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mandragoraIt's been ages since I updated. I think the flu (so much for the flu jab I had - wasted! Am gonna claim tax relief on it, though) really knocked me for six.
However, am (sort of) back to feeling human and am inspired to write something. Wanna write on my SV Clex WIP, but really have to plough through some legal documents. So...am writing in my LJ instead!
The good. Amidst all the news of war, the dead and dying and the wholesale looting of some of the world's greatest treasures in Iraq (was very pleased to learn, courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
olympia_m that the British Museum is sending a taskforce to Iraq to assist the Iraqi museums) I was cracking up at an item on BBC Radio 4 this morning.
The programme regularly covers the most serious issues of the day and top politicians are interviewed on the Today programme all the time. When Thatcher was PM she used to ring up when there was something in the programme she disagreed with (which happened rather often...*g*) and was put on air so she could air her disagreements.
So, yeah, very serious programme. And today they chose to cover an event of high - nay, earthshattering - importance. The return of Muffin the Mule. Muffin was a puppit who appeared in a children's programme on the Beeb way back when. And yes, it was before my time, okay! My mother remembers watching Muffin the Mule - I don't.
And not before (one of the presenter's) time, obviously. I think he was probably a kid when Muffin the Mule was shown, and, well, I can empathise when it comes to the programmes you grew up with. Hey, I've seen the new 'Bill & Ben', and it's so not the real Bill & Ben. The lack of strings and being in colour is only a small part of it. Not least - they talk now.
I've never heard this presenter be so passionate in his questioning before. Big issues of the day - he's calm, cool and collected. But the news that the 'new Muffin' won't have strings is just-- just...horror! He went on about the lack of strings at some length. His co-presenter was killing herself laughing, and commented that she had originally been down to present the Muffin item, but had stood no chance once he had learnt about it! I think she's too young for Muffin.
So, yes, highly amusing.
Also very much to the good, hearing from Sapphire, who has a LJ under the monikersapphiresmuse. Anyone reading this who knows Sapphire hop over to her LJ and see if we can persuade her to come play with us in LJ-land. *g*
And also in the good category, the weather! Hey, I'm British, allow me a moment to marvel when we enjoy temperatures of 26 C in April. Weather forecast is that by next week we'll be back to the seasonal average of about 10 C. Sigh.
On the not-so-good front, went on a business trip to Cardiff last week. Train journey was about as good as it gets in Britain's benighted transport system, very smooth, weather was fine, and Cardiff looked pretty. Just small. Like a small provincial city type of small. Shouldn't the capital city of Wales be bigger than that? It's been years since I was last in Cardiff (when I visit the Welsh relatives I go to the North Wales coast), and I'd forgotten what the city is like. On the plus side, the people I met were lovely, warm and welcoming. But terribly, terribly provincial. They were nowhere near as cosmopolitan as the Scots in Edinburgh, for example. And this distresses me, because well, Cardiff's the capital and it should be grand and impressive and it's just. Not. Pleasantly pretty is about it and that's not a bad thing, but I wanted a experience a sense of grandeur, similar to that I have when gazing up at Edinburgh Castle, and it just wasn't there, dammit. Nice castle, though.
As for the tragic...
I was having dinner with one of my university friends when she mentioned Tim's death, thinking I'd have read about it in the latest issue of the University magazine. That issue is in fact sitting around unopened somewhere, so it was a shock.
I last spoke to him a few months ago, when he was thinking of coming back from Singapore, where he'd been working for the past few years. He was a member of the Singapore cricket club, who were on a trip to Bali at the time and was just outside the club when the bomb blew.
We were both studying law when we met. He was open about his bisexuality (a rarity, as most gay and bi people kept a pretty low profile on campus back then) and went out with both men and women.
The relationship of his I remember best was with a fellow law student, Sarah, who was in the same Hall of Residence as me. In fact, her room was opposite mine. They had a very torrid affair, lots of break-ups followed by passionate reconciliations, sometimes several times a day. It got to the point where we didn't know from one moment to the next whether 'it' was on or off. So, in a joke that had a ring of truth about it, we made a chart and stuck it up on Sarah's door.
The chart was for the next week, with each day broken down into hourly units accompanied by 3 categories, with space to put a tick by that most appropriate at the moment in question. The categories were:
It's on
It's off
We're not sure
Sarah took one look at the chart, which was pinned to the outside of the door to her room and lost it! Much giggling all round.
They finally broke up after she gave him a whopping black eye. She swore that she didn't really mean to hit him, but hit him she did. He said that was the final straw, snapped that men were a lot less work, fuck it! And left. The next person he went out with was a rather shy, and very nice, man. Not at all like Sarah, who was neither, but was damn good company nonetheless.
He never married, and was single when he died so at least he didn't leave behind any dependents. Although I doubt that was any consolation to his parents. I think I was the only one of the university crowd I see on a regular basis who was still in touch with him at all, which is why I hadn't heard about his death earlier. So, yeah, it was upsetting.
He was a really nice bloke, and there aren't enough of them around.
And on a trivial note, am wondering whether, and if so how much, the latest SV episode (for which I've read all the spoilers/reviews I can get my mitts on) is gonna impact on the SV story I'm writing. Oh well, it's not like I don't know that it's going to be pretty much wholly AU anyway. Some canon developments I might be able to include within the plot, others not. That's the difficulty of writing in an open canon, of course.
