Under the mackerel sky

On Friday, I opened Dreamwidth to post an open thread prompt, went nope, and immediately closed my browser. There's been a bit of that this week — I also noped out of the idea of writing a third treat this Yuletide, in spite of having had a fairly good idea percolating since the requests lists went live at the start of the sign-up period. I'm absolutely stretched thin and worn out, and the week I've just had — which included a midweek night of only 3.5 hours' sleep before going in to work — has not helped. Just three days of work left in the year, and then I'm on holiday until 2025!

I spent most of yesterday in Cambridge, running various errands. My hairdresser is there, so whenever I want to get my hair cut, I have to go back in. She's an excellent hairdresser, but is also very credulous and fond of conspiracy theories — which I put up with due to how good she is at cutting my hair, but which means I need to be really careful when talking to her, and ensure that the topic of conversation isn't going to spark some absurd conspiracy discussion. (Yesterday I lost this battle and was treated to twenty minutes' of earnest explanation as to why the move to card payments only is a ploy by banks and governments to track everyone's economic activity.)

One of the bonuses of going in to Cambridge is being able to avail of its gloriously varied array of food options. We ate lunch in a Jordanian restaurant (amazing cold mezze, and a juice made of fresh mint and lemon juice), and dinner in a Chinese dumpling place, both of which were fabulous. I always think of Cambridge as a pretty small town, but compared to Ely (where dining out is essentially limited to a handful of Indian and Thai restaurants, one Turkish and one sushi restaurant, and a few chain restaurants and pubs), it's positively cosmopolitan.

In addition, I bought some new swimmers to replace my very loose, deteriorating swimwear, refilled my spices at the refill store, and then met Matthias for a beer tasting hosted by the owner of a beer subscription service to which he subscribes — which had conveniently been scheduled for the same Saturday on which I'd already booked the haircut. So all in all, it was a very efficient trip to Cambridge, which suited me well.

Today, I've essentially been hibernating at home: sleeping late (by my standards, which means I woke up at 8am), cooking stewed fruit, lounging around watching biathlon and catching up on Dreamwidth, and finalising some joint Christmas presents with Matthias and his sister. After lunch, we did a walk along the river and up into town, pausing for mugs of mulled wine in one of the cafes around the market square.

I haven't read any books this weekend, but I did do a reread of Monica Furlong's Juniper and Wise Child duology (the third book in this series, published much later, I pretend does not exist) — a series set in medieval Britain about young girls being mentored by women and trained to be witches. What I love, and have always loved about these books is that although they very much include the supernatural, they also have a huge emphasis on the ordinary activities of daily life: cleaning, growing, gathering, cooking and preserving food, and making a house warm and beautiful, and infuse these with their own kind of magic. The well-rounded and well-lived life, Furlong argues, is one that has space for friendship and intellectual learning, the physical and the spiritual, and spending time and energy performing tasks to feed and clothe and house oneself — and an equal mix of these things is required to keep a sense of perspective, and still the sea inside. Losing sight of this, or being barred from the opportunity to live a life with this kind of balance, causes a kind of psychological damage, as far as Furlong is concerned.

I'll wrap this post up with a couple of links, all completely unrelated.

The first is this long-read in the New York Times (unlocked) about the absolute toxicity that is competitive cheerleading in the United States. Just about everything that you could imagine might be wrong in organised sport (sexual abuse scandals, lack of concern for athletes' physical safety, financial exploitation of competitors, families, and coaching facilities) is there, although the true extent of the brazen, rapacious greed of the organising body was truly shocking to me, and seeing it all laid out was really stark.

This post by sineala on Ellipsis word processing software may be of interest to anyone wishing to make the switch from Google Docs to something (at present) with fewer privacy concerns and other problems. I've not tried Ellipsis, but sineala's post is a good overview for anyone interested in getting started.

Finally, if you've got free icon slots and are wanting wintry (mainly, but not exclusively, Christmassy) icons, this batch from insomniatic has definitely got you covered!