Beyond Selidor

I've just come back downstairs after finishing today's yoga class — 35 minutes of slow, calming stretches, tucked up in the bedroom, watching the bare branches sway in the breeze and the clouds slowly fill the sky. This morning was much clearer — by the time I returned from swimming at 9am, the streets were full of people out and about and enjoying the bright winter weather.

It's been a weekend of good food. Matthias and I went out for our semi-annual joint birthday/Christmas present to each other: a meal at restaurant22_cambridge. These are tasting menus with wine pairings, and a really nice treat, in a lovely restaurant located in an old terrace house in Cambridge. This particular iteration was delightful, and for once getting in and out of Cambridge by train went as smoothly as it's possible to go, which was very pleasing.

Other than going out for dinner, it's been a typical weekend with the usual array of Saturday morning fitness classes, buying groceries at the open air market, the aforementioned Sunday morning swim, yoga and so on. I suppose this will be the last time for this specific weekend routine for the year — next weekend I'll be in Cambridge all day on Saturday, and then Sunday will be a whirlwind of Christmas meal preparation, cleaning, and so on, and I'm not yet sure what will be going on on the New Year's Eve weekend. In any case, I'm pretty happy with the normal shape of my weekends, the result of various changes and habit-forming behaviour I implemented at the start of the year, all of which I plan to continue.

I'm satisfied, too, with my contribution to this year's Yuletide collection. At the final count, I've written my main assignment, and three treats, the last of which I finished editing earlier today. Hopefully they'll be well received. I have an idea for a fic for Fandom Trees, but it's not yet ready to post, and hopefully I'll be able to make at least one more contribution to that fest on top of that (since the expectation is that each participant should receive two gifts, I try to contribute at least an equal amount back).

It hasn't really been much of a weekend for reading — too much time spent out of the house for that — but I did pick up a copy of Emily Wilson's Iliad translation from the local independent bookshop, and have made a start on that. This is I think my third attempt to actually read the Iliad in translation — on every other occasion I'd get bogged down and bored in the endless lists of names, and give up — but I really loved Wilson's Odyssey translation, so I have high hopes that this third time will be the charm. I've always felt vaguely bad that as someone who spends so much fannish energy devoted to the sort of fanfic Briseis I've created in my head, and who has such strong opinions about various Iliad retellings and reimaginings, I've never managed to read the actual original epic poem that launched these thousands of other things.

As well as this doorstopper of a book, I'll be turning my attention to various seasonal rereads that I always do around this time of year: Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma's novella 'Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night' (which I try to read on the actual day/night of the solstice), and The Bear and the Nightingale, the first, most frozen and wintry book in Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy (which really is suited to a much colder climate than these mild East Anglian winters). And then it will be time for Yuletide to open, and I'll bury myself in the collection, and read all the wealth of small book fandom fanfic that appears at this time of year like my own personal winter harvest.

Can you tell that, although I have a week more work to go, I'm already somewhat in holiday mode?

This has been the first weekend in quite a while spent at home, without visitors, and without various time-consuming and exhausting household tasks to get done — and it has been wonderful. I've got a fairly full-on weeek coming up in terms of work, and having this brief, relaxing pause has been incredibly helpful.

It poured with rain all day yesterday, and Matthias and I got thoroughly soaked when heading out to the market, but we're now well stocked up on fresh fruit and vegetables, have picked up and returned various library books, and we were able to spend most of the remainder of the day hanging around inside, listening to the rain pour down around us. I felt bad for the stall-holders — not just at the market, but also at some kind of food festival taking place around the cathedral, since they would have been sodden, and would not have got much in the way of footfall.

Yesterday was also our wedding anniversary, and Matthias and I celebrated by going out for dinner and eating a ridiculous amount of sushi, which was delicious and cozy in the rain. We've also been revelling in all the various major works that have been done in our house over the past few weeks and are now finally complete: landscaping of the front garden, replacing the carpet on the stairs (the new stuff feels so soft and squishy underfoot), and having the tatty carpet in the living room, study and upstairs landing replaced with laminate. It all looks fantastic, and it's just such a relief to have it completed at last — what was there before was bothering me a lot, it was depressing to look at, and now it looks fresh, and clean, and new.

Other than all that, it's been a fairly quiet weekend. The weather today was nicer, so Matthias and I went out for a brief looping walk along the river, picking up takeaway coffee on the way home. Once I've finished catching up on Dreamwidth I'll go upstairs and do a slow, stretchy, calming yoga class.

