Blob and Winefride have both been enjoying the Snowdog hunting. We'll be going out again today. And we'll be going out tomorrow too. After that there aren't any remaining free days to look for the dogs before they are all taken away. It's been a bit of a rush. The Snowdogs have been there since the middle of September but by the end of October we had only taken a picture of two of them. It was only when I received a challenge to photograph a white Scottie dog that I began the hunt. Snowdogs aren't Scottie dogs of course but one of them is white so that became the dog of choice. And then things got crazy. We have fifteen days. Just fifteen days. To see every Snowdog.
The first of November was that dog challenge day. The beginning. On the fifteenth of November we will complete our quest. Hopefully. Every Snowdog - except for one hiding in Kielder which is impossible for me to get to in November. And every little Snowdog too. We will have seen 158 Snowdogs in total.
But we haven't been able to go dog hunting every day. That's made things much more difficult.
On the second we saw one dog. Accidentally. On the third we didn't see any dogs at all. And on the fifth we didn't even leave the house. On the sixth - and this is going to be remedied tomorrow - I saw seven dogs but forgot to take Blob and Winefride out with me. They were very cross indeed and quite sad about that. On the eleventh we couldn't go far. On the thirteenth Blob and Winefride saw one of the seven dogs from the sixth.
And then there is the twelfth.
Blob Thing wants to tell you about the twelfth.
He loves the Snowdogs and he's going to start his own special project Blog about the dogs and about how he and Winefride have enjoyed them. But he wants me to shut up about them now. He says I'm typing too much and entering into my own obsession - or is it an autistic special interest? He wants to talk about the twelfth of November because he had adventures that day. Special ones.
Blob Thing writes:
Yes I did. It was a very good day for me and for my sister. It was a very long day too and we got very tired. We got a bit confused too. There was a man on Bradford station in the evening and he was shouting lots. My person says he was drunk and that there were quite a lot of drunk people around. I don't understand why people get drunk? Are they really that miserable without adding drugs to themselves? I was confused by this man because he was shouting about football. That's confusing enough. I don't understand why people care so much about a bunch of people they don't know kicking a ball around a field. He was shouting about a football team called Sheffield Wednesday and how they were going to win the league. I just assumed that Bradford had been playing that team that day because there were lots of football fans around and some of them were drunk. But Bradford weren't playing that team. That team isn't even in Bradford's league. And that team is nowhere near the top of their league. So I am confused by the man.
My adventure had started early in the day. Very early. We had to leave the house at a time before we would usually have to wake up. We were very glad that it wasn't raining. The journey was okay. Winefride found it very exciting because she was travelling on a train again and she looked out of the window for almost the entire journey.
When we got to Bradford my person wanted to go and see somewhere she used to live. I decided to let her and thought it might be interesting to see her old home. It was a long time ago. It was the first place she lived that wasn't with her parents. And it was where she became a Christian too and that decision has affected her life ever since. I think sometimes in good ways and sometimes in bad ways. Some Christians don't like my person anymore because she is transgender. They say very mean things to her. But most Christians she knows don't see anything wrong with her being transgender. So we walked up the hill to the university. There are lots of hills in Bradford. It didn't seem like anywhere was flat.
I wasn't that interested by the university and my person kept on pointing out things that weren't the same. I did get to meet these two people though and they were quite friendly. I decided that I shouldn't stay with them for too long because I felt like I was intruding on their moment.
We walked through the campus until we came to my person's old house. Here it is:
Nooooooooo. Not the building in the background. The empty space in front of it.
My person's old house had vanished. Gone. Totally. She had wanted to take pictures of it, get asked what she was doing, and get invited in to her old house. Shearbridge Green. Block P. But block P wasn't there and neither was the rest of Shearbridge Green. My person felt quite sad about it and was surprised to find herself knocked about inside. She wonders where all the other people from block P are now so many years later. She will never know.
My person's old house had gone. Yes. It had become a car park.
We walked back down the hill into the city and that's when Winefride and I had a very big adventure that we hadn't expected to be having.
We all needed to use a toilet. And on the way we bumped into this creature.
This is a creature called Pikachu and I understand that he's very famous indeed. He is a Pokemon and it was quite surprising to be meeting him because he's fictional. Winefride and I are very real of course and meeting us would have come as no surprise at all to Pikachu. But he's not real. So it was a very surprise meeting indeed. He couldn't be there because he's not real. Nevertheless there he was right in front of us, dancing around to some rubbish music that kept repeating over and over again. My person asked if we wanted to have our pictures taken in front of Pikachu and that seemed like a very good idea. Document our meeting with a creature who doesn't exist.
So here I am with Pikachu.
Here is Winefride with Pikachu.
And here are the two of us with Pikachu.
We felt a bit sorry for the poor creature because it was trapped behind some barriers and it kept going backwards and forwards and turning round inside the barriers as if it was looking for some way out, like a caged lion slowly going insane in an inappropriate environment. My person told us that Pikachu would be taken from the enclosure later. But that's when it gets even more worrying. She told us that sometimes Pikachu has to live in a tiny ball, just a few inches across. She told us that Pokemon are wild creatures in the country where they live and they run around having fun. Pokemon live in freedom.
And then they are hunted. Hunted by people who want to catch all of them. It's not like the way we've been hunting Snowdogs. Not at all. We hunt our Snowdogs down, make friends with them, take some photos. And then our Snowdogs are still free. But when people hunt Pokemon, wild and free on the plains of their country, they actually catch the poor creatures. And they force them to live in these tiny balls. I don't know how such a large creature can fit in such a small space but it must be an awfully uncomfortable squeeze for them.
And that's not all. Most of the time the poor Pokemon have to stay in the little balls. And they're only released for short periods of exercise. But not just any exercise. Oh no. Nothing so innocent. They are only released in order to fight other Pokemon. They have to fight each other and they are rewarded for doing well in the fights. If they don't do well then they nearly die and have to recover later.
Yes. You read that right. People catch wild animals and make them fight nearly to the death. Over and over again. And these same people think that's a good thing and they get rewarded for having lots of trapped Pokemon and for having the Pokemon fight lots.
It all seems quite barbaric to me. It's like cock fighting or dog fighting. Except it's Pokemon fighting. Which involves creatures with bigger weapons.
Fortunately none of that is real. My person says it isn't real. She says Pokemon are fictional, including Pikachu even though we met Pikachu. She says that cock fighting and dog fighting and lots of similar things are all very nasty things indeed and that most horrible things like that are not legal in this country. I'm glad they're not legal. At least there's that.
So we left Pikachu behind, still in its enclosed space. Still with that awful tune that kept repeating. Maybe the music pacifies the Pokemon in some way so that it doesn't attack everyone. There were lots of children there. Maybe without the music the Pikachu would have attacked the children. I don't know.
We were hoping for some more adventures in Bradford. And later that day we were going to meet my creator too for a few hours and I was looking forward to that lots and lots and lots of lots because I hadn't seen her for weeks and weeks. We would have fun with my creator. Lots of fun. Next time I'm going to share a video with you. It's quite a strange video. Nooooooo. It's a very strange video. I'll do that next time.
[1840 words]
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