Computer. Book.
This was going to be a joyous post about a book. Still is, kind of. It's the first weekend I've been at home for a very long time. I have good bread, chocolate, lemon tarte, strawberries, cheese, olives. I'm not working tomorrow or Monday, and I'm taking the R6 for her MOT on Monday too: we'll be back on the road. (And I got the wiring harness and the carbs back on the Katana last Sunday.) And next weekend, next weekend - not only am I at home again, q_i is here too.
But. I have major computer issues. I deleted a whole long paragraph here, you don't need to know. It's not making me happy.
This did, though. It's a book called The Soul of the White Ant. It was written in 1937, by Eugene N. Marais, and it's a meditation - a naturalist's handbook, a poem, a anthropology, an ethnology - on the life of the termite. Marais spent ten years observing termites: the book is a slow, lovingly constructed distillation of those years.
"What South African child has never seen the toktokkie and heard him make his knock? Your eye suddenly falls on him in the road or beside it. If he does not get a fright and fall down dead with stiff legs as dead as the deadest toktokkie which ever lived -- then you see him knock, and of course hear him, too. He looks round for some hard object, a piece of earth or a stone, and knocks against it with the last segment of his body -- three, four, four, three! This is his Morse Code. He then listens for a moment or two, turning rapidly in many directions. His behaviour is ridiculously human. His whole body becomes an animated question mark. You can almost hear him saying:
'I'm positive I heard her knock! Where can she be? There, I hear it again!'
He answers with three hard knocks, and then he betakes himself off in great haste and runs a yard or two. He then repeats the signal in order to get a further true direction, and so he continues until at last he arrives at his loved one's side."
The full text is on line here.
It's an unexpected delight, this book. I have, too, a new book about Franklin and the North West passage (The Man who Ate His Boots) which displays old news in a most engaging style, and Edward Larson's An Empire of Ice, a new analysis of Scott's scientific endeavours. Thus, you see, I prepare myself for the possiblity of both PC and internet failing altogether.
In the knowledge that I may not be able to reply... people, what are you reading just now?
But. I have major computer issues. I deleted a whole long paragraph here, you don't need to know. It's not making me happy.
This did, though. It's a book called The Soul of the White Ant. It was written in 1937, by Eugene N. Marais, and it's a meditation - a naturalist's handbook, a poem, a anthropology, an ethnology - on the life of the termite. Marais spent ten years observing termites: the book is a slow, lovingly constructed distillation of those years.
"What South African child has never seen the toktokkie and heard him make his knock? Your eye suddenly falls on him in the road or beside it. If he does not get a fright and fall down dead with stiff legs as dead as the deadest toktokkie which ever lived -- then you see him knock, and of course hear him, too. He looks round for some hard object, a piece of earth or a stone, and knocks against it with the last segment of his body -- three, four, four, three! This is his Morse Code. He then listens for a moment or two, turning rapidly in many directions. His behaviour is ridiculously human. His whole body becomes an animated question mark. You can almost hear him saying:
'I'm positive I heard her knock! Where can she be? There, I hear it again!'
He answers with three hard knocks, and then he betakes himself off in great haste and runs a yard or two. He then repeats the signal in order to get a further true direction, and so he continues until at last he arrives at his loved one's side."
The full text is on line here.
It's an unexpected delight, this book. I have, too, a new book about Franklin and the North West passage (The Man who Ate His Boots) which displays old news in a most engaging style, and Edward Larson's An Empire of Ice, a new analysis of Scott's scientific endeavours. Thus, you see, I prepare myself for the possiblity of both PC and internet failing altogether.
In the knowledge that I may not be able to reply... people, what are you reading just now?