Love and the Quantum Butterfly

who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma

2010-01-03T03:52:15Z

We were just eighteen when you gifted me Trafalgar Square complete with lions. Big Ben chimed the time, the time was now and London was my prize for bad behaviour. You told me of the boy you loved: I checked out girls who walked undressed for summer. And eighteen was the year for role reversal, getting high, and nicotine, and discount love.

"Marry me," you said as we fed pennys to the fountain, "not today, but someday, when we 're old and lonely let's give it a shot."

I said yes and didn't really mean it; being old and lonely seemed a long way off and I could never see a time when I would ever need your love.

New year resolutions

2009-12-12T02:39:05Z

response to post of buttkick

Gonna post these resolutions everywhere I can, might even graffiti them on walls with spray paint, 'cos the more I tell people I'm going to do all this the more likely it is that I'll do it. And, honey, I have to do most of this stuff.

1.Get Myspace/facebook fan page/Soundclick/twitter stream/website sorted. Start gimmicky pro-blog (it's gonna be totally amazing --not discussing gimmick yet).

2.actively self promote the things I do (this isn't quite the same as above) -- start a mailing list, update facebook status/twitter regularly
n.b this is REALLY REALLY important. I lost count of how many sets I did last year, I was ubiquitously everywhere, but very few people came to things expressly to see me. Know why? I never let anyone know what I was doing -- the correct response to "I really enjoyed that, where can I see you next?" is not "um.... you liked it?... um... er... really... well... er... where am I next?... er... where am I?", it's "thank you very much, it's been a great night. I've got loads of exciting stuff coming up. Could I take your email and I'll send you the details."

3.contact some of my favourite people (and a bitter enemy or two) and twist their arms until they agree to workshop a musical with me

4. write and rehearse 10mins worth of new material every week,whether I actually need it or not

5. Start a crazy cabaret night fortnightly/monthly (it's going to be amazing)

6. Blag a spot at seven festivals (I did four last year, so seven isn't unreasonable)

oh yeah, also...

7. Get driving license sorted out, buy car.

There you go. Hit me over the head if I don't seem to be doing any of this next year

Cuthulu in a tutu!

2009-09-12T01:24:55Z

Okay, I lied about cuthulu in a tutu, but there is a kraken especially for fatkraken .

Well not just for The Kraken, other folks will like kraken love also. I promise....
(let's be honest, with at least eight appendages there's gonna be plenty of kraken love to go around anyway.)

the woman wot did this cool vid is m_stiefvater, when she's not trying to convert the world to squid love she writes books. She's got a new one out . It's called Shiver, it's great, you should totally buy it.

typsetting can be a bit of a bugger

2009-09-01T18:10:19Z

Literally....

The accidental headline of the year

Do read it, it's hilarious, although I'm not convinced that this isn't a fake story that's been planted, just to see how fast it'll spread and how.
False stories having being very much in the news recently, following a bit of a debacle where a number of papers reported that Chris Grayling (the shadow home sec) apparently got lambasted on the Mayor of Baltimore's website, for comparing Britain to the TV show the wire.

Anyway, I'm still a boring person who only posts quizes and links, I'll write more interesting things when my life's more interesting.

'cos all the cool kids are doing it -- meme nicked from the fair flower of Northumberland

2009-08-23T22:53:11Z

In other words I thieved it from mametsuki (there's no' a difference between Northumberland and Cumbria is there lassie?)

Rules:

*Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find the fifth sentence.
*Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal.

*Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Sadly the closest is "Geometry and Symmetry" by Paul B. Yale, since pornography and books about summoning demons are never close at hand when it would be entertaining -- they're only clearly on view when I have straight laced visitors who already think my life style is too extreme. And all the most intellectual books I own are on the coffee table in the sitting room in the after math of a vain pre-attempt to convince my straight laced visitors that I'm secretly deep. It might have helped my cause if I'd either read the intellectual books in question, or my straight laced visitors(SLV) had not, but you can't have everything in this world.

The fifth sentence of the 56th page is:

With this information it is tedious, but trivial, to complete the proof

I shall leave the derivation of the theorem as an exercise for the reader.

Sita sings the blues

2009-05-21T05:46:41Z

I'm always late to the party, but on the off chance that you haven't watched Sita Sings The Blues yet, you totally and utterly should. It rocks harder than a rainy day at Glastonbury, albeit in a totally different way.

I've just finished watching the thing and I'm still in that state of bouncy enthusiasm one gets from having watched something one really loved. In fact, I'm still so bouncy and enthusiastic that I'm not sure that I can actually write anything more coherent than I loved it, and if you haven't watched it, do so immediately so that I can rave about it with you.

That said, not being able to talk coherently about something has never actually stopped me talking, so here goes.

Sita Sings the Blues is a feature length musical animation. The film is a highly idiosyncratic retelling of the Ramayana, focusing on the story of Sita, Rama's devoted wife, who is abandoned by her husband for complicated and unfair reasons, that neither can fix, nor change. Sita's story is intercut with the story of Nina, a modern day American woman who is coming to terms with a marriage break up and finds comfort in the Ramayana. That's pretty much it. it doesn't sound that amazing a story line, but trust me it is. Like most good storytelling, things are kept relatively simple, and by keeping things relatively simple the film packs a powerful punch. I have a feeling you could probably watch the film several times over and see different things within it each time.

The narrative is held together by three argumentative shadow puppets, each of whom have a slightly different, and often highly entertaining take on the story. They were absolute quality, it was like listening to three old friends discuss a much loved story. They didn't always agree on certain points, and sometimes they found plot holes, and sometimes one of the narrators would actually get something wrong and get corrected by the others. I gather that there are multiple versions of the Ramayana as well as a strong oral tradition, and I liked the way the shadow puppet implicitly addressed both this and the nature of oral storytelling without making a massive point of it. Each of the puppets had very distinctive personalities and different takes on Sita's story. There were some fairly deep debates within the generally fairly light hearted commentary, though my favourite shadow puppet moment was a somewhat tangental discussion about the amount of jewellery one would have to wear to be able to drop enough to create a followable path from a forest somewhere in the middle in India to a fortress in Sri Lankra, followed by a discussion about whether Sita was actually wearing any jewellery anyway. I loved those shadow puppets to pieces, I could have listened to them chatting and arguing all day.

While there were quite a few things in the film that got me thinking, the things that are mostly going to remain with me are the animation and the music.

The animation is lush. Absolutely fragging gorgeous. Not just pretty, but visually interesting. There's a lot of different things going on, a massive hodge podge of different techniques and styles. There are so many different techniques thrown into the mix, that it could potentially have become quite trying. It wasn't. I'm not quite sure how it worked, but it did.

The music and animation are so entwined in places, that it's fairly hard to discuss one without the other. The bits that really stood out for me, and probably will for most people are the "Sita sings the blues" segments, where the voice of Annette Hanshaw, a jazz singer from the 1920s is given to Sita, who sings her heart out, usually while her world is collapsing around her. The animation in these segments is absolutely gorgeous, very very slick and polished, but with the innocence and hopefulness of a kids cartoon. Although I think these sections also owe quite a bit to the Fleischer brothers -- Sita actually looks a little like Betty Boop in these segments, and anything that combines 1920s jazz with animation makes me think immediately of that Cab Calloway/Betty Boop/St. James Infirmary clip (this one).

There's something very upbeat about Annette Hanshaw's voice, even when she's singing about heartbreak, and the choice of Annette Hanshaw as Sita's "voice" gives Sita that same upbeat hopefulness and occasionally rather knowing strength. Sita's character is defined by those songs and they become a very integral part of the film. In some places the animation and songs tie in so completely that the song is actually carrying the story, in other places the action radically re-interprets the song. In one particular segment (you'll know which one I mean if you've watched it) I actually had to remind myself that the animation had been done around the songs and not the other way round, the track in question seemed so apposite to the story that it felt as if it had been written for it.

Sita Sings the Blues has had some serious problems with copyright issues, these centre around Nina Paley's use of the Annette Hanshaw recordings. The issue seems fairly complicated, but appears to have been mostly (but not completely) resolved. Not using the recordings would presumably have fixed the problem, but they're such an integral and important part of the film that I can see why she's fought to use them.

The tagline to the film is "the greatest break up story ever told" and it really really is. Neither of the women gets her man. Neither woman gets a conventional happy ending. That said this is not a film that ever feels particularly sorry for itself. There's a strength and hopefulness lying just under the surface -- things don't always go well, but life goes on. In the midst of exile, banishment, abduction, captivity and war, Sita finds something to sing about; while Nina gets unexpectedly dumped in a really nasty way, channels a goddess, dances with rage and then just gets on with things, eventually taking her misery and channeling it into something creative and positive. There's a definite feel good factor to this film and I came away from it with a great big fat smile on my face and so did the person I watched it with.

Sita Sings the Blues is a feature length animation, written and produced by Nina Paley and distributed under creative commons license. You can download it here, watch it here and chuck them some cash here.

You should definitely watch this film if you've ever had your heart broken. Actually you should definitely watch this film fullstop.

Deary deary me -- what's up yours?

2009-04-25T12:20:15Z

I'm turning into one of those people who only post memes, quizes and youtube links. Bad me. I was going to tell y'all about my exciting week off work in which I was supposed to be recovering from stress and exhaustion. I er.... spent the week suffering from weird adventures which included a somewhat unsettling encounter with a crazed horse and a slightly odd nearly drowning incident. My laptop has finally breathed its last, which is a tad irritating. I also started my own business (more on that in another post, once everything has had a chance to sink in). I still haven't quite managed to write any of those gazillion emails I owe folks, can we assume epic fail on my part. I will spend Monday morning writing them, because I'm off Hellraising this evening and I'm working tomorrow.

Meantime have a youtube link. I was actually looking up a link to John Wright, a much underappreactiated singer/songwriter in the same vein as Eric Bogle, but I got sidetracked by this.

The only thing I can really say to this, is "oh dear, oh dear" and also can some one wave said clip at the Bears, for 'tis practically their anthem already.

I told you so (but folks never listen)

2009-04-21T14:15:12Z

I'm not so keen on the meme thingies and the quiz thingies, but I have a week off work (at least I hope I have a badly needed week off work and haven't just been fired so nicely by my best mate that I failed to notice the firing -- note to self: ask for clarity on this issue at end of week) and one day into the week off work I'm already so bored that I'm climbing the walls.

so....

Your result for The Greek Mythology Personality Test...

