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OK, so it’s a crap photo, but just how cute is the pose? They’re inquisitive little buggers, although they’re still not sure about me and, depending on mood, will either eat from my hand or go sit in the tree. Once they get used to you they [apparently] sit on your head and play with your hair. I suspect the keepers are poisoning the beasties against me as they never do this for me

Annoyingly becomming a doley scum has rather curtailed my ability to go up to the zoo and help out there. My weekends of late have got rather full so I was planning on moving my Thursday tai chi to a Monday morning and going up Wednesday to Friday one week. Except this week I had to see my vampire and do interviews, next week I need to sign on (and may well have to do interviews) and I’ve got a checkup on Friday and a one off tai chi class on Wednesday, the week afterwards more doctory stuff (hey, this health insurance rubbish is costing me a fortune so I’m getting my moneys worth while I can) and then seeing my Dad, then the week after signing on so we’re really looking at the last weekend in August. See - I want to go do an honest days work for free but the government are making it so that I can’t with it’s silly rules and crap health service. Instead I shall lounge about in bed and complain bitterly that I have to be up and in town for 2:20pm every other week which is clearly too early for anyone to be awake and about That said, I bet the keepers are delighted they don’t have me underfoot all month

Anyway, in an attempt to curtail the desire to spend all day, every day in bed that seems to be mandated by law in order to claim my however much a week I get I shall be going to the cinema over the next couple of days to see Wall-e and Kung Fu Panda. I may also try and locate a new hairdressers that doesn’t costs me £ouch every time I go (I have big trust issues when it comes to cutting my hair so changing hairdressers is a mahoosive deal for me) and get a charachature of me that I have framed. It’s all just so jolly exciting.

Anyway, bed time. More garbage tomorrow.

So I find myself stuck waiting for a Norwich train which means I’ll miss my connection and strand me in Norwich for a couple of hours. I could argue the toss with NXEA, get a train to Cromer (one stop on from where my ticket goes to) and walk to the zoo (which is not an overly long jaunt) but I may head into Norwich town center and investigate the purchase of a shiny new iPhone. This does, of course, assume trains start running again

Been a bit quiet of late, mainly because I’ve been rather busy. One of the keepers at the zoo was ill over the weekend so I decided that I’d lend a hand [read: hinder the remaining keepers and use it as an excuse to feed the animals] which was really rather quite fun. Of course, there is no way I could do it as a full time job. I got spared much of the poo picking (there is an awful lot of poo involved in being a zoo keeper), the gutting of the rabbits, the chopping up of the day old dead chicks and great chunks of the sweeping which I think, in the depths of winter, would have me thinking “What the hell am I doing here?”, but I think the ‘fair weather’ zoo keeping a few times a month will maintain its fun for a long time to come

Getting up in the morning to be on my feet for 8 hours is not what I’m used to so I’ve been quite tired in the evening (doesn’t help that I’ve been going out with the guys from the zoo too and getting home after pub kicking out time ) so blogging has taken a bit of a back seat. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend and just generally relaxed so today is my catchup day. I’ve been through the 600+ outstanding items in my google reader, caught up on my email, now I’m catching up on the blogging then I shall do my accounts, clean my swords, sort out a few other chores and then go to Tai Chi. Back up to the zoo tomorrow (I wanna feed the squirrel monkeys again… and I really need to get some photos of the tapir and capabari) then back down to London Saturday night for to be clubbing followed by death on Sunday.

More later.

