Floating down to Camelot

I have no voice. For the most part, I sound like one of Peter Jackson's elves, talking in whispers all the time, except that every now and then, something happens and I suddenly sound like Gollum or an orc for a few words, before I return to being an elf again.

The above situation makes phoning in sick to work slightly challenging. Although we have a new, shiny phone system at work, we do not yet have one that allows for miming "my throat hurts so much that I've had no sleep for two days, except for snatched moments on the couch when I was trying to watch dodgy movies on the SyFy channel, but kept opening my eyes blearily to find that I'd missed the end, so still don't know if all the giant mutant megatyrannoctosharkypusosaurs ATE THE WORLD! or not."

We spent last week adventuring in the far reaches of space (or the not-so-far reaches of space, since Space is Big.) This was the continuation of the campaign we started two years ago, which culminated in a super-powerful Ancienty chap telling us that All The Things were at risk unless we joined him in his fight against The Destroyer. We decided that said super-powerful Ancienty chap was a capricious, arrogant twit. We suspect strongly that other characters in other campaigns have tangled with said Destroyer, who is also a capricious, arrogant twit, but our current characters don't know this. "Can we have a year to think about your job offer?" we asked, and, faced with the news that All The Things were potentially under threat... we decided to ignore it, and continued to visit wacky tourist attractions, search for elephant tusks, buy quirky robots and go to concerts.

Duct tape was the prevailing weapon in our arsenal, most notably when we spent about two hours trying to work out how to detain 4 prisoners in the toilet of our passenger shuttle. Few guns were fired, and these often ineptly. One of the few fights we engaged in involved using pasties as a weapon. (It made a strange sort of sense at the time, honest. We were on a mining planet, you see?) The most passionate debates - apart from the duct tape/toilet thing - revolved around PR and marketing strategies, HR and recruitment issues, childcare, contract law and the financial management of ailing steel farming companies. Can we conclude from this that we are getting old?

We found the elephant tusks, and all finished happily for every past owner who had become fond of them during their chequered career! We rescued an 8 year old telepathic girl from a life of brain probes and hideous tesssts! We saved a planet from being crashed into by a comet! We launched the career of a rubbish film star! We discovered a boy band! We captured a pirate! (This was the long-term nemesis of Pellinor's character. I thought that he would feel a little sense of sadness at finally being rid of his nemesis, but he is made of less sentimental stuff, and captured him without a qualm.) We even got a medal ceremony! I have always argued that all games should end with a medal ceremony, ever since I took 2 days destroying the Death Star, only for the game to cut instantly to credits without letting me bask in my hard-won victory.

As well as fighting fictional pirates, most of us ventured into Plymouth - most of us in appropriate costume - for a pirate-themed metal gig, which was fun, but very very hot. Two days later, the dreaded lurgi began to sweep through the party, clearly the fault of those pesky pirates. It reached me on the journey home. I thought I was past the worse today, and ventured into work, but was sent home after a few hours, on the grounds that I was "as white as a sheet," and was sitting inside shivering in two coats, while everyone else was in short sleeves and saying how hot it was. Illness is giving me interesting dreams, though. Last night, I dreamt a long and very vivid adventure prompted by the government making possession of 20-sided dice a capital offence...

Is anyone wise in the ways of insect bites? I know I could Google this, but reputable health sites tend to say "if in doubt, see your doctor," and other sort of sites tend to say, "OMG! You're DYING!" so I prefer to start with the wisdom of the real, sensible people who live in my LJ.

( Not particularly graphic or icky, but behind a cut anyway, just in case. )

It's very boring to be too ill to actually do anything, but not so ill that you don't want to do things. I am also fed up with being reduced to languishing on the couch just before Christmas, when there are dinners with stuffing and sausages wrapped in bacon (aka two of my Best Things Ever) to be had. That's two years in a row that I've missed a Morris dancing boozy Christmas feast. Grump!

Oh, and is anyone else not getting LJ comment notifications? I've had none since, um... Tuesday, I think?

At least I can just about cope with rereading well-loved favourite books, as long as they don't get too challenging. Sadly, I've reread (or, rather, re-re-re-reread) most of my well-loved favourite non-demanding books in the 6 months or so (my favourite Georgette Heyers, Diana Wynne Joneses, Sherwood Smiths, Elizabeth Marie Popes, Hilary McKays, Jaclyn Moriartys and so on) so am doing quite a lot of standing swayingly while staring at shelves failing to find much inspiration.

