When I was young, my mother gave me a book from her childhood, Orlando the Marmalade Cat – His Silver wedding. I’m still fascinated by the illustrations of Kathleen Hale which captivated me as a child, and I’ve never seen an illustrator manage to evoke the slinky, almost human characteristics of cats with such grace and humour. Searching for more titles led me to a couple of surprising discoveries, such as Orlando smoking a hookah! As for invisible pyjamas… Continue reading
Watch in HD, fullscreen!
Ok, he can’t really dance. Or read. But he was definitely funky.
Ever since reading Orlando the Marmalade Cat as a child, I wanted a ginger tom. Sparky was a rescue cat, and he was old when I got him. After six happy years with me, he became ill and passed away just before xmas 2010. It was a tough time, and shortly afterwards, I went to London. Staring out of my hotel room window, it really hit me that he was gone. I distinctly remember saying ‘Thankyou, Sparky. Thankyou for leaving me. Thanks a lot.’ Not my finest hour, but by a strange quirk, at that exact moment, underneath the planet in Oz, The Found Sound Orchestra were making a song out of heart strings, called ‘Thankyou 3 Times.’ Spooky! It’s the song that soundtracks my video, and I’m glad I had the forethought to record Sparky in glorious High Definition, during a blazing August sunrise in The Northern Quarter.
As Mrs. Madrigal says in Armistead Maupin’s Michael Tolliver Lives, ‘Someone to sit in the sun with me. Who doesn’t want to go anywhere.’
(Please. Don’t send kittens.)
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© My artwork, photography and music are copyright Mark Wallis 2015
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