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Remember when Greg Wadley wrote (anonymously) the amazing novella Diary of a Cold? Well exactly. All this has meant thus far is I have slept a lot - this morning between about 9 and 12 in particular very heavily - and also this afternoon, and I have a bit of a headache. It's not even really as bad as a cold or a hangover. I do appreciate that I am a bit ditzy and muddled, but that's nothing special. 

Helmi and Nancy are being very good companions as well of course, by which I mean to me, not to each other, they provide the eternal dance of hostility and jealousy which is as old as time as they sit/lie either side of me on the bed. Sometimes Helmi will get up and with a small whimper move towards Nancy presumably to attack her, and I put my hand in front of her face, and she realises she didn't really feel like doing anything after all. 

finally caught up with me

 

So I finally got covid, from an unknown source but obviously it could have been from any number of sources, although unlike many people I have still worn a mask on PT, in shops mainly, in the library etc. But it was always going to happen and it is not so bad (so far). It's just a nuisance to have to be at home for a week, although the cats are going to be happy about it I'd say. 

Everything comes at once, I don't mean covid, that's just one thing, but I got the final proofs of my DeGaris book, I got two journal articles published online this week, and another accepted by an international journal - it's amazing how everything comes at once. 

oh what a year

Hasn't it just been a rollercoaster ride? In truth, as I am writing this on 3 October, I don't really know how the ride 'ended', but I just thought I'd put in a note about my significant return to the blogosphere in 2020, after, um, a major slump last year, back to the glory days (if 'glory' means 'frequently posting') of this blog.  As I think I had previously mentioned (maybe I haven't) the problem was I had to go into my-old-gmail-address-mode to get to this blog; the main reason I am back in business with Lorraine Crescent is that Blogger has somehow made it easier to click through, so there's none of the gatekeeperishness of 'god, what's that password again?' although I suppose it's been a year of much more sittin' at home not talking to people and maybe writing here fills in the time. It takes on a life of its own though of course, a blog, and once you've got the first ten years down you are probably not going to give it up fully. 

One thing I have been considering is whether to go back and clean up previous posts particular as regards to dead links, etc. It wouldn't make sense if I just clipped them out, I'd have to put something in there a la the Simpsons picture of the drunk cameraman and a 'stand by', except no point standing by, that film clip of the Bee Gees doing 'Sweet Song of Summer' is never going to be there (it probably is somewhere on youtube though, just not on that link anymore). Well, I'll think about it. I assume that just by dint of the fact that the world is six billion buzzing browsers, those posts still get hits. I just checked a random 2009 post, because for a second I thought each post had a record of how many views it got on the 'reader' side of the blog but it doesn't, I have to go back into the works to see that; but what I did note, also arguably important, is that pictures on this blog in its early years were tiny. If I went back and enlarged them they'd probably be horrendously pixilated, don't know, but maybe there's a sweet spot where at least it doesn't look like an out of focus postage stamp. 

I mean considering most of the time this is just a low-key ramble, and I have about five loyal readers (thank you) and that's it, it's probably if not a waste of time, certainly time spent that I could be doing better things with, but also it keeps the (writing) muscle active, and that's not the worst thing. 

Anyway, greetings from October! Remember us? We were naive, we had no idea what the next three months was going to hold. We were optimistic for the outcome of a US presidential election. Yes, we had something to focus on. 

getting the virus

I know all of us, the minute we feel a bit sluggish or fluffy, immediately wonder if we've caught the virus. I suppose it then depends on the kind of person you are whether you bat that thought away and insist to yourself you couldn't possibly have it or you spend more time teasing out the possibilities. I probably wonder 2 or 3 times a week whether I have it, though it's certainly not like the early days of February-March where it was like being 'it' - you were always wondering what you'd touched and whether you'd then touched your face, and so on. If I may just officially say, probably the ten billionth time on Earth this kind of sentiment has been uttered this year: imagine in October 2019 looking a year into the future and looking at what the planet has become. A year ago I was apparently in Oulu:

Though I am a teensy bit confused about that because fb also tells me that on 17 October I was also in Helsinki, and I was in Tampere for a day between those two cities. I remember the long walk I took, though, during which I encountered the mildly funny images above (if you can't tell, the pizza/burger restaurant advertised itself as 'probably the best'). I should just check my phone for the truth, because I took a mass of pictures, but my phone's over on the kitchen bench being charged.

