Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Blog Six - errrr

OK, so, what was wrong with that last post? Yes! Well done. Of course I can tell the difference between two saxophones and two trumpets. It's just the picture was very small on my computer.

I think his name is Lester Bowie, by the way. I think. But you know, sometimes I get things wrong.

Yes! A Picture on the Blog!


Not the right picture mind you. I was looking for a picture that was relevant. Or an elephant (then I could have done a little joke about it being irrelevant). But that proved a little complicated for my first try, so instead here is a musician playing two saxophones. This band is called the Art Ensemble of Chicago and they are superb. But even if you don't like their music, hey, he's playing two saxophones. At the same time!

Blog Five - remember to give it a title. Zizou's going to Norway. OR: Zizou has seen inside the human heart. Yes, literally.

I am learning bit by bit how to do this blog thing and get it right and looking nice. Give it a title, do it regularly, capitals at the beginning of a sentence, spell things right...

Next week, dear readers, Zizou is heading off to Norway. Normally the younger of the pair that make up us has to go to school, and we don't let her out to go frolicking about the world, but Norway is not very far away and she has never been there before so we thought it would count as educational. We're going to look at the beautiful Viking ships they have there and if I can work out how to do something so advanced I will attempt to post a picture of them. Also I think in Norway they have houses with lawns on the roof. Though that might be Iceland. Anyway if you have a lawn on your roof does that mean you could have sheep on your lawn on your roof to graze it? I'm just thinking that would be a good way to insulate your house since apparently a lot of heat gets lost through the roof (since heat rises) but not a lot of heat can escape through a layer of woolly sheep. Then we could save energy and avoid global warming and not have such huge gas bills.

Or would the sheep just fall off the edge?

I will let you know if I learn any more about this in Norway.

The other thing I did was I went to a hospital and I watched two operations. I had to put on a hat and mask and baggy special pyjamas, and I stood at the top of the operating table and I saw right into the patient's body, right inside his chest, and in fact right inside his heart. It is not the sort of thing you would think could be possible. The patient had a problem with a valve inside his heart, so the doctors stopped his heart from beating, and sent all his blood through a special machine to keep it going round his body even though the heart had been stopped. Then I watched while the surgeon (his name is Frank) cut out the diseased valve and sewed in a new one, with tiny very tidy little stitches. He had to make sure he used the right size valve (it was size 23, you might like to know - about as fat as a slice through a small sausage). Then he sewed up the heart, and started it beating again. It went from being all floppy and empty to being fat and strong and pumping again. Then they sewed up his chest, and that was that. He has to rest for a while, but basically he had been mended. Like fixing a puncture on a bicycle tyre.

This was one of the most interesting things I have ever seen in my life. It was so interesting that I leaned in too close and one of the guys had to tell me to stand a bit further back.

No, of course I didn't take photos of it.

The surgeon said would I like to go and watch a heart transplant one day and I said that I would.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Post Four

Also I feel you should know that I am NOT posting at 5.18 in the morning. That would be way past my bedtime. It is in fact about half past one, ie a little past my lunchtime. But for some reason (perhaps my computer thinks it is in Japan, or the Andeman Islands, or up the Empire State Building) 5.18 is what comes up. I shall perhaps attempt to ask the computer why, and try to change it.
Now there's a good way to avoid work!

the technical term for this, dear reader, is 'displacement activity'. Writers know a lot about this.


How about a book about a girl spy, who pretends to be ineterested in only nailpolish but is really a black-belt karate with a personal jet-pack hidden in her dad's shed disguised as a lawnmower, who is under contract to the government and scoots off to save the world every day after school?

Just a thought.

Blog Three: getting the hang of it

Ay ay ay! Just realised that some people had actually read this and written comments and I never knew or responded or anything. I am REALLY SORRY. And thank you sosos sososososososo much. So now even more I am going to be responsive and appreciative.

And in answer to your questions:

1) the blog is me (aha! which of us is me, you may ask. Ha ha ha! Not telling.)
2) the idea for Lionboy came from bedtime stories told by a tired mum who couldn't think of anything to tell a story about to a chirpy kid who didn't want to go to sleep. So the kid thought up subjects (a naughty boy! a whale! running away! a circus with zebras in!) and the mum thought up things in response and put them all together as stories, and from that little acorn the great Lionboy trilogy sprouted.
by the way our aunt who is also a writer had a little brother who would ask for stories about.... a lovely little electric plug. So really, we had it easy.

cheeriooooh. We are now going away to think up miore good dieas for exciting books.


(I do hope some of you come back....)
Whoops! We didn't post anything ofr more than a year! No wonder we're not taking over the world..

Well - if you're still here, you may like to know that Zizou has another book coming out. It has no title yet, but it's about a tough boy who can't read, and a magical book, and a lots of stinky sewers, and an evil authoress who steals other people's stories, and it is VERY VERY EXCITING.

You may also like to know that we will keep this blog a bit better from now on, with Lionboy news, interesting items, peculiar comments and our favouritely dreadful jokes appearing regularly. Honestly. We promise. Thank you. And we are very very sorry about the long gap, which is entirely because we are useless and lazy. We won't do it again.

Honest.