SPLENDID MONKEY GALLERY: Picture 21

Regular readers will be aware of the work of Splendid Monkey Gallery, a marvellous invention that provides an opportunity for readers to submit splendid photographs of monkeys for my perusal.

I judge them with a small clay pipe in one hand and a schooner of sherry in the other; if pleased, I tap my pipe twice on my knee and utter the magic words, "You please me, Splendid Monkey and for this, you may enter my Gallery."*

This afternoon, a strange communication appeared in my inbox; a monkey so splendid I stopped breathing for up to and including ten seconds. "What is this?", I gasped, turning to the Mysterious Note that accompanied the submission. It was entitled "A tragic monkey for your collection", and read as follows:

"It's not funny though. It's terribly sad."

The note was from one Olivia, and said nothing else! Olivia, you are wrong; the picture is entirely funny, and also slightly strange (not to mention small!). More to the point, it led to the immediate expostulation of the words "You please me, Splendid Monkey and for this, you may enter my Gallery!", and a frantic tapping of pipe on knee.










It only remains for me to say: Congratulations, Olivia!

* Should you wish to see past submissions, entering the search terms "Splendid Monkey Gallery" into the search box above will show you all splendid monkeys in my gallery. Some of them are really bad, which makes them even more splendid.

Day 281: I Must Decide What To Do

It is quite ghastly, this thing of being asked what one does, as if it is important. (It isn't, unless one is a doctor and someone is having a heart attack on an aeroplane.)

"And what do you do?", people ask each other glassily at parties whilst dissolving Wotsits under their tongues. "Oh, you know, sleep, read, do stuff, go to work, cook, bicycle about the place. And you?", I usually reply, looking over their shoulder and cleaning my ear with a pencil. They are no more interested in how I earn money than I am in their children's education, or the weather, or house prices in the South East, but we will talk until one of us finds an excuse to leave, and hope that we never see each other again.

What I "do" at the moment is something I used to do five years ago, but in a freelance format-style - at least for the next two weeks. It is pleasant enough and the days pass nicely, as long as I remember to pretend to be partially deaf for a great part of each day, spend long hours making soup and aim low in all that I do.

Tragically, however, I am a High-Church Protestant Atheist, which means that no amount of "You are a not in permanent employment" (muttered to myself whilst writing invoices), can stop me from trying to do the right thing. Tragically, this can lead to an unfortunate state known as "giving a shit", which is not something one wants to do when working in a freestyle freelance-format.

Still, I digress. The issue of what I will "do" is becoming ever-more pressing, as later this year I hope to move to the Canada to investigate the actual living state of sharing a home-space with a pathologist and, until issues of visas, work permits, employment, length of stay (possibilities include "a very long time, up to and including Permanently and/or Forever"), and other such details are resolved, I need what they call "financial security", otherwise known as enough money to buy hats and crisps without having to worry too much.

And so I must work a little longer. But what shall I do? So far, the list of options includes (in order of likelihood):

1. Make jam
2. Adopt abandoned horses and/or donkeys
3. More freelance freestyle marketing or advertising-type work
4. Marketing in a digital style (but in real life)
5. Make apple juice infused with ginseng (inc. hand-drawn labels)
6. Join the Cirque du Soleil in the role of Chief Ringmaster Dwarf
7. Become a hairdresser
8. Host own daytime television show on BBC4 with Bamber Gasgoyne
9. Write for money.

Anyone got any ideas?

Day 279: I Am Yet Again A Subject Of Academic Study

Swift (and, in the main, uncomprehending) perusal of my "Site Meter" stats (Total Site Visits This Month: 3), has proven yet again that I am a favourite amongst academics.

In the past, the range of my university-based readers has been confined (in the main), to Great Britain, with a couple of notable exceptions (McGill in the Canada and Harvard in the Americas, for example).

But no! For now my reach is international. Academics across the world are, even now, sending each other electronic mail in which they exchange "ideas" about me. Recent visitors include top-flight academics from the following august institutions:

From The British Isles

LSE
Leeds
Sheffield
York
Cranfield
Edinburgh
Oxford
Cambridge
Bristol
Newcastle
Birmingham
UCL
The Open University
Westminster (is this a 'real' university, or a Recent Polytechnic?*)
Bradford (ditto above)
University College Dublin
Glasgow

From Abroad

McGill
Harvard
Papua New Guinea
Melbourne
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Cornell
Southern California
Texas at Austin
New Mexico
Arkansas Technical University

and (I am delighted to announce):

Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Are YOU visiting from a university not listed here? If so, make yourself known! I'm making a list!

(Oh, and if anyone wants to pay me to be a visiting lecturer (subject: me), I'm still up for it, as long as you cover my expenses.)


* I await a barrage of abusive comments with bated breath!

Day 276: I Make Something With My Bare Hands

Boxes with bits in, instructions, anything that demands that I lay bits out on a tray in order and read bits of paper. Things that only work if you read pages and pages of instruction manual. Sewing tiny things, putting the right screw in the right place, accepting that something may fall apart if you don't assemble it in the right order.

IKEA wardrobes, changing fuses, wood glue, taking things to be mended, changing my own tyres; reading meters, getting better insurance deals, wondering if I get a 0.003% highter interest rate if I spend three weeks moving my bank account, putting my socks in pairs in order and throwing away old tights, doing my tax return on time, cleaning the bath and selling my car. These things do not interest me, despite the fact that I know that they should, and I have nothing but admiration (genuine admiration) for those that do lay bits out on trays in the right order and make things work.

I will, however, spend quite a long time making tiny huts. I will lay the bits out on the table; I will do as the instructions suggest and do a 'trial run' before I glue them together. And then I will glue them together and arrange them about the place and take photographs of them, complete with a genuine (to scale) French Canadian Beaver called Beaver the Beaver.

Day 275: I Am Not A Star

When you call someone "a star", what you actually mean is: "I think you are my intellectual inferior, and I have just charmed you into doing something I couldn't be arsed to do myself."

Interestingly, it is invariably the 'thank you' of choice of the over-promoted.