sir_guinglain

Today I:

woke up late. I, very unusually for me, was so tired when my alarm went off that I set a new one. For some reason, I decided to make it five minutes before my first meeting, my team's usual check-in. So yeah, I did not make that.
got dressed and downstairs eventually, triaged email and Teams messages.
did my morning chores: open the curtains, empty the dishwasher, make breakfast for me and a pot of tea for the household...
got halfway through the dishwasher when my work phon rang. Actually rang, not a Teams call. How odd!
remember as the guy starts talking that I agreed to do an interview but forgot to put it in my calendar
the interview is with rail industry press rather than my usual audiences of general public or politicians, so I got to drag some of the technical vocabulary out of my brain.
had a little cry at lunchtime about Alex Pretti
had two absolutely brutal meetings this afternoon, for a total of three hours: more technical stuff. I have looked at so many diagrams of train stations...and there weren't any breaks in that 2-hour meeting!
walked Teddy with V, as a nice antidote to all the thinking and trying to decipher engineering diagrams (some of which were labeled by hand).
made dinner by chopping all the veg in the fridge that needed using up and roasting it (some wrinkly peppers, half a head of rubbery broccoli, a few carrots I didn't know we had, mushrooms that were best before last week...) into a serviceable dinner
helped D do a Tesco order for tomorrow
read too much news
had a shower
went to bed late and now can't sleep

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diary

For any fellow Discworld fans the Discworld Reading Blanket is back in stock at the Discworld Emporium in Wincanton (*), after it sold out rapidly previously. Buying me one!

* Wincanton is the town very near to Martin's home village in Somerset. So where his family would go to the supermarket, post office, school etc. He went into the Discworld Emporium once, on a visit back home twenty years ago. Was rather wowed.

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Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

Dear friends (mostly, but not all, on Dreamwidth) who...

... are really enjoying that ice hockey series
... are really enjoying playing ice hockey themselves
... are really looking forward to the Winter Olympics
... are reading that book that everyone is reading
... are reading that book that everyone read three years ago
... are reading books that nobody's read for a hundred years
... are reading things I wrote when I could string more than ten minutes together at a time
... are knee-deep in an obscure spin-off of something I saw once
... are singing or playing
... are listening to other people sing or play
... are going out and eating delicious things
... are cooking delicious things for other people to eat
... are going to interesting places and seeing interesting wildlife and sharing pictures
... are doing small things (or big things) in pursuit of a better world

... I am really enjoying reading about your enjoyment and activity, though I never manage to comment as often as I'd like. Thank you for keeping me in touch with the fandom world!

TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

Having talked mostly about Dreamwidth above, I'm going to go super literal here and talk about the bandstand in my home town. It's set at the centre of a park next the river, and every summer Sunday afternoon a different brass band from one of the surrounding towns and villages turns up to give a free concert. Programme-wise, you always know more or less what kind of thing you're going to get: a march or two, some film music, an arrangement of some classic rock, and so on, but since it's never advertised in advance you don't know the specifics. There's always a mixed audience: people who know it's happening and have turned up deliberately; friends of the band; people who were just wandering past and stop to listen; kids playing on the slides. Some people stop for a few minutes and then move on; some stay for the whole thing.

I love the energy of live music, and it's so good to have something that's so very relaxed, so very - literally - open.

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Having Fun Yet?

Not really. Not with the latest murder in Minneapolis, a city I have connections with and memories of. I flinched when I heard the gun shots that killed Alex Pretti yesterday. So very loud.

Only a couple of weeks earlier, again in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good, was killed by ICE. Her last words were "I'm not mad at you guys." After - after - she was shot, one of the ICE agents called her a "fucking bitch." Professional attitude there, buddy.

But let's not forget others who were shot, either killed or injured, across the country.

Last September, undocumented immigrant Silverio Villegas González, a 20-year resident of Franklin Park, was killed by ICE thugs in that Chicago suburb, after dropping off his children at school. The narrative from ICE was one we're very familiar with now: he "severely injured" an ICE agent, and dragged the agent with his car.

