Beyond Selidor

I said on Friday that I was looking forward to a weekend with no social obligations, and lots of cooking, and broadly speaking, that's been the case. It's been great!

I went for a little walk this morning, and was pleased to note slight hints of the change of the seasons towards autumn — hues of red and yellow in some of the trees around the cathedral, and the smell of woodsmoke emanating from several houses. I'm still hoping for a winter filled with foggy, frosty mornings. There's no sign of that yet, but I have at least been able to content myself with photos of such weather in other places — in Vilnius, Kyiv, and Ærø in Denmark. (As an aside, I highly recommend — if you use social media — following accounts that focus on photography of places around the world you love and have visited or want to visit in the future. It's like a way to travel, virtually, and expand the landscapes of your mental geography.)

As I hoped, there was a lot of cooking this weekend — slow, flavourful meals for dinner (oliahercules oven roasted stuffed capsicum yesterday, Burmese curry currently roasting in the oven today), plus a lot of preserving. I picked over two kilograms of green tomatoes that I don't think will ripen, and turned half into green tomato chutney, and started the other half to ferment. I've always aspired to be the kind of person who has a pantry full of pickles and preserves, and although I don't have the storage space to do this on a massive scale, I've liked my attempts this year, and will continue adding to my repertoire as I grow a greater variety of vegetables.

Other than cooking and wandering, and the usual weekend personal maintenance, I've spent a lot of time reading — a mixed bag, but on balance mostly good. The books are as follows:

Honey (Isobel Banta), a novel following several aspiring pop stars in the Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera etc mould in the 1990s and early 2000s. The book does a fantastic job of capturing how truly messed up that moment in time was — how it ate up young women with big voices and big dreams, and sucked them dry and spat out the bones like a piece of old rubbish. As someone who was a teenage girl during that time period, the depths of the abuse and cruelty — that toxic nexus of the last gasp of print tabloid media and the rise of internet gossip columns — just seemed like the fabric of the universe, but looking back, it was its own breed of horrifying. Banta conveys this with empathy and understanding, and although her characters and their music is entirely fictional, there are a lot of echoes of real-world stars and music industry figures, recognisable to anyone who paid passing attention to that pop cultural moment. The only false note to me was the pop music starlets' depth of awareness of all the toxic structures around them, which didn't ring true (I feel that in reality, the real-world equivalents of these characters maybe understood subconsciously how they were viewed and being treated by the industry, but not in a way that they would have been able to articulate).

All My Rage (Sabaa Tahir), Tahir's first foray into contemporary (non-fantasy) fiction. The novel interweaves the stories of Salahudin and Noor, the only two Pakistani-American teenagers in a remote Californian desert town, as well as flashbacks from Salahudin's mother's early married years back in Pakistan. It's a story haunted with grief and pain — the intergenerational trauma and racism experienced by the characters is dealt with in terrible, unhealthy ways. This is a book about people who are incapable of giving voice to their regrets or pain, instead sealing up everything inside, where no words will reach them. Tahir herself grew up in a similar environment — like Salahudin, her parents were Pakistani immigrants running a small-town desert motel — and she writes with experience of the sense of being trapped in a tiny, insular community where you do not fit in, and see no way out.