The Oracle

33% Extroversion, 67% Intuition, 17% Emotiveness, 81% Perceptiveness

Heuristic, detached, and analytical to a fualt, you are most like The Oracle. You are able to tackle any subject with a fine toothed comb, and you possess an ability to pinpoint nuances and shades of meaning that other people do not have and cannot understand. Accomplishment and realization of ideas are, for you, secondary to the rigorous exploration of ideas and questions -- you are, first and foremost, a theorist. You hate authority, convention, tradition, and under no circumstances do you accept a leadership role (although, you will gladly advise leadership when they're going astray, whether they want you to or not). Abstraction and generalities are your interests, details and particulars are usually inconsequential and uninteresting. You excel at language, mathematics and philosophy.

You are typically easy-going and non-confrontational until someone violates one of the very few principles that you deem sacred, at which point you can fly into a rage. Although you possess a much greater understanding of process and systems than the people around you, you are always conscious of the possibility that you've missed something or made a mistake. You don't tend to become attached to particular theories, and will immediately discard mistaken notions once they're revealed to be incorrect (but you don't tolerate iconoclasts who try to discredit validated theories through the use of fallacies and bad data). Despite being outwardly humble, you probably think of yourself as being smarter than most other people. That's because you are. In fact, in your dealings with people your understanding of their motives is so expansive that you know what they're going to say before they say it, and in world affairs, you usually know what is going to take place before it actually does. This ability would make you unbeatable in debates if only you were a little less pensive about your own conclusions, and a little more outgoing.

Famous people like you: Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, John McWhorter, Ramanujan, Marie Curie, Kurt Godel

Stay clear of: Apollo, Icarus, Hermes, Aphrodite

Seek out: Atlas, Prometheus, Daedalus

Take The Greek Mythology Personality Test at HelloQuizzy

Folks are allowed to laugh hysterically at this assement of my personality, but I liked it. I particularly like the suggestion that I should be more outgoing. I'm off to do more Hello Quizzy quizes in order to boost my already enormous ego.

Anyone who feels prompted to do this quiz please tell me your results, so that I know whether to shun you like the plague or stick you at the top of the cake list. What ho!

Waterloo Station

2009-03-12T20:11:51Z

Waterloo Station

The dreams which defined us at sixteen
Gave us meaning at twenty
And left without us
As twenty-three became
An endless fury of uncaught trains
Which roared like monsters in the night

At twenty-five conductors
Sneakily sold tickets
Valid only on another platform
And we sat in carriages
Bound for places quite different
Than our plans

Thirty was spent in smoking
Thoroughly standard class
Thinking we could get bumped up
But didn't want the fuss
Some of us were lucky
And never saw the substitution
We took the trolley tea and cake
And called it caviar and wine

And thirty-five was nine to five
Commitment the coin of entrance
We'd met the others on our journey
Our transit tempered by
The company of strangers

There were those who traveled with us
In an storm of missing luggage
And ill-thought words
Those we met on platforms
During signal failures and strikes
who we waved away on journeys
Going quite the other way
And never saw again

And there were one night stands
And absent conversation
Among those who traveled light

There were those who planned their journeys
Baedecker was their constant consolation
As they too were misdirected
But thought they knew the time
To change their trains
At forty we shared their carriages
And found that those whose purpose was the journey
Still traveled much the same

There were those who watched from windows
As fifty-five slipped past
And mourned the country side unseen
The towns and fields lit by the golden light
Of approaching autumn afternoons
With crisp cold sunsets
And they shuddered with the chill
As winter nights drew in

Then finally came the terminal
The destination we all traveled to together
Regardless of our route
And no matter what the stations
We had changed at
None were lost upon the way

I'm only doing this so I can use the pretty icon

2009-02-15T20:14:36Z

And also 'cos I've got the bloody song on my brain

After me, kids --- "Zydrate comes in a little glass vial...."

I laughed and laughed and then I laughed some more

2009-02-13T01:16:28Z

I dedicate this youtube offering to Catboy.

Incidently, yup that is Paris Hilton.

ps. it's Friday today

It's been nice, but now I want to scream

2009-02-04T23:50:44Z

Okay, so yesterday it seemed like I took loosing virtually everything I'd done since November really well.

That was shock.

Now the reality has hit me and I'm not taking it well at all.

Yesterday I was all "well that's actually a good thing, because... blah, blah, blah." Today I'm all on the phone to nerds saying things like "well I know it was a stupid thing to do, but if the FBI can find pornography and stufff off people's hard drives even after they've reformatted them fifty million times, then why can't I...? Okay. No... No... Yes it was a stupid thing to do... No... No... Okay, maybe it wasn't a real news story, maybe I'm thinking of CSI, or numb3rs, or something like that, but seriously if that character in that Neal Stephenson book can do it and anyway there's recovery programs on the net that can. Oh shit... shit.. I'm sure that wasn't supposed to happen... crap! Yeah, I didn't want that data anyway."

One of my neighbours does aromatherapy and hypnotherapy and massage and stuff. I'm going to see if she can hypnotise me into total recall of every word I've written since November. Maybe I can get a hypnotherapy package deal -- total recall and giving up smoking in ten easy sessions.

randomness

2009-01-20T21:04:59Z

livredor made me think about old protest marches. What gives

Belfast '93
The one thing we do well is hatred
It exports well too
In every paper there’s a piece on hatred
And why it's all so bad;
And why it's all so good
For the Fat Cat politicians who reel in the dollars
Making peace with two sides
With far more in common
With each other
Who are far too blind to see.

The Protest march
There was a protest march in Belfast, “I'll go” said Lyn, “But only if it doesn't rain.”
We were big on symbol then, the cease fire'd barely finished, and to mark the death
Of a year and a half of peace, we set free eighteen pigeons, kidnapped off the streets
And painted white.

We wore flowers in our button holes, made of toilet paper, Beth spent a morning
crafting them, and when the downpour came our blazers were caked in their decay.
The soldiers on the corners just looked bored, as yet again we said a thousand things
we've meant before, and never carried through.

A girl burst into tears and spoke of the death of her Da, a not altogether innocent victim,
It turns out. But then our dead are seldom innocent, save in retrospect, or by default.
There was unity among us, as we huddled together for “the cause”, admittedly something
Many of us had done before
For different people.

Later in the rain we hurried off our seperate ways, the proddys stuck together
The hibs were just as bad. We could try and socalise among ourselves, but most
Of us would not have known how, segregated practically from birth, for some
This was almost the first time...

And in a country where you can get shot just for opening your mouth with the wrong
Accent on yer, why would you do something as risky as talk to a bunch of people
You don't know, and anyone can write a protest song.

Patsy and me, went down to the station, sitting on the benches by the Europa Hotel
And the little boys from Crumlin, aye – sure they threw stones at our pigeons
As they sheltered 'neath the arches, and the dye on those birds...
Just washed out in the rain.

edited: because nostalgic totally was not the right word

</lj>

In the Bleak Midwinter

2008-12-31T04:17:59Z

It's been bitterly cold all day and a dense fog started to draw in with the evening -- one of those thick freezing fogs that turns everything it touches into spikes of ice and reduces visibility to glimpses of moving shapes with ghostly auras beneath the street lights. It's a pea-souper of a night. A night from a murder book written in the thirties, the sort of night that could have been written by Margery Allingham or Christiana Brand.

And it's death I'm speaking of though, not the knife man in the fog, but death from cold. I can't tell you how cold it is exactly, but it hasn't been much above freezing at any point today. The grass outside my house crackled with ice when I walked my dog this morning, the path was break neck icy when I walked him this afternoon, and it was so cold when I walked him this evening that I actually thought I was going to die of cold.

I went back into my nice warm house and had a nice warm drink and after that I felt a lot better, but some people may well die of cold tonight. They might even die of cold in the city I live in. The people most at risk are the old, the poor, the vulnerably housed and the people with no homes at all. And the street people are having it hard tonight. From what I saw earlier this evening they were already suffering badly, and the temperature has dropped rapidly since then.

Early this evening I was travelling into town with some friends. On our way in we passed a church that a lot of homeless people tend to congregate at. There's always far less of them out there as the winter draws in. Tonight there was only one street person outside the church. He wasn't sitting on one of the benches, he wasn't sitting on the wall, he was sitting hunched up on the pavement against the wall. He had a little white dog and he was hugging it close against his chest, he didn't seem to be crying, but every line of his body was telling a tale of abject misery and he was hugging his dog because he needed that affection. It clearly wasn't attention seeking, or a complicated begging strategy; it was an intensely private moment of personal unhappiness that was happening in a public place, because he had nowhere else to go. There were three of us in the car and we all saw him, but we didn't stop. We couldn't even dash out, ask if he was okay and give him some money on the off chance that would help: none of us had any cash on us whatsoever, and we were running badly late for something.

The really unhappy guy hugging his dog was an image that stuck with me all evening, I wished that I had done something for him, but I couldn't imagine what I could have done in the face of such deep unhappiness -- except listen, which I really hadn't had the time for. And it turns out that I'm an over-privileged fool, because I didn't even connect his utter misery with the bitter cold, though even if any of us had made that connection there still wasn't much we could have done -- we didn't even have a spare blanket in the car.

My sister phoned me up later in the evening. She was meeting up with some friends in town and had taken a short cut along a street which is never well lit, but is normally a busy thorough fare. In the the freezing fog the street was deserted and slightly spooky. As she was walking she heard a girl sobbing somewhere along the road ahead. She's either braver or more foolhardy than I am, because she went to investigate and found a teenaged girl sitting in the doorway of one of the office buildings. Her arms were wrapped tightly round her dog and she was sobbing her heart out. She was sobbing her heart out, because she was unbearably cold, had been unbearably cold all day, had never really got warm, and had now reached the point were she couldn't cope with it any more.

I hope that the problem was simply that the night shelters hadn't opened yet. They don't open till about seven or eight -- that's a long time to wait round in the cold, long enough to make anyone unhappy in this sort of weather. I would hate to think of either the sobbing girl or the unhappy guy with the dog sleeping rough tonight. I hope they do have somewhere warm and safe to sleep, because the temperature is going to drop even further in the night.

But some people will be sleeping rough tonight; there will be various reasons for this (which I'm not going into), but not every street person will use the Night shelters. People will be sleeping rough tonight in the town I live in, and through out the country. I cannot find any precise figures detailing how many people each year die of hypothermia, and how badly the homeless population is effected, but I guess it's a fair few.

It's cruely cold tonight.

A little story about electric light

2008-10-19T14:35:04Z

In the beginning there was light, then came money.