Beyond all that, I've been doing my semi-annual reread of one of my favourite book series of all time, Sophia McDougall's Romanitas trilogy. I've already written so much about these books, in my two tags for the series; my default icon on Dreamwidth is a drawing by the author of one of the characters with a quote from the books about her, for many years I was the series' sole online fandom, trying to generate fannish enthusiasm through sheer force of will, to the extent that I got to know the author and she thanked me in the acknowledgements of the third book 'for being generally wonderful.' In other words, my feelings about these books are deep, and just a lot in general. It's not so much what the books are about, although obviously I like that too (alt-history contemporary Roman empire political conspiracy thriller in which a ragtag band of dispossessed and devalued people — some of whom have supernatural abilities — try to take on the might of an empire), it's also the way the books are written, and the way the point-of-view characters think about themselves and carry themselves through the world. Of the four main point-of-view characters, three have this intense interiority — they're in their own heads so much, with this instense, obsessive focus on their own thoughts and actions, and how they are perceived by the people around them — and the fourth point-of-view character is basically the opposite of that, and the other three are constantly baffled and astonished as to how he can be so comfortable and easy in his own skin, in the company of any other people, everywhere. All this, shall we say, resonates a lot.

And that, in essence, has been my weekend so far.

I've had a very busy (by my standards) few days, to the extent that in some ways it feels as if the weekend was four days long, even though I had to work two of them. Due to a strange set of circumstances, I've ended up working in the library in Cambridge for three consecutive days (Wednesday-Thursday-Friday), and will be working another three consecutive days next week (Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday), whereas I normally only work in person on Wednesdays. I have no idea how I used to manage to work in person five days a week, week in, week out, because just three days in a row now feels incredibly draining.

On Thursday evening, Matthias and I walked the 8km or so out to Littleport, a village to the north of us along the river, and had dinner at an Italian restaurant that had been recommended to me by a colleague. It was still pretty warm and humid, so the walking felt effortful, even at 6pm. The food at the restaurant was great, and incredibly cheap (less than £10 for a main course), and the waiter was what you might describe as 'a character,' discouraging people from ordering certain dishes on the menu, and chatting endlessly with the Irish family at the next table over. It's definitely the best place to eat in Littleport, so I'll certainly be back the next time we walk out there.

On Friday evening I met Matthias in the centre of town, where there was the monthly food truck event happening. We had dinner, and then ended up at a '90s silent disco in the cathedral. The place was full of people mainly our age and older (and, as usual when events involving nostalgic '90s music take place, seemed to have attracted every Polish person in the region), although with pockets of zoomers whose presence baffled me given they weren't even alive when most of this music was a thing. There were three different DJs playing the three different channels on the headsets — '90s pop, '90s alternative, '90s hip hop — I flicked between the channels according to the song and my whim, danced my heart out, and generally had a wonderful time.

On Saturday, we did another walk — this time around 8km through various villages into Haddenham, which was hosting a beer festival/community fair on the village park. The walk took us through the usual kinds of fenland landscapes — lots of flat fields of wheat, paddocks full of horses, hedgerows and brambles under skies filled with low-hanging fluffy clouds. I'm not a beer drinker, so beer festivals in general aren't hugely interesting to me, but I love these kinds of village community events from a sociological perspective, and had a great time sitting out in the open air, listening to some rather dreadful local music acts, and people-watching.

Finally, we spent the middle of the day out at 'Aquafest,' a local fair thingy that involves various food and drink and tat stalls, fairground rides, and a race of homemade boats/rafts on the river. As we were walking home, I could see a group of four people struggling to stay afloat on their sinking craft, with one oar drifting away down the river, which probably gives you an accurate idea of the vibe of the whole thing. We ate soft tacos, wandered around for a bit, and then headed home.

I've been so busy this week that I don't have any new books to log here, which is strange for me, but I suppose if you take all the above into account it's not all that surprising.

It's a long weekend here, and this has thankfully coincided with the appearance of the sun, after what was apparently a very cold, drizzly April. Matthias and I have been taking full advantage of this, spending as much time outdoors as possible.

On Friday evening there was the monthly event with food trucks, and we had bagels with salt beef and pickles for dinner, sitting outside in the beer garden of our favourite local bar.

Saturday began with my usual two fitness classes at the gym, which were a bit of a struggle after a month away in Australia where the only exercise I'd been doing was swimming and walking — but I survived. I then met Matthias in town, and we fought our way through the crowds and chaos to do our weekly shopping in the market. We followed this up by having lunch out at the annual 'eel day,' which is a local fair with food trucks, craft stalls, performances by local choirs, ballet students, etc. The eels come into it because there's an element of local/natural history, including all things fen eels. I've only ever been during pandemic semi-lockdowns, when I found this a rather depressing affair, but the non-lockdown version was loads of fun, sitting in the park by the river, eating South African food and drinking Pimms. We returned home in the afternoon via bakeshop.generalstore, which has the most amazing suntrap courtyard garden, and a great variety of wines by the glass.