Lady Macbeth (Ava Reid), the book that sparked my Friday open thread prompt about satisfying and dissatisfying retellings. As is probably obvious, this is Reid's attempt at a retelling of Macbeth, focusing on Shakespeare's most acclaimed female character. Reid's usual thing (and what made her an insta-read for me to begin with) is to write a story about teenage girls and young women whose experiences of abuse and trauma render them monstrous in the eyes of the wider world, with a relentless emphasis on the fact that abuse survival is not soft or pretty. While this has served her well in earlier novels, you may be able to see why this approach is not a good one for the character of Lady Macbeth. Instead, Reid has done what I've often seen criticised in the glut of supposedly 'feminist' retellings of Greek myths: written a traumatised, abused, frightened young woman who is utterly blameless of any of the bad or even controversial actions perpetuated by the character in the source material. To top this off, the story is a historical, geographical, and linguistic mess (the constant, grating use of the word 'Scots' to describe what is presumably meant to be Gàidhlig is merely the most glaring) — and while Shakespeare was obviously no paragon of historical or geographical accuracy, Reid's defensive author's note on the fluidity of her treatment of language, history, and cultural and national identity only serves to emphasise the lack of care in this regard. (As an irate Goodreads reviewer commented, 'what has Scotland ever done to Ava Reid?') A female character-centric Shakespeare retelling, use of Breton lais and the folkloric trope of the three impossible tasks, in the hands of an author whose previous work I've enjoyed immensely? I've never been so disappointed.

Where the Dark Stands Still (A.B. Poranek), a gorgeous blend of Polish folklore, Howl's Moving Castle, and Beauty and the Beast. This, on the other hand, was an absolute delight. If you like Uprooted, you'll probably like this. Our heroine is a misfit teenage girl with magical abilities, there's a creepy, sentient forest, and an immortal supernatural boyfriend. Poranek isn't doing anything particularly original with these building blocks, but the heart (at least my heart) wants what it wants, and quite frequently, what it wants is this, done well — and Where the Dark Stands Still delivers.

There was no customary Sunday Dreamwidth post from me this week, but thankfully that was for a very fun and delightful reason: I spent a good chunk of the weekend away in rural Suffolk, celebrating a wedding. The occasion was the marriage of lowercasename, one of my oldest and dearest friends, to his (now) wife hazlett92. I've known him for nearly 20 years, since he was a gangly teenager and I was a miserable twentysomething, and we both formed part of the weird, wonderful and precious community of a Philip Pullman fan forum message board. I've talked in the past about how (due to the utter indiscretion with which everyone on that forum treated their personally identifying information) we realised that not only were we the only two Australians there, but that we also lived around the corner from each other, had attended/were attending all the same schools, and were friends with various overlapping sets of siblings of different ages. I migrated to the UK for my studies, he did the same several years later, and both of us ended up finding love and choosing to build our lives here.

The wedding itself was lovely: tucked away in a former priory at the heart of a forest; other than the sound of conversation and music, the place was full of silent stillness, peaceful and serene. Both bride and groom have loads of creative and talented friends, which resulted in excellent speeches (both as part of the ceremony, and over the reception dinner), and poetry, music and singing as part of the evening's entertainment (including a hilarious dual recital by lowercasename and his best person about their experiences attempting to cook in their share house kitchen when they were undergrads in Canberra), and the whole day just felt filled with love and sunshine (both literal and metaphorical).

Sadly, due to the timing of the event (a Sunday after school holidays had ended), bethanwy_ and I were the only representatives of our group of Pullman forum friends, but we made up for it in sheer enthusiastic celebration: she, Matthias and I were the only people who danced without pause for the entire duration of the band's performance (over three hours), a feat which was praised by the bride, the groom, the groom's mother, and the band itself. (My attitude towards dancing at weddings: where else will you find such a perfect compilation of cheesy and danceable music, and, most importantly, spending the night dancing means you do not have to spend the night making awkward small talk with strangers, which is a win-win situation all around.)

The whole thing was simply wonderful, and I feel saturated in love, light, and the calm, green, stillness of trees.

At last, my cold seems to be receding (fought off, as far as I can tell, by a combination of hot lemon/honey/ginger, and congee), and I no longer feel as if I'm drowning in my own lungs. That was a particularly nasty one, and I'm glad to see the back of it.

For those of you who enjoy nature writing, there's going to be a (free) Zoom event this Saturday with Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Macfarlane, and David Haskell. The event will be recorded and shared later, so if you can't make it at the advertised time, you should still be able to access it later. This is the event description:

In August 2021, Orion Magazine released Old Growth, an anthology of essays and poems about the lives of trees. It's a dynamic cross section of Orion's long history of engagement with arboreal culture, featuring work by Ursula K Le Guin, Terese Marie Mailhot, Michelle Nijhuis, Michael Pollan, and Arthur Sze, and printed as gently as we could manage -- using 100% recycled paper, processed without chlorine, and free of plastic.