As civilizations discovered about money they had to hide it. With the net result that everybody went underground and hid, so that no one could see their money. People then mutated so that they could see in the dark. After this massive change, the underground cave dwellers decided it was a waste of time hiding in the dark.

Not wishing to leave their underground homes, they invented electric light instead.

They then discovered that while money was fun, money and electric light was even more fun. That was until they started getting electricity bills.

After this, a bill was decreed, stating that people could have either electric light, or money, but not both. Some people decided to stay with the money and moved outside into the light. Some of them went to Mars, but most of them didn't. Some of them mutated into frogs instead.

I hate the electricity company

The end

Good Golly Miss Molly!

2008-09-10T18:38:28Z

Guess who is in a spectacularly good mood, because they found a copy of Jive Bunny -- the essential party experience for three quid in Asda?

Yup, that's pretty much got to be me. JIVE BUNNY!!!! (cue the little dance of joy) THREE QUID!!!

Want to know the best bit? Go on... I know you do.

The best bit are the extras. There are Mega Cool Groovy Extras. There's a Jive Bunny colouring book to print off and colour in (I'm going next door to steal felt tips/crayola from the munchkins). And... there's a kareoke Cd.

You see, sometimes life seems shit and bleak, and basically it is really, but then there's JIVE BUNNY!!!

Runs off to gloat. With colouring book and stolen crayonage. My inner child is thoroughly assauged.

23

2008-08-31T23:08:10Z

Innocence has too short a summer
Its length measured not by deeds
But in its dreams.

You loose it not through action but
Acceptance of the very things you
Railed against in youth

Autumn comes with compromise
And words that cover up the cracks
And adult woes

Are born of things we never planned
When we built castles out of quicksand
At seventeen

Soda bread recipe

2008-08-21T18:49:46Z

It's been a funny funny week. And since it was funny in a peculiar, surreal, wtf kinda way, I think I've lost my sense of humor on the subject.

I haven't posted up the second half of "why we don't like Wednesdays" yet. I appear to have a day entirely to myself on Saturday, I'll finish it then, for my own satisfaction and then I'll post it, because I hate not finishing things once I've started.

Have a soda bread recipe. I'm in a bad mood (more than a bad mood actually, I'm a towering rage of fury) so I'm baking.

Aunt Franny's Soda Bread

3 cups of white self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 carton buttermilk

note that real buttermilk is hard to get hold of these days, so I'm talking about the synthetic stuff that comes in 300ml pots and looks like yoghurt.

If you can't get hold of buttermilk, natural yoghurt or unflavoured lassi both make good substitutes (lassi is best of all, even better than buttermilk, but it's very expensive and rather too nice to use just for cooking).

Mix all the ingredients together in the bowl, adding the buttermilk a little bit at a time until you end up with a large lump of dough in the middle of your bowl. The dough should not be sticky, but it should not be in any way crumbly or dry either. Add water if the dough seems crumbly. Do not add too much liquid, the dough won't rise if its too wet.

Shake a little flour on to your working surface. Place the dough on to the working surface. Don't knead the bread, sour dough doesn't like being over worked. Press the dough flat, until it is about an inch thick, then pat it into a round. Lightly dust the top of the dough with a little bit of flour. Cut the round into six pieces, as if you were cutting a birthday cake. You should end up with six roughly triangular pieces of dough. Your dough should be slightly floury on the outside and not in the least bit gluey to the touch.

Some people cook soda bread in the oven, but then there are also those who also make the stuff with wholemeal flour. Each to their own I suppose. Where I come from the stuff is traditionally cooked on a griddle. Griddles don't really exist anymore, and I haven't the fogiest idea of how to use one anyway. The modern equivalent is a frying pan. I like to cheat so I use an electric frying pan, which I own specifically for making soda bread in. You'll probably want to use an ordinary frying pan. You need a flat bottomed frying pan suitable for making pancakes in; a wok is great for stir fry but of no use to you in this endeavour.

Do not oil your pan, the dough isn't sticky and it won't stick to an un-greased pan; if you add oil you will end up either frying your dough or with very oily bread. DO NOT OIL YOUR FRYING PAN. Okay, got that. Good. Pre heat the pan at its top temperature for a few minutes, then lower the temperature to a mid setting (on my electric pan full heat is six and I drop it down to four). Place each soda farl carefully in the pan. The farls will grow in size during cooking, and they have a tendenency to spread out towards their neighbours; make sure there is plenty of space between each farl otherwise you may end up with ONE large mishapen piece of dough. If you can't fit all six pieces in the pan without squashing them together, cook your farls in two batches. If your frying pan has a lid, stick on the lid; if it doesn't, no worries. It will take about fifteen minutes for the farls to cook on the first side; during this period the farls will inflate in size and the top side will start to look bubbly and grey like the top of pancakes. After fifteen minutes, flip the farls over, the bottom layer should have a very faint brown colour and a slight crust. If this has not been achieved re-cook this side when the other side is done. If your farls are very thick, they sometimes fail to cook in the very middle; after the farls are completely cooked on the top and the bottom, turn them on their sides and (by dint of propping each farl against the side of the pan) cook each of the three sides for a short period.

Cut all the farls in half lengthwise (so you end up with each farl in two slices, each slice consisting of one crusty surface and one surface from the centre of the farl); butter your farls (usually the bit in the middle rather than outer crust, but each to their Aunt Germaine) and add cheese or jam or what you will.

If the inside doesn't look too cooked (and it may not be the first time you try to make soda bread; it takes a while to get used to the cooking times for your pan and your stove), stick the uncooked bit back in the pan to finish off.

And that's it. Soda bread.

Some days are diamonds, some days are rust

2008-08-18T02:29:02Z

But my momma always told ne there's be days like these...

1. Things you never say to some one who has been sitting in front of a keyboard for over 36 hours:
(brightly) so, did you know Danny Kaye used to open up his living room as a restaurant.

Apparently that's completely true. Either that or I fell asleep by accident and never noticed. In which case no one is going to say "I can't believe you believed that tomorrow. Unless it's true. There's no way that fact is real, it's there to confound the confuddled, surely?

Thing You Never do to someone who has been sitting in front of a keyboard for over 36 hours:
Buy a new cordless telephone, that looks exactly like the old cordless phone, but apparently doesn't work off the same base and then leave both the old phone and the new phone lying round the house in different random places (but never the same random place twice).

Oh yeah. Got it in before 9am Monday morning!!! SIX HOURS EARLY!!! Does the six hours early dance.

Someone say, "so, Red, what was actually wrong with your computer? What was the hardware problem that it took three nerds to fail to fix, and one small child to point out?"

Go on, some one ask me.

redaloud @ 2008-08-14T04:22:00

2008-08-14T03:26:29Z

My laptop won't power up, which is really annoying, because it's the only machine in the house which runs windows and also the only machine in the house which has all the mathematical software and statistical software I need for the maths thing that was due on Friday.

YT phones Tutor.

YT: I think it's the bit the power cable plugs into, I sent it to the computer fixer at the start of the year, but I don't think he did the repair. I think he said he did the repair, but actually all he did was clean the points. I could have done the job more effectively. Eighty quid he bloody charged me...

Tutor: Ah... hello there. Could we start this phone call again... the conventional way where you start off by saying "hello Dr.X," and I say "how are you doing?"

YT: (unenthusiastically) Okay... Hello Dr. X

Tutor: How are you doing?

YT: My laptop's buggered.

Tutor: (dryly) I gathered. Can you get the work you've done so far off the hard drive?

YT: It's SATA and my desktops won't talk to it.

Tutor: Clever. Install the software on one of the desktops and start again.

YT: They're all running flavours of Linux.

Tutor: Clever. How soon can you make one run a flavour of Windows?

YT: Should be able to get the laptop fixed by Thursday. Then I won't have to re-do a whole weeks work.

Tutor: (laughs wryly) Did you have plans for the weekend?

YT: Yes, I did actually. They were wonderful plans, they involved a jazz festival and another country.

Tutor: What a crying shame! For a I foresee a sleepless weekend spent drinking Java and re-doing what is technically a months' work on a desktop with a shiny new installation of windows. That laptop's dead, admit it.

YT: It is not dead. It's just a naughty boy.

Tutor: Enjoy your caffeine-fuelled weekend. I want that work in my in-box first thing Monday morning.

So I have a day off today and a day off tomorrow. There's plenty of things I should be doing, but for a change it's not my fault that I'm not doing them. I physically can't.

While I was waiting for the opportunity to pull a Lazarus on my laptop (which will happen tomorrow night once I can get my hands on the parts, mwhahah), I ended up bored and adding to my comfort blanket -- Minstrel Without Portfolio which, strictly speaking is DNR due to plotholes, unexpected gender confusion and lack of any form of redeeming features (and also I should be working on the rewrite of Kenneth, writing Space Opera, or doing something about Flick and Toni which is unusually well plotted by my standards but lacks any character to the characters). Except that in my boredom I decided to write a LRP story featuring gay elves to cheer-up the Welsh contingent (admit it Bangorites, you like LRP and you like gay elves) and I was going to re-use the characters. So once I re-used the characters, in a way they would not have approved off at all (the characters, that is), I then realised how to write myself out of the plot-hole and possibly even the gender confusion.

So (takes deep breath) ... I'm very run-on sentencey today, I've noticed. Then I decided to write Freud in Wonderland instead. It's gone stupidly long, I'll stick the other half up tomorrow. Also I nicked the zombie boyfriend, and I can't remember from whence.

Why we don't like Wednesdays

“Hey!” Morrison's voice sounded tiny and far away, “Hey!”

I looked up, Morrision was leaning over the trapdoor, peering down at me thoughtfully. He looked tiny and far away. And that was because the top of the cellar is much further away from the bottom of the cellar, than the bottom of the cellar is from the top of the cellar.

I did mention I hate the cellar, didn't I.

“Hey!” Morrison shouted again. “Hey! I've still got the torch.”

He flashed it in my eyes, in a thoroughly unhelpful fashion, while I swore long and hard in the several languages at my disposal. There is a “Thing” in our cellar and it sometimes likes to eat people. It is pretty much light blind and can only see in the dark. A torch is always helpful, when dealing with the “Thing”. In the circumstances, I would really have appreciated a torch.

I had a little list of things I didn't wish to do today, and while going down into the cellar was close to the top of the list, getting eaten by the “Thing” was definitely almost at the very top.

“You're a bastard, Morrison!” I yelled.

Morrison can be pretty deaf at times, and he's particularly deaf where the cellar's concerned. He obviously thought I couldn't hear him.

“I've got the torch!” he bellowed. His voice echoed off the walls, and reverberated through the cellar.