I felt a bit slow and sleepy this morning, but made it out to the pool for my regular 8am 1km swim, before returning home to make crepes for breakfast and hang laundry outside (for the first time this year). Then Matthias and I walked 9km along the river to Littleport, having lunch outside on the deck by the water at the local pub. It was a gorgeous day, and the river was alive with boat traffic, walkers, bike-riders, and birds. We returned home on the train, and have just been back for half an hour or so. I'm going to spend the evening pottering around on Dreamwidth, reading, doing yoga, and so on.

Tomorrow, the weather's meant to be terrible, so I don't think we're going to spend much time outdoors, besides possibly checking out the food fair that's happening on the lawns outside the cathedral. I'm going to cook a roast chicken, and snuggle up on the couch, and generally catch my breath before the working week begins.

Honestly, I don't think I could have asked for a better long weekend — it's been perfect!

This past weekend, Matthias and I made one of our periodic trips to London to cram in as much big city culture as is possible in a single weekend. We picked up the habit years ago after realising that racing across the city to catch the last train home after concerts was very stressful and unpleasant, and that it would be better to stay overnight in a cheap hotel after the gig, and do other London-y stuff around it. This usually means a couple of meals out and an exhibition. This weekend, however, a convergence of events meant that it was a concert, a Cirque du Soleil matinee, two exhibitions, and multiple meals out across about thirty hours. We even managed to cram in a catch up with catpuccinotrin, who I hadn't seen since late 2019!

The concert in question was XYLØ, an unfamiliar-to-me artist who I would probably best describe as Lana del Rey in mood, but with a much less somnolent sound. The venue was a tiny little jewellery box of a club in Shepherd's Bush, and it seemed to be a former ballroom, filled with glittering chandeliers, disco balls, and other elaborate decorations dangling from a very high ceiling. I liked the music well enough, but the gig had a weird vibe — the room was only 1/3 full and apart from a pack of obsessives near the stage, very few people were dancing energetically, and XYLØ left without coming back for an encore, which I've only ever seen once in a gig before.

The Cirque du Soleil matinee was Kurios, which was, as usual, in the Royal Albert Hall (this time we were literally in the highest seats in the place, which was certainly an experience), and had a steampunk aesthetic inspired by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cabinets of curiosities. The set itself was fantastic, and there were a couple of good acts — a great teeterboard act, a great group trampoline act in a giant net suspended above the stage, and a fun banquine finale (although I've now seen four banquine acts in Cirque shows and they really need to find new material, since the grand closing masterpiece is always four men standing on top of each other's shoulders, and it's got to the point that I know it's coming; the best banquine act will forever be the finale from Quidam, which aside from being technically brilliant is just an incredible piece of choreography and storytelling), and Cirque is really important to me, so it means a lot that I've been able to share it with Matthias these past few years.

In terms of exhibitions, we saw one in the British Library about Alexander the Great, but rather than it being a standard chronological account of his life, it was about how he was represented in culture and literature across time, and across different parts of the world. This meant things were gathered thematically rather than chronologically, so you'd have Egyptian papyrus from the first century sitting next to Malaysian graphic novels from the twentieth century, or German woodblock prints from the early modern period next to clips from early 2000s anime. I found it really impressive in its breadth, and in the coherent story it was able to tell across such a wide geographic region and spread of time.

On the Sunday morning we saw an exhibition about the interaction between science fiction and science, in the Science Museum. This was aimed at a younger audience in terms of being very interactive, with a frame fictional narrative about an alien AI wanting to find out about human life and scientific endeavour, but then most of the exhibits were of media aimed at an adult (or at least not specifically a child) audience, ranging from the big hits of US pop culture to early French and German cinema and Soviet science fiction films and novels. We had a bit of time left before our lunch reservation so we ended up seeing a couple of free exhibitions as well — one on scientific research in early modern London (and how it interwove with British economic/industrial developments, and was used to fuel empire and exploitation), and one that was just a massive collection of clocks and watches. They're well worth looking at if you have an hour of spare time and are in that part of London.

We ate a lot of great meals out, but the highlights were probably the coffee and cake in honeyandcobloomsbury with catpuccinotrin (which was so good I want to come back at least two more times, for both brunch, and a full lunch or dinner), dinner at kricketlondon before the gig (amazing Indian food with a twist, e.g. pakora, but made with samphire), and our usual train station staples of thegermangym and caravanrestaurants, which are close to Kings Cross station and very good at serving food that fits in with train departure times!

