Beyond Selidor

This is a brief roundup of everything I've watched in May that I have not yet discussed. Matthias and I have continued to take advantage of the fact that we have no commutes, and thus our free time begins the instant our working day stops, at 5pm, to catch up on a backlog of streaming series, mainly on Netflix.

This seems to have been a month of watching rather silly fantasy/horror shows in non-English languages: we've watched an Austrian show (Freud, which I discussed earlier on this blog), a Colombian show, an Italian show, and a Dutch one.

( Read about these, and others, behind the cut )

And that's a (viewing) wrap on May!

I had a slight mental health wobble earlier this week, before making the rather obvious connection between my furiously miserable mood, and the fact that I had spent some time on Twitter. If I could just find a way to maintain the friendships and connections that I've made there, with people I don't speak to on any other platforms, I would leave that hellsite in a flash. I need to remember that whenever the UK government is being particularly horrible about immigrants, I need to steer clear of Twitter, otherwise it feels like standing in the middle of a public square and letting people take turns to punch and spit in my face.

Monday is a public holiday in the UK, although my library doesn't close. However, as I worked the previous May public holiday a couple of weeks ago, it's my turn to take the day off. Matthias and I elected to take today (Friday) off and make it a four-day weekend. Obviously we can't go anywhere (the travelling highlight of the long weekend is likely to be the trip we made this morning to buy difficult-to-obtain groceries from the street on the other side of town where the Chinese, Korean, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Italian etc grocery stores are all located), but we've got a courtyard garden, it's very sunny, and I keep breaking away from writing this post to dance to Matthias's 100+ hour female vocal trance playlist which he's playing through the cheap external speakers.

In terms of reading I haven't had the brainspace to deal with anything more demanding than a reread of KJ Charles's Charm of Magpies trilogy, which at least was cozy and kind-hearted. I also signed up for a programme with the publisher Hodderscape which gives (UK-resident) participants one free ebook per month. My selection this month is Honeycomb, a book of short stories by Joanne Harris, all inspired by fairytales. We'll see how this goes — other than Chocolat, which I read years ago when I was a teenager, I can't say I've ever been hugely impressed with any of Harris's books. Given this one is free, I'm happy enough to give it a try. If anyone is interested in this programme let me know and I'll try to send on the details.

My plans for the remainder of the long weekend are to write fanfic (a month ago, one of my goals was to write at least 1000 words of fic in the next four-week period, and then I ended up writing ... 15,000 words — which I get is a miniscule amount for a lot of people, but given I only ever write fic in response to exchange prompts, this is a staggering amount for me), try to finally finish watching Jane the Virgin (I've had nine episodes to go for over a year, and I really need to sit down and just watch them), cook a bit, and transfer some of the plants I've got in pots on the kitchen windowsill into the garden. We should have been travelling down to Devon to visit our friends who live there, but given that's no longer possible, my holiday plans seem like a good substitute.

Today's post title is, of course, brought to you by that rallying cry of introverted Gen Y Australian homebodies everywhere:



I hope you are having delightful weekends.

I have a deep, earnest, and enduring love of Eurovision. I've loved it since before I ever moved to Europe — like a lot of Australians, I watched it fairly religiously on Australian TV every year, simultaneously baffled and gleeful. Thankfully, when I moved to the UK, I found myself firmly ensconced within a social circle which shared my love for all things Eurovision, with varying degrees of sincerity and irony.

For many years, my husband and I hosted Eurovision parties of varying sizes — over the past few years it had dwindled to notasapleausure and her husband, as our original crowd of local friends moved on to other cities. And of course, due to the pandemic, this year Eurovision was cancelled. Thinking we would get nothing, Matthias and I had already arranged to have a viewing party via Facebook — interested friends could watch the different acts on Youtube, and air their thoughts in the comments of a post I made. It was a great deal of fun, especially given I hosted it in the early days of lockdown, when there was a real need to lift morale.

I should have known, however, that even with the contest itself cancelled, Eurovision would find a way to infect our screens with sparkles, wind machines, and multiple lyrics featuring the words 'fire' and 'desire' rhymed together.

