night tramp

I woke up at 3am dead on, so whereas normally I would angst around I decided to be proactive and get in 'my steps'. I walked around the area aimlessly following the same route three times. It might have been four. Sounds boring and in fact it more or less was but I thought I should experiment with stopping expecting all my walkertainment to be ambient stimulation. 

On the way around the dull route I saw absolutely not one person until the last circuit when I saw someone a block or so ahead of me dressed all in black with only white shoes. I didn't take a picture of that. I did heard a few people though - it sounded like voices in the grounds of University High, and voices on a verandah perhaps? I couldn't tell. Only two cars passed me.  

Lately as is my wont I have become slightly annoyed by the incredible lack of imagination by whoever built or commissioned to have built houses like the above for which the corner is just 'slice of the cake', you know, 'nothing to see here'. This could be in the middle of a row of houses or at street corner for all the imagination that has been applied to this side of the house. That said, I'm a hypocrite because I kind of love this kind of big, blank building face. The little arch at the side at least indicates some kind of awareness of a street to be accessed. 

The only other animal I saw during the hour or so I was out, aside from this timid creature below, was a snail. 

The houses below intrigue me. 

Someone put a box of free jars in the street, someone else put out some free shoes. The ones on the left are size 8, what size are you? 

These stumps irritate me every time I see them. Most of the time they are covered in junk. 

So as of 4:42 am I have 5,397 steps under my belt. That's actually not much of a slice of the pie but I guess by this time of the day I usually have 0. 

big moth

For the last few nights a big moth has been trying to get through the ceiling every night, or to get through the bedroom window glass to the street light outside. It has been very distracting and made it hard to sleep, though I will admit that as of last night (technically still tonight) I have achieved not one but two breakthroughs, firstly that I have stopped giving much of a fuck about the moth's welfare and secondly that I have finally lured it out of the bedroom into the living room and possibly even beyond (I'm not sure where it is right now, but I have turned off all sitting room lights and only have the 'laundry' light on, in the hope that it will go in that direction). A rude reality awaits it if it does go outside because whereas its life in the last few days has been warm (too warm for me, I don't know what moths prefer) it's raining outside and the temperature has really dropped. But I am sort of drably assuming that it has an ambition for its species that it needs to get out and lay its eggs on a leaf or something, rather than waste time on trying to fly through the ceiling, so go forth big moth please you're driving me out of my fuckin' mind. 

*update about 17 hours later: it seems it worked

hot night

It's a hot night and I was at the work xmas party online. My team came second last. Our ambition was to not come last. 

Helmi has been in bed twelve hours, [...] I just went and made her get up, but she just ran under the clothes rack. I guess the trauma of me changing the sheets this morning still hasn't worn off. 

exhaustion!

So I am 55* and I do have a fairly sedentary life, as much as I have kidded myself for a long time that one of my advantages was that I had some, I don't know, resilience? Tenacity? Anyway for a week now I've walked 20 000 steps a day (that's approx 12 km) and I am here to say, it's absolutely doable. However, the surprising part of it is that I am so tired a lot of the time! I had not expected that, I thought it was just a time commitment in terms of the hours (3-4) spent doing the damn walking. (Btw don't even think of telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing - I'm doing this). But beyond that even more surprising: I am dead tired, but my mind is racing. Last night I passed out (I'm seriously going to call it that) waiting for the sun to go down so I could get in the final 3500 steps of the full contingent, got up and did it, was falling asleep again by 11, but had this exceptional detailed fine-grain, fully designed with its own aesthetic, dream about a superhero called Handyman (ha ha) who lived/s in the electricity substation building two doors away from where I live, in an amazing split-level apartment basically hiding in plain sight. Every time people from the electricity company (whoever that literally is these days, I don't know) come to check on the status of that building, he puts his hand on their head and his touch generates a blue spiral and they believe whatever he tells them, which in this case is something like 'it's just a relay station'.  So that is basically his superpower - that he can touch people's heads and make them believe whatever he tells them. I am not sure what the rest of the movie was about, but there was a scene in a kind of bad boutique pet shop where he brainwashed (whatever you want to call it, blue concentric circled) the owners to dedicate their lives to the welfare of not only these animals but all animals, and I think to stop using the pet shop as a drug front (how they were supposed to make money I don't know). Sorry, it's a cliche but hell it was a superhero movie and to be honest I am not that au fait with that genre, all things considered. 