However, am (sort of) back to feeling human and am inspired to write something. Wanna write on my SV Clex WIP, but really have to plough through some legal documents. So...am writing in my LJ instead!
The good. Amidst all the news of war, the dead and dying and the wholesale looting of some of the world's greatest treasures in Iraq (was very pleased to learn, courtesy of
olympia_m that the British Museum is sending a taskforce to Iraq to assist the Iraqi museums) I was cracking up at an item on BBC Radio 4 this morning.The programme regularly covers the most serious issues of the day and top politicians are interviewed on the Today programme all the time. When Thatcher was PM she used to ring up when there was something in the programme she disagreed with (which happened rather often...*g*) and was put on air so she could air her disagreements.
So, yeah, very serious programme. And today they chose to cover an event of high - nay, earthshattering - importance. The return of Muffin the Mule. Muffin was a puppit who appeared in a children's programme on the Beeb way back when. And yes, it was before my time, okay! My mother remembers watching Muffin the Mule - I don't.
And not before (one of the presenter's) time, obviously. I think he was probably a kid when Muffin the Mule was shown, and, well, I can empathise when it comes to the programmes you grew up with. Hey, I've seen the new 'Bill & Ben', and it's so not the real Bill & Ben. The lack of strings and being in colour is only a small part of it. Not least - they talk now.
I've never heard this presenter be so passionate in his questioning before. Big issues of the day - he's calm, cool and collected. But the news that the 'new Muffin' won't have strings is just-- just...horror! He went on about the lack of strings at some length. His co-presenter was killing herself laughing, and commented that she had originally been down to present the Muffin item, but had stood no chance once he had learnt about it! I think she's too young for Muffin.
So, yes, highly amusing.
Also very much to the good, hearing from Sapphire, who has a LJ under the moniker
sapphiresmuse. Anyone reading this who knows Sapphire hop over to her LJ and see if we can persuade her to come play with us in LJ-land. *g* And also in the good category, the weather! Hey, I'm British, allow me a moment to marvel when we enjoy temperatures of 26 C in April. Weather forecast is that by next week we'll be back to the seasonal average of about 10 C. Sigh.
On the not-so-good front, went on a business trip to Cardiff last week. Train journey was about as good as it gets in Britain's benighted transport system, very smooth, weather was fine, and Cardiff looked pretty. Just small. Like a small provincial city type of small. Shouldn't the capital city of Wales be bigger than that? It's been years since I was last in Cardiff (when I visit the Welsh relatives I go to the North Wales coast), and I'd forgotten what the city is like. On the plus side, the people I met were lovely, warm and welcoming. But terribly, terribly provincial. They were nowhere near as cosmopolitan as the Scots in Edinburgh, for example. And this distresses me, because well, Cardiff's the capital and it should be grand and impressive and it's just. Not. Pleasantly pretty is about it and that's not a bad thing, but I wanted a experience a sense of grandeur, similar to that I have when gazing up at Edinburgh Castle, and it just wasn't there, dammit. Nice castle, though.
As for the tragic...
I was having dinner with one of my university friends when she mentioned Tim's death, thinking I'd have read about it in the latest issue of the University magazine. That issue is in fact sitting around unopened somewhere, so it was a shock.
I last spoke to him a few months ago, when he was thinking of coming back from Singapore, where he'd been working for the past few years. He was a member of the Singapore cricket club, who were on a trip to Bali at the time and was just outside the club when the bomb blew.
We were both studying law when we met. He was open about his bisexuality (a rarity, as most gay and bi people kept a pretty low profile on campus back then) and went out with both men and women.
The relationship of his I remember best was with a fellow law student, Sarah, who was in the same Hall of Residence as me. In fact, her room was opposite mine. They had a very torrid affair, lots of break-ups followed by passionate reconciliations, sometimes several times a day. It got to the point where we didn't know from one moment to the next whether 'it' was on or off. So, in a joke that had a ring of truth about it, we made a chart and stuck it up on Sarah's door.
The chart was for the next week, with each day broken down into hourly units accompanied by 3 categories, with space to put a tick by that most appropriate at the moment in question. The categories were:
It's on
It's off
We're not sure
Sarah took one look at the chart, which was pinned to the outside of the door to her room and lost it! Much giggling all round.
They finally broke up after she gave him a whopping black eye. She swore that she didn't really mean to hit him, but hit him she did. He said that was the final straw, snapped that men were a lot less work, fuck it! And left. The next person he went out with was a rather shy, and very nice, man. Not at all like Sarah, who was neither, but was damn good company nonetheless.
He never married, and was single when he died so at least he didn't leave behind any dependents. Although I doubt that was any consolation to his parents. I think I was the only one of the university crowd I see on a regular basis who was still in touch with him at all, which is why I hadn't heard about his death earlier. So, yeah, it was upsetting.
He was a really nice bloke, and there aren't enough of them around.
And on a trivial note, am wondering whether, and if so how much, the latest SV episode (for which I've read all the spoilers/reviews I can get my mitts on) is gonna impact on the SV story I'm writing. Oh well, it's not like I don't know that it's going to be pretty much wholly AU anyway. Some canon developments I might be able to include within the plot, others not. That's the difficulty of writing in an open canon, of course.