“...the torch ...the torch ...the torch!”

It was pretty ear-shatteringly loud, and if it hadn't alerted the “Thing”, it was definitely loud enough to wake the Minotaur. I hate the Minotaur. I hate the cellar. I've already mentioned that I hate the cellar, haven't I? I have always considered cellar hatred, something that should be indulged in at every possible opportunity.

Morrison had definitely decided that I couldn't hear him. He cupped his hands round his mouth and threw his voice.

“I've got the torch,” he said, his voice as clear in my ear as it would have been if he had been standing next to me. “I've got the torch, Meg. Sorry!”

Then, obviously worried that he hadn't thrown his voice far enough and that I still couldn't hear him. He decided to illustrate the point by amplifying the light of the torch and illuminating one of the cellar walls. Because, you know, obviously, when a girl is standing in utter darkness at the bottom of a hell-hole, what she most wants to see is the message Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here written in Sanskrit and daubed in blood in six-foot letters. A message that is only visible when lit from above by someone standing at the entrance of the cellar. My siblings and I worked out that particular cellar idiosyncrasy years ago, and Morrison has been with us more than long enough to know about it, too. That's Morrison for you, he never thinks about these things.

The letters re-arranged themselves under the prolonged exposure to the torch beam. They now read,

I am going to rip the flesh from your bones, Meg. And I am going to enjoy doing it very much

I looked back up at Morrison and shook my fist at him. “I am going to kill you, when I get back up there, you idiot!”

Morrison smiled at me and nodded his head. He didn't move the torch beam, and the letters were already rearranging themselves into another creepy threat.

“Kill you!” I shouted, “I'm absolutely going to kill you. I'm going to rip the flesh from your bones, Morrison. And I'm going to enjoy doing it very much.”

I glanced at the wall. The writing now read,

I shall use your sinews as stirrups, your guts for garters, your hamstrings as bowstrings, and your big toe shall cork my wine

God Lord! The wall was actually being helpful for a change.

“I shall use your sinews as stirrups, Morrison. Your guts for garters, your hamstrings for bowstrings, and.... and. And, I absolutely refuse to use the phrase 'your big toe shall cork my wine', because that's the lamest threat I've ever heard. How old are you? Four?”

And your big toe shall cork my wine The wall said in six foot letters of blood.

I smacked the wall firmly. “No really, that's a pathetic threat. Utterly pathetic. I wouldn't even have produced that as a playground insult.”

And your big toe shall cork my wine

The letters lengthened until they were at least ten feet high and blood dripped from them.

Morrison leant through the trapdoor at a truly precarious angle. “Good,” he said happily, “so you can hear me then. I've got the torch.”

“I know you've got the torch, Morrison. I'm coming back up to get it.”

“What?”

“I know you've got the torch, Morrison. I'm coming back up to get it.”

“I've got the torch, Meg. Do you want to come back up to get it?”

“Yes, I'm coming back up to get it, now.”

“Are you coming back up to get the torch, Meg? I've got the torch you know.”

“YES! I KNOW YOU'VE GOT THE TORCH, MORRISON. I'M COMING BACK UP TO GET IT. YOU HUNCHBACKED YELLOW-TOOTHED IMBECILE!”

Morrison's face fell. He looked like I'd kicked him in those yellow teeth I'd mentioned earlier.

“I'm sorry about the torch, Meg,” he said, disconsolately, “but there's no need to shout at me like that. That was horrible stuff you just said. It's not fair to mention my disability like that. It wasn't nice at all.”

He was quite right, it wasn't fair, and it wasn't nice. Even the wall thought it was a low blow. Its letters had now rearranged themselves to read

I can't be bothered to eat you or torture you.

You have sunk below my contempt

“I'm sorry, Morrison,” I shouted back up, “I lost my temper. I shouldn't have said that.”

“I can't hear you,” Morrison shouted back.

“I said, 'I'm sorry, Morrison.' I lost my temper. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

“I still can't hear you,” Morrison shouted.

“I SAID I'M SORRY, YOU BLOODY MORON!”

Morrison started humming loudly. Which, being Morrison, he could do in three part harmony.

“I'm not listening, and I can't hear you,” he muttered through the hum.

“I SAID, I'M SORRY.” I yelled, but Morrison was determinedly not listening.

He moved away from the trapdoor and started talking urgently to someone else. “I can't hear her.” he said, crossly, “I can't hear a word she's saying, but she's definitely saying something dreadful. Meg has such a nasty temper. She always does it, just when everyone is having such a nice time. She always has to ruin things for everyone. Well, I've had enough of her. I've had more than enough of her. I've had enough of this entire family. I'm going to pull the steps on her. Leave in the cellar for a while. See how she likes that. She'll probably get on well with the “Thing”. I've had enough of her....”

His voice drifted off, and another voice cut in; female, calm and insistent. It sounded a lot like my sister Lacey.

I put up a swift prayer to any gods that might be listening that it wasn't my sister Lacey, because while being in the cellar and getting eaten by the “Thing” were close to the top of my “things not to do today” list, dealing with my sister Lacey was actually at the very top, beating both fates by a large margin.

It was Lacey, of course. It was that sort of day. She leant over the trapdoor and looked down at me disapprovingly. Even balanced precariously at the edge of a hellhole, Lacey managed to look unruffled and sweetly pretty.

“I heard what you said to Morrison,” she said in her sweetly reasonable voice, “I can't believe that you said all that, you know how sensitive he is about his hump.”

Morrison muttered something in the background.

“...And he's not an imbecile,” she continued fluently, “he says, he got fed up with you calling him an imbecile, so he joined MENSA and it turns out that his IQ is three points higher than Einstein's, and he's got a little card to prove it.”

There was more muttering from Morrison.

“...Also, he's been doing a correspondence course in Astrophysics and technically he'll be a rocket scientist when he's completed his last module.”

Morrison growled loudly.

“...That comment about his teeth, was a really low blow,” Lacey continued, “he's really sensitive about his teeth. We all know that, Meg. He always has been. He wants you to know that he's started using Dr. Zhivago's whitening powder, and he's going to an astral dentist tomorrow and she's whitening his veneer, and...”

There was yet more muttering from Morrison.

“...And, also it's not because he doesn't brush, he's just one of those people who are unlucky enough to have teeth that are naturally the colour of old ivory, and...”

There was even more muttering from Morrison.

“...And, also even his bones are off-white. Really?”

She lifted her head back from the trapdoor and flipped over to look at Morrison. “How do you know?”

They'd both left the torch at the top of the steps, and I amused myself by reading wall-threats.

It had just produced a really odd one involving rising damp and a noose – it's actually pretty hard to take the wall seriously at times – when Lacey's voice rang clearly through the trapdoor.

“Really!” she said, “Gosh, I've absolutely got to do that sometime. Don't tell Meg, she'll want to try it, too, and she's really bad at pulling herself together. That's half her problem, you know. She's far more to be pitied than blamed.”

“I heard that!” I shouted.

“Drat!” Lacey leant back over the trapdoor, “did you hear all of it.”

“Yes!” I lied.

“Well, don't try it, Megara. You know what you're like.”

“No, I don't!” I bellowed back. “What am I like? What's that even supposed to mean?”

“Well, you know, you're a bit... a bit...” she paused searching for the word, her unflappable demeanour slightly flapped, for a change, “well... you're a bit....”

“A bit what!!!”

“Don't shout at me, Meg. You're so aggressive. That's half your problem, Meg. You're so aggressive. I can't talk to you when you're being aggressive.”

“What problem?”

“Meg, you've got too much anger inside you, it's impossible to reason with you. Have you tried yoga? I thing you should try yoga, Meg. I really do. I know the number for a really good guru. Do you want the number, Meg? He's really nice. I think you'll like him. He trained in the Himalayas, you know. With Yetis,” she added, encouragingly.

I'm not entirely sure why she considered Yetis a selling point, but that's Lacey for you.

“I don't want to try yoga! And you can stick the Himalayas so far up your guru that he reaches Nirvana through sheer height advantage!”

And yes, I actually was quite pleased with that bit of invective. Even the wall was impressed, it went blank for a moment.

Needless to say, Lacey was not impressed. She was actually faintly shocked. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

“That's a horrible thing to say about a man of the cloth,” she said reprovingly, “and I was only trying to help you. You never listen, Meg, that's half your problem.”

“And again, what problem?”

“Oh, you know, your problem.”

“No, I don't know.”

“You can be very unreasonable sometimes, Meg. We all know about Meg's problem, don't we, Morrison?”

Morrison nodded firmly, slimeball sucker-uperer that he is. “You definitely have a problem,” he agreed.

“See, Meg. Even Morrison thinks you've got a problem and Morrison isn't really all that good with people.” She turned back to Morrison, “you don't mind me saying that do you?”

Morrison shook his head, because of course it's perfectly fine when Lacey says something like that to Morrison, but it's not when I say it. Although, in fairness to her, she'd used a pretty good euphemism for Morrison's people problem.

Morrison leant through the hatch and smiled self-deprecatingly, “I don't really like people,” he said.

“What do you mean he's not really all that good with people, Lacey?” I shouted back. “He eats them, that's not really having a problem with people. There's a world of difference between having no social skills and eating people. I think Morrison is pretty good with people, actually. And he does like them really. He likes them crunchy,” I added for emphasis.

Morrison looked crestfallen and started growling.

Lacey pushed him back from the door.

“You're being really unfair, Meg,” she said. “It was only one person. And it was Cousin Harriet, and she was a real bitch.”

“She didn't deserve to get eaten, Lacey.”

“I don't know why your getting so upset about it. You never liked her. You told him to eat her.”

“I was seven! And was at least two people! Don't you remember all that business with the postman? And, all I said was, 'I wish Morrison would eat Cousin Harriet, as well as the postman'. How was I to know he actually would.”

“Because he's Morrison. And we all know that Morrison is an imbecile.”

There was a loud growl from Morrison, and I wondered if she had pushed her luck a little too far.

Lacey obviously wondered the same thing, because she amended her statement hastily. “An imbecile with a really high IQ,” she said, “you don't mind me saying that, do you, Morrison?”

There was no growl from Morrison, so presumably and quite typically, Morrison didn't mind her saying that.

“Anyway, I don't know why you're still holding it against him. He's promised never ever to do it again.”

“I'm not sure that's quite enough, Lacey.”

“And Mum put a geas on him. So he can't do it again. I can't believe you're still whinging on about Cousin Harriet, Meg. You can't let go of grudges, that's half your problem.”