I've been ill since Monday night, struck down by a nasty stomach bug. I don't know if it's one with a posh name, or just a common or garden stomach bug, but either way, it felled me completely. I'm a lot better than I was, but still far from recovered. My ambition for the weekend is now just to be able to eat a normal meal, and walk as far as the end of the drive without swaying and falling over.

I've been too headachey to read and too swimmy to get up and change DVDs, so I've spent pretty much the entire time under a duvet on the couch, watching whatever I could find on the TV. For someone with absolutely no appetite, I've watched a surprising number of cookery shows. How do Masterchef contestants manage to prepare the 194 elements they need for their meals and have them all coming together at the same time? How many jolly Christmas shows about Christmas merriment were actually filmed in August, featuring warm people decked in tinsel, trying to look cold? While channel hopping, I saw about ten seconds of Britain's Next Top Model, in which a stick-thin girl was being told she was too fat. I also watched various American crime shows, usually managing to fall asleep just before the baddie was revealed. Well, that was on day two. On day three, I specialised in falling asleep for most of the episode, waking up in time to find out whodunnit, but having no idea whatitwastheydid.

Dreams were strange. On day one, I dreamt that academics across the world were being renamed pachydemics, and were allowed to study nothing but elephants. They were still allowed to keep with their respective disciplines, but it all had to be elephant-related: the astrophysics of elephants, the mathematics of elephants, the economics of elephants, and so on. Very odd.

I chuckled darkly to see on the BBC website that people suffering from norovirus were being advised not to visit people in hospital. If norovirus is anything like this, getting as far as the front door is a feat a bit like climbing Mount Everest, let alone getting as far as a hospital.

I decided to find out if I was capable of driving today. It turns out that the answer is yes... as long as I don't go above 20 mph, don't brake or accelerate, don't reverse, and don't turn. I'm struggling to come up with destinations I can safely reach.

Having made this discovery by driving (in tears) to work, I came straight home again. I can't sit at a computer chair for more than a few minutes, let alone do any of the other things I needed to do, so I knew I wouldn't make it through a day at work. I went in because I'd hoped to delegate tomorrow's storytime, but this wasn't possible. However, I have a chauffeur, pack animal and all-purpose minion lined up to do all the bits that I can't cope with.

So I guess it'll be another day spent watching the Olympics, while pacing periodically around the room.

Hair + scissors + a mirror + a whim = regret

I managed to do pretty much nothing whatsoever during the four day weekend. I'd woken up with a sore throat the day before going to Malta, and contended with a cough and sore throat for most of the holiday. It wasn't enough to ruin things, but was enough to make me very unresilient during the holiday, liable to burst into tears is bus drivers were mean or waiters looked too confusingly foreign or I couldn't decide what pastry to have for breakfast. It all got a lot worse after I got home, and I managed an hour at work on Wednesday before the combined forces of my boss and the Big Boss took one look at me and ordered me home. And I've pretty much stayed on the couch from then until yesterday, apart from one ill-advised trip to Sainsbury's on Saturday, when just wheeling the trolley down an aisle left me breathless and wiped out.

I did watch the entire river pageant on... whatever day it was. (Bank Holidays are very confusing, especially those that overrun.) I spent the entire time being annoyed at the BBC, but sadly my ailing brain didn't manage to come to the conclusion that changing the channel might result in less grr and more content. I didn't bother with the concert, but watched the procession yesterday. I like processions when they involve prancy horses and soldiery people in pretty clothes and heralds in tabards, (though not when they involve blaring pop music and floats and bored-looking carnival princesses.) I briefly considered staggering down Cowes to see all the Cunard Queens assembled, before finding out that this would have required getting up at 3.30 a.m. I would have liked to have tracked down a beacon, but the local news sites really didn't want to tell us about them, and the national beacon site was down, and, well, perhaps it wouldn't have been the best idea, given the whole "lungs feeling as if I've inhaled half a dozen moulting cats" thing.

