aid of narration and a couple of tiny moments that we actually begin to see a little more of the character coming to life. It’s a shame we don’t get more of him, given the running time, but he is a legend in American history, and legends are perhaps best left painted only as an outline.
We know the ending from the beginning, of course, and it’s almost too easy to fall into the trap of seeing Pitt as a good man – even though the narrative paints him quite readily as a thief and a murderer – and Affleck as the twitching, baleful Ephialtes figure who betrays his leader. By the climax, though, things are not so clear-cut, and we’re left swimming in a muddy world where no one figure stands out as right or wrong, and the motivations of the characters are less satisfying from a Hollywood perspective, but so much more from the perspective of humanity. The players are capricious, and this gives the story much-needed tension. As we build to the climactic assassination, there’s a palpable feeling of nervousness, of what if, because although we know how the story ends it feels like at any moment the situation could turn and history could be rewritten in just a single second of celluloid flicker.
That alone makes the movie worth watching. Add to that a well-chosen supporting cast – a few big names in there but none that lumber onto the screen and jar your suspension of disbelief too strongly – and a brilliantly-paced epilogue, this is a great movie to spend an evening with if you’re up for something a little more heavyweight than the norm.
In other news, I got a Kuru Toga mechanical pencil! It has a tiny clutch just behind the nib that rotates the lead to keep the wear uniform across it, reducing breakages and improving the feel when writing. So far, thumbs up!
*Obvious porn title – The Ass-Assassination of…you get the picture.
So, we went down to Newark this weekend for the half marathon.
While we were in town, though, Alistair was quite keen on seeing the Air Museum. And when I say excited, I’m not kidding.
At a little over six quid to get in, it was somewhat pricey, but nevertheless a very interesting wander round was had.
After a summer of 10k races, Alistair and I will be upping the distance tomorrow with the first of our two planned half-marathon races.
As far as races go, you can’t really imagine two more different than the Newark half and the Great North Run. The latter is one of the biggest, most well-known running events of the British racing calendar and will have somewhere in the region of 50,000 runners participating. For Newark, I’m number 195.
This will also be the first race this year sans racing chip. It feels archaic, but pleasantly so. I can forsee a lot of jostling, congestion and dodging in the Great North Run, and it’ll be good to have a race where that’s not going to happen.
I think Alistair is looking to hit a time of around 100 mins for the half. I’ll be aiming for 2 hours. Anything I can manage over and above that would just be a bonus.
Wish us luck! Photos and race report to follow!
This month’s theme over at the SFF Chrons forum is “Time”. It took me a little while to come up with a passable idea, but I think it turned out alright in the end.
Man is least himself
It seemed like such an elegant solution to the time travel problem, connecting realities by tunnelling through the barriers between them.
I had no idea they would collapse behind me.
That’s what I told them at the trial, anyway. Not that it made a difference.
Hanging forever in penitent stasis, I am a reminder to those that survived:
This is the man who murdered the multiverse.