So a pair of size 10 wellies have been procured at the house in Cromer which means I can now head to Monkey Island with impunity. Unfortunately due to me needing to feed my sugar habit, breakfast, talking with my Mother and other related and unlrelated reasons I didn’t get to start taking photo’s until 3 whereupon it decided that being a nice sunny day was no longer fun and it should instead just piss it down. So there’s me, on an island in the middle of a lake cowering under a tree trying to keep dry while being hassled by squirrel monkeys for the grapes and dates I had in my pocket. Then one of the monkeys decided that it was all very well and good getting the single date or grape from my hand as I fed them (hand feeding squirrel monkeys is just so cool ), but if they got the bag with all the goodies in it then they could have as many as they liked. Cue one fight for the bag which they damn near won Still, not as bad a the trainee keeper who was trying to claim that rhea were smarter than they looked as he nearly got outsmarted by one. Trust me, rhea are as stupid as they look and getting outsmarted by one is the equivlent of being outsmarted by a wet paper bag Photo’s will be forthcoming later, in the mean time I’m trying to decide if the squirrel monkey’s are cuter than the marmies. It’s a close call

I know I bitch and whine and moan a lot here (it’s a blog, hello? What did you expect? :D) but there are some aspects of my life that I really can’t complain about. Take what is essentially my holiday home: after eating dinner (prepared for me, I daren’t get in the way) and helping clear up I took walk round the grounds to check on the rhea (one of them was acting odd today) and to say goodnight to the two pumas, two jaguars and the ocelot. I just love big cats and two have 5 (well, 4.5, the ocelot is teeny tiny :D) on your doorstep is just about the coolest thing ever. The pumas are getting so used to me that I can almost stroke them [I say almost because they're effectivey wild animals and they can get their paws through the fence. A puma can turn increadibly quickly and there is no way I will get close enough to them to get me with a paw because no matter how cute and cuddly they look they'd happily rip me to shreds if I gave them half a chance]. They still hiss and spit if I get too close but otherwise they just ignore me and get on with it.

If that wasn’t enough I’ve basicaly got unlimted access to two species of monkey, both of which are very cute (the spider monkies aren’t so cute and would not apreciate me being in the cage which could result in injury and/or death, therefore I don’t go in wih them), a plethora of wildfoul, various sized rodents (I don’t care how cute they are, they’re still rodents) and I get to trapse round with the keepers bugging them while they try and do thier job all in the name of photography. And, AND I get to walk around with impunity ignoring no entry signs and the like which just feeds my god complex no end.

Seriously, living in the middle of a zoo is to be highly recommened, but failing that come visit this one so you’ve got an idea on what you’re missing out on

So its 04:42, the first train is at 05:30 and I’m surprisingly awake. Given death doesn’t seem to be iminent I choose cake (c.f. Eddie Izzard). My current plan is to make this zoo opening if it kills me (err… I’ll blog about it later in case you don’t know, but basically my step dad runs a zoo). Getting the train home, having a shower, grabbing bags and getting the first train to Cromer. The shower is key. A) I stink. 4 hours solid dancing in a hot club (more about that later) means I’ve been sweating like a really sweaty thing that sweats a lot. B) it will wake me up some more and help propel me to north Norfolk.

Of course the cake could be a lie (c.f. Portal) and I could just get home and crash. Death, when it comes, is going to be swift and brutal but I would like to stave it off until 11 or so. That will mean I’ve been up for 26+ hours but I’ve done that loads of times before (admittedly when I wasn’t quite this old )

You know you’ve probably lost the plot entirely when you find yourself explaining to a rather irate puma (she’s always irate) that if she doesn’t relax she’ll have a heart attack before she’s middle aged. Still, you’ve got to try My attempts were simply met with hissing, growling, spitting and lunging for me (2 fences in the way, bwahahahaha!). Since the cats came from Austria I decided that perhaps their English wasn’t so great and I would try mime and whenever they stalked me, I stalked them looking all serious and mean and then pissing myself with laughter when they went for me. They failed to see the funny side. I swear I’m first on Blacky’s list if she ever gets out

So I’ve spent the day getting rained on, climbed on (niece and nephew are here too) and generally blown about by the wind. Still I did get to spend some time with a pair of jaguars (who are driving the pumas nuts), go in with the coati and watch them mob the keepers for food and generally take advantage of all the joys of having a zoo in the back garden of the family home brings. There’s nothing like a load of ruddy great big cats to take your mind off the fact it’s raining.