| Festive Felicitations to one and all |
[Dec. 25th, 2009|05:50 pm] |
Eric, the half-a-tree
Today we have been drinking champagne, eating chocolates, lounging around, opening presents and listening to music. Not necessarily in that order. I finger printed a daisy onto abrinsky, using my new Finger Printing Art Set (thank you Dr A, &hearts).
Also we went for a walk ( and took some photos ) |
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| When is Newtonmass? |
[Dec. 25th, 2009|11:41 am] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pigeonhed points out that thanks to the calendar shift the actual anniversary of Newton's death is on 4th Jan. Ignoring for a moment that it is sorta traditional not to have the foggiest when one's figure of celebration was actually born and at least we are only a few days out with Newton, if we count from the eve of the calendar date, through to the day of the actual anniversary....
We can have Twelve Days of Newtonmass! 24th December to 4th January.
Suggestions please for ways of celebrating each day. I will compile them and do something with them for next year.
Edit: Suggestions for appropriate toys also welcome: yo-yos, spinning tops, pendulum toys.... |
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| If you liked Firedrake in Concatenations, you'll love this |
[Dec. 24th, 2009|05:04 pm] |
moshui's forthcoming Jade Man's Skin gets its oddest 'review' yet on something calling itself 'Ursula's Space' (http://peacescbqj.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DFA921FDF0C3B16B!160.entry).
The 'review' is the publisher's blurb (as it appears on Amazon, for example), but run through BabelFish or equivalent in both directions. I can think of various reasons why you might do this: to pad out a link-blog with fake content, to make money through Amazon links, say. But it doesn't seem to be doing any of these - the only link is back to Daniel Fox's own web site.
The processed text is quite wonderful, though: Therein surging epos, Daniel Fox interweaves the ancient myths and fables of feudalistic PRC into a fairyland of roughshod warfare and brickle passionateness, immortal God and mystic brutes.
With the long-chained firedrake now free and the Reb ' invasion boomed by her triumphal rage, the balance of powerfulness holds modified. Offspring emperor Chien HUM is no more fighting for endurance; now he is ambitious to retaliate. As unreliable General Ping Steatocystoma voicelessnesses in the emperor 's ear, not even Chien Harkat-ul-Mujahidin 's darling courtesan or his most sworn escort can conclude with him. Worse, prolonged exposure to wizardly jadestone is modifying him radically: His increasingly divine powers are doing him dangerously rash.
But with the firedrake policing the skies above and the strait beneath, the emperor 's forces hold no hope of founding a counterattackuntil a goddess locomotes to interfere. Yet neither the clangoring of armies nor the opposing volitions of goddess and firedrake can determine ultimate triumph or licking. The destiny of the warfare lies in the blood-deep bonds between the firedrake and the boy Han, her screw and her liberatorand in the costs both will invite their freedom. |
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| Sol invictus |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|10:39 pm] |
We have been away for pre-Christmas family visits and other traditional activities; and now we are home. If I have time to write more about it, I will. But for the time being, this pretty well sums it up.
Wishing everyone sunlight in the winter, and grace even when the branches are stripped bare. |
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| all about trains |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|05:23 pm] |
just for a lark #3
abrinsky got mobbed at the National Railway Museum in Delhi, by local schoolboys who wanted to have their pictures taken. ( more larks )
( more bits of trains )
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A completely different train of thought: further to my recent Thomas the Tank Engine related ranting, I listened to an interview with the author of the paper in question. You can find the podcast here - 21 December. Her principal point seems to be that just because it's for children is no reason to withhold critical analysis or assume that a thing is transparent, a point I fully endorse.
----
An utterly charming silent film, brought to my attention by The Bioscope, my favourite silent film blog.
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| Oh wailie wailie |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|06:48 am] |
This house is full of miseries this morning. Only one of whom has eaten prunes overnight (hint: icon). They hate it when I go away.
Back in a week. No wifi where I'm going. Expect silence. |
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| Dear Mr Mayor |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|11:15 pm] |
Dear Boris,
I took a day's annual leave today. I had not planned to, but I needed the sleep, having eventually gone to bed after midnight. Why am I telling you this? Because, you stupid chump, your idea of being prepared for snow meant that yesterday evening's journey home from work, which normally is a 40 to 50 minute bus journey, took *five* hours. You heard me. *Five* hours. Traffic was stop/start all the way, with more emphasis on the stop. It took two and half hours to get to Medlar Street where they change drivers, and guess what? There were no relief drivers! They were all stuck in traffic... So we waited, and I tried walking on ice, found myself slipping on ice and so got back on the stationary bus. Finally a driver decided to drive the bus in front, but only got as far as the next stop, where we were all turfed off. All buses were terminating at Camberwell Green, he told us. No buses were going up Dog Kennel Hill. All three routes that go past my house have to go up Dog Kennel Hill first. There were a lot of passengers at Camberwell Green who needed to get to East Dulwich and other places past Dog Kennel Hill, who were not happy at the cavalier attitude of the bus companies. Neither was I. So I tried a different route, i.e. the bendy bus through Peckham to Dulwich Library, which avoids Dog Kennel Hill. Unfortunately they were only going as far Peckham Rye. I did not understand the driver's reason for why they weren't going the extra mile and a quarter - something about being too heavy? So when I saw a taxi with its "For Hire" light on, I hailed it. Initially the driver didn't want take me, because his meter would be running and with the traffic in Dulwich almost at a standstill, the journey would be expensive. Well, I was not going to walk around Peckham in the dark on icy, untreated footpaths wearing new spectacles that I'm not used to. Plus my journey at that point had already taken four and a half hours. I was tired. I wanted to get home and go to bed. And when I explained exactly where I wanted to go, he (of course) knew the back ways and had fun slipping on the icy roads. (He said he was a big child when it came to driving in the snow. He also told me that the reason Dog Kennel Hill was closed, was that six buses had broken down, blocking the road in both directions.)
