Week 24

The Good Boyfriend

Something different this week. A little short story…

I’ve been reading a lot of short stories lately. Perhaps that’s why I felt like doing a small piece of fiction. But I couldn’t just write prose, that would be mortifying! Text must be couched in image, it’s the only respectable way.

This Week I Learned…

Some aquatic-based facts. Whenever I go to the museum (which is lot these days) I try to walk away with one fact gleaned from a museum placard. I then repeat it to everyone I see so that it will stick in my mind.

This week I learned that around 70 percent of the white sand found on tropical beach is coral that has been eaten, digested and pooped out by parrotfish. One parrotfish can excrete more than a tonne of sand per year. I don’t know what the other 30 percent is as it wasn’t on the placard.

I also learned a little about orca ecotypes. Our friend Ada came over this weekend and told us about a new acquaintance who’s obsessed with orcas. Their relationship with this person was all very interesting but ultimately not really my story to tell, so I’ll just tell you something I didn’t know about orcas: there are different ecotypes — which are kind of like distinct races or cultures. Though they could technically interbreed, they don’t. One group eats fish, another eats mammals. They share the same waters but deliberately avoid each other, as if by unspoken agreement, which it would have to be as they even speak entirely different dialects. Some have unique hunting techniques passed down through generations — one group in Patagonia intentionally beaches itself to catch seals, while another in Antarctica stuns fish with coordinated tail slaps. I could see why you’d get obsessed with them, they are parallel civilisations quietly coexisting beneath the waves. And that’s even without the whole fish hat thing