Pretty, but not the sight you want to see when you're 10 miles from the car and didn't bring a waterproof because, fool that you were, you believed the weather forecast when it would be gloriously sunshiny all day, with rain just a distant memory.



Yesterday, on the other hand, said it would be gloomy all day, but was sunny and warm all afternoon, except for on the seafront, when it was cold, windy, gloomy and an entirely different season from 200 yards inland.

Weather is weird.

(Photo taken on my phone, so a little fuzzy. On the extreme left, atop the Downs, is the Ashey Seamark, which is fast approaching Holy Grail status in my recent bout of "walk all the paths" expeditions. About 6 times now, in recent weeks, I've parked within 2 or 3 miles of it and have expressed my intention to get to it, only for one path to lead to another to lead to another, and I end up in a village 10 miles in the opposite direction, or up to my ankles in a marsh or scurrying across an airport runway ("groups should cross in pairs") many miles away. One day I will get there. One day. And then, perhaps, I will never be seen again by mortal eyes.)

Gosh. What a long time since I've posted. Or read anything, really. Looking back, I think it's because when working from home, I was based at my desktop computer upstairs. When I went back to work in June, this computer therefore felt like "work". Unfortunately, the desktop computer was the only one logged into LJ using the new password I created some months ago, and the admittedly very tiny amount of work involved in remembering the new password long enough to log in on my phone and laptop was, apparently, too much for me. "I'll sort that out it in a minute," thought I repeatedly, whenever reminded of the fact that I had no LJ access on my phone or laptop, only to..., well, not.

Anyway... Here I am. And here is an account of the holiday we had a few weeks ago in East Sussex, during the brief heatwave. It seems a world away now that I'm sitting here shivering in the gloom, wind and drizzle.

( Sweltering in Rye )

I always have great trouble with potatoes sprouting, so tend to buy only small packets and ensure that they get eaten within a week or so. But back when we were in peak panic buying season and all the shelves were entirely devoid of starchy carbohydrates, one of our half-hearted concessions to panic buying was to grab a small (750g) bag of potatoes despite having no immediate plans for it. To address the whole sprouting issue, I put it on the ex-garage (the coldest room) under a sheet of sewing fabric.

I then forgot about it for a few weeks. Remembering much later, I checked them and found that none of them had sprouted - yay! - but one was going mouldy - boo! But I was busy in the same room recording a video for work, so decided to deal with it later.

And then forgot.

Later that evening, after a few glasses of wine, we went into the ex-garage and noticed a rather unpleasant smell. The potatoes? But strange, if so, since they'd been there for weeks and I'd noticed no smell earlier that day. The pile of unsorted LARP kit? Same argument, except that it had been sitting there for months. The fact that the external door had been open and untended for a while the night before, and local cats might have wandered in and left unwanted presents?

Anyway, just in case it was the potatoes, I decided to move them to another room, for Science. Pretty basic Science - i.e. did the smell move to a new room along with the potatoes? - but hey. Note that I still failed to do anything at all about removing the mouldy potato. Oh well...

Next day, I'd planned to have half the packet of potatoes for dinner. I went to the garage to get them. Where were they? Oh yes! We'd moved them.

But where?

We'd had some wine when we moved them, but honestly not THAT much. We both clearly remembered the entire conversation. We just had no memory at all on where we took the blasted things afterwards.

We tried obvious cool, dark places: the cupboard under the stairs, the utility room. Nothing. Kitchen cupboards. The fridge. Nothing. We tried a bit of role play. "Okay, I've had a couple of glasses of wine. What would seem a sensible thing to do with a bag of potatoes?" Surely we wouldn't have put them in a bedroom or living room, given the whole nasty smell thing that was the entire point. But time was ticking on, and I was getting increasingly hungry (I fall apart when I'm hungry) and they were definitely not anywhere sensible, so on we went to stupid places.

Underwear drawers. Inside the food bin. Outside, to search under all the easily accessible shrubs. The car. The recycling wheelie bin. Drawers we'd opened 3 times were opened for a 4th, just in case a different result was achieved. Underwear drawers again. Inside shoes. Inside boxes plainly too small to hide them, but they had to be somewhere. THEY HAD TO BE SOMEWHERE?