But Boris, it's not as if you didn't know that snow was forecast for yesterday afternoon. The rest of us did. And it we only had an inch or so, not that much. And the traffic meant the main roads stayed clear. And the buses are all German makes, and the Germans know about snow, so the buses should continue working in snowy condidtions. So why did six buses break down on Dog Kennel Hill, blocking the road in both directions? Has the maintenance budget been cut? I think we should be told.
Five miles is not a great distance, Boris, but I don't cycle, and certainly not in London. It's not that far to walk, but in the treacherous conditions underfoot yesterday, I didn't like walking five yards. I am not impressed by you concept of being prepared. Not at all. And neither is my cat, who had to wait five hours for her dinner.
Perhaps I should report you to the RSPCA... |
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| Well, so much for that idea |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|05:00 pm] |
I did most of it, I did. I finished the revisions, and sent the book off again. I cleaned the kitchen floor (under strict supervision). I gave the boys Early Tea, as a reward for their supervising, and powered up the vacuum while their backs were turned. And addressed it to the dining-room floor, and--
And suddenly it was sucking nothing, on account of the hose ripping itself to shreds.
This is the almost-brand-new expensive vacuum, you understand. Which I bought from some dodgy online deal and am now somehow going to have to find a contact for, to kick and scream at them in the new year.
Meantime, I suppose I could dig out the twenty-year-old vacuum that still works perfectly, but...
Nah. Sod that for a game of soldiers. I'm going to the pub. Catsitters will just have to walk on crunchy carpet. |
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| Thumbs? Who needs 'em? |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|01:47 pm] |
Mac is learning how to operate my devices. Barry has already taught him to switch the bathroom light on and off (by leaping wildly for the dangle-string). Yesterday he taught himself to switch on the vacuum cleaner, by leaping down from the mushroom-box. He was so startled he dropped his mushroom, oh noes!
This morning, immediately after I switched off the radio, he switched it on again. Presumably he wanted to hear about the banks' overdraft penalty fees, which I most exactingly did not. Fine: I left him to it.
In other news, Newcastle has not been above freezing all week, and yet young women still expose their midriffs to the frost. It is insane. They will freeze through the middle and snap in half.
What else? Only urgency. I left the Lit & Phil at half past twelve, and yet it is now two o'clock. I need to eat: prawns and mushrooms and dried fish and noodles, I think. Perhaps an egg. And then I have thirty pages of book yet to wrangle through the computer, and that's done; and then I have to clean the kitchen floor and push the vacuum around a bit, if Mac's not going to do that for me; and then I have to go back into town. In, um, three hours' time. It's a lot to ask. I shall probably fail at one of the above. I'll leave you to guess; it's all a mystery to me.
Tell you what, though. I don't care what anybody else is going to say (and they are). I like the way this book ends, damn it. |
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| another photo from Shorpy |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|01:17 pm] |
I really like this pic:
Also, the one on the left is definitely from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Clearly it is possible to photograph vamps, after all. |
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| Margaret? |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|04:40 am] |
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Looking remarkably confident. She must be stargazing. Have I made her young enough?
Nine
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| Sigh |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|03:03 pm] |
I tried to do Margaret holding her lens, but she turned out more like 30 than 13, and rather plainer than I'd hoped; much as Grevil comes up way younger than 40. My scholarly look, I suppose. Maybe part of what's wrong is that she has such a public, enigmatic face for such a private moment. What the Victorians called an "old-fashioned look." I want some flicker of passion or mischief, something unguarded. What works with Will--and with Grevil--despite the faulty drawing, is the absence of a mask.
Nine |
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| Solstice |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|01:21 pm] |
Wishing you joy at the light returning.
If it's slipping away into shadow for you, O my southern friends, think cooler.
Nine |
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| Where did the day go? |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|05:28 pm] |
Down by the river, that's where this day went. Walkies in the snow. Hours'n'hours of walkies.
There might have been a pub involved, halfway.
Now what I really want is tea'n'toast. What I really don't want is to be sitting here chiselling words out of this manuscript.
*chisels*
*scowly-face*
In other news: I appear to have written a climbing scene where nobody slips to hang perilously by their fingertips above a dire drop. They climb carefully and sensibly and get where they're going sans any intimation of disaster. What was I thinking? No wonder I'm not rich. |
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| Photo of the day 21st December 2009 |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|05:08 pm] |
among the hazards of country living...
There's only one road through the village and section as it leaves to the east has deteriorated to the point where there's more pothole than road. It is finally being relaid, which is great news. But that means it's only possible to leave the village heading west. This means that my 4 mile round trip to the Post Office is temporarily a 14 mile round trip. Today it involved (rapidly melting) snow and an encounter with a flock of sheep. |
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| Photo of the day 20th December 2009 |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|04:34 pm] |
suffocation by cat
The Urv likes boobs. Boobs are warm and squishy and a fine place to take a nap.
I, on the other hand, am less than happy about having a cat balanced across my chest as I sit at the desk. |
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| Photo of the day 19th December 2009 |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|04:31 pm] |
anger transmission
I blithely told maryread that I could ignore Christmas and hang onto my serenity. Or something similar. Hah! I forgot the things it stirs up when I have to dutifully visit the Aged Ps. This scene was the good thing about the visit. And also a projection of the mind lamentable. |
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