So this is how 2020 ends for me, overactive mind and no capacity to do anything creative with it. I sleep very deeply but for less than 6 hours/night. 

Today is a 32-degree day and I am on a team for a trivia competition at the virtual work christmas party tonight so I decided I would try and conserve my energy (day off). If I don't get back on the horse tomorrow then whatever but I think all things considered I probably will, because actually all immense exhaustion aside, I do feel better, this is a really interesting state to be in and also I want to see what happens to Handyman. 

By the way, he has these really weird, long wavy fingers, sort of like crustacea tendrils. I don't think there's anything sexy about it though people will sexualise anything these days. 

* and a half

walking

Sometime last week I read an article, probably in the New York Times, by somebody who decided early in the pandemic to walk 20 000 steps a day and has never felt better or happier. So I thought fuck it. That's what I'll do, since someone I have never heard of before recommends it. I mean, if it means I feel better and happier then, yeah. So since last Friday I have walked 100 000 steps and my feet are tingly and I feel really really tired every day and also a bit baffled and sore. I assume the whole thing is doing me good. 

Every day I feel like I've lost weight but that's mainly because I realised that the bathroom scales instead of being set at 0kg was set at something like 8kg.

I wrote the above on Wednesday but got too tired and went to sleep.

Then I woke up around 4am and got interested in show called Hippies and remembered I had to (co-)write an article about Big Things (eg Big Pineapple) before the end of the week. 

But first, I have to get some purchase on my 20 000 steps so it's off to Royal Park. Ouch.

trough

First of all, 'trough' is, I suppose funny. The weird automatically generated book cover (or is it a printed and bound pdf?! you never know what shit you'll get on ebay) is intriguing too. 

Of course as you know what is really getting to me is the 'figure' below. That's something like a $200 purchase. It is really grinding my gears, wanting it so much but also being very aware that I would regret the purchase from the very second I pressed send. 

when smokie sing

I'm sorry but the world in which Smokie: Live The Concert is 'popular' is not a world I want to continue living in. I would love to be a fly on the eyeball of the person who is buying the vinyl for JB's weird little vinyl section. I am not saying I could do it more effectively, because I don't know what the market is or could possibly be for vinyl at JB or whether it's just a kind of 'thing we need to have so people think we have everything' so it doesn't really matter what's there. It obviously can't be in any way comprehensive, and anyone with the slightest interest in buying vinyl records is very unlikely to go to JB, particularly JB at Melbourne Central, proximate to actual, you know, record shops not appliance shops like JB (which of course emerged from a CD store in Keilor so has a kind of sentimental drag towards music retail as much a defining aspect as its ugly yellow signage). They also have a copy of the 12" of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' for just under $50, I am not sure if they are aware this is a 12" single, or if they are and that's fine, they'll probably sell it to someone who will be perfectly happy with the purchase, thus adding to the sum of happiness in the world. 

'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and Smokie: Live The Concert were recorded I guess within 18 months of each other, the Smokie concert in question being performed in mid-1978. Smokie were one of those bands plucked from nothing by Chinnichap and given a run of big hits that set them on a lifelong career in various, I think, disintegrating units until retirement. (OK I checked their wiki entry and no, as always it's weirder than that, but essentially the bass player who joined in 1965 has held the ship together between 1986 and the present day and indeed the group went to number 3 in the Danish charts with an album of new material in 2010, so, there's undoubtedly more in store for Smokie). 

There's possibly even less reason for the existence of Ringo Starr's solo career, even including his supposed best solo album (so far). No, wait, I forgot - adds to the sum of happiness, except amongst those who would deprive others of happiness for no good reason, so, OK. 

robert raymond on flook

So I made it to the SLV at last today, actually managed to do some research in a 3-hour bloc of the almost empty Redmond Barry reading room. One thing I snuck into my order was Robert Raymond's Giving Luck a Chance, a cheerily written self-published (I think) memoir. Chapter 8 is called 'Flook to the Rescue'. In it he describes being down on his luck with a wife, a child and a lot of wet washing to contend with (I'm still confused about whether Candy and Vicki Raymond the actors are his children; going by this book I think they might not be, as Candy is mentioned but no Vicki, and if Vicki the actor was Candy the actor's sister, then Candy the actor might not be Robert Raymond the journalist's daughter... anyway...)