Apart from slumping on the couch watching the BBC be annoying, I spent four days doing very little. I did manage some writing, the first writing I've done for well over a year, although it was hard hard hard. I did quite a lot of cross-stitch while watching TV, having spent the last few months periodically picking it up, realising that all the next bits involve metallic blending filament, and going, "On second thoughts, maybe not." (I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE metallic blending filament!) We killed some zombie hordes, some enemy flag carriers and an eternal GM. And, um, that's about it. Where did the four days go? Can I have another Jubilee weekend, plz, though with better weather and fewer coughs?

Our local Sainsburys is embiggening at the moment, and is full of posters telling us how wonderfully incredibly EXCITING the new shop is going to be once they've finished drilling and banging and wandering about the car park with troglodytes.* I'm trying desperately to work out what on earth they can be planning to do to turn a supermarket into a thing of such wonder and glory. I'm hoping for fairies at the till, and a whole aisle devoted to hover boards. Or maybe you can level up once you've found three rare items, and get given GOLD STARS at the checkout.

* Or theodolites, if you want to be boring. And correct.

I do, however, find one part of shopping rather exciting, and that's checking my receipt afterwards to see how much money I saved through careful use of multibuys. Under 10% is a cause for dismay; over 20% is cause for smugness and jubilitation. I got 40% in the M&S Food Hall today, thanks to their "Eat in for £10" offer. I also got two more ceramic pots for holding board game counters. Even better, they came with free creme brulee.

In other news, the end of my right index finger is all split and bleedy, thanks to a periodic skin complaint that I have, involving teeny blisters on my fingers, which clashed with some nettle stings and didn't react at all well to the competition. It's amazing how many things involve use of the right index fingertip. Like typing. Ow.

It is definitely the summer for things breaking, and not being easily fixed. So far, we've had the boiler, which required three visits by baffled boiler men before it was fixed; the oven, which required three appointments with Oven Man before it got repaired in the very nick of time; the Sky box, which stopped working, only for the first replacement to stop working in exactly the same way mere minutes after being installed (this one particularly annoys me, since I lost all my saved Game of Thrones episodes); a tyre which got replaced, then popped again only weeks later; the windscreen wiper washer repair that ended up taking out the windscreen wiper completely... and now the washing machine. It finally gave up the ghost last weekend, having been obviously on the way out for a while, so we ordered a new one. I worked last night in order to get some lieu time to use up in waiting for the delivery today (some time between 7.09 and 11.09, the website said, in a rather baffling combination of vagueness and accuracy)... and it's arrived damaged. Fortunately, they've been very nice about it, and since the damage won't affect its funtionality, they've installed the machine anyway, so we can tackle the mountain of washing that's built up, but now we've got to arrange another delivery to get the undamaged replacement.

It's just as well I'm not superstitious, or I'd be anxiously awaiting the next one... (Though if people believe that things go in threes, and you're already over three, what's the next superstitious landmark, I wonder. The next multiple of 3? The next power of 3?)

I had my phone in my hand as I headed to the bathroom at bedtime last night, so I put it down on the cistern. "Hmm, perhaps I should move it somewhere more sensible," I thought, then dismissed this idea, telling myself, "It's not as if I'll be stupid enough to drop it down the toilet, or anything ridiculous like that."

I don't think I need tell you what I ended up doing this morning.

Now, my phone has always been prone to sending me very annoying cell broadcast messages, in which it informs me what dialing code area it is currently in. A few weeks ago, I finally managed to find a way to disable these. However, this morning, in the very second that it sank below the surface of its watery resting place, it chirped with an urgent message, telling me that it was in an area with a dialling code that I didn't recognise. When I plucked it out, it chirped again, telling me with great relief that it was back in the Isle of Wight.

There is only one explanation of this. These is a thriving civilisation of sewer creatures living down there, who have mastered modern technology sufficient to have their own dialling code. But what is their purpose? What other weapons do they use? Have they suborned my phone during that brief contact? When will they attack us, the dwellers of the surface? And in this epic battle, who will win?

I was walking past a hairdressers' the other day, and saw their prices prominently displayed in the window. The cheapest women's haircut was three times the price of the cheapest men's cut. Even the most expensive men's cut was more cheaper than the cheapest women's cut. I realise, of course, that most women have hairstyles that are more complicated and time consuming to produce than most men's hairstyles. However, some men have very fancy hairstyles, and some women have very simple ones. When I was a child, the hairdresser used to cut my hair dry. Then I became a teenager, and suddenly the hairdressers swore blind that it was impossible to cut hair without washing it first, then blowdrying it afterwards. My hair was the same, and the style was the same, but suddenly the hairdressers insisted on all these extra expensive stages. It all seems like a bit of a con.

