The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

While the world has been busy going to hell in a hand basket, Izzie has been busy with trivia and distractions such as reading, listening to gloom and doom on the radio or playing Sudoku or Mastermind. I discovered these latter two are great for trying to remain the present moment unless that time includes listening to Radio National. Then they are no good at all and gardening is a much more compatible activity as I have found that it is possible to concentrate on listening to the words or doing the puzzle but not both at the same time. Rather like listening to talkback radio while reading the paper. Such attempts at multi tasking merely lead to frustration and the realisation that in attempting to do both at the same time, I have ended up with the benefits of neither.

That is probably where doodling or the current colouring in craze come in handy. They don’t require the same parts of the brain used for processing spoken or written words.

( Scrabbling Serpent )

The serpent’s sorting and decluttering schedule has well and truly been derailed by a certain toadish creature who shall remain nameless. Not only has it all come to an abrupt end but the Izzie has regressed to some ridiculously silly and irrational behaviour in the last four weeks or so.

Started off so well this month with all those good intentions not to buy any munchies other than milk and the occasional loaf of bread and certainly no books of any kind unless acquiring book cases or shelves to put them in.

Of course each one of these new books in itself is harmless enough. It is the slowly accumulating collection that is the problem and the increasing tendency to start a story but not to finish it. Already abandoned Stephen King’s “Cell” for something shorter and snappier as the story seems to be taking ages to get moving along. His short stories are definitely much better than most of the novels.

It started ever so innocently last Wednesday with a walk past the gorgeous good old fashioned Elizabeth’s book shop. There was a big stash of bargain basement books most of which were dust covered pulp fiction. One of these included the intriguingly titled “Interview with the Vampire” by one Anne Rice. This story has rather a good reputation and with a price tag of a mere two silver sickles plus a desire to banish the memories of sparkly silliness, it was just too good to resist. A bunch of American atheist vampires are much more interesting than bright and shiny sparkly special snow flakes. A rave review on the inside page from “The Catholic Herald” proved to be temptation beyond endurance.

( Angels and Devils )