Chapter 8 is called 'Flook to the Rescue'. It's, well, I suppose some time in 1949, and Raymond is at the offices of the Daily Mirror hoping to pitch an idea for a series on 'trad bandleaders' to Ken Brown, who I guess is the editor, or an editor anyway. Brown doesn't want to pursue the idea (which had been his, Brown's, suggestion) but while there Raymond runs into Wally Fawkes, who is in a pickle:

'What do you make of this?' he said.

On the board was a strip cartoon divided into four frames. Drawn with an incisive pen in a spare yet sophisticated style, the first frame showed a large, well-dressed gentleman in a top hat climbing into a hansom cab in front of a stately Georgian town-house. The second frame showed two small characters standing on the pavement watching him - a schoolboy with an innocent gaze, and a funny little bear-like creature with a short trunk, large eyes and knowing expression. The third frame as a wide shot including all the characters, with the old gent learning out the carriage window and wagging  warning finger. The final frame showed him... addressing the young pair. Above his head was a speech balloon - empty. 

I recognised it as the new comic strip which Wally, under his pen name Trog, had recently begun drawing for the Daily Mail. It was called 'Rufus', and although I had not been following it I knew it was about a small boy, Rufus, who had met an odd little character named Flook in a dream, only to find his new friend beside his bed when he woke up next morning...

'Ever written the script for a strip?' Wally enquire casually.

'Can't say I have.'

'Want to have a go? It pays quite well. Seven guineas a week, probably.'

He immediately had all my attention.

'Who's doing it now?'

Wally gazed out the window.

'At this moment, nobody,' he said dreamily. 'A fellow in the advertising department, called Douglas Mount thought it up, after Rothermere came back from a trip to the States impressed by a strip over there about a boy called Barnaby who had a magical fairy godfather. Doug's been writing the story for the past couple of months, but he's had a nervous breakdown or something, and he's disappeared - gone to South America, I think.'

'Why don't you write it yourself?'

'Look, with Humph and the band two nights a week, and the odd concert, it takes me all my time to draw it, without worrying about the story. How about it?'

'I'll have a shot at it," I said, thinking of the seven guineas. 'Fill me in on where we are.'

'Well,' said Wally, 'the old boy is a rich philanthropist who finds Rufus and Flook wandering about London and persuades them to come and stay with them in his big house. He's very sad about something, and hopes they'll cheer him up.'

'What's he worried about?'

'I'm not sure,' admitted Wally.

'And where's he off to now? What's he telling them?'

Wally looked into the distance. 

'I haven't any idea. That's what I asked you up here for.'

'Oh well, I suppose we can come up with something,' I said uncertainly, and started towards the door. 'I'll have a think and give you a call next week.'

Wally turned and stared at me.

'I don't think you've got the idea. I've got to finish this strip now. They're waiting for it downstairs in the block room. (Pregnant pause.) It's in tomorrow's paper.'

There was a long silence. Before I could get a word out the phone on Wally's desk rang. He picked it up and listened, gazing at the wall.

'It'll be there,' he finally mumbled, and hung up. 'They've got to have it in half an hour. So what do I put in that last balloon?'

[...]

I tried to think of all the strips I had ever read. I knew that if I got the Mail out of this jam the scriptwriting job was mine. I paced up and down a few times.

'Right! Here's what we do. The old boy says: Make yourselves at home while I'm away, boys, but - '

The phone rang again.

'Leave the receiver off', said Wally, glancing at the clock and starting to letter the caption in the balloon. 'But what?'

'- BUT STAY OUT OF THE EAST WING!'

'Great!' said Wally, lettering rapidly. 'What's in the East Wing?'

'I haven't any idea,' I said, 'but give me a day or so and I'll think of something'. 

That story is told, by the way, on pp. 58-62. Obviously fifty years or however long later Raymond didn't have the actual strip in question to hand, and his recollection of it is wrong but it's more or less true in spirit (or, this is a redrawing done for the American run of the strip two years later). (I guess I'll find out when I get my hundred dollar Flook book in the mail someday). 

I think I also need to purchase these Robert Raymond memoirs. Intriguingly he mentions somewhere in there that he was the author of the main book mentioned by George Orwell in his 'Decline of the English Murder' essay. I have to get to the bottom of that because I think it must have been published under a pseudonym (he doesn't even list it in his bibliography, despite claiming in the text to be the author - ?!). (Maybe I misread it - maybe he just covered the case in the newspapers). 

rain stopped play

Woke early with every intention of taking extended Royal Park walk and just nipped out to get some extra stuff in the garbage and found big drops coming down and then within minutes it was raining extremely heavily, wetting-the-enclosed-verandah heavily. I might be able to get waterproof enough to withstand it (I don't have any galoshes though) but decided nah just wait a while. 