It was especially annoying since the whole washing thing was riddled with awfulness. I hated the feel of all the extra horrid things they insisted on putting in my hair so much that I had to wash my hair as soon as I got home, to get rid of them. They always used shampoo that I was allergic to - despite me warning them - and then sneered in a disapproving fashion when they noticed that my scalp was all red and irritated. ("Do you use a cheap shampoo?" they'd say, dripping with disdain.) I was paying extra money to get a dose of superior sneering, a dash of allergic reaction, and a whole lot of annoyance.

Which is why I did something rather rash and drastic with scissors.

In other news, I've often chuckled at those lists that reveal how many people each year were hospitalised because of clothing-related accidents, and the like - injured by killer socks etc. Today I was almost one of them. I forgot to pack any skirts or trousers when going to a folk festival last year, so borrowed a skirt from someone else, and rushed out and bought the first trousers I found, which were three-quarter length, with a decorative cord around the hem of each leg, held there by being threaded through a series of little loops. It's always looked a bit traily and messy, but today it almost killed me. I was going downstairs, when the big toe of one foot got caught in the cord of the other leg. I would definitely have fallen headfirst downstairs were it not for the fact that I've got cats. I never used to grip the bannister when going downstairs at home, but too many near-misses involving thundering cats have taught me always to grip onto it for dear life.

The cords have now been removed. The cats have ritually killed them.

Apart from that, I've spent most of the weekend playing Assassin's Creed 2. I killed the pope today, but he was evil, so that's okay.

Oh dear... The house has been suffering lately from the lack of free weekends, the fact that Pellinor came back from Summerfest with an entire lorry full of stuff, all of which exploded about the house, and, well... from general laziness. I'm now trying to tackle it by doing about 15 minutes a day, in the hope that I will turn around suddenly one day and realise that I live in a shining model of perfection. I felt bad enough when I realised quite how many palimpsests of candlewax there were on the ridiculous number of candlesticks (note to self: candlesticks in the form of dragons complete with textured scales might look nice in the shop, but they need to resisted. Removing wax from said scales is an impossibility.) However, it was when I moved the curled-in end of the dining room curtain that I was confronted with the most stark evidence of how long had passed since I last did such a thing:



I expect I have failed somehow.

Oops. I seem to have been absent for over a week, so here's a quick summing up. Last weekend, I worked on the Saturday, struggled to dance at the Bestival on Sunday, and then pretty much collapsed onto the couch and didn't move much from it for two days. It was a cold that hit me hard, but seems to have passed on fast, since a week on, I'm still coughing a bit, but that's all. While off sick, I watched lots of costume dramas and Jane Austen adaptations, ate Magnums and chocolate buttons (those well-known medicinal things) and read a lot of books.

( Books read )

I also finally remembered to watch Being Human, and liked it a lot. However, coming in on the penultimate episode of the repeat run of a series is spectactularly bad planning, even for me. (Most of the TV shows I've ended up obsessing over were ones I initially stumbled across by accident on what turned out to be the last episode before a six month gap.) And Peep Show returned last night, but I've not watched it yet; Pellinor finds it too embarrassing and has to hide under a cushion if I watch it when he's around, so I'll have to wait until he's safely away somewhere.

Last night I was listening to a double CD of skiffle, and noticed that many of the songs are about trains. My challenge for the day is to fit "The South-West Trains 11.30 from Southampton Airport Parkway to London Waterloo" into a catchy song.

And finally, last night I won the "zombie genocidiest" achievement in Left 4 Dead, for killing 53595 zombies. This clearly means that I play the game far too often. It's just a fun game to play together, and the authoring tools are out there, which means that there's a constant supply of new maps to play in. A few of these are excellent. One of them was a series of film-inspired nightmares, one of which was closely modelled on movie-version Moria. It was quite strange to be battling zombie hordes across the mines of Moria, but pretty cool, even though the bots kept falling to their doom from the bridge of Khazad Dum.

My Mum loves gardening. My Mum is never happier than when gardening. Presumebly she always hoped that I would inherit her interest. However, when I was a baby, my Mum also tried to get me interested in dogs, only to find that I was apparently incapable of even noticing the existence of dogs, but could spot even the tiniest cat at five hundred paces in the dark with my eyes shut, which probably didn't tend to augur well for my willingness to be swept up in parental enthusiasms.

