Beyond Selidor

I don't know how it happened, but somehow it's been more than a month since I last posted on Dreamwidth, and several weeks since I last logged in. I'll try to read back over people's posts, but may not manage to work through the full backlog.

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The main reason I've been so absent from these parts is that my mother came to visit. Due to the pandemic, this is the first time we've seen each other in person since June 2019 (whereas before she'd come over once a year, and I'd go back to Australia around every two years; the latter I've now not done since April 2018). She stayed for a month, and it was absolutely marvellous.

The big highlight of her visit (beyond just seeing her and being able to have conversations unmediated by a screen) was spending two weeks travelling around the Amalfi coast in Italy. Usually when Mum visits we do a hiking trip, walking from place to place for about a week, normally in the UK. This year, she was adamant that she wanted to spend time somewhere it was guaranteed to be warm and sunny (which in the UK is definitely not guaranteed), I suggested Amalfi, and she found a company that organised the itinerary and accommodation for self-guided hiking.

I don't want to give a blow-by-blow description, but suffice it to say that we started in Amalfi, ended up in Sorrento (with a side trip to Capri), and it was absolutely extraordinary. The hiking terrain is extremely mountainous, and the routes, while not particularly long by our standards (the longest was about 14km), were very tough and challenging, and we learned early on that if the tour company's route description designated the route 'medium,' we would find it hard, and 'easy' was for us medium. (One 'medium' route began with a climb up 1000 stone steps up the side of a mountain, for example.) The hotels we stayed in were all very nice, we ate extremely well, and, best of all for both of us was the swimming — whether in outdoor rooftop hotel pools, or in swimming holes off the rocks at the foot of cliffs, the beach that was essentially attached to our hotel in Positano — which we managed to do every single day. It's hard to explain, but the ocean has such a different quality in different parts of the world — the look and feel of the water, the way it moves. It's so restorative to the soul to swim in the sea, particularly if it is as beautiful as it is in that part of Italy. If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen the photos, and if you haven't, please feel free to have a look — ronnidolorosa is the username.

(Another bizarre highlight of the trip was randomly bumping into my Canadian sraffie friend alexiepedia, whom I hadn't seen in person since 2011 or so. We both realised from Instagram we were in the same part of the world, were messaging to arrange to meet up for a drink, and eventually realised that not only were we all staying in Anacapri, but that we were literally eating meals simultaneously at two different sections of the same restaurant.)

After returning from our adventures, Mum stayed with us for another two weeks, with all of us working (she's a radio journalist and had arranged interviews with various people in Cambridge and London for one of her programs), going for walks, and us showing her all our favourite spots in Ely — as we moved house and city last year, all this was new to her. She's just returned to Australia, and I miss her already, but given we're all going to be in New York in a few months for a wedding, and Matthias and I will hopefully be visiting Australia over Christmas, at least the gaps between seeing each other will be much, much less.

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Inevitably, I've picked a day to return to Dreamwidth when Britain's domestic politics resemble an Armando Ianucci script. It's been a weird 48 hours.

So, I've just got back from a rather epic and amazing srafcon. It started with two days in London with Alex, and then we caught the train to Cardiff to meet up with thelxiepia. Cardiff was extremely fantastic. We went to a 90s nightclub and DANCED TO 'RHYTHM IS A DANCER' BY SNAP! It was a very brilliant three days. I took quite a few photos, which are behind the cut.

I should also warn that there are spoilers for Torchwood, of all things, in the photos.

( I'm going blind in my eyes )

So yeah. It was lots of fun.

I have had an absolutely epic (and fantastic) weekend. It began with a bang, with the ASNaC Society black tie dinner, which involved three courses of Scandinavian food, one mead-filled drinking horn, one drunken dance uploaded to Facebook and several bizarre d and m conversations with people with whom I wouldn't normally discuss my personal life. I followed this with a sprint through snow-filled streets to deliver some of losseniaiel's belongings which she'd left in my room, before beginning my first shift at the English faculty library (with complementary blinding hangover).

Then I got on a train and went to Southampton.

( I met some sraffies )

It was a wonderful, excellent weekend!