ohhhhhhhhhhhh, I put me finger in the woodpecker's 'ole, and the woodpecker said, "gor bless my soul - take it ahht, take it ahhhht, wiggle it abahht, remove it!!"

first of all, buggrit. Went and went away for awhile again, didneye? Must stop doin' that, 'cause it always means coming back to a mess of massed messages and a deluge of deviations that I'll never get 'round to getting written back to/about/and...thingy. - I've made a fairly half-arsed stab at responding to at least a fair few of 'em, but realistically I'm gonna hafta opt for the classic cop-out of apologising for my absence and more especially for not having looked back in any of your respective directions, as it were, for a bit too long and another week or two on top.

- so yup, sorry 'bout all that, I will make up for it by pretending I can actually get away with such a piffling little sorry-say-so, and then go blustering on into the matter of a new journal as if it simply never happened. Observe:

...well, it's been about a year now since the discovery of the kitten on me doortsep, so I can say without much doubt that Fidget the cat is now at least a year old. He's grown quite a bit just to prove it, and is now more or less proper cat size (I'm assuming that he's not actually one of the local Lindsey Leopards and isn't about to end up at six-feet something before he's done). He has also apparently become much more aware of his impending man-cat-ly-ness (he's 'entire' as they say, haven't had him neutered as yet 'cause he doesn't get to go outdoors randomly impregnating anything that gets in his way when facing the right way round (so to speak) - I live right next to a road entirely populated by very efficent cat-mangling machines, so it's a bit of a no-go for the moggy majority), as he woke me the other morning by way of trying to shag my arm like a little catty Don Juan, or whoever it was.

Don't think he's quite sure yet of the mechanics of it all though, he was essentially gripping my wrist with all his strength while pressing up against my forearm and shaking like a washing machine on the spin-cycle, all the while wow-ing like it was me that was doing something to him. He was most disgruntled when I took my arm away (I very nearly resisted saying 'tossed him off', but in the end just couldn't, see?), and made several more attempts to latch on again, the horny little git.

Anyway, this got me thinking, or maybe rather wondering, if anyone out there does sex toys for cats. (I imagine inflatable cat-girl dolls are a bit of a lost cause though what with all the claws involved in such matters)If not (and I guess that's probably the case - could be an open market, y'never know), I guess I'll go invest in something suitably cat-sized and/or even cat-shaped in the toy animal way of things, to give him something to occupy the hours while my arm is otherwise engaged... which is likely to be - well, always, all things considered. And if nothing else it ought to provide a bit of youtube based amusement to have him rattling away at a stuffed monkey or something while the poor little pretend-creature sits there with a glassy stare, more or less unaware of what's going on. I understand that many females of the species are aware of this particular phenomenon. (None of the ones I've known, I hasten to add )

Failing all that I suppose I ought to otherwise consider making him a veteran of the vet's surgery, and have him say a fond farewell to his furry little friends, though it does seem a bit of a shame - dunno, I'll ask her if she thinks it's a necessary nip-and-tuck or whatever, or if it'd be better to let him be and just instead get used to the idea of waking up with a sticky elbow...

So, there's the low level of things I've brought things down to. Time I came up out of the gutter a bit, I guess. Hold on though, just off to rustle up a cuppa...

'ere I be, back again - and about time now to get to the point, i.e. the bit that deals with the question "what the 'eck has this got to do with it bein' a small world, you great rambling pillock?" or words to that effect. Well? (yes, thanks. Nice tea, by the way) Ta.

Soooo, haven't been getting much big sculpting done for a bit, not least 'cause of the usual proper work thing taking up the usual too much time, but slightly less 'cause now some of the other small bits of time left in between such times, seem to be getting taken up by doing similar things, but smaller; what it is, was, I went and entered some sculpting competition thing being run by a relatively local miniatures-making company (by relatively local I mean basically 'in Britain', appended with the adage that the Brits think 200 miles is a long way, the Americans think 200 years is a long time, that sorta thing)

- to make, as you might expect - miniatures - not something I'd really tried to have a proper go at beyond a few fiddlings-about when I used to do the hobbying thing way back when I was a widdle wascal - so for the hell of it thought I'd have a go - still no results on the compo yet but as a result otherwise of featuring meself in it I seem to have landed a somewhat sizeable number of commission-requests from a number of mini-making companies, so it's looking like I'm gonna be a bit on the busy side of doing things in small, for quite a big time.

Flip, I still haven't even got the hang of working to the shrinkydinky scale-size yet, but heyho, we'll see what happens. Still gonna try and keep me hand in with the biggerbuggers too, but it's looking possibly like I might've found meself a secondary source of incoming income of the small at first but building variety, a bit like the tremors you get when a cat is shagging your arm. And there's yer blummin' roundabout, careful when you step off.

What this also might mean maybe, is that I'll start getting 'round to doing some of the daft stuff I do do in miniature too, been kinda meaning to get around to miniaturising all these Wyrdworlders o' mine and the like, not least since there don't seem to be a great many minis out there that go down the animal-people route - there are a few I know, but those I've seen are somewhat so-so, though you might say I'm a so-and-so for saying so - so, we'll see...

...I've just had to add about fifty words from all that to the dictionary, this computer doesn't understand me.