Indispensible accessories

Glove puppets: they're fabulous, aren't they? They can be used to entertain small children, create personal space on public transport, derail team meetings, and exercise pets.

I think everyone should have one!

Wish List

My birthday and Christmas are rapidly approaching, and family and friends (but mostly the former,¹ since I don’t have many of the latter who care enough to give me gifts) are asking what I would like. Setting aside such futilities as world peace and a pygmy goat and my very own lemur-infested island, here is my wish list:

A flash for my camera. Preferably one of those really nifty ones which I can detonate remotely without it having to be attached to the camera.

A small portable diffuser for said flash.

Some shades for my camera lenses.

Some clear filters to protect my lenses (miraculously they got around Madagascar unharmed, but I really ought to protect them more).

A backpack for lugging the above camera gear around.

A new mattress, ‘cos the current one is nearly ten years old and very lumpy.

Lady with an Ermine. Conveniently, it’s in the National Gallery in London this Christmas, so you won’t have to go all the way to Vienna to perform the heist.

A new hot water bottle – I have plenty of novelty-shaped cases, but only one bottle, and I think that’s going to start leaking soon.

The latest OOTS book, which is quite fortuitous since I found it under the bed the other day when I was looking for something else.

A ferret-proof kitchen bin (but small, since our kitchen is tiny).

A holiday somewhere with interesting wildlife – I hear Costa Rica is pretty nifty, and not far off the track from the Galapagos Islands.

A plain dark tailored jacket for the office.

A new bit of silicone tubing to repair my swimming paddle.

A sticky-roller for removing cat (and ferret) fur from clothing.

A slow-cooker (and a kitchen big enough for it).

A couple of saucepan lids with handles to replace the broken ones (the saucepans are fine). 

Some more Big Gay Musicals for rainy hungover Sundays. Classic stuff, like Calamity Jane, only I already own that. Oh, and Some Like It Hot - I don't have that in my Monroe collection.

Um…

I think that’s all. The problem comes when one is an adult and earning money and in (theoretical) control of one’s life. If one wants something, one buys it. I just ordered the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed game – Tim said “Bugger. There goes that plan for your birthday.” (Yebbut I want to play it now, not later!).

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, and all I ever wanted was a pet cat. Now I’m grown up (ha!), I have two cats, not to mention three ferrets.

I am Living The Dream. 

Smug. I haz it.

1 Who feel obliged to do so.

Duck Soup - a food for convalesent British ferrets

Most ferret-keepers have some equivalent of "Duck Soup" - a high-fat, high-protein soft food to be given to ferrets who are ill or recovering. The only thing these recipes have in common is that they contain no duck...
 

All the recipes I was able to find online were American, and contained brand-names I'd never heard of, units I couldn't deal with (I can never remember how much is "a cup"), and occasionally contained things like sugary caffeinated drinks, which didn't seem a good idea for a species prone to diabetes and insulinomas. Not to mention all the recipes with homoeopathic tablets in them!

In the interests of information, here's a British recipe, with none of the above problems:

Ingredients

About 250g of dried ferret kibble (mine eat the James Wellbeloved stuff)

1 pack of chicken livers - about 300-400g, I guess

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons cheap cod-liver-oil (the cheapest you can find - it'll be 50% sunflower oil, and really pungent)

Method

1. Soak the kibble in an equal volume of water, until it is completely mushy - about 6 hours for cold water, at least 2 hours for hot water.

2. Melt the butter in a pan, and gently fry the chicken livers until lightly brown on the outside, but still pink inside.

3. Put everything - kibble, butter, livers, cod-liver-oil - in a food processor, and blend until smooth. It will look like chocolate mousse.

4. Feed to poorly ferret.With a syringe if necessary.

This will only keep for a couple of days, even in the fridge, so I usually freeze it in ice-cube trays, and then defrost a few lumps (about 5-10 seconds per lump in the microwave) as and when needed.

Despite multiple terminal conditions, Wellesley lived a happy six months or so on this diet, and I doubt he'd have lasted so long otherwise. I'm currently feeding ð on a pot of duck soup (made for Wellesley) I found in the bottom of the freezer, since he could do with putting on a bit of weight. He seems to like it.

Wellesley, enjoying life

Weasels are *not* weasily photographed!

We've had the Boys (þ and ð) for two weeks now. So far, they have destroyed one swimming hand-paddle and a Kurt Geiger shoe of which I had been somewhat fond, chewed the scrolly-wheel off a computer mouse, and stolen a waterproof phone case, the rubber Wiimote covers (we call them "Wii condoms") and the nose-piece off my M-frames. I've still not found everything. On the plus side, three ferrets bouncing on my laptop seems to have triggered the charger to start working, so it's not all bad!

I've been trying to photograph them. Ferrets are a tricky subject matter: they are fast-moving, so will inevitably be blurry, out-of-focus, or in a different environment to the one you just set your camera for.

White balance? What white balance?

 They are crepuscular, which is a posh way of saying that they are most active when it's gloomy (or under the bed) and you can't use a low-light lens because of the shutter speed you need to prevent motion blur.

POING!

Note ð's cartoon legs as he attempts to knock the stuffing out of þ

 Finally, they like to Take An Interest.

I think the best solution is to wait for them to get tired.

New brake blocks?

Nah, these ones are fine!

Look, the wear-indicator says so!

Granted, they're shaving tinsel-like threads off the rim of the front wheel, but that's just going to give us a lightweight sporty tandem, right?

Janus pumpkin

Hallowe'en is a disgusting recent adoption of American commercialism and threatens the Christian morals of our children. Or something.

Anyway, before I drench myself in fake blood and go to drink beer and offer children-knocking-on-the-door toffee onions, here are pictures of the drunken two-faced pumpkin I carved for my god-daughter.

Happy drunk!

Day Fourteen – The End of the Tale

And that, as they say, is that. It chucked it down with rain the night we got back from Lokobe Reserve. 

The global HQ for Air Madagascar

 The next day we got up early and headed to Tana. We followed the repeated exhortations from the guide books, our guides, and the hotel staff, and prepared to look around the town. As per advice, we locked SD cards and valuables in the hotel safe, hid spending money across a variety of pockets, and made sure we had a sacrificial wallet containing a feasible but not excessive amount of money to give up if we were mugged. Having considered all these aspects, we walked into the main street unacompanied by guides for the first time in our holiday. We felt very conspicuous and very white. Being vaguely surrounded by beggars and people trying to sell us three-foot-long carved wooden galleons (unfortunately I didn't know the Malagasy for "Are you mad? That will never fit in my suitcase!"), we moved through the throng. We had a brief look around the town centre which was a bit like Basildon but hotter, saw possible signs of the political situation (a lorry-load of youths distributing bread to some people, and causing consternation and panic amongst others), drank a lot of rum in the Cafe du Gare, spent another night in Tana Plaza, and headed back to the UK the next day. There was a while when we thought our holiday would involve an unscheduled day in Nairobi, but they held our connecting flight so that we were able to make it despite an eight-hour delay (Many thanks to the Dutch cycle tourists who translated airport announcments and found us free food in the interim). Sadly our luggage didn't get that flight, but it showed up eventually, smelling of vanilla and lemur pee. Much love to Auntie C for collecting us from the airport despite a stinking cold, but she was thankful not to be able to smell us at that point.

In summary, Madagascar is a lovely country, two weeks is not enough time to spend there, and I'm determined to go back.