'I saw youse, beneath the cashews'

Yesterday Helmi, the little shit, swiped Nancy to the extent her (H's) claw got stuck in her (N's) side fur. I don't think the claw went in, but it left a disturbing looking mark in the textured surface. I am not going to make excuses for H but N did give her a fright by jumping on the bed unannounced (they do give each other verbal signals a lot of the time, and I stupidly figure sometimes their sounds are for me, sometimes for each other). N is I think a bit scared of H who is unpredictable because she is so anxious but once again, no excuses. Maybe H will never settle down. 

I did some very minor tidying, shirt ironing, fridge clean-outing, etcetera and couldn't find a record I wanted to listen to (Monday, fuck, worst day for new podcasts I tell you what). (I'm almost ready to resubscribe to audible, I stopped mainly because I was so pissed off by their constant emails telling me Charles Dickens had a new book out). (Also I didn't like paying regular mun to amazon but jeez - how can you even slightly control where you send your mun). For a long time I used to think not being able to find a record to listen to considering I have more than umpteen (and in fact I finally bought that M2 box set yesterday - five albums of music I will probably often enjoy - but I just don't feel like it) meant I was some kind of brain damaged lord fauntleroy but now I realise sometimes you just don't feel like listening to a record. Oh yeah! I cracked another side of the Peter Laughner box set last night, the third LP I think with the versions of the Velvets' 'Rock 'n' Roll' and the Mott the Hoople cover and 'All Along the Watchtower'. Oddly enough since I can't really care much about 'AATW' it was the best of the three IMO, very fine dynamics!!! I can't believe I'm thinking things like that let alone saying them. But it was a pretty appealing LP side. And I finally read the book that came with the box, which to be honest I wouldn't be at all surprised if it wasn't just a CD booklet blown up, the text is huge. Interesting but huge. In one sense it's weird (man, is that my word of 2020 or what) to think that Laughner coexisted with (for instance) Allen Ravenstine - I came across a Ravenstine album I have as well, while I was looking for a record to play this morning, and I didn't play it - but then again, in Melbourne we will have freeform improvisational stuff in amongst rehearsed 'classic' pop on a bill and we would recognise the distinction and contrast but not, you know, vomit in fear. Ultimately the record I did play was a French Canadian folk album which was actually pretty good, I don't remember buying it I have no idea why I did. 

I hope it stops raining anyway as I want to go around the park and get my 'steps' in. 

sunday walk

Walked to the market. For once and just for fun I went to the weird traffic island at what used to be the thriving intersection known as the Haymarket. Now it's the kind of junction you avoid if you can, because it's puke. 

Speaking of puke, what is this stuff coming out of the building site just south of there. People could slip over in that puke. 

You know I never really thought much about the street cafe scene on the Victoria st side of the QVM, but I guess it's here. Now I don't eat bread, barely eat pasta, etc etc I have no special reason to go to the delicatessen section of the market. And for that matter I wasn't all that tempted by the other stuff - just bought a cauliflower, some broccoli, some carrots, I forget what else. 

This is coming back through campus and crossing Grattan St, looking down towards the hospital direction. 

They've gutted the building known as the ERC - I read some grand Victorian (-era) novels here ten or more years ago and now it's a husk. 

 I did some more walking later but it was even less interesting than this walking, sorry. 

big day out

 

My story begins at the Broadmeadows Shopping Centre though of course like all stories there is a preface of I guess not only millions of years of life on Earth but also God's infinite existence, but let's start where my story begins, at the Broadmeadows Shopping Centre. Faffing around like an old fool at JB trying to get the cheapest easiest earbuds (ugh I hate that term) for my phone, which means actually buying an adaptor and then getting cheap 'n' nasty old-school product. I didn't want bluetooth nothing (yes I do have bluetooth things somewhere, but where are they? Answer me that and then we don't have to have a terse exchange). I knew I would be doing a fair bit of walking today and I wanted to listen to podcasts or whatever. (I say whatever, but all I ended up listening to was podcasts.) So here I am wandering through the BSC after buying something for that purpose, also, some dog biscuits. I had about 25c in 5c pieces jangling away in my pocket for the guide dog dog into whose head you put money. It's good luck I know 25c isn't much but it adds up if you do it every time for fear of having bad luck. Next slide please.