Instead of the contest, there was a simultaneous Eurovision celebration broadcast across all the competing nations — the performers who were supposed to have been competing this year played snatches of their songs and aired videos recorded in their homes, old winners (or simply old fan favourites) dialed in with performances of their own, and the whole thing just ended up being a sort of festival of Eurovision, celebrating this ridiculous cultural phenomenon, and the weird people who love it.

In any other year, I would have found it too treacly and earnest, but in 'these current challenging times' earnest was exactly what I was looking for. Matthias, notasapleasure and I aired our thoughts in a group chat, Twitter memed away as usual, Måns Zelmerlöw found yet another Eurovision-related camera in front of which to fling himself, and a good time was had by all.

This marks the second year in which I've spent Eurovision night crying. Last year Eurovision was on the same day as the Australian federal election, and I kept breaking into bitter tears at the futility of hoping for an even mildly left-wing government within my lifetime in any country in which I have voting rights. This year it was the montage of empty concert halls in Europe (and the Opera House in Sydney, my Sydney) which had me misty-eyed. Oh, my weary, hopeless heart!

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As an aside, I am feeling the lack of any decent Eurovision icons keenly. I shall have to investigate...

I've been feeling pretty blah all weekend. I suspect it's because of the (premature) relaxing of the lockdown (honestly, any government slogan that requires the immediate publication of clarifying footnotes is insufficiently clear), and impending (online) meetings next week to discuss our eventual return to work in the library/offices.

As a result, my weekend plans, which looked like:

Weed garden

Finish stressful administrative task

Write long review blog post about Black Sails

Thoroughly declutter clothing drawers and wardrobe

Read

ended up being more like:

Scroll idly through social media for hours

Flip through new Sami Tamimi cookbook

Drink wine

Sleep

I did at least manage the stressful administrative task, but other than that it has been a weekend of drastically lowered expectations. I finished one book and am contemplating doing a Pagan Chronicles reread, since I don't have the mental energy to start something new. My two favourite Kidrouks, and the overwhelmed people who love them might be just what I need to cut through my current feelings of fogginess.

Other than that Matthias and I finished off the third season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and (re)watched Strictly Ballroom, which ... has not aged well in some regards, but is still the cheesy love letter to daggy Australian suburbia that I remember.

Tonight we will probably finish off the latest show in our Netflix backlog, Freud, a ridiculous German-language series set in nineteenth-century Vienna, in which the eponymous psychotherapist finds himself solving mysteries with the Viennese police, and caught up in political machinations that involve Hungarian aristocrats and occultists, hypnotised mediums, grisly murders, and the upper echelons of the Austrian army. I love it to bits: to my mind it's like a mashup of Vienna Blood and Penny Dreadful, with the worst parts removed and only the best elements remaining. It's definitely been one of my TV highlights of the year so far.

Right now it's pouring with rain, so I think I will curl up with a cup of tea and the first Pagan Chronicles book, and try to salvage my mood for what is left of the weekend.

This is a musical interlude to interrupt the flood of fandom meme content that I've been posting recently.

Australia's political response to the pandemic has been as abysmal as its response to the terrible bushfires in the summer, which is not surprising, given the dreadful Prime Minister and government currently in charge. I have to admit, however, that I was shocked at the sheer level of bumbling, wilful incompetence in both instances.

One positive result of all that incompetence, however, is this song and video (with both lyrics and visuals packed with allusions to specific instances of shambolic, vindictive government incompetence), a collaboration between Briggs and Tim Minchin, which takes the government to task with exquisite and deserved brutality. I love it.



Even the Ruby Princess had a captain, indeed.

Since my last post, things have happened very quickly.

( COVID-19 )

I will leave you with some links to happy and amusing ways people are dealing with the crisis. I've been most moved by images and videos of city-dwellers socialising with each other from their individual apartment balconies or open windows. Urban life is not alienating: those of us who live in cities do have a sense of community, and it is coming through beautifully right now.

Scenes of people on balconies from around the world

Finns dance to 'Sandstorm' by Darude from their balconies, open windows, and back gardens

A man in Toulouse runs a marathon on his seven-metre balcony

Sports commentator with no sport on which to comment provides commentary for scenes of ordinary life

If any of you have similar links, share them in the comments and I will add them to the post. Much love to you all.