The title of the novel sounded intriguing: 'The Happy Prisoner'. Imagine that... If the book had been written in more recent decades, one might suppose it would deal with the omnipresent mind and mood altering substances finding their way into the penitentiary institutions despite all the precautions put in place. It was written much earlier. Anyway, what made the prisoner happy, I'm still to find out, but the first two pages I read really impressed me. The way Monica Dickens described the intricate beauty of a simple creature that we normally consider a nuisance makes me look forward to reading more of the book.
Changing the topic to my joint and bone treatment, here is something new. As the gentle exercises didn't work, quite contrary, caused a disaster as described in the Thursday post, I've been recommended another exercise, far more gentle, well, as gentle as it can get! I'm doing it now, actually! Twice a day, for 45 minutes, I'm to sit in a cushioned armchair with legs on the table, with more cushions underneath them so as to achieve a position as if I were in a hammock!
Back to my thought on 'The Happy Prisoner'. Another explanation to why a prisoner might be happy occurred to me. A friend of mine who is a barrister in a country with cold winters told me many times that when the icy season is approaching, the prisons fill up to the brim with poor people who commit petty crimes that are serious enough to put them in the warmth behind bars till the spring comes...
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Hurrah! The best moment of the day so far has come! I've found what I'd been looking for since Thursday.In the middle of serious digging through all sorts of paperwork I suddenly went to check somewhere else, on the cupboard I'd inspected earlier, and.... there it was! How great! Let me now get back to sorting the papers once they are out. A useful task when you are stuck at home. :-)
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Now something Wiki says about the.. cod I came across:
'Cod and related species are plagued by parasites. For example the cod worm, Lernaeocera branchialis, starts life as a copepod, a small, free-swimming crustacean larva. The first host used by cod worm is a flatfish or lumpsucker, which they capture with grasping hooks at the front of their bodies. They penetrate the lumpsucker with a thin filament which they use to suck its blood. The nourished cod worms then mate on the lumpsucker.[3][4]
The female worm, with her now fertilized eggs, then finds a cod, or a cod-like fish such as a haddock or whiting. There, the worm clings to the gills while it metamorphoses into a plump, sinusoidal, wormlike body, with a coiled mass of egg strings at the rear. The front part of the worm's body penetrates the body of the cod until it enters the rear bulb of the host'sheart. There, firmly rooted in the cod's circulatory system, the front part of the parasite develops like the branches of a tree, reaching into the main artery. In this way, the worm extracts nutrients from the cod's blood, remaining safely tucked beneath the cod's gill cover until it releases a new generation of offspring into the water.[3][4]' '
No fish and chips today, thank you!
Stumbling upon this 'appetising' bit of information reminded me of my childhood. When I wanted to look something up in my parents' encyclopedia, I would always end up reading about a few more things that caught my eye.:-) However, I know a guy who claims to have read the whole encyclopedia (the one-volume popular one), when he was aboard a training ship for months. Imagine that!
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