This is the argument I was having at the same time. I always try to have an argument with some drone from Optus every day, it keeps them on their toes and keeps my bile up. 

I took Barry and Ferdie out for a little walk, and as is now my wont I let them go into the water. It was quite a warm day (it got warmer, this is only midday) but Barry did not want to go into the water, just potter around the edge. They were panting quickly though and they both drank deep from their water bowl when they got back. 

I decided after this to walk to Glenroy which means first of all crossing Jacana Reserve (this picture is a bit of an illusion, there's a big drop between the green grass and the yellowed bit which is much further away, I saw that and can't unsee it but I am not sure how it looks to you, just imagine the second tree from the right is absolutely on the edge of a steep hill, and when I say imagine, it's not a lie. 

Emu Parade shops, a late 1950s Housing Commission construction which has never really been a jumpin' joint in my experience, though someone there was smart enough to register the name Broady Pizza and that was, well, smart. Hard to conceive of this now but whereas Jacana is the very southernmost tip of the City of Hume today and for many Hume is really two major centres - Sunbury and Broadmeadows - the old Broadmeadows council went much further south. It unnecessarily irritates me that the true fact is often stated that, until Hume set up the Broadmeadows library there was no library at Broadmeadows. And there wasn't! But Broadmeadows CC ran at least two libraries - at Fawkner and Glenroy - because Broadmeadows wasn't really where the population was. OK enough defending Broadmeadows CC for now. Don't really know what this landscaping etc is about (in the top picture) but seriously, that vacant land on the right which I think was once a petrol station (never in my Jacana experience, so more than 15 years) has been vacant too long. It should be a groovy vegan cafe and record shop, shouldn't it. 

So many great brick HCV houses in Jacana, it was probably one of the last bastions of brick HCV before they went concrete (as they did over the railway line within years). This one has a name, 'Jallen'. 

This is not a house but a tree with a really nice view. I have probably mentioned this before, I don't know what happened here, it was a weatherboard house probably from the 1920s that burned down about a decade ago. Surely foul play of some sort. I met a man there, when the house was still standing, who claimed to be the owner, he told me that there was an old saying in Greek that you needed three things in life, friends, cunt and money, which was not as far as I'm concerned the sort of thing you say to a stranger, probably not even a friend, and certainly not the kind of thing you write on a blog for anyone to see. He was complaining that he was not being enabled by council to pull down the house and build something else on it, and now the house is not there, but I don't see anyone trying to build anything on it, so what's that about? 

As you probably know when the Bolte government considered ways to get people to and from the new Tullamarine Jetport, dedicated 1959, a significant amount of land was reserved from the Broadmeadows line just south of Jacana station (which actually opened that year) to the airport. Presumably most of it was sold yonks ago, but this little patch was only developed a few years ago and currently looks like this. It is called something ridiculous like Coupling Lane which sounds a bit, hmm, not heteronormative but at least relationshiponormative. It should have been called Friends, Cunt and Money Avenue. Why? Well, it has a tree in it, that makes it an avenue. Avenue been told that's what makes an avenue? 

So I crossed the railway line. This is in the yard of the house in Glenroy where these people live: 

Glenroy has a lot of good weatherboard houses like for instance this one:

I know what you're going to say but I kind of like the idea of these flats, too, in Pascoe Vale Road:

Then I went to the two Glenroy op shops. I hope never to see this film. I only photographed it in case I was ever challenged at a dinner party to provide an example to counter the claim that 'everyone who ever wrote the text on the front of a DVD never made a mistake in punctuation'. 

I didn't buy this either though I probably should have. 

What the hell was being implied by the shapes formed by the song titles? Also, who is more objectified by this, the woman or the mop? Assuming neither of them is actually Ken Griffin. OK, next slide please. 

Look I now can't remember what this cafe used to be called, I have remarked about it en blog in temps passe and it will probably come to me. But calling it "21 Days Later" seems zany, I mean why not just go the whole hog and name it after a real dystopian horror film? 'Meet you at Night of the Living Dead!' I didn't go in, it looked a little sad in there but I think that's covid trading, not any reflection on the current owners. 

Glenroy underpass, which everyone loves. I suspect its days are numbered however as there is presently a skyrail solution to the very real shithouseness of the Glenroy level crossing. What worries me more is what this means for... 