BUT WHERE? It was getting really quite surreal. They had to be somewhere, but we'd looked absolutely everywhere FOR AN HOUR! In the loft? No, we'd remember THAT - as I say, it honestly wasn't that much wine, and the rest of the evening after the potato incident was clear and vivid in our minds. The very fact that we'd forgotten all about it suggested that we hadn't gone far or put in any real effort - had probably done it casually while talking about something else, barely even noticing what we were doing.

But I was getting too hungry to wait, and though I refused to give up the search, something had to be done, so we grabbed some frozen parmentiers and popped them in instead.

Whereupon, naturally, Pellinor promptly found the missing potatoes. I'd put them on the dining chair I always use, protected from the room's bright sunlight by the cushion that always covers the chair. The dining table is currently set up for Gloomhaven (an endless board game) and we'd fully intended to play it that afternoon - hence, presumably, my assumption that I didn't have to bother trying to remember where I'd put them, since I'd discover them by sitting on them. ("Oh yes," said Pellinor, "I said something about the princess and the pea. I remember now!")

Oh, and the mysterious smell? It didn't move to the dining room, but it had also disappeared from the garage, so who knows? It is a Mystery, but after much questing and many daring adventures, the potatoes at length were not.

Here are typo stories for the last several days. There was no story yesterday, though. Instead I drew a picture for what I hope will be an occasional series of novels with one letter changed. (This is different from the typo stories, since with the typos, letters can only be changed to one adjacent, or very nearly adjacent, to them on the keyboard, whereas the "one letter changed" thing can change it to anything.)

( Stories )

( And a picture )

The storm was drawing nearer, the thunder nearly constant. Lightning flared and wind hammered—

No, not the wind. There was somebody at the door.

"Not again!" Sarah groaned, but it was no good ignoring them. They'd just hammer away doggedly until the end of the storm, and once the rest of them started to arrive, things could turn very messy indeed.

She stood up. Beneath the tatty blanket, the lump quivered, burrowing deeper into the cushions.

Reaching the door, she fastened the chain then twisted the latch, opening the door a cautious crack. "What is it?" she demanded.

They had robes on, this lot, and were standing three by three. "We bring a sacrifice!" the leader intoned, raising aloft a chocolate rabbit and a butter knife. ("Best we could manage at short notice," whispered the young one at the back of the group.)

A car pulled up at the end of the drive, and tall men burst forth. "Away with you, you heretics!" boomed the tallest as he endeavoured to don his impressive hat. "We alone follow the One True Path! Let us drape the Great One with garlands!" (The third tall man did an about turn and hurried back to the car to rummage anxiously in the boot.)

"Stop it!" Sarah admonished them, for the lady with the butter knife seemed to be about to use it, and not on a chocolate rabbit. "I refuse to have a religious war at my own front door."

A circle of dancers was forming up in the garden, their dresses diaphanous and soggy. "We sing our paeon of the praise to He Who Bestrides The Narrow World Like A Colossus!" they sang in seven part harmony.

"Enough!" Sarah shouted, as thunder cracked above them, and lightning blazed so brightly that for a moment afterwards she could barely see. "Enough," she said. "No sacrifices, please. No fighting. He hears your… respects and is pleased with them. Now go away. But," she couldn't resist adding, "he doesn't really bestride anything, you know. He's just a dachshund."

She closed the door, bolted it twice, and returned to the couch. The lump was shivering, emitting pitiful whines. Sarah sat down beside it, touching it soothingly. "Poor little sausage. It's only a storm, and it'll be over soon. There's no need to be sacred."

Typo (or homophone or malapropism) story of the day. I genuinely saw this particular error online once, many years ago, where it entirely ruined the effect of an angst-ridden fanfic.

The chalice lay toppled on the table in a spreading puddle of red. Golden serpents twined around its stem, rubies for their eyes. They blinked and glimmered in the light of the flickering candles, almost as if alive.

Peterkin tried again. "…it's because they're serfs, sire. Serfs." His bells jingled sadly. The stick of his pig's bladder was slick in his hand. "Sire?"

