Tag: animals

It’s hard to resign ourselves to making money out of those we love

To Leave With the ReindeerTo Leave With the Reindeer
by Olivia Rosenthal
translated from French by Sophie Lewis

I quite like books that are strange and hard to categorise, but I found this a little too weird, or at least too minimal in actual story. It’s certainly ambitious and I’m sure will have its fans.

A second-person narrative describes a woman from early childhood, trying to break free from her mother’s stronghold. One winter she fantasises that after Christmas she will leave with the reindeer, to wherever it is that they go after they have assisted Santa with his work. She desperately wants a pet, a wish that is never fulfilled. When she grows older this becomes a desire to work with animals. Her romantic relationships flounder until she figures out how to complete her separation from her mother.

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The Sunday Salon: All systems go

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The Sunday Salon

After last weekend‘s perfect mix of activity and downtime, it feels like life has switched up a gear. Evenings and weekends are full of plans, with many more things needing to be slotted in – when will I find time to read?

One thing I did this week was finally get my latest film processed. I took most of it on our holiday in Wales and I’m pleased with how some of the shots came out, though the scans don’t do them justice. We must find a way to display more photos in our house!

Look up

I haven’t been feeling 100% (it happens) so I have been tempted on getting home from work to just stare at the TV rather than read. Which makes sense when my brain is frazzled but the rest of the time I think reading actually makes me feel a lot better than even my favourite TV shows could. What about you – do you read when you feel unwell?

I also went to the zoo with Tim and a couple of friends. We go to the zoo a lot and always have a good time. Bristol Zoo is very good about breeding and conservation programmes and doesn’t have many large animals so I don’t feel animal lover guilt and can just enjoy the cute animals.

Baby turtles

Something new every time

We like to go to the zoo. Specifically, Bristol Zoo, which just happens to be our local one. Handy that. It’s a particularly good one in terms of conservation and breeding programmes and all that. The enclosures are big enough and full of enough foliage and whatnot that the animals can pretty effectively hide from view, which some of them do more often than not (no aye ayes for us on the last 2 or 3 visits) but somehow we still managed to take almost 1000 photos there at the weekend. Yup. 1000. Of which I have so far identified about 20 good ones.

While we like to think we know our zoo pretty well and can find our way around and show visitors hidden treats, there is always something new to see/do/learn. This time we saw lion cubs, learned about gorillas and fed lorikeets. Which was all very cool.

The lorikeets know that visitors are bringing them food so they land all over you, eager to be closest when you reveal the pot of nectar. It’s a bizarre feeling, birds’ feet on your bare arm. The keeper shooed off the bird that landed on my Mum’s head. Sadly I didn’t get a photo of that because we foolishly all fed the birds at the same time. So my photos are of complete strangers feeding the lorikeets.

They are very pretty and reasonably gentle if slightly frantic birds. My best photos of the day were taken in the Bug House but I figured they might freak some of my readers out, seeing as it freaked me out a little editing them. Zooming in on a locust’s head to check if the eye or the mouth is in focus – it’s making the hairs rise on the back of my neck just thinking about it!

I’m gradually adding the selected photographic highlights to my Flickr photostream so if you’re interested and ready to be slightly unnerved by/speed quickly past the insect macros, take a peek.