That agent told his buddies at the scene of González' murder that his own injury was "nothing major." Oops.

American citizen Marimar Martinez was shot five times by CBP agent Charles Exum, who later boasted about it in texts to friends. She survived, and charges against her were dropped. It turns out that she didn't ram any agent's car. Someone rammed her car. Quel surprise.

There have been at least eight other shootings by ICE or CBP agents across the country since last September, of U.S. citizens,and non-citizens. They were lucky enough not to be killed, but some of them are still in ICE custody.

They were all domestic terrorists who used their vehicles to ruthlessly hunt down blameless ICE and CPB agents. At least, that's the message that ICE Barbie and her Trumpian buddies like Greg Bovino have repeatedly given out at press conferences. Not only are they lying, they're not even creatively lying.

Can we have the midterms next week, please, before That Man and his criminal team figure out how to shut elections down?

No?

Well then, we'd best be on our guard.

Current Mood: enraged
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Cortis "Joyride"

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Following my recent post about favourite Eleventh Doctor stories I thought I'd post a list of my favourite Tenth Doctor ones. These are in chronological order, not order of favourites. And I am being picky, although I seem unable to get to a shorter list!

The Christmas Invasion. Given David Tennant's Doctor is unconscious for much of the episode, he must have made a heck of an impression on me when he woke up. I was already confident that he was going to be great in the role after having seen him in Casanova. Now I was convinced.
Tooth and Claw. This is not a flawless story. I greatly dislike the digs at some of the Royal Family (and I'm not a Royal fan at all), and some of the other Rose bits are pretty unsubtle too. But in other respects it's a magic mix. Ninja monks, a scary werewolf, a library full of books, and Scotland! Thank you RTD.
The Girl in the Fireplace. This was instantly my Dad's favourite Who story ever and remained so for the rest of his life. Just magical, even if you do pick it apart, and realise it's a retelling of The Time Traveller's Wife. A route that Steven Moffat went down far too often. But still, wow. Clockwork Droids and Madame de P.
The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit. For a Doctor Who fan I'm not much of a fan of scifi in space. I'm really not. But this is a base under siege, from within, and facing dark primeval forces. So gripping. And fully merits the two part treatment. I really wish that we'd got more Doctor Who from the writer Matt Jones.
Human Nature / The Family of Blood. A moving piece of historical fiction and lost romance and chances. This is so very special. Thank you Paul Cornell.
Blink. Ok another where David Tennant is barely in it. But it's just so good. We needed more Sally Sparrow on TV! A star in the making. And my favourite Tenth Doctor story of all.
Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead. I rewatched this recently. It's still superb. Tight plotting, imaginative scifi, another iconic new monster, and hey, who's this we meet?

Clearly I enjoyed Steven Moffat's writing for the Tenth Doctor. And his gas mask double parter for the Ninth Doctor remains my all-time favourite Who story ever, even beating a spaghetti-faced Count in Paris. But it's nice to see some other writers represented in the list here.

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I had a dream about Gary last night so I miss him extra today.

But D and I saw many cute and happy dogs when we were out helping a family member, and we got home just in time to do our usual Teddy walk.

I miss my dog, but there are so many good dogs.

In the dream, I was showing someone who was frightened of dogs how carefully and delicately he'd take a treat from my hand (which is exactly how he'd do it in real life too). And the dream-person was happy about seeing this and it made her relax. It was really nice.

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everygary everywhere all at once

Thinking of my Dad who would have been 91 today. He loved Robert Burns poems and songs from a young age, and I inherited a book of them he bought as a young man in Yorkshire. He always used to treat himself to a haggis meal on Burns Night. Still much missed.

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Grant someone's wish from Challenge #5.

I answered a couple of requests for recommendations, and am copying my answers here for reference.

1. for someone who wanted to hear from people forty and up about shopping for clothes:

I hit forty last year, and what I've done is to keep on experimenting until I find something that works - whether that's a shape, a colour, a manufacturer - and then keep on experimenting with that. What that looks like depends very much on circumstances - at the moment I have quite a lot of unscheduled time and my small town has a lot of charity shops, so I'm mostly buying things second-hand and donating them back if they don't end up working. But when I was working full-time I did a lot more internet shopping. (Svaha and Joanie were what worked for me then, for what it's worth.)