Nothing. The king was barely upright in his chair, his face blank with incomprehension. There was more life in those fire-sparked rubies than in the king's living eyes.

"An English serf, an Irish serf and a Californian one?" Peterkin prompted. "It's a pun, sire. A play on words. It's about incongruity and anachronism. That's why it's funny."

Still nothing. Go on! the physician mimed at him urgently. Don't stop! The king's hand was like the carved stone claw of a grotesque, unmoving on the arm of the chair.

"So when I said…" Peterkin said. "The Californian fellow in my story, I mean. When he said, 'ah, that's my serf board, it was…"

He was almost in tears. He so desperately wanted to caper. He wanted to mutter rude comments about the barons, knowing that he was the only one in the entire realm who could get away with such things with impunity. He wanted to fall over and hit people with bladders and make rude noises until he was blue in the face. He wanted… Oh, he wanted…

"It's because they sound the same," he tried desperately. "Serf. Surf." Oh, but this was unbearable! You never had to explain a fart joke or a custard pie. He appealed to the physician, almost weeping. "Just one little caper?"

"No." The physician was stern, unyielding. "It is as I said. If he doesn't get the anecdote, he will die."

We've been in this house for over 18 years - which is scary enough in itself, since in the first 18 years of my life, I lived in 5 different houses and in each of those houses, it felt as if I'd lived in them for years and years and years - and for that entire time, our fridge has been hinged The Wrong Way. It has been quite unambiguously The Wrong Way, since the fridge is right next to the door, and when open, the open door faces out into the hall rather than into the room like any sensible fridge would do.

If we ever consciously noticed this, we just shrugged and put it down as One Of Those Things - a minor irritant, but what could you do? But my Dad, when visiting, seemed to find it quite outrageous - an offence against nature, almost - and asked why on earth we hadn't dropped everything the minute we moved in and changed the hinge to the other side, and what sort of human were we that we could tolerate this - were we man or animal? We didn't quite dare admit that we hadn't actually realised that changing the hinge direction was possible - although, really, the fact that the fridge door has handle-inserts on both sides should have been the clue. "Um, we're used to it now, and it would be confusing to change," was all we managed.

And so it went on. Years passed. The Wrong Hinge issue became something one just accepted, like gnats.

But then our CD players started to die. ( CDs and fridges )

Gosh. I've not posted for ages. But the other day I went looking for something on my LJ of some years ago, and got distracted en route by reading - and chuckling about - various posts detailing small, amusing incidents. All totally inconsequential... but all things that would have been forgotten and gone forever had I not written them down. So for 2020, I really need to get back into the habit of posting things no matter how small and silly. If nothing else, they might amuse me in some years time.

So. I was just browsing through a book of Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops. Many weird things get said in libraries, too, of course, and most I have already forgotten, but the book caused me to remember a few, all of them from years back, when I spent my days on the desk in the children's section.

( Weird things said in libraries )

I'm re-reading Harry Potter at the moment. I am spending quite a bit of the time being annoyed by such things as the blatant abuse of the house point system by all the teachers, "good" as well as "bad," and the silliness of quidditch rules. But I am also getting very distracted by trying to work out how owl post works.

( Owls, ravens and other mysteries )

Two months on the same series!

I first gave this series a try over a dozen years ago, when several people appeared to share my reading tastes were raving about it. I was so confident I'd like the books that I bought 4 compilation editions straight off, this being in pre-Kindle times when American imports took ages to arrive, so later volumes needed to be secured in advance. I read two books – the first Miles book and the first Cordelia one – and while I don't remember disliking them, I remember being disappointed by my failure to love them. I don't think I consciously gave up on the series, just never felt inspired to read on.

Much more recently, though, I read and loved many other books by the same author (Lois McMaster Bujold), so I thought I'd try the Vorkosigan books again. It still took me several books before I went from a mild "this is okay, I suppose, and I'm determined not to give up so quickly this time" to a realisation that I was hooked. But I did end up loving them, and have spent the last two months reading my way through the whole series.

( Series overview for people who haven't read them )

( My reactions to invididual titles, with spoilers )