“According to you, I have at least two problems.”

“What are you blathering on about?”

“You said, 'that's half your problem' at least five times. And every time it was a different half problem. So that's two and half problems when you add it all up.”

“Oh, for goodness sake.” Lacey ran her fingers through her hair, in a gesture that characteristically lead to a full scale Lacey rage. “You can be so childish, sometimes.” She said crossly.

“I'm not being childish. I'm just saying....”

“Oh. I know what you're saying, you can be very difficult at times, Meg.”

“I was just saying....”

“Yeah. What makes you think you've only got one problem, anyway?”

The doorbell sounded in the hallway. Lacey stood up abruptly and smoothed her dress.

“Shit!” She shouted down to me, crossly, “do you think that's Dad back?”

“No,” I told her, “it's only half-past two.”

Lacey looked confused, “No it's not,” she said firmly, “I didn't get here till half-past four.”

“Lacey, you're being special again. It was about two O'clock when I came down here and I can't have been standing here for more than twenty minutes.”

Lacey started laughing.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She sounded insufferably smug.

“Oh go on... What is it?”

“Nothing.” She was definitely being smug.

“What's so funny then.”

“Nothing.”

“Lacey, if you don't tell me I'm coming right back up the stairs and I'm going to throttle you.”

“I really wouldn't do that, Meg.” Lacey now sounded like a cat that had got the cream.

“Why not?”

Lacey shrugged, “I just wouldn't... Meg, do you know what day it is?”

“Of course I know what day it is.”

“Good.” Lacey obviously knew something I didn't, she was positively purring, and she was equally obviously in the sort of mood where she wasn't going to part with a single snippet of information that could be useful. “What day is it, Meg?”

“Tuesday.”

“Has it been Tuesday all day, Meg?”

“It's definitely been Tuesday all day, Lacey.”

“Sure it is,” Lacey said, in a voice that strongly suggested that it wasn't Tuesday at all. If it had been any one other than Lacey I would have been filled with Tuesday-doubt, but Lacey always does this as well. She actually rather likes winding people up.

“It is Tuesday

I was now beginning to have some doubts about the Tuesday-ness of the day, anyway. I cast my mind back over the week so far.

“It is Tuesday!” I shouted up, “it was Sunday the day before yesterday.”

Lacey seemed to think this was even funnier.

“When did you last get some sleep?” she yelled back.

“Last night.”

Lacey started giggling again. She was being quite insufferable.

Thankfully the doorbell rang again.

“Get the door, Morrison,” Lacey said, in her best Lady of the Manor voice.

And because it was Lacey, Morrison did. He didn't even grumble.

“You will tell me if it's Dad, won't you?” She yelled after him.

“Why are you avoiding Dad?”

“Oh!” Lacey sounded uncomfortable, “I just don't want to see him, that's all.”

“Why?”

“I just don't.”

“Oh come on, why not?”

Lacey was suspiciously silent.

“You've done something dreadful, haven't you?”

“No.” Lacey said quickly.

“Come on, you obviously have.”

Lacey coughed. “Maybe,” she admitted cautiously.

“Oh come on, what've you done?”

“I don't really want to talk about it.”

“You've dropped out of college, haven't you?”

“No,” Lacey said, a little too quickly.

“You've dropped out of college, run off with a Vampire rockstar, and have joined some ridiculous occult cult in the Outer Hebrides.”

“Don't be silly,” Lacey said, she was laughing.

Well, I knew it was too much to hope for.

“And you've crashed Dad's car” I suggested wildly.

Lacey gasped. “How did you know?” She uttered faintly.

“What?”

“How did you know I crashed Dad's car?”

“You've done what!”

“I might have, sort of, crashed Dad's car,” Lacey said in a small voice, “but only a little bit,” she added.

“You crashed Dad's car!” I started laughing.

“Shut up!” Lacey sat back down on the ground again, “promise you won't tell Dad.”

“I think he'll notice, all by himself,” I pointed out.

“No he won't,” Lacey said firmly. “I've done something clever, and once I speak to Bridie, “I'm going to do something even cleverer. So he's never going to know.”

“Well good luck with that!”

“Thank you.”

“'Cos you're really going to need it.”

“Oh shut up, and stop being horrid.”

Lacey shifted herself into a more comfortable position. “Where is Bridie, anyway?” she asked thoughtfully. “I haven't seen her since I got in.”

It was my turn to chuckle infuriatingly. “You mean you don't know?”

“Don't know what?”

“You so totally don't know.”

“What don't I know?”

“You don't know that Bridie did a stupid bet with Aunt Griselda and she's gone missing in the cellar.”

“She did what?”

“She got into a bet with Aunt Griselda and she's gone missing in the cellar.”

“What did she do that for?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Lacey.”

“She really got into a bet with Aunt Griselda?”

“She really got into a bet with Aunt Griselda.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Bridie can be really thick sometimes.”

“Yup.”

“I was wondering what you were doing in the cellar,” Lacey admitted, “but you can be pretty weird sometimes, Meg.”

“Oi!”

“Oh come on, Meg. You know you can be pretty weird sometimes. That's half your problem.”

Morrison was blustering in the hallway. It obviously wasn't Dad, Morrison never blusters at Dad.

“I'll be right on through, Elizabeth. Just want a word with young Morrison, here... What do you mean, Elizabeth?... Nonsense. Morrison's a lovely fella. Get on like a house on fire, don't we Morrison? Like a house on fire... So how's it going, old fellow? Eaten any family members recently?...”

Lacey winced.

“Is that Uncle Henry?” I asked.

“Yes.” Lacey shuddered dramatically. “He's being particularly Uncle Henryish today.”

“There's no need to be like that about it old fellow.” Uncle Henry's booming voice rang out, “just wondered if you'd fallen off the wagon ... we're friends, old chap. No need to be shy about it... Know you can always count on me, old chap. Know you can always count on me.”

“Don't tell him about Bridie,” I whispered urgently.

Lacey glared at me, “I'm not stupid,” she said.

“Now listen, old chap,” Uncle Henry lowered his voice, he obviously thought he was whispering. “Listen, Morrison, old chap, if you ever do have a craving for flesh you must phone me up at once... Haha, that's a good one old boy,... well it really depends on how you want to eat me, ha ha ha.”

Lacey winced and covered her face with her hands, “I hate Uncle Henry,” she muttered.

“I really think I should be a four course meal, old boy. None of this knocking me back unseasoned. Roast me on a fire first, that's what I always say to the cannibals. I'm at my best when you give me a good stuffing, know what I mean, old fellow.”

I started giggling, Lacey was brick red.

“Do you know my friend Richard, he's a Kelpie... Oh come on, you must know him, he eats babies – you lot all know each other, don't you... Well, remind me to give you his number then, I think you've got a lot in common... Absolutely addicted to babies, poor fellow. Terrible thing for the family. Anyway, after he ate his third son, his missus put her foot down. 'It's me or the babies', she said. So he ate her too, with a side portion of baked potatoes and some coleslaw. Ha ha ha... Oh come on, old fellow, I was only joking. Of course he didn't. Eating women just isn't good form, old boy. It's just not cricket... Terribly sorry, Morrison, I'd forgotten all about that. Not to worry, dear boy, every one's forgotten all about it. Perfectly natural, nothing to be embarrassed about. What's a cousin between friends, old chap.”

Lacey sighed deeply. She stretched out on he floor above, and pressed her face through the trap door. “Meg,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“Meg, did you really really mind when Morrison ate Cousin Harriet? I can sort of remember it happening, it was pretty gory, wasn't it?”

I stared at the wall.

All things come to dust

Worms shall eat your bones

The wall could be pretty apposite at times

“Meg?” Lacey pushed her shoulders through the trapdoor, she was now hanging through almost upside down.

“Meg, are you actually alright down there. The “Thing” hasn't eaten you or anything?”

I glanced back at the wall

you will die alone and unloved

“No, Lacey. The “Thing” hasn't eaten me.”

“Good. Meg... I've been thinking about things recently and I've come to the conclusion that I wouldn't be friends with you, if you weren't my sister.”

“Thanks,” I replied sourly.

“You don't mind me saying that do you? You're not going to take it the wrong way are you?”

“What other way am I supposed to take it?”

“Oh God!” Lacey sighed deeply, “I knew I shouldn't have said that. I knew you would take it the wrong way. It's just I think we should have more honesty with each other. That's the problem with this family, we're not honest about our feelings.”

“I think you're a sanctimonious, stuck up, drug taking, tie-dyed wannabe hippy.” I shouted.

Lacey smiled, “See,” she said happily, “you're getting the hang of it, already. Don't you feel better now?”

“No.” I growled at her. I would have snapped my teeth as well, but that would have made me like Morrison and I'm not like Morrison, even if I do want to eat people occasionally.

“Oh!” Lacey sounded surprised, she shifted the torch round until the beam moved off the wall and formed a spotlight on me. “I think you're a whining, self-obsessed, boring, manipulative, little bitch,” she said conversationally.

That actually hurt and I couldn't think of anything to say in retaliation.

Lacey jiggled the beam again, the cellar went dark for a second and I could hear the “Thing' moving towards me in the darkness.

“Go on,” Lacey said finally, “it's your turn to say something. You can make it really hurtful,” she added encouragingly.

There are a long list of things that really piss me off about Lacey, but my mind had gone completely blank.

“You're being a dick,” I shouted back, “I've had enough of this, and I'm fed up with being down in the bloody cellar with no torch, a scribble demon, the “Thing” and a bloody minotaur. I'm coming up the stairs and I'm getting the bloody torch.”

There was a long pause. “I don't really don't think you should do that, Meg.”

“What?”

Lacey sounded very certain, and when Lacey sounds very certain about something, there's usually a good reason.

“Why can't I come up the stairs, Lacey?”

“Um...” Lacey looked uncomfortable, “um... well.. I just don't think you should.”

“Meg!” Mum elbowed Lacey aside and shone the torch down at me.

I wasn't in the mood for whatever last minute instruction she was about to give me.

“I'm doing it.” I told her, “just give me a minute. I have to come back up for the torch.”

Mum looked startled. “Doing what?” she asked.

I growled with irritation, even by Mum's standards this was ditzy. “I'm looking for Bridie,” I told her, through gritted teeth. “In the cellar. The way you told me to.”

“She thinks it's Tuesday,” Lacey informed her in the exact same voice she used to use when telling tales when we were small.

“It is Tuesday,” I shouted. “It was Sunday the day before yesterday.”

Mum leant through the trapdoor and shone the torch on the wall. The writing flickered and faded, too fast and too high for me to read.