BUT the really important thing to bear in mind is not that 'we' were complacent, or that we should enjoy everything in the moment, although of course enjoyment is fun. What I have really come to resent attitudinally is that idea that the course of history was altered by (for instance) the coronavirus. This is history, we're living it. Nothing is predestined or predictable. This is both a profound observation (because it's true) and a pathetic one. But I'm talking more about what we think of as 'normal', and how it's too bad clinging to things we don't want to change because the whole thing is always shifting; to resist it is like saying you don't want to wake up. In terms of mass consciousness of how the world works, I think this shake-up has done us a favour (that is probably the only favour that's been done). I mean sorry to come on all punk rock but it has been a revelation for many I think. 

various nothings

I have that occasional frisson of concern when I wonder how people in other countries are going to assume/ interpret aspects of Australia. This is an image from the Washington Post's article I think today or yesterday marvelling about how Daniel Andrews as a centre left politician with experience only of being a politician can maintain popularity despite his commitment to lockdownism. I was just annoyed at thinking that people reading the WP will be thinking 'oh my god, that's what bananas look like in Australia?' I have to remember that actually I don't give a flying fuck what people who read the WP think about Australia or anything. 

 

One of the things I love about history is it so often makes me/allows me to feel smugly woke. I actually saved this cartoon because I thought maybe I could use it in teaching next year. But like a lot of historical things it is meaningless if you don't consider the context, and that a lot of it is in the eye of the beholder. Your first take on this is sexist society but then again, it's also, kids are know-nothing shits, and sexist society acknowledged in a cartoon in a major newspaper. Is acknowledging the first step towards doing something about it? Not my place to say. This is a syndicated cartoon from 1962. 

Of course a lot of us in 2020 will be like, wow she got to leave the kids in the car without someone calling the police and putting her in jail and also wow, a parking space so close to the supermarket (also wow, why no shopping trolley? but I guess that's part of the cartoon exaggeration - I'm pretty sure shopping trolleys existed in 1962). (Also, often, teenagers to help you carry your bags to the car etc, I gather). 

The only other thing that happened today is that I tried out a little bit of ink drawing to see how I would go with my second graphic novel in ink (Helmi walked over it, and without thinking I committed the cardinal error of picking her up to put her on the floor, which is of course anathema to this little free spirit who struggled in outrage and flew across the room, but I don't think she got ink on the carpet, if she did, it's not noticeable - to me - yet). The difference is, an A4 page like this has the detail I could do in felt pen in 1/6 of a page. So either I would be doing my pages at A1 size (not easy) or perhaps doing what I understand Chester Brown does, or has done: composed his comic books out of individual panels which he has assembled on the page after the fact. 

I have a vague memory that, when I did the pages for Cut Snake I wanted them in some way to be holistic, although I have no idea (and there is no evidence, to my mind) how I thought this would manifest. But maybe this is the way to go, and I should just be more freeform about the ultimate result. I shouldn't put stuff like Chester Brown's work in close proximity to mine, only one of them comes off well. He is smartly economic though in putting totally black backgrounds etc, which not only focuses the reader's attention it also, let's be realistic, saves time and effort. But what's important is it looks great. There's no doubt he could/can draw a fabulous comprehensive background if he wanted to, it just doesn't suit the story. 

My next step might be to try and redo some actual pages from I Am Not... as ink drawings, big, with a view to reducing them and composing a page against a black (or other?) background. See how it goes.