All in all, it was a fabulous (if expensive) weekend. If I can't live in a big city, having one only an hour away by train is the next best thing!

Matthias and I saw out the old year with a Rian Johnson movie marathon (Glass Onion was the only new-to-us film; Knives Out and Brick were rewatches), champagne, and cheese, fruit, olives and charcuterie, and it was a great send-off to a year that probably didn't really deserve it.

We welcomed 2023 with a 3km walk along the river and among the fens. The skies were beautiful, and the river reflected them like a mirror. I've spent the afternoon doing a mixture of yoga, journalling, and reading (obviously not all at once), and am just starting to scrounge things together for a slow roasted dinner. All in all, a good start to the year.



It's 1st January, and that means it's time for snowflake_challenge to begin. Today's challenge is:

In your own space, update your fandom information!

I took this as an opportunity to go and check my sticky introduction post, which turned out to be completely up to date. One thing I do want to work on in January is a sticky, locked version of my exchange letters post, including all fandoms I'm likely to ever request for exchanges. I tend to reuse elements of old letters (and I keep requesting the same fandoms over and over again until the request is fulfilled), and it would be helpful for me to have everything in one place rather than having to go digging through my tags to find various old letters and cobble the new letter together from multiple past letters.

I'm looking forward to participating in the remaining portion of the challenge!

Matthias and I spent the weekend in London. The initial reason was to see a gig (experimental techno DJs SHXCXCHCXSH), but although it's theoretically possible to get back home after a concert ends, it's very stressful and unpleasant — and for this reason, Matthias and I always stay overnight in London in these circumstances. This time around, it would have been genuinely impossible, as there were train strikes, and the last train back to Ely left London at 5.30pm.

The gig itself was excellent — it was in a tiny nightclub in Brixton, there probably weren't more than thirty or forty people there, and I could dance to my heart's content without being crushed or needing to compete for space. As we were queuing outside, a horde of metalheads streamed past to another gig in the Brixton Academy, and I was reminded how much I intensely love London.

We'd had the strange experience of being unable to find a single hotel room anywhere in central (or even semi-central London) for less than £200 for the night — and indeed most such hotels didn't even have rooms available at that ridiculous price. However, we had the brilliant idea to try airport hotels, and were able to get a room at Heathrow for a much more reasonable price. We've stayed out there before while en route to early morning flights, and although it meant we had to travel for an hour on the Tube, it was comfortable enough, and saved us a lot of money. I have no idea what was going on with London hotel availability — I've never seen anything like it.

We made our way home via a fantastic lunch at mriya_neo_bistro, which was a restaurant I'd long been eyeing on Instagram. The food was delicious, and (while this doesn't matter to me, it is a bonus) the decor, cutlery and crockery were beautiful. We'll definitely be back again. I stuck up a photoset on Instagram.

I finished up two books this week — mainly train reading.

( Book thoughts here )

All in all, it's been a good weekend.

A few days ago, I got back from a wonderful weeklong trip to New York. I'm still feeling a bit exhausted and frazzled (travelling across London after a sleepless overnight flight with disastrous public transport on the day of the Queen's state funeral was not on my to do list, that's for sure), but if I don't write about the trip now, I'm never going to do so.

I've been to New York in the past, but not in adulthood and not for more than twenty years, so it was a very different experience this time around. I was there with Matthias and my mum, and we were staying in Brooklyn, which ended up being a good location in terms of getting around. All of us had already done the standard touristy things on previous trips, so we felt no need to repeat any of that, and instead had the kind of holiday that all of us prefer — wandering around new-to-us places, visiting cafes, restaurants, galleries and museums, and just generally drinking in life in a different environment.

I particularly enjoyed all the long walks and wandering. The place we were staying in Brooklyn was close enough that it was an easy walk over the bridge to Manhattan, and on one day Matthias and I walked for ages along the river, and on another we walked the length of the the High Line. Both places offered fantastic vantage points, as well as excellent opportunities for people watching. I was impressed at how both must improve residents' quality of life (in terms of free outdoor green spaces for exercise, meeting friends, walking dogs, eating, etc) but somewhat shocked that both were created and maintained by private donations and non-profit organisations rather than by local government.

We didn't go to a huge number of exhibitions, but the two we did see were excellent — the Tenement Museum (which I had last visited in 1999 and which had changed a lot), which focuses on the experiences of immigrants and refugees to New York, and a sort of grab-bag 'treasures of the library' exhibition at the New York Public Library.