“Have you found Bridie yet?” she asked. She sounded a little worried.

“No!” I yelled back, “Morrison has got the torch, and I'm not wandering around the cellar in the dark. Why did you and Dad decide to move into a house with a hellhole in the basement, anyway? Why can't we be like normal people? Why does everyone in this family have to be so horribly weird?”

“Are you still dating a zombie, then?” Uncle Henry's voice boomed down from the parlour. “Nothing wrong with dating zombies, that's what I say. Gives them a new lease of life, but what do you do if the bits fall off? I suppose that's something you learn to live with.” He roared with laughter.

“We prefer the word previously owned.” Aunt Rose's voice was softer, but carried just as far, there was a sharp edge to it. “It's just like dating a divorced guy, only his ex-wife's a widow. And the rest really isn't any of your business, Henry.”

Even Uncle Henry is smart enough to know that you don't push Aunt Rose when she has that edge to her voice. He changed the subject abruptly.

“Has anyone done anything about poor Meg's little problem?” he asked.

Someone hissed at him to be quiet.

“I don't have a problem,” I yelled at the top of my voice.

“Of course not,” Mum agreed.

“Oh yes you do,” Lacey said at the same moment.

Mum glared at her. “Meg will get things sorted in her own time,” she said finally.

I hit the wall in exasperation. Yes you do! It told me in six foot letters.

Some days I feel like everything is ganging up on me.

They were still discussing me upstairs in the parlour. Aunt Rose was explaining that all living beings had the right to express their lives in any fashion that they chose, and some one else was patiently correcting her, words like intervention were being used. The second voice sounded a lot like Bridie's, which would explain why I couldn't hear it clearly. Bridie is the only member of the family with a voice which usually operates at a normal volume.

“Is Bridie upstairs?”

“What makes you say that?” Lacey asked.

“I can hear her.”

Mum and Lacey gave each other a worried look.

“Are you certain it's Tuesday,” Mum said finally.

Some one was shouting in the parlour. She was obviously upset and her voice sounded very high pitched. It sounded a lot like one of Bridie's temper tantrums, but she hadn't had one like that for years, not since she was a kid.

Lacey and Mum had heard her too.

“That is Bridie,” I told them firmly. “That is definitely Bridie. This is silly. This whole thing is silly. I'm coming back up.”

Mum shook her head. “That isn't Bridie,” she told me firmly, “don't come upstairs.”

I ran my hand over my face in exasperation and realised that my cheeks were wet. I was cold, I was in the bloody cellar more or less in the dark, and I'd had enough.

“There's something you aren't telling me,” I shouted up.

Yup, it's true, I majored in the bleeding obvious.

The girl was shouting again in the parlour. In fact she was doing more than shouting, she sounded like she was having hysterics. There was a slamming sound as she hit the ground and I could hear her feet pounding on the floor. She was crying now in fierce whoops.

Everyone was talking loudly, pretending that it wasn't happening.

It wasn't Bridie, Bridie isn't that young. In fact, when I thought about it, there was only one person it could be. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable, as if a ghost had walked over my grave. Which you know is pretty unlikely, what with the fact that I don't have one and all.

“What day is it where you are?” I shouted back up to the trapdoor.

“Wednesday,” Lacey told me. She was smirking and I actually wanted to hit her. Life would have been a lot easier if she'd told me that to start with, but Lacey always has to know more than everyone else.

Now I knew what had happened, I even knew which day was happening upstairs.

“You're going to go into the parlour in a minute,” I told Lacey, “and you're going to tip a bucket of water over me.”

“Does it work?” Lacey sounded interested.

“Well... actually it really pisses me off and I tell Morrison to eat you and I'm so cross that it get's round the geas enough that he actually bites you.”

“Oh Meg!” Mum looked furious.

Lacey smiled crookedly. “Thanks for that,” she said. “Any other things I should be looking forward to?”

“And then you get gangrene from the wound and your arm falls off,” I added.

“That's quite enough, Megara,” Mum said firmly.

“Of course I could just be screwing with your head. And now you're going to go round for the rest of today wondering if that didn't happen because I warned you, or if it didn't happen because it never happened.”

“Today always happened the way today happened,” Lacey said firmly.

“But you always think you can change it at the time,” I pointed out. “If today always happened the way today happened, then what happens to free will. Think about it, if causal loops exist then there's no such thing as free will, because the future happens at the same time as the present and the two things effect each other. You're the Deist in the family, doesn't that screw things up for you?”

Lacey glared at me. “I'm looking forward to going into that parlour and throwing a bucket of water over you. And I promise you that's my own free choice and I don't care about the consequences.”

The tantrum in the parlour was getting worse, all three of us winced as the kid stopped sobbing and started shrieking. Eldrith shrieks. Several glasses broke in the parlour.

Lacey stood up abruptly. “In fact I'm throwing that bucket over you right now.” She scooped her hands into the air and pulled out a bucket of water.

“Cool.” I told her. “By the way it was really clever the way you covered up the fact you crashed Dad's car. I never knew.”

“Lacey! Did you crash your father's car?”

Lacey shrugged. Or at least she sort of shrugged, it's hard to shrug with a bucket of water in your hand. “A little bit,” she told Mum. “I may have crashed it a little bit.”

“What were you doing in your father's car in the first place?”

“Yes, Lacey, what were you doing in Dad's car?”

It's good to see Lacey put on the spot, but sadly she was given a reprieve. Morrison came barreling out of the parlour at some speed. Well I assume he did 'cos I could hear him running. He was also crying.

“She told me to eat Master Henry,” he sobbed, “and I nearly did.”

Mum stood up abruptly. “But you didn't, Morrison.” She told him soothingly, “you didn't do it, it's all okay.”

“But I wanted to.” Morrison sobbed.

“That's alright,” Mum said, “we all feel a bit like that about Henry. Patrick has dreams where he poisons him by accident, and they're not nightmares. He always wakes up in a good mood afterwards, he says they set him up for the day.”

“Really?” Lacey put down her bucket again, “Dad has dreams about poisoning Uncle Henry?”

Mum nodded.

“Huh! I never knew that.”

“You don't choose family,” Mum told her, “most of the time you just put up with them.”

“You chose me,” I shouted.

Mum sighed, “is that what this is all about?”

“No,” I told her, “it's another causal loop. I act the way I do because everyone expects me to act like that, and everyone expects me to act like that because I do. The problem with this family is no one ever gives anyone enough space for development.”

“Oh, Meg.” Mum sounded half-cross and half-sad.

“I told you we don't talk about our feelings enough,” Lacey pointed out.

The kid was still shrieking, and my ears were thrumming to the sound.

“Go and chuck that bucket of water over me,” I told Lacey.

Morrison leant into the cellar and did a double take. “How the heck did she get down there,” he asked, still with that faint sob in his voice.

“It's a time loop,” I told him, “you know about time-loops Morrison, you're studying to be an astrophysicist.”

Morrison looked startled. “How did she know that,” he asked shrilly. “Who told her that. I don't want her to know, she'll only be horrible about it.”

“You told me,” I told him, “but I think you might have told me next Tuesday.”

“What?” Morrison cupped his hand round his ear. “I can't hear you.”

“I said you told me next Tuesday.”

“What?” Morrison turned back and spoke to Mum, “I don't know what she's saying,” he said, “but I'm sure it's horrible. Meg's got such a nasty temper, that's half her problem.”

I counted to ten slowly. “I'm sorry, Morrison.” I shouted up, “I'm sorry if I'm mean to you and I'm sorry about just now in the parlour.”

Morrison shook his head. “I know she's talking,” he said, “but I can't hear her. I know she's saying something horrible.”

“I said I'm sorry” I yelled back up.

Morrison shook his head again.

“She said she was sorry,” Mum told him.

“Oh,” Morrison looked startled, “well it doesn't really change anything does it?”

He glared down at me again. “She doesn't have a torch,” he said.

“No.” I agreed.

Morrison snatched the torch out of Mum's hand and shone it down on me.

“I've got the torch, Meg,” he shouted. “Do you want to come up and get the torch?”

“No.” I shouted back up, “I don't want the torch.”

Morrison muttered something, “I don't think she can hear me,” he said. “I've got the torch Meg. Do you want to come up and get the torch.”

I sighed, deeply, we were getting caught back in the loop again.

Bridie and Lacey were shouting at each other in the hallway. Bridie was telling Lacey that she needed to be more sensitive to my problem and Lacey was telling Bridie that I was a spoiled brat who needed a good smacking. The bucket of water had done the trick though and the kid had finally stopped shrieking.

“I'm sorry,” I told Mum.

Mum looked surprised. “What for?”

“The fuss upstairs for a start.”

“You can't really help it,” Mum said.

“Yes I can,” I told her quietly, “it's everything else I can't change.”

“The rest of it really isn't a problem.”

“Uncle Henry thinks it is. Lacey thinks it is.”

Mum grabbed the torch back from Morrison and shone it down at me. She muttered something vulgar and highly uncomplimentary about Uncle Henry.

“And Lacey?” I prompted.

Mum sighed, “you two just rub each other up the wrong way.”

In the hallway Bridie yelled something unforgivable at Lacey and Lacey did something involving magic. I could hear the displacement pop. Morrison muttered something under his breath, unusually virulent even by his standards and ran into the Hall.

Even Mum looked a little taken aback, and she's usually pretty cool when Lacey starts throwing magic around.

She lay back down on the floor and peered down at me. “Why did I ask you to look for Bridie?” she asked. She looked a little worried.

“'cos she got into a stupid bet with Aunt Griselda,” I told her.

Mum's eyebrows shot up. “She got into a bet with Aunt Griselda,” she said disbelievingly. “What sort of bet?”

“It was one of her fate-line jobbies,” I told Mum. “I think that might be why the time-lines are screwed up. Do you think I'm here so that you can tell Bridie not to do the bet?”

Mum looked thoughtful. “No,” she said.

“That's a great shame, then, because if that's all it was, then you could do that and then I wouldn't be in this bloody cellar anymore, because you wouldn't have told me to come down here.”

“If that's all it was, then you wouldn't be down here,” Mum said.

Which was reasonable, but not the answer I particularly wanted to hear.

“Could you throw the torch down?”

“Why don't you switch the light on?”

“What light? There isn't a light in the cellar? Since when has there been a light in the cellar?”

Mum looked faintly shifty. “Since... since practically forever,” she admitted, “but don't tell anyone.”

“What is the point of having a light in the cellar, the cellar that's full of monsters, the cellar that's full of monsters that live in the dark, if you don't let anyone know?”

