Look At This! It’s A Thing!

I am the shill, hear me roar!

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An orangutan unimpressed with my roar

So here again is a small excerpt from my book which got published, and you can even buy it right here. It’s all about magic, love, drugs and the pursuit of something, anything, beyond the humdrum. It’s about how imagination is a powerful force for both creation and destruction.

Vurt is raging now, preaching about the evils of cocaine, of billy, the evils of all drugs.

“It’s all just sloppy! Sloppy and messy. Look at yourselves choking and gacking and sweating.   Don’t you get it? There’s nothing cool about this. This is too easy, too obvious. Anybody can take cocaine!” His podgy face is patched with red and he is lurching about the kitchen in a frenzy of belief. I shimmy over to the breakfast counter, lick my finger and dip it into the powder sack. Cant makes his way over and is looking at me all cute-eyed and squirmy. I hold out my white-coated finger to him.

“Suck on it rich boy.”

He narrows his eyes, takes my hand in his and my finger into his mouth. His tongue is rough like a cat’s. He starts gagging, flailing around for something to take away the taste. I jive away across the kitchen. Vurt is still preaching, so I put my hands on his shoulders and dance in time to his words.

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Or if spending money seems a bit drastic, then there’s the easier way of getting more of my writing and hearing about my new project as it happens, by signing up here.  This is perfectly safe, and I won’t spam you with lots of emails, I’ll only write when I’m doing something interesting.

 

Frogs and Caterpillars

Today was a good day for wildlife, so I thought I’d share. I hope no one has the heebies jeebies about the above animals, ‘cos here are some…

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Tropical Caterpillars
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A Caterpillar with many horns and spikes

I saw a dark shape sitting amongst my orchid roots…

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Mysterious blob

I was a bit alarmed, then saw it was a frog, frogs are great.

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Beautiful Creatures

Continuing my celebration of Monday good things…

I took this photo at work.  We have a tropical butterfly event on at the moment, and I saw this one just sitting on a flower with its tongue out. I think it may have got drunk on the nectar.

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And below are some pictures of the butterfly pupae after we stuck them onto canes, ready to go into the puparium to hatch. Some look like leaves in order to hide from predators. Sometimes I find the butterflies can be annoying, smelly and a bit icky; so it’s good to remember that they are also beautiful and fascinating.

 

Please tell me about a good thing on your Monday, no matter how small.

 

I Want to Introduce You to Victor

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Victor has been in my life now for over twenty years. Most of the time he has that look of quiet, patient dignity, occasionally it changes to a look of suppressed rage or weary indignation. Here he is looking natty and cool in a baseball cap. For twenty years I have kept him hidden away, a secret all mine. Now I think I need to share him with the world, I’m not sure what the world will do with him, but let’s find out.

This is Victor the Head. He will be back soon.

Banishing Gloom – a Monday Good Thing

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A lot of bad things have been happening in the world recently, and now it’s cold, everyone is miserable and I keep forgetting to notice all the good things that are around me.

So I’m going to make a point of, every Monday, posting something good from the week. Either a photo, an observation, a piece of news or a delightful fact.

So what about you, what has brightened up your Monday? What good things are in your life right now?

If anyone feels like joining in, that would be fantastic, I’m happy to link or feature.

This Monday’s good thing, some photos of the frost where I work…

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The Abandoned Hotel

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“Jess?”

“Hmm?”

“You remember the hotel?”

“Which one?”

“The haunted one.”

“Oh that. It wasn’t haunted, it just had squatters.”

“Squatters don’t howl like that.”

“Sure they do.”

“Squatters don’t make you shiver like that.”

“No, but being soaked through and standing in a derelict and draughty hotel can.” She sat up and stared at David. He was gazing into the distance with a look that would have been dramatic if it wasn’t so obviously rehearsed. “It was just a building, David. It’s fine.”

“Some places you can’t ever really come back from,” he said still staring straight ahead. She wasn’t impressed with his melodrama anymore and just assumed the faint flicker of darkness in his eyes was a trick of the light.

Petra Jacob hotel

Photos my own

Just a Brief Warning…

Over the next few weeks I’m going to clean up my blog a little and remove a few of the old stories. I’m going to take off Henry the Psychic Goat and a few of the longer, older stories (eg In the Sphere, The Corporation will Always Win, Not Awake) so if you think you’d like to check them out, then now is the time.

This is not the most exciting post ever, so here is a picture of a parrot scratching it head.really-scratching-2