The Rotary Centre, a pretty decent op shop for a long time now, is no longer trading. I have a sense that this building is actually pretty old, though I concede it doesn't necessarily look it. I have a feeling it hasn't got long. I wish I could remember something I got there when it was an op shop that sparked joy but to be honest, nah. It had a certain something though. 

Behind you! 

So we shall see where this ends up. Meanwhile, over the road from this sign/site, the weird phenomenon of the other big Glenroy supermarket that was a kind of bizarro world 'how does it make money' place, presently I suspect fixing to die (it's certainly not trading any more):

Kept walking down towards Oak Park, stopping in at the beach for a relax. 

Travelled all the way to Kensington on the train, during which time I heard from a lovely girl who just wants to be friends: 

Apparently she lives in Bendigo now but she was originally from Narrogin in WA, which is about an hour's drive north of Katanning, where I have been, but I don't think I've been to Narrogin. I wonder why she wants to be my friend and what she has just for me. Sadly I have too many friends so I had to decline. 

I wish this story had a good solid ending, maybe you're just happy it has any kind of ending whatever it is. I went to Cheaper Buy Miles and KFL Kensington (no relation at all, as far as I'm aware, to KFL Glenroy) and then I got the tram back because my feet hurt and my shopping bag was heavy. Curiously, just as I got back to Parkville I saw an instagram post from the national archives showing the cast of Aunty Jack, which I recently found out something interesting about (and put on the Aunty Jack wikipedia page). Did you know that the first Aunty Jack outing on Australian (naturally) TV was on the same night that Monty Python was first shown on Australian TV? Well, anyway... 

That's not a good ending to my story of my day out, but it'll have to do you. 

thank god, he's back to cats

I have never seen this cat so relaxed. I would not be surprised actually if she had only just learnt to lie like this. Oddly enough she was curled up next to me and I said her name and she started flicking her tail, then she decided to do this. It's no biggie in the scheme of things in the world but she is a super-highly strung animal and I think it's great that she feels secure enough to lie flat. I had to take this picture with my computer as my phone is charging in the kitchen. Hence the slightly odd angle sorry. I hope you can't see how dirty the cats make my sheets. But you know I drew your attention to it so it can't bother me that much.

I can hear the people downstairs' baby crying. It's weird how I can only hear this at certain times of the day, is it because the baby only cries sometimes, or is it an acoustic ambience thing? 

Oh by the way I think Nancy is on the floor, in a patch of sunlight. That's her morning. We are all very attuned to each other in this house whether we like it/each other or not. Nancy will prioritise sunlight over anything and everything, and can't help meowing in what I assume is pleasure (god, I hope it's not discomfort/sadness/pain) as she [what's a less tortuous-sounding word than 'writhes?] in it. 

ottawa evening citizen, 5 april 1952 p. 24

 

Robert Raymond was an Australia journalist, founder of Four Corners... you don't need me to just funnel what wikipedia says. What wikipedia doesn't say - and surely it can't just be a name coincidence - that his daughters are Vicki and Candy Raymond. Anyway, the Flook-Four Corners connection is my biggest discovery of the day. 

Age Green Guide 25 July 1963, plus ca friggin' change

Age Green Guide 6 February 1975

SMH 7 Feb 1976

Sydney Sun-Herald 28 September 1969. I guess kind of what I'm wondering is whether Vicki was the model for Ermine. I think Vicki is older, if she's 21 in 1969 though she was 4 in 1952 so probably nah. Got to fix up these people's wiki pages though, they are b-a-d.  

Update 20/11 omg Erwin Knoll!

flook - end of 'volcano island' sequence (or is it?)

All the little identical Ermine-produced quintuplets are weirdly dead-eyed (even in the fourth strip, and until at least the first frame of the last strip above) which is curious (maybe that's what being named after dead animal skin does to you) and Rufus has gone from child in the 15 January strip to a small 40 year old buff man in the 16 January. 

I know, I know... if Ermine was kidnapped from an obscenely rich man, why was she then sold to a 'chief' (or whatever) as a 'daughter' (whatever that means) rather than ransomed and where is said 'chief' now, and why did Mossy Mildew's interest hinge not on the kidnaping but on the golden volcano... gah, not even worth thinking or talking about, it's presumably just guff written on the fly perhaps even deliberately a melange of cliches. 

I am going to stop this rampant reproduction of old Flook for the time being because you know I don't want my blog to become one of those Flookfests (germ: Zufallsfest), and I'm aware that people are more interested generally in the behaviour of my cats. I may return to it though. You have been warned lol.