Mum looked shifty again. “The cellar's much bigger with the lights on,” she told me finally.

“How much bigger?”

I got the shifty look again. “Appreciably bigger,” she said.

She shone the torch at the wall. The writing had got bored of being ignored and was back to it's ABANDON HOPE message.

“Press the full-stop,” she said.

“What fullstop?”

“The fullstop at the end.”

“There isn't a fullstop at the end of Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here,” I pointed out. “Or at least, there shouldn't be.”

Mum sighed. “You're being terribly pedantic,” she said, “and I'm not sure you're right anyway.”

“Well, there isn't one on the wall.”

Mum grumbled something under her breath. “Just use the other one then,” she said finally.

“We have two light switches in the cellar? I can't believe there's lights in the cellar and you never said.”

“You're going to have miles to walk,” Mum said. “If you use the other switch you're going to have miles to walk.”

“I'm not walking for miles in the cellar without a torch,” I told her. “I'm just not doing it.”

“Miles to walk back,” she said, in the slow clear voice that people use with people who are being absolutely idiotic. “I told you the cellar is much bigger with the lights on.”

She flicked the torch over so that it's beam shone on the furtherest wall. There was a sea of darkness between the wall and me. There was indeed a light switch on the grimey bricks of the cellar wall. A very ordinary light switch. I wondered why I'd never seen it before.

“Could you track me with the beam?”

“Um... no. That switch is only there when I shine a torch beam on it.”

Well that explained why I'd never seen it before.

I stepped into the darkness and felt something large flip by me. It had batwings. And if it didn't have batwings there was some kind of serious leather fetish going on, and I didn't want to know about that either.

“Meg!” Mum exclaimed, it sounded urgent.

“What?”

“What day was it when you started?”

“Tuesday.”

“Yes, I know. Which Tuesday?”

“Next Tuesday.”

Mum looked worried again. “Do you think Bridie's alright?”

“Yup.” I told her, firmly. I really wasn't sure, but it didn't seem fair have her worrying for the rest of the week.

She saw through that anyway. “Did I look upset?” she asked, “when I told you to go and look for her in the cellar, did I look upset?”

“No. You mostly looked pissed off.”

“Oh.”

“You had a row with Aunt Griselda and then you looked pissed off. I think you sent me down the cellar because you remembered that I'd ended up here today.”

“That's a little convoluted.”

I shrugged. “Don't ask me.”

“I hope the pair of you are okay,” I could see she was going to be fretting all weekend. I was going to have serious words with Bridie once I'd found her. “Once you've switched the lights on, I'm going to close the trapdoor,” she said, “I don't want today to get anymore mixed up with next Tuesday than it already is.”

“Okay.”

“Also,” she added, “the electrician wandered off when he wired up the cellar and we never saw him again. Show him out if you run into him on your travels."

"Okay."

I closed my eyes and stepped back into the darkness, on the off chance that if I couldn't see anything, nothing could see me.

... and in tomorrow's thrilling conclusion.... more action, less talking. Meg discovers that "appreciably larger" is a bit of an understatement. um and stuff happens, finally.

I can haz music meme

2008-08-10T23:22:39Z

Drat that wiffly_shwoo for infecting me with a music meme thingy (and drat spawnofweevil for infecting her).

Wiffles gave me the letter P, and I cursed her long and hard, for I could think of no tracks that begin with the letter P. Then when I got thinking about it ALL my favourite tracks begin with the letter P, and I had great trouble reducing my list to five.

1. Peter Kagan and the Wind (Tommy Makem/Liam Clancy) -- Makem & Clancy in concert
I have a soft spot for "spoken word" pieces at the best of times, and I've always loved tracks that are all about the storytelling. On Peter Kagan and the wind, you get thirteen minutes of superb storytelling as Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy lead you into a world where fishermen marry "seal wives" (i.e selkies, but with some provisos) and the wind talks. A genuinely magical piece of theatre.

This comes in at the number one slot on the "tracks beginning with P" list, just because of the fond memories associated with it: I used to listen to this on my parent's record player when I was very small -- I would make my dad drop the needle close to the start of the track (those olden days before you could just flick to the right spot on the CD) and then I would curl up in a little nest under the table with my eyes closed and let myself get carried away with the story. It was always a rainy day outside in those memories, and I sometimes used to pretend that the rain beating against the window was the sea and that I was out on Kagan's dory. One of the first stories I ever wrote was a rip of this track. Even now, I will occasionally re-read stories I've written and see traces of Kagan and the Wind lurking beneath the narrative.

Sadly this track is pretty hard to find, because it was only ever released on the Makem&Clancy in concert LP. It was a double album and when it got digitized for CD, the track got cut for length (it's almost 13 minutes long). My copy is a digital copy of my Dad's LP and the sound quality is very poor. I dream of the day when I can get my hands on a digitally remastered version of the track, but for a variety of reasons that seems unlikely to ever happen.

2. Perfect Day (with Antony) -- The Raven (Lou Reed) ltd ed 2cd version
I'm also a sucker for concept albums, and I like Edgar Allan Poe and I like Lou Reed. That being said, "The Raven" can be a little trying at times. It's definitely one of those albums I have to be in the right sort of mood for and it's not an album I can stick on as background noise when I'm working. There's some great spoken word pieces, there's some dire spoken word pieces, there's some tracks that are so bad it's almost embarrassing to listen to them, and there's one or two tracks that grab my ears every single time and leave me listening in awe till the sound goes away. Antony's cover of Perfect Day is one of those tracks (the other three are "The Bed" (another odd re-interpretation of a classic Lou Reed track), "Imp of the perverse" and The Cask (dramatic re-workings of two of Poe's stories)).

Antony can sound oddly otherworldy at times and he sounds positively ethereal on this track. In this radical re-interpretation Perfect Day is no longer a triumphant love song, but a somber epitaph to lost love, remembered perfect days and the good times one clings to when everything else is gone. Almost every Lou Reed/Velvet Underground fan I know considers this version a butchered perversity, but it appeals to my inner emo kid.

3. Passenger (Deftones feat. Maynard James Keenan) -- White Pony (Deftones)
I've never quite been able to work out if this song is about two guys having sex in a car, or if it's all about a drug trip, or if it's actually even meant to be about anything at all. To be honest, I've long given up on trying to decipher the meaning behind a good half of Maynard James Keenan's lyrics. As always, the imagery is amazing and I'm prepared to leave it at that. Leaving the lyrical content aside for a moment, this tune is luuuusssh. One of those songs that carries itself up to heaven and takes you along for the ride. I'm not going to say anything more, purely on the grounds that just about everyone I know owns a copy of White Pony, so y'all know what I'm on about anyway.

4. Perfect Crime No.2 (The Decemberists) -- The Crane Wife (The Decemberists)
I'm cheating a little bit on this one because The Decemberists are one of my favourite bands and I wanted a Decemberist's track on here. Which isn't to suggest that Perfect Crime isn't a great track -- there's the usual quirky put-it-together-to-make-a-story lyrics, and a funky bassline which probably won't have you off your seat and dancing, but certainly will have you vigorously swaying in time -- it's just that I prefer the long narrative pieces like the mariner's revenge, the infanta, and the bandit queen. Am I allowed to have a whole album beginning with P? If so I want Picaresque.

5. Professor Dragon (Lonely Karen and the Drifters) -- Grass is Singing (Lonely Drifter Karen)
Okay. Hands in the air. I admit it, Lonely Drifter Karen are my current favourite band, and I'm going to be rabbiting on about them for a while yet. So it kinda went without saying that if there was a track that began with a P on their album I was going to stick it on the list. Thankfully, Professor Dragon is a track I really really dig, it was the song that kept me watching Lonely Drifter Karen rather than buggering off to watch Tori Amos at Dranouter, so it's on this list because I really like it and not just because I wanted a LKD track on the list.

Lonely Drifter Karen are a quirky little band with a mellow sound and a lot of heart. There's traces of cabaret, traces of old musicals. Most of all there are catchy little numbers that sound like songs you knew a long-time ago but somehow forgot when you grew up, and a lead singer who sounds like a cross between Joni Mitchell and Marlene Deitrech. Professor Dragon is a whimsical little song about an inventor who falls in love with a circus clown and builds a flying machine which runs on smoke and soap bubbles. Utterly charming ear candy for your inner child.
Now then, as I understand this meme, if you haven't done this one already you ask for a letter of the alphabet and then you recommend five songs beginning with that letter in your LJ. Flaming easy, innit.

Also

I'm Mrs Dumbledore

So anyway.... as you can tell I have more deadlines and I'm procrastinating. I'm off to do mathematics (unwillingly).

Darnouter '08

2008-08-08T14:58:20Z

I take back my sulk of last week -- the one that went "Belgium turns out to be a place you can't not go to if you don't want to" and continued with me suggesting I was on the wrong side of a continent torn apart by continental drift, because....

The festival was amazing and Tori Amos was one of the headliners. That will larn me to bitch about going to a music festival I didn't have to pay for, when I haven't even looked at the line up.

Herewith a surprisingly coherent account of Dranouter. I'm starting with the music - 'cos the music always comes first - and then I'll fill you in on the craic, though most of that probably comes under the heading of "you just had to be there".

While I was certainly buzzed about getting the chance to see Tori Amos live, she wasn't actually the highlight of the festival. In fact I missed the very beginning of her set, because I was watching Lonely Drifter Karen in the showcase tent and put off leaving 'til the very last minute. Yes, Lonely Drifter Karen were so good that I was prepared to forgo fighting my way to the very front to see one of my favourite singers of all time perform live. A band has to be pretty special in those circumstances, you'd better assume that Lonely Drifter Karen were amazing.

Other highlights were the Blindnote concert (charity gig I gatecrashed by mistake, more later); Dolfijntjes XXL (no one should be allowed to have that much stage presence, it should be illegal); The Tribe Band (multi-talented musicians showing off and doing it with style); and Arsenal (though that pretty much goes without saying).

We didn't get back till late on Tuesday, and the last few days have been unbelievably hectic (mostly doing all the things I should have done before I left), though I also got forced to party by the fun brigade on weds evening (that was an odd evening, btw). I've got lot's of festival write up however, since I don't want to spam you and everything's gone a bit long, I've redacted things to the appropriate days on the calendar.

Born under Mercury

2008-07-30T13:51:44Z

I was ever a picker-uperer of unconsidered trifles.