( Gardening woes )

Note to self: When packing for holiday, do not forget door key for getting home. This is somewhat important.

Failure to pack a key leads one to make an unscheduled time-killing trip into town to do some shopping, while waiting for the cat-feeding neighbour to return home (desperately hoping that he wasn't planning on staying out until midnight.) This leads to unexpected and accidental purchases in PC World and Game. Fortunately, the cat-feeding neighbour was home by the time we got back (narrowed saved from accidentally buying an XBox 360 by the fact that the shops closed at 4) and we are now home. "I nearly put the key through your letterbox this morning," he said.

It's all the tiling man's fault. He had Pellinor's key, and he also arrived just as we were leaving last Friday, which is why we managed to go off with the only key we had left to us sitting nicely in the lock on inside of the door.

Tiles look nice, though.

Ow! I had a slightly stiff neck yesterday. In the evening, I turned sharply to the right, and suddenly my neck became a very stiff neck (although the pain is now centred more on my shoulder blade and the top of my back than the neck.) I feel as if I had about one hour of sleep last night, though it was probably more in reality. I couldn't get comfortable, and moving hurt enough to wake me up. Ow! Ow! Ow!

The phone keeps ringing. The caller is with-holding their number, and there's only static on the line when I answer, and then it hangs up. It's happened 4 times now, in 5 minutes. At 2.30 in the morning.

The worst thing is that Pellinor is away. He was dancing in Portsmouth tonight, so rather than come home late, and then go out again tomorrow morning, he's staying there, so I can pick him up tomorrow morning en route to our festival.

The only other time I've ever been woken in the middle of the night by an inexplicable phonecall, Pellinor was also away. That time it was an unknown mobile number, and I got half an hour of vague background noise left on my BT Answer service.

Phone calls in the night are scary, especially when you're all alone, and have an over-active imagination that can clearly envisage awful disasters out of any scenario.

EDIT: 9 a.m. I've finally spoken to Pellinor, so my mind is set at rest. I know that repeated calls from a with-held number doesn't really support the scenario of a Pellinor left for dead in the gutter by a rampaging mob, enraged by the sight of a lone Morris dancer walking to his hotel in the middle of Portsmouth at midnight, but at 2.30 in the morning my brain is perfectly capable of making such a thing plausible.

Happy summer!

The plan was to post a happy May Day song at 4 a.m. ("We were up long before the day-o!"), then post pictures of the sun a-rising when I got back at 7. However, since I'm ill, I tossed and turned sleeplessly until 2, got up and pottered on the computer for a bit, then went back to bed. I'd just begun to feel dozy, when a suspicious noise led me to an Adventure with a Mouse (that had an as-yet-unresolved cliffhanger ending.) Still awake at 4, when Pellinor went out. Still awake at 5. Still awake at 5.45. But 6.45 came quickly, and I clearly remember being at Kentwell and then at a folk festival on a canal, so I must have finally slept. Can't skive off work; got to give a lecture to a group of childcare students. Wish I could. Skive, that is.

It's particularly vexing because the sun really did rise today, after years of rain, mist, fog or haze. And there was more singing than normal. Pellinor skipped the group breakfast since he has to get to work early, so at least he couldn't do bacon-related gloating. The sun-related gloating would be bad enough, except that he's also adding in moon-related gloating, too.

I'm too tired to do a proper folklore post. Suffice it to say that there's a lot of it around. Folklore, that is.

( Pellinor's scant two pictures taken on the last dying breath of the camera battery )

Happy summer, all! (Although, this year, we feel that some imposters have been plying their wares round these here parts. As everyone knows, the summer only happens because the noble Morris men get up at dawn and heroically dance to bring in the sunshine. If they didn't dance, then where would be be? However, since it's been summer for around six weeks, we can only conclude that some pretend Morris dancers came along and conned the sunshine into thinking that March 21st was the traditional start of summer, did a dance, and fled.)

My socks are stuck to my feet with the dried blood of burst blisters. I know I've got to take them off eventually, but I don't want to! I'm cringing in anticipation of the pain.

A three hour journey by car and boat is not good the day after drinking far too much mead. :-(