I had a most illuminating conversation recently with a group of friends, most of whom like Seasalt. I said that Seasalt ought to work for me but never quite does, but that Fat Face is pretty reliable. Interestingly, most of the Seasalt fans said that Fat Face never quite works for them. I take from this the lesson that even makes that appear very similar at first glance will be more or less suited to different groups of people, so it's worth keeping on looking.

I also like the Who Wears Who blog for thoughtful prompts on style and experimentation with same.

2. replying to someone who wanted to talk about femslash

Femslash! Here are three of my favourite books with canon femslash ships:

- my oldest - The Count of Monte Cristo, a rambling but enjoyable French doorstopper tale of revenge, appeared from 1844 to 1846 and has canon femslash. And no bury your gays! (Obvious warning: it is, of course, very much Of Its Time.)
- my newest - I've just finished The Priory of the Orange Tree. Will it be one of my favourites of all time? Probably not, but it was a lot of fun - an ambitious fantasy novel that attempts to put a valiant number of belief systems and all the dragon lore on the page. And yes, canon femslash.
- the one that feels like it was written just for me - the Alpennia series by Heather Rose Jones. It includes many of my favourite tropes (fictional European country, swashbuckling, complicated power dynamics) and weaves religious practice into the way the magic works in a way that I've rarely seen done so effectively. And, for a third time, canon femslash.

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Recently I rewatched the Matt Smith Doctor Who stories again. And I'm now rewatching Peter Capaldi's run. But it's been tricky to keep going. I think he's one of the best actors ever to play the part, but the characterisation as presented is often so unlikeable. Especially at the start of his run, but also with his treatment of Danny. It's very difficult to relate to this Doctor early on, and to want to watch the series.

I paused my rewatch part way through "Robot of Sherwood" and it took me some months to summon up the enthusiasm to restart. I'm now part way through series 8 episode 6 "The Caretaker". I've enjoyed some of the previous stories more than I expected to. Not least "Time Heist" which I could barely remember anything of. Though I rather yearn for simpler old style storytelling, rather than Steven Moffat esque convoluted timey wimeyness.

But I'm still hating the dislikeable aspects of this Doctor, which are particularly evident in
8. Not so much his alienness, but what I perceive too often as unnecessary cruelty to watch in the series. It feels like experiencing the early Sixth Doctor all over again. But pushing on ...

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Challenge #12:

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

This is the closest I've got to deciding not to fill one of these prompts, because the dark side of appreciation posts is rejection sensitivity, and I have been there so many, many times, I hate being in situations where I have to decide who and what to appreciate and who and what not to mention. I always get it wrong and I always feel like I've hurt someone and I always, always drop back into the bit of my brain where no-one cares about me at all and I genuinely don't know if other people have that bit in their brain too, but I wouldn't want to contribute to anyone going there.

However. This project's got me nostalgic for The Way The Internet Was Back In My Day, and I want to appreciate a few people who apparently have never quite got to the point of writing me off. *g* I don't have a lot of people that I used to have on LJ because this is DW and my LJ is long gone, and I have done various iterations of "growing up" and moving away from fandom and fan spaces over the decades. I haven't even been in the habit of sharing when I do write fic here, which is going to change so I'll have to set up some filters for RL folk who just don't care. The me who found LJ and FF.Net in 2002 and the me of now have almost nothing in common, and I don't have any friends from school or university or childhood or 20s or 30s interest groups (apart from the TS) and I understand why, and I'm mostly sanguine about that now. And I am really bad at staying in touch with people.