Conversational trifles, I hasten to add (unlike Autolycus, I'm perfectly trustworthy when it comes to kerchiefs or trinkets) but I'm the Jackdaw of Rheims when it comes to unexpected snippets of conversation. Doesn't matter if it's among friends or strangers, my ears tune in to the bizare, the surreal conversations, the sweet, or the brilliantly worded one-liners, and my mind over-rides the immorality of earwigging and thinks "Lud, that was a good line, I'm 'aving that," and sometime later it turns up in a story, or a poem or a play. And I feel very bad about it, but not bad enough to actually become repentant of my sins.

Now, most of the time I'm fairly sure I have actually heard the remark I've thought I've heard. People are strange beasties, and I've always been prepared to believe that "what he really hates is razor blades in his coffee," "you can't do that Charles, you need a submarine license", and "but she looked very sweet with an elephant sitting on her knee," all had internal logic.

However... sometimes I know I've just misheard:

In the Poundshop today (a wonderously down-at-heel place, where everyone looks older than they should and the staff have their names mis-spelt on their printed name-tags -- Elizebeth, Tracee, and Filip), two old ladies are standing behind me in the queue

Old Lady 1:
Well, he's been dead for a while now, but he came back over for a holiday a couple of years ago and loved it. He's says he feels privileged to be back over. Privileged, he says. He's thinking of coming back over permanent, like.

Old Lady Two:
Well that'll be nice for you.

Old Lady One:
Well it'll be good to have the company, but I hope he'll leave it a year or so... My Alice's girl, you remember Alice, don't you? Well she's eighteen this year, just finished her A-levels. We were hoping we could send her out there, on one of those gap year things.

Now obviously I know I mis-heard. And I even know which bit I mis-heard, but I prefer my version of events.

My mind is filled with the dead coming back for holidays and students taking gap years to Hell.
What does one do on a gap year expedition to Hell. Would it be an adventure holiday -- travel to the Slough of Despond, the pit of no return, special package deals for the inner circles and budget hostels tucked beneath the throne? Does one do voluntary work -- care and counseling for tortured souls, and imp relief on weekends? Or would one work as an intern in one of the executive offices? My mind is boggling.

redaloud @ 2008-07-26T03:22:00

2008-07-26T02:31:05Z

Rat's teeth, Od's Bodkin and buckets of blood! Tarn it and darnation. fatkraken was right, as per bloody usual, and when I've made rhythm happen and drowned my babies (i.e silent fiddlers, and pirate polkja-ing princess and probably every single line I actually like) and re-introduced a narrative (i.e loads and loads of work) I'll dedicate this poem to her and put her back on my cake list.

Sorry for spamming you all. I absolutely promise not to post anything else for at least a fortnight -- unless the Fun Brigade force me to go clubbing tomorrow evening, in which case I'll write drunken nonsense at 3am and forgot to lock it to private, as usual. And if I do that, I appologise in advance, but I'll try not to.

The Spirit of the Age

The spirit of the age was dancing until dawn in shoes that never fitted quite,
At four am they bustled into carriages and yawned in early morning light,
And horses strained against their harnesses and rose into the air in clouds
Of feathered plumes, and dappled hides, and whips of tails, and hooves
Of black and white... They left the ground so gentle, that it came as a surprise
To see them leave the trees behind and watch them prance along the path,
-- That ribbon in the sky, that led them to the moon-white door of statues
Cast in salt, and stalactites, and age-old tales, and chess, and folded time...

In the spirit of that age, she only lived for nights, no princess walked by day,
Twilight was the time for dresses laid out bright and flat upon the sheets
She never used for sleep. Her maid laid dreams within her hair like jewels,
And dreams became the only things she knew, or cared about...

She lived for spinning round braced tight within her prince's arms;
For purple midnights as they kissed beneath the clock and pledged
Themselves against tomorrow... for futures painted bright with artist's brush...
And love was warm, like cuckoo's eggs in spring time...
And when they danced, the floor was there for them alone
-- and silence was their fiddler.
They wrote the beat with hearts that stroked as one. And they were pure
And chaste, not knowing there were other things besides a pilgrim's kiss...

And hags and crones and babas watched from tables sticky with spilt wine
And shook their heads and pursed their lips, and muttered ancient's words
They spoke of fleeting youth and crowing lines that lie against the eyes,
That come from laughing at old jokes, and squinting at the sun, and crying
Late at night on pillows slick with spite.

And all the girls were jealous of each other, as they sailed on ships
That bore them out towards glory, took them out through cruel Aprils
But brought them safe to summer's sun. And each and every one
Sailed past and tried to take her shimmer, and each and every one
Sailed past and tried to steal her shine. Yet she was flawless in her motions,
And she never saw those ships tack by. No friends she had to smile with,
But she did not know that lack. Wrapped precious in her story,
She was her only truth.

She never saw the kitchen maids, who draped their rags like silks
Around their shoulders, and wore the ash upon their cheeks
Like rouge and powdered Lead.

She missed the girls who saved themselves and rode on Nightmare's horses,
Who promised all to witches, and choose their men for loving and old age.

And she missed the princess who danced the polkja with her skirts bunched
High and a cutlass in her teeth, who ran off with the goose girl and laughed
At hurtful words.

And she never saw the moment when the spirit of the times changed shape
And she lived on borrowed life, upon the embers of an age.

.....And she was somewhere else that night, that heart hard night, He --
And it was always He and Him for her -- He met the girl who owned
The hat-shop in the town, and spent the evening laughing right out loud
At silly things and jokes which no one else could ever understand.
And no one knew her well enough to tell her of the way they kissed,
And how the other woman bit his ear and pressed herself between
His thighs. And no one knew her well enough to tell her how
To understand the signs...

And she was somewhere else the day the world changed with a shudder,
And spun her from the axis, and left her dancing by herself, save for
Ghosts and bygone dreams. And laughing girls who spoke of shoes
And sex and shopping took her place, and angry women shook their fists
And burnt their bras, and wrote their books, and mocked her dreams.

And four am is bitter now, the taste of cigarettes and stale wine
And probing tongues. And vomit on the pavement. And alleyways
Which sink of puss and piss. Taxis for the lucky, or catching
The night bus home. And when she wakes to morning light
The night lies heavy in her ears and eyes and she struggles
For a day that must be lived between the twilight.

And she tells herself sweet stories of the way it used to be,
And she dresses up for grandeur never knowing the reasons why
It's gone, or why she doesn't sparkle in the lights.

How did she loose her glamour?... Where did she loose her name?...
And when did she became a wraith, a spirit from a bygone age?

The endings even weaker this time round. Beau-locks!

The spirit of the age

2008-07-25T16:06:13Z

Hah! So I totally promised to post a more coherent account of Saint Chartier and then I totally didn't -- 'cos other stuff happened.

Anyway... I've been remarkably bad at finishing things recently and I've been feeling a little bit writer's blockish and I've mostly been trawling the internets rather than doing any work at all (I'll have to buck up my ideas shortly, because I've got a maths thing due in on Monday). One of the places I went and lurked in lieu of working was merry_fates which is filled with cool short fiction and is an easy place to get lost for several hours if you like good atmospheric fiction (which I do). They also have a monthly writing prompt for their readers. This month's prompt was the dictionary.com definition of the word 'spirit' and it got me ever so inspired and in a writing mood. I FINISHED something for a change. The story in question is under the cut. I like the beginning, but I couldn't work out how to end it. If some one could think of a stronger close, I'm totally up for advice.

The Spirit of the Age

The spirit of the age was dancing until dawn in shoes that never fitted quite. At four am, mothers bundled daughters into carriages, yawning in the early morning light, and horses strained against their harnesses and rose into the air in clouds of feathered plumes and whips of tails and dappled hinds and hooves of black and white. They left the ground so gentle it always came as a surprise as they pranced up the path to Tir'na nog and vanished by the moon.

In the spirit of that age there were no day princesses -- you lived only for the twilight and the dresses laid out in the evening on the bed you never used for sleep. Your maid laced dreams within your hair like jewels and dreams were all you knew or wanted. And you scarcely knew you were a dream yourself.

In the spirit of that age, you loved the prince and he loved you. Your love was pure and chaste. Knowing nothing else, you painted futures in broad strokes of colour and wanted nothing more. Midnights came and went and you kissed beneath the clock and pledged yourself against tomorrow. And when you danced the floor went silent and you moved within a bubble made for two.

In the spirit of that age, you were friendless and alone, but never knew it, so wrapped inside the lines of story that only you were true. And the hags and crones and babas watched from tables sticky with spilt wine and shook their heads and pursed their lips and muttered to each other about the fleeting price of youth.

In the spirit of that age, girls were jealous of each other, each one was bound for glory and other girls were there to steal a little of your shine. You never noticed them as you moved flawless through the motions.

You never saw the kitchen girl who wore her rags like silk and her ash like powdered lead. You never saw the girls who rode the back of Midnight and rescued themselves with golden combs. You never saw the girls with noses cut like mountains and good hair, who learnt to entertain and taught them all that wit is beauty too. You missed the pirate princess as she lifted up her skirts and danced the poljka, and ran off with the scullery maid who had the gap toothed smile. You missed the moment when the world skipped a beat and the spirit of the age had changed.

You had a headache the night he met the girl who owned the hat-shop. You had no friends, so no one told you that they spent the evening talking by the fire. No one told you that she made him laugh out loud, or that when midnight came she scooped him in her arms and kissed him firm and long. No one told you that they saw her tongue dance into his earlobe, or that he pulled her tight against him and could not let her go. There were damning signs against the over stretched fabric at his thighs. You alone would not have recognised the symptoms, but you were written pure in an age that now was speeding by.

When some one asked you how you made your living, you did not recognise the words. Living was a thing that other people did, and you were static made from roses, lavender and fresh cut grass, and you were woven in the dream of seventeen.

And as the world spun you slid off from the axis and danced alone, and laughing girls who spoke of shoes and shopping took your place, and angry women mocked your dreams.

And four am is bitter now, the taste of stale wine and cigarettes and probing tongues. And four am is taxis for the lucky and usually the night bus home. And four am is vomit on the pavement, the scent of piss in alleyways and waking in the morning's heavy light. And you became the shadow at the parties, and you never speak to strangers because you don't know what to say.

So you tell yourself sweet stories of the way it used to be, and you dress yourself for grandeur and never understand the reason why things changed. And people ask each other who invited that strange girl here, and you catch yourself in mirrors and you ask yourself the same. And you became a wraith that doesn't have a name.

And you became a hungry ghost dreaming of the good times, longing for the music, and the princes and the maid.

And you will never realise what happened, or how you became a spirit from a bygone age.