The Gonzo Daily - Boxing Day
We had a lovely, quiet family Christmas Day. I
spoke to Karl Shuker in the afternoon, and he asked me what my plans were for
the rest of the day. I answered: "I have the new Frederick Forsyth novel, and
three bottles of bourbon as Christmas presents. You guess." But I was being
facetious. My days of downing multiple bottles of anything on Christmas Day are
thankfully long gone. So we pottered, played with the dogs and watched TV
including the rather disappointing Dr Who Christmas special. (So the Time Lords
just GAVE him another cycle of regenerations. You cannae change the laws of
physics, Captain. Not unless you are a Time Lord or a BBC executive wanting to
carry on a lucrative franchise).
But this morning was something else. My greatest
hero; the late, great Gerald Durrell; once wrote (I think in Menagerie Manor)
that animals always choose the most inconvenient and expensive times to become ill.
Ever since we have had her Prudence has had a large and completely benign
dangling wart on her inner front leg. It is completely harmless so we have
ignored it. However, in bed last night, she managed to scratch it, and when I
awoke this morning our bedroom looked as if the Manson Family had been playing
Musical Chairs in it. Pru (although apparently in no discomfort whatsoever) had
bled copiously and then rolled in it, so the bed and the dog were both covered
in blood, which was continuing to drip enthusiastically from the
wart.
Luckily my stepdaughter is a vet (and a bloody good
one) and she talked Graham through the procedure of tying off the wart with a
ligature, which slowed the bleeding down but didn't stop it. So we telephoned
the emergency vet, and bundled Pru into Graham's car and took her down to
Stratton (outside Bude) to the emergency surgery. The vet complimented Graham on
his handiwork, augmented it with a ligature that wasn't using Corinna's
embroidery silk, patted Pru on the head and charged me £108. The joys of animal
ownership, eh?
Happy Boxing Day.
* The Gonzo Daily is a two-way process. If you have any news or want to
write for us, please contact me at
jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and
want to showcase your work or even just say hello, please write to me at
gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and
spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to
read us in order to grow and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more
traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we
all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...
* The
Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about
artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has
other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly
newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this
link:
www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
* We should probably mention here that some of our posts are links to
things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not
responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest
guv!
* Jon Downes, the editor of all these ventures (and several
others), is an old hippy of 54 who - together with his orange cat (who is
currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small kittens (one of
whom is also orange) - puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a
tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon, which he shares with various fish and
sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna,
his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law and a motley collection
of social malcontents. Plus... did we mention the orange cat?
