Black Doggerel

My mother's been clearing out an enormous cupboard in my sister's old bedroom. I say cupboard; it's bigger than my utility room and the entire family has been using it as a dumping ground since forever. This is what came to light today: some early photos of me with hawks.

There aren't any of the redtail I think of as my real hawk, my Camilla. John and I had custody of those, and his sister threw them all away when she cleared out their mother's flat after her death. These are of my first hawk, a European Buzzard called Morgan that I had for three years before Camilla. Morgan was fun; resilient, even-tempered and lazy, possessed of every bad habit I had to learn to teach a bird not to have, and although she remained resolutely uninterested in hunting anything larger than mice, she was a damn good teacher.

( Here be the pics )

Today I officially love Facebook. I've always been massively wary of getting in contact with anyone I went to school with, for a bunch of reasons - we change so very, very much, we're all basically dickheads as teenagers, and my school career can be succinctly described as nasty, brutish and short.

Nevertheless, two people I was at school with have tracked me down anyway. One, Carolyn, was my BFF at prep school when we were both pony-mad prepubescents. I am enormously tickled to discover that she's still into horses, has herding dogs and keeps bees. I can't exactly say we know each other well any more, but she's plainly awesome.

She was someone I played pretending games and made up stories with. That, far more than ponies or even sheepdogs, is the thread between us that hasn't snapped in thirty years.

The other friend, Sarah, went to my last school when we were both in our mid-to-late teens. My memory of those times is spotty at best; I didn't know it at the time but I was already starting to fall through the cracks in my own brain. That last school was a good one, but the two before it had left me skittish as a trapped wild animal; I didn't have enough trust or resilience left to let it do me any good. I ran like hell the moment I could and never went back.

Today Sarah showed me a scan of a painting I did for her at the time. I am awed. See, I don't have any of my old work left any more, and haven't had for decades. For a long time now I've been certain my memories of being able to produce good work were false, the same as my memories of flying.

Except, bugger me, they're not. I can remember doing that painting, although without seeing it again I would never have remembered what it looked like or what I was trying to do. I don't really remember if I felt I'd succeeded at the time, but looking at it now, I certainly succeeded at something. And I think I might be able to use it to rediscover the part of me that's capable of doing that; because these unkept promises have been sitting here a year now. I haven't forgotten.

Thank you, Sarah <3

I remember it vividly from when I stopped using heroin: that slow surge back to life of passions dropped on the journey. ( Cut for verbosity )

...how the hell do you make 20 minutes of video take up 4GB? The wedding's on TWO DVDs and my media player wouldn't even play it till I'd copied the first half to my hard drive. And I can't copy the second half till I've made some space.

There were people I wanted to show this to. Some of you were there. The only way I can see it being possible is to mail you copies, though.

I just came back from shopping with Mum, and realised I'm completely out of sugar.

No, I didn't buy any, why do you ask?


I have here a DVD that should have my wedding video on it, converted from the VHS tape to an .avi file. I ought to put it into my DVD drive, if only to check that the shop haven't messed up or got it wrong somehow. So far, I have failed to do this.

So I was talking to deathwokclan, and I go to Youtube to show her the Spike tuggy video. And while I'm there, I'm distracted by a National Geographic video of an eagle hunting a chevrotain, and then it occurs to me that I could do a Youtube search for "falconry", and I wonder why I never thought of it before. I'm not usually so slow to find new ways to torture myself.

Edited to add:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34SO5LbZx3s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M2OLYG694Q - includes working ferrets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnWeN02DLmU

These killed me. They're English. I might even have met the guy, though I can't tell. Don't click the first two if you have a problem with furry mammal death. This isn't a display at a fair, it's the real thing. That was my life. Third one is a redtail, which is what mine was.

I love playing around with LJ tags. I just created a new one, and I'm gambling that the person it refers to will a. know exactly who he is, b. see this and comment and c. get exactly why I chose that particular phrase.

Love you, still. *evil grin*



P.S. I mistyped that as "evil groin" the first time round. *smirk*

Calling peladon, Bill and maybe watervole too - do you recall the saga of Dorian di Chrysaetos and Jehanne de Valerian?

I still refuse to use her married name. That marriage was annulled, and I was furious when the newsletter referred to her as Jehanne Morgan when they printed our obituaries - ironically, on the same page as our marriage announcement. Damn them, our marriage was the legal one, short as it was... I'd have protested, but for being dead and all.

I'm back in the roleplaying saddle, that's all, and seeing certain parallels. It makes me want to reminisce. I wish to hell I still had the love letters I wrote her. I wish I hadn't destroyed so many brain cells in the intervening years.

Apologies to the 98.9% of the f-list who have no idea what I'm talking about and care less. I'll try not to do it again.