Blobby thing

Pliny and Nostradamus walked from Semaphore South to Largs this afternoon. When Pliny's eye was on the horizon, Nostradamus's was on the sand.

Pliny saw the wide blue sky, 49 yachts, the amethyst sea, 9 children playing in the shallows, copper coloured wavelets, heaps of tealeaf seaweed, weeping sands, her own feet.

Nostradamus saw a blobby thing on the sand, grey and dotted like a beche de mer. He saw hundreds of transparent kidneyshaped jellyfish at the water's edge. Pliny has no doubt that he saw many other things as well.

Bee Jesus

Pliny went to a Lunch Hour Concert this afternoon, with his mum. They heard Messiaen's "In praise of the eternity of Jesus" and "In praise of the immortality of Jesus".

Pliny wondered how the eternity of Jesus could be different from the immortality of Jesus, and why either of these things needed praising.

While he was pondering these ineffable mysteries, a bee came and sat on his head. At least he thought it was a bee, but it was a fly.

Marigolds

More evidence to support the Orange hypothesis.

1.Nostradamus and I drank apricot and lemon juice on Wednesday evening.

2. We both noticed , as we were returning our glasses to the kitchen , that the not yet disposed of washing up water from dinner time was ringed with orange tomato paste scum.

3. I noticed it again when I tipped it out next morning onto the marigolds.

YouTube

So Pliny has discovered YouTube! I do feel bad now. Annoyed too. He's only just got off the computer after spending all morning looking at YouTube bugs. He was particularly taken with a red and yellow bug that 2 Spanish motor cyclists had filmed in the middle of the road eating another bug exactly like itself. Exactly, except that it was dead and more than half eaten, and could easily have been a piece of bread. But that's YouTube, as Pliny will have to learn.

Natural Wonders

In the days when I was writing my Natural Histories, we had no knowledge of the Galapagos Islands, and so I was inspired, when I saw a program on the television recently about these islands, to visit the Library and find out more about the wonderful birds, animals, fish, rocks and volcanoes of these regions that were hitherto unknown to me.

I little suspected the wonders that awaited me at the Library.

The Librarian introduced me to the internet and showed me how to seek out information by merely typing a few keywords into a line at the top of the screen. I duly entered the word Galapagos and added for further exactitude the letters BBC.

To my surprise I was led to a site that showed me identical versions of the opening scenes from the television program with alternative musical accompaniments. It seems there had been a competition to choose the most suitable music and both the winner and one of the losers had posted their entries thereon.

From there my eye was led to a sidebar with the intriguing title of "Self Inflating Fish!". I clicked on it and was delighted when I was shown an otter seeking to bite into a puffer fish which immediately inflated itself to the size of a man's head and floated tantalisingly ahead of the otter who was unable to get his teeth into the poisonous fish.

Next I sought to view a site that promised to show me The World's Weirdest Animals ,and indeed, many of these were astonishing, including a half horse, a half crocodile-half man, and a fish with the face of a woman.

But not so astonishing as the creatures on the next site I visited, which was called Plants with Eyes. These plants were clearly shown to have functioning eyes, opening and shutting and in some cases altering size. I cannot but believe this to be a true depiction of a natural marvel of which I was entirely ignorant before. They also go by another name which is Anime.

Gaius Plinius Secundus

He seems a little glum

Pliny the Elder has been rather quiet lately, ever since that meeting. I wish I hadn't mentioned 79BC, particularly as I got the date wrong. It was 79AD that he died in the volcano. So perhaps it was mere bravado that he pretended not to know what I was talking about.

To cheer him up I asked him if he would like to write tomorrow's blog and he looked really happy after that. He's gone to the Library to do some research. I didn't like to tell him about the internet search engines. What a disaster if he should accidentally google himself.

Pliny's orange hypothesis

Pliny's mum had not paid enough attention to the colour component of the Sunday dinner. With bright orange sweet and sour chicken, and extra carrots, she served large glasses of orange juice, followed by tinned peach dessert.

Later they were watching a program about the Galapagos Islands on TV. The iguanas were orangey-brown and the sunset was golden-red. Even the joints of the tiny underwater seaspiders looked like miniature glowing apricots. And there were volcanoes, all around.

Pliny began to formulate an hypothesis, that the colour of ingested food might be related to the perception of colour immediately afterwards. She would have liked to test her hypothesis but she needed someone not to have eaten the dinner.

Cataclysm

On Sunday Pliny went to Brighton. He was astonished to see, lining the shore, stones the size of small potatoes, to each of which was attached a shock of bright green seaweed hair.

He concluded these were heads of small mermaids, who had suffered cataclysmic fright.

Pliny questions himself

Pliny: I seem to be three different people here.

Pliny: Yes.

Pliny: So do I.

Pliny: I need to sort myself out.

Pliny: Sometimes I'm Lynn, a woman living in Australia, who calls herself Pliny.

Pliny: Yes, And sometimes I'm her alter ego, whom she calls Pliny.

Pliny: Whom, I like that. And sometimes I'm the real Pliny, the well-known natural historian from antiquity.

Pliny: Oh! Didn't you die in 79BC when Mt Vesuvius erupted ?

Pliny: 79BC ! What's that?

Pliny: Perhaps it was the name of your little boat. You saved people in it.

Pliny: Did I ? Anyway, are we less confused?

Pliny: Yes

Metamorphosis.

This afternoon I went to Henley Beach. I observed on the sand a seaweed collection in the shape of a crab. Pliny thinks this will become a real living crab when the tide comes in.

I saw a shell I liked. It was yellow, grey, white. Pliny would have picked it up. I decided to pick it up on the way back if it was still there. It wasn't. Pliny was sad.

Pliny was walking with Nostradamus, who was looking at the sky. " Is that a Virgin or a Quantas?" asked Nostradamus. " Virgins are red", replied Pliny.

What deserves to be written

Pliny went to a Lunch Hour Concert yesterday. It was an organ recital. She expected to be looking at the organ, listening to the music, idly counting the pipes. But there were 2 screens on the stage, showing the hands and feet of the organist. Pliny was entranced by the dancing feet of the organist, in their shiny black shoes. They hardly seemed to touch the pedals, and yet they produced the heaviest notes.