do you know the weight of a blue whale's heart

I have just finished my new manuscript that I have spent a year working on. It is about superstition and judgement and not seeing only one version of life as acceptable. 

It is about a boy who cannot speak(judgement)  includes a magpie (superstition) and is set during the second world war centering around the sinking of a hospital ship by a German submarine which in real life my grandfather was on.

Of course Mrs Magpie had to be in the story and here is her publicity photo (above)for the launch.

She hasn't been much help in the writing of the story as she keeps flying off with my pens.(OK I write on a laptop but still need pens for taking notes) Here she is just before she stole my good pen. I was so busy hiding the pencil that I knew she'd like that I forgot I had a nice silver looking pen on the table next to me and she flew off with it and left it in a bush.

Half the book is set at sea and here is Rocket doing a bit of research.

Scout didn't come to the sea side so took herself off with her shadow for a walk in the fields.

Pocket who is quite capable of holding a grudge turns his nose up at fiction.

I don't know why you novelists waste your time writing what never happened when you know so many things that did happen? Well that's just it I answer - a lot of my story did happen. 

He snorted. All other things being equal, a simpler explanation is preferable to a more complicated one.

Ah you're working on the parsimony principle I say but he ignored me and not wanting to be left out and claiming nautical heritage, Pocket has now been studying The Ashley Book of Knots which he says is most informative and I really ought to tie a few. He seems to have learnt a lot about the sea (perhaps he's been reading the notes I made before Magpie stole my pen.) and asked me if I knew the weight of a blue whale's heart. I said I didn't and when I asked around neither Rocket nor Scout seemed to know or care for that matter. 

He told me he weighed ten pounds and the weight of a blue whale's heart is forty times greater.

Mulling this over and thinking about whales I did think that Magpie had the markings of an Orca killer whale.(above sitting in the fruit bowl)

 

Whales Weep Not!

D. H. Lawrence - 1885-1930

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They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
   the sea!

And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas, 
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
   comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's
   fathomless body.

And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the
   wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
   forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the
   sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.

And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-
   tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of
   the beginning and the end.

And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.