And yet... and yet. There are

shirebound and

ancalime8301 and

rabidsamfan. I don't know when we first crossed paths but it's got to be 25-odd years ago. We were in a common fandom in the heady days when the LotR movies were coming out and it was frantic and brilliant and the internet wasn't evil yet. We wrote fic and exchanged plotbunnies and wrote drabbles that were exactly 100 words, and we were, I think for a lot of people, community that they struggled to find elsewhere. I've drifted through a lot of fandoms since then and had a lot of fallow periods where I haven't posted for literal years, and when I have it's just been to whine about how crap I'm feeling.

But you're still here.

Our interactions are different, because times change and interests drift, and I think I'm very bad at thinking things into the screen when you guys post but not actually hitting the keyboard, and I should work on that. But you're still there, and you care, and I think you understand when I'm enthusing about something that you really couldn't care less about, because fandom is its own language and you might not get the subject but you do understand the process. Maybe we don't swap writing challenges any more but you're there still there to enthuse when I'm enthusiastic and hug when I'm grumbling and I've only even met one of you in person! These are the oldest friendships I have, and there's something really beautiful about being able to retain that portion of a time that was so special - like catching the light of a star in a small glass bottle and taking it out to look at when things are dark.

<3

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snowflake2026

Last time I took the canoe out, we struggled to get the canoe on top of my car. It weighs about 35 kilos, which is not *that* much, specially when split between two people - but it feels like a lot when you are lifting it over your head, and it's heavier every year.

So! I went on Youtube and found some ideas, and today I built a sort of stepped ramp thing that lets me lift the boat a little bit at a time. The ramp is attached with removeable bolts to a frame on top of the car, and the rubber stops allow you to 'walk' the boat in small steps. Then you just lift the 'ramp' and you can push the boat onto the car. I got it up there all on my own!

( Photos )

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I went to lift club this morning and left it not feeling briefly euphoric as usual but instead nothing at all. I had seen cool people, I'd done the best exercise my body has available to it, and all this only got me up to about neutral.

I went to the RNCM, for the first time in at least five years but probably longer, to see a brass band with angelofthenorth. It was such a treat thar she'd sorted this all out for us. Great to have someone to talk with afterward: we had practically opposite rankings of the four pieces we'd heard which amused me. As she was listing hers, someone a few rows ahead who was also getting ready to leave overheard and said "I thought exactly the same!"

I told her that I didn't feel like I was thinking a lot about Minneapolis but looking at how poorly I'm functioning at everything, it's clearly taking up a lot of my usual abilities. Background radiation, she said, and yes that's it exactly.

This afternoon, V filled their pill boxes for the upcoming week had noticed that they didn't receive more of something that they thought they had. (They're so contentious but with so many prescriptions -- especially when they're low on spoons for an extended period (flare? new problem? just coincidence? no way to know!) -- it's easy for something like this to happen.) And of course it's one with hideous withdrawal symptoms. And of course it's the weekend.

I was fully prepared to leave D to make dinner while I was on hold waiting for NHS 111, but I found out you can do this online now! So I spent a relatively painless few minutes typing things into the website and then D drove us both to the pharmacy. After a bunch more questions, which luckily I was prepared (enough) for, we emerged victorious with three days of meds, enough to get us to a weekday when this can be sorted out properly.

We had takeout for dinner.

And then I saw that ICE have executed someone else. My brain and body seem to have shut down at this news.

I'm very glad that V has their meds now. They were so stressed and miserable at the thought of having to go without them. They take them in the evening so I'm glad we could figure out a solution before the meds were even overdue.

Tomorrow will be a busy day being helpful to V's relative who's clearing out his mother's house. I'm looking forward to the physical labor for something I'm not emotionally invested in.

I hope I sleep.

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I just met someone to return their partner's phone, which I found in the road on the way home from ice hockey practice around 1am. Phone, case and debit card all scattered and wet from the rain I was grateful to have missed, the phone itself cracked but still intact. I put them in my bike and went on home.

There I dried everything out and set out to see if I could get in touch with the owner. I couldn't get into the phone, couldn't make calls or send messages, could access emergency contact info but it hadn't been populated, could view Gmail notifications which gave me the owners email address. I emailed it (and had the satisfying confirmation of seeing the resulting notification a short while later). I could see someone had been repeatedly calling the phone, and when they did so again I answered and we were in business. The owner was in a car accident, spent the night in A&E, and just got out, poor thing. I've just come back from meeting the partner at the Co-op to hand it over.