Food is always a big part of travel for me, and we were definitely well served in terms of meals eaten out (and thanks to everyone here who helped me with advice about tipping, card payments etc before trip). I was particularly delighted to be able to eat at places I've long followed on social media — edithsbk, and russanddaughters. It was also wonderful to discover completely new places, especially the amazing falansai, where Matthias and I took Mum out to dinner in thanks for covering the costs of our accommodation.

The main reason we were there, though, was for the wedding of coriburford, an Australian friend of mine who has lived in New York almost as long as I've lived in the UK. My mum and hers have been really good friends since they met as part of the Australian immigrant community in New York in the 1980s; both returned to Australia prior to becoming/once they became parents, and Cori and her sister have always been like extra cousins to my sister and me — we grew up together, went on family holidays together, and shared a lot as children. Her wedding was great fun, and it was nice to see her so happy and settled in New York. As someone who had to move to the other side of the world to feel happy and comfortable in my own skin, it always delights me to see others who did the same.

For various reasons, this is likely to be the last time I ever go to the United States, so it was good to have had such a wonderful holiday there!

Today the house is filled with sunlight, and flocks of wood pigeons have descended on our garden, where they appear to be munching their way through our lawn, and the shoots on the tops of the cherry trees. It's still wintry, but change is definitely in the air.

Yesterday, Matthias and I headed into Cambridge to meet up with notasapleasure and her husband, with whom we went to a museum exhibition of exquisite gold jewellery and other archaeological finds from the Saka nomads, who lived in what is now Kazakhstan. (They lived elsewhere as well, but what I mean is that these pieces were found in Kazakhstan.) The pieces — excavated by Kazakh archaeologists — were amazing, although I felt the exhibition itself was somewhat lacking in context, even by the standards of archaeology (which we always joke will fall back to assuming an object had 'ritual purposes' if its use isn't immediately apparent). It was more a collection of shiny pretty things — but it was a nice way to spend an hour or so. Since entry to this museum and exhibition was free, we followed it up with a quick look around another exhibition on medieval coins, partially the work of our friend Rory_Naismith, who was a PhD student on the same programme as all of us.

Today is, as planned, a lot quieter: pottering around Dreamwidth, a bit of cooking, some yoga in the afternoon. Ideally I'd like to finish my current book, but I'll have to wait and see how that goes.

I can't see that I'm going to finish any more TV shows in the next two days, so I've written up my TV roundup for January a little early.

( The order written reflects order of completion )

Semi-self-imposed* Lockdown Christmas #2 is underway, and I am resolutely trying to have a relaxing a time as possible, packed with as many enjoyable activities as possible.

I started the day off with a rather intense yoga/meditation practice, walked along the misty riverfront, and returned home in time for Zoom Christmas present unwrapping with Matthias's family. Because our plans were changed so abruptly, a lot of our presents were already at their place, and a lot of their presents from us are still here, but other than time-sensitive gifts like 2022 wall calendars, we're going to hand things over later in person rather than wrestling with the monster that is sending parcels between the EU and Britain post-Brexit. In any case, the small children's presents were all there, the main gifts we'd bought Matthias's parents, sister, and brother-in-law were all there, and Christmas for me is much more about food and people than getting gifts, so the whole situation was fine by me.

After we finished talking to them, I finished off the book I was reading — These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong, which is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1920s Shanghai. I love reading about this particular period and setting, and Gong's book certainly did it justice. It was also a lot of fun to see Shakespeare's characters and plot devices translated into a new time and place, and I especially appreciated that a lot of subtextual queerness of the play is made textual. I'm less enthused by the fact that the book is first in a series, since it feels as if it's stretching out the premise too thinly, but I will probably still read the resulting sequels.

There was also time this evening to read 'The Tinder Box' — free short fiction from Kate Elliott. This was another retelling, in this case of Andersen's fairy tale, with Elliott's trademark focus on justice, revolution, and scepticism about monarchy.

After I've finished catching up with Dreamwidth comments, I'll move on to setting up our Christmas Eve dinner — salad, fresh bread, and smoked salmon — before snuggling up in front of the wood-burning stove. And tomorrow, other than a FaceTime call with my family, I will have no demands on my time, and it will be all about the Yuletide collection opening, and more books, and more delicious food. It's not how I was expecting to spend my Christmas holiday, but we're definitely making the best of it.

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*Self-imposed because the government here is still steadfastly refusing to implement anything stricter than mask mandates, semi because the main driver behind our Lockdown Christmas is the fact that Germany closed the border to arrivals from the UK, so it was not entirely self-imposed.