How to use a chair

Firefighters in Manchester can't use new £400 chairs until they go through training

HOW TO USE A CHAIR

• Place your personal issue head protector onto the chair prior to use


• Sit fully back onto the chair seat and get ready to recline


• To release the mechanism simply lift the lever under the right hand arm of the chair


• To fully recline the chair hold onto the arm rests and push backwards


• To upright the chair, the occupant should sit up slightly into the semi-reclined position, hold on to the armrest then press downwards with their heels until the action locks chair into flush position

The Lottery

Last month, there was a discussion on The Perfect World about "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. The discussion led me to Jackson's essay "Biography of a Story" in Come Along With Me. This essay is well worth seeking out - it is about the aftermath of the publishing of "The Lottery" in The New Yorker. The reactions of the readers is fascinating. The rest of the book is good too, with a number of short stories I hadn't read before and a few other essays.

For a great parody of "The Lottery", check out JennyD's post on The Perfect World.

A fresh look at an old classic

Just finished reading My Dearest Mouse: The Wind in the Willows Letters by Kenneth Grahame and David Gooderson (who wrote the commentary). I love Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, and really appreciated this behind the scenes look at the creation of it. I highly recommend it any one who loves the original book and is interested in the creative process behind it. My Dearest Mouse is a collection of the letters Kenneth Grahame wrote to his son Alistair (Mouse) that are the foundation of the stories in the book. In many ways, reading this reminded of comparing Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (this link is to Martin Gardner's excellent annotated edition) and Alice's Adventures Under Ground, the facsimile edition of the original story Carroll gave to Alice Liddell.

Great minds think alike

My mom & I sent each other the same book for Christmas this year - Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, Or, Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss. This is the same author as the bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (if you haven't read that one, I highly recommend it). Talk to the Hand is excellent and you should definitely check it out.

Zoo life

I was visiting my sister last week and had limited Internet access, so didn't spend much time online. Had a fun Christmas with her and enjoyed the strange yellow orb in the sky that seemed to keep things warm. I haven't seen it in a while, but I think it's called the sun.

We spent two days at the Phoenix Zoo (one day seeing the animals and one evening seeing ZooLights). Here are some photos (you can click on them for see a larger image).

My favorite animal at the Phoenix Zoo has always been the Arabian Oryx - I couldn't get a good photo of them this time, but my sister took this picture of me next to a model of one.

We were astonished to see one of the big horn sheep up close and personal - they are usually on the far side of the mountains in their pen and can't be seen at all. This one was down by the fence. Later we saw one silhouetted on the mountain.



The meerkats and the prairie dogs were both spending a lot of time surveying the horizon.




The new monkey exhibit is nice - I got this photo of a mother and baby that were running around. They seemed to be enjoying the nice weather, too. We spent a long time watching them.

We also spent a long time watching the mandrills - we first saw this fellow warning off one of the youngsters who was walking too close to him, then he spent some time playing with himself before putting a foot down on his privates.