The situation reminded me to check my own phone was set up with emergency contacts and medical info in the Emergency section, which can be accessed without unlocking the phone. I also have my email address showing on my lock screen (all my notifications have the content hidden unless the phone is unlocked). Let this be your reminder to consider what you want visible on your own phone if it is lost.

Tonight’s film viewing here. Total nostalgia fest for us two. And such lovely music!

Some of the Scottish accents are urgle, but I give this film quite a lot of leeway.

Also what a fab supporting cast, not least Ian Holm.

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For reasons I am too tired to get in to, there ended up being no need or reason for me to be in London for work today. The thing I had been dreading didn't happen...not today anyway.

I sorta got my wish of not working much today. Viva la huelga. I got home in time to walk Teddy this afternoon, and both of the others could make it too. It was Vee's first time in a while and Teddy was beside himself to see us all.

I spent some time being annoyed by having bad to pointlessly stay away a second night. I could only conclude that the real reason I had to be here today is just so I could watch Heated Rivalry last night (it's on HBO in the U.S. so not easy to get here). And that cheered me up.

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diary

Made it to the Mackays factory shop in Arbroath, ostensibly to get more Mrs Bridges morello cherry preserve. But we came away with 7 jars of jam, preserve, marmalade and chutney, plus unplanned fudge! After in Dobbies cafe, then a wander around the plants area. We live very near Dobbies, and first came to the cafe 25 years ago, after moving to the Dundee area. Many happy memories. Oh and I was trialling my sturdy soled new Moshulu loafer shoes. Very comfortable.

Very weary after our brief outing, but delighted to have managed it. Dobbies Dundee currently has a semi resident robin singing in the main shopping area! It's been there since Christmas. We thought they were playing very loud bird song through the speakers. But on the way out saw the robin perched near the tills. Attracting a crowd.

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Just finished this, my second book finished of the New Year. And it was honestly one of the most powerful and affecting books that I've read for a very long time. A tale of Shakespeare, yet not of Shakespeare, a moving family story, an immersive glimpse of Tudor England. I'm reluctant to say too much in detail to spoil things.

Structurally it was really interesting, different in some ways I gather from the film version. I also found it phenomenally immersive, similar to the effect that Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall series had on me. I wondered if this was due to the present tense used throughout much of the book, but I don't think that's so much the reason, as an acute sense of authorial observation and description. And just thoroughly good writing.

It has big standout moments that are particularly powerful, but also moved me constantly throughout, both by the feelings conveyed, and the power of the writing, which was both lyrical and addictive in equal measure.

Just an incredible achievement. And one that I would recommend without question.

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Also the stones of Stenness, but not the large ones.

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Big Mood (Board)

CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND CREATE A MINI MOOD COLLECTION OF THREE (or more) ITEMS THAT EVOKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT. You don’t have to limit yourself to visual media, or collect the items into a special format like a square (though you can if you’d like).

I've never done a digital moodboard (have done physical collages, back in the day) and this sounded fun, if a little challenging to manage with limited laptop time. As I've been burbling about The Prisoner of Zenda quite a bit recently, I thought I'd stick with that. All the images came from Wikimedia Commons.

I can never make DW images play nicely, so I'm just sticking this under a cut and hoping for the best. I hope it doesn't come out too huge!

( Read more... )

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What I did today

Discworld Reading Blanket

Snowflake Challenge: day 12 and 13

Dept. of Catching Up

Favourite Tenth Doctor stories from Doctor Who

Just one of those days

Burns Night

Snowflake Challenge: day 11

Quick musings on resumed Twelfth Doctor rewatch

Snowflake challenge prompt 12

I built a thing!

Background radiation

Random Doctor Who Picture

Good deed / public service reminder

Loch Ness (1996)

Home again home again

Afternoon outing

Book review: Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Random Neolithic Stones on a Friday

Snowflake Challenge: day 10

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