What have I been up to these past six years? Well, some of it can be found in the archived posts below. For those disinclined to delve, I shall attempt a succinct summary. But how does one even start to summarise six eventful years? A moment-my-moment summary would be very dull, and with a temporal mapping of 1:1 would take six years to write, after which six more years would have elapsed. Brevity, on the other hand, would hardly give any flavour of time passed or experience lived. I have decided, therefore, to write extremely rapidly. What results might be a text full of errors and in a typeface too small to make out without a microscope. But such is compromise.
Since we last chatted I have written another book, of a somewhat technical nature, and a further tome is on its way, intended for a broader audience, or at least, that’s the idea. Along the way I became a celeb. But that’s quite enough about me. What of the other residents at the Maison Des Girrafes?
Mrs Gee is embarking on her third career. In the first she was a journalist. In the second she was a teaching assistant at the local secondary school, specialising in helping children with learning difficulties, during which she accreted a large number of specialist ologies. In 2018, she had to nurse a truculent patient immobilised for some weeks following a broken ankle (that was me) and enjoyed the experience so much she decided to study for a degree in nursing, specialising in patients with learning difficulties and disabilities (go figure). She’s now in her final year.
Offspring#1 is now 22. After studying sciences at sixth form (and writing about the experience for LabLit), the aspiring surgeon did indeed get a place at medical school and is now four years in, having achieved an ology, as well as changing name and gender. She is now a He and much happier. As well as medicine he has a killer stand-up routine and enjoys some light subversive queer Jewish activism after lunch. In the course of this transformation he and I have enjoyed many amazing road trips and I have become acquainted with the importance of the correct pronouns.
Offspring#2 is now 20. She (she’s still a ‘she’ as far as I am aware) is in her final year studying history at the University of L___ and is as I write applying for Masters’ programs. As quiet as Offspring#1 is flamboyant, she has found time to be the founder (and first President) of a Jewish Society at her university and is active in BAME causes.
All this means that Mrs Gee and I are, for the most part, custodians of the Twilight Rest Home for Superannuated Pets. Some of you will remember our dog Heidi, who sadly crossed the Rainbow Bridge last year. Bereft without the Floof in our lives, we now have another golden retriever, Miss Posy Fossil, who, despite being less than a year old, already has her own instagram account and has written her first volume of autobiography. She joins Ronnie (Jack Russell, 13) Lulu (Jack Russell x Dachshund, 3) and the four cats, assorted hens, snakes, fish and Merry the Axolotl.
Of all the past few years, the undoubted Apotheosis of the Zenith was a meeting in Cromer to commemorate the Tenth Anniversary of the now-legendary Cromer Is So Bracing unconference of 2009. Here are some of the participants of the reunion: you might recognise Frank and Erika. The man with the camera goes by the name of Professor Trellis of North Wales.
Participants at the Tenth Anniversary of CISB ’09. March, 2019.