To celebrate the release of the book, Robin Wall Kimmerer (who contributes the foreword) will hold a public discussion with Robert Macfarlane and David Haskell. These authors bring a unique perspective on the legacy of trees in deep time, which they explore in their recent books Braiding Sweetgrass, Underland, and The Song of Trees,respectively. Together, they will discuss the idea of the personhood of trees, root communities, and the ways in which humans might foster the growth of our canopy. Moderating the event is Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-author of Journey of the Universe.

You can register here.

For large parts of this past plague year(-and-a-half), my fandom has basically been the cookery empire of Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, so of course I was delighted to watch a panel discussion with Tamimi, Tara Wigley (the co-author of his Falastin cookbook), and representatives of the Zaytoun food import company, talking about Palestinian cooking. It's viewable on Youtube, and inevitably made me hungry.



The Vengaboys (yes, you read that right) have just released a new single, and the video clip is the most lurid, kitsch, 90s-nostalgic, self-referential thing I've ever seen. I am delighted.



(In a sentence that is possibly the most late-90s Australian thing ever: I once won a free Vengaboys CD at the launch event of a new under-18s nightclub; the launch event was sponsored by Impulse deodorant and hosted by several cast members of Home and Away. And yes, fourteen-year-old Ronni attended said launch event wearing a) bell-bottomed leggings that had a miniskirt attached b) a baby blue singlet top with a glittery rhinestone butterfly on it c) my hair basically in this style d) bright blue platform sneakers and e) body glitter. I can still remember all these details because the entire event seemed like the most serious business ever at the time.)

It seems ridiculous to say that the highlight of the weekend was getting a new kettle and toaster delivered (but we got them for 'free' on the basis of credits earned by Matthias through using direct debits for certain payments; also I am enough of a millennial to appreciate that they have rose gold trim), walking to and from Grantchester as the sun rose, and eating crêpes for breakfast, but such is lockdown life.

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Matthias and I finished the final season of Black Sails on Thursday, and I'd been planning to write a longer review of it over at dolorosa12, but in the end I lacked the mental energy. I will probably get around to it next week, but suffice it to say that my review, in summary, is oh, my heart. I love these ridiculous people, and how fiercely they fight for survival, and for each other, and how they come to realise that these things are worth fighting for. I knew from the start that Max would be my favourite character, and I rejoice at the ending she got.

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Yesterday was sunny and warm, and I spent the morning repotting my radish seedlings from tiny pots in the kitchen windowsill into large planters outside, and planted some rocket seeds as well. I'm hoping May is now warm enough for them to thrive. My tomato, chili and bean seedlings remain indoors for now, but in general the garden is bursting into riotous life: the unkillable mint and chives have resurrected themselves after dying back in winter, and the unkempt rosemary and thyme plants have new shoots. I miss getting hand-delivered squash, onions, and beetroot from notasapleasure and her husband's allotment, but I'm doing the best I can at home.

Today was colder — it kept threatening to rain, and other than the early morning walk along the river, and dashing out quickly to post some recipe letters (anyone who requested a letter in the most recent post as of 5pm on Sunday should have a letter winging its way towards you as I type), I stayed indoors. I attempted to dry bed linen outdoors (I just love how it smells!) but this had to be rescued from the rain after several hours, frustratingly.

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My morning was occupied with a long restorative yoga session, finishing off Tessa Gratton's rural folk horror gothic novel Strange Grace (you were right, of course, merit, I adored it), and watching an epic hour-long Youtube video about the Msscribe saga. I was not in fandom (indeed I was barely online) when all this went down, but I can remember avidly reading (and rereading) the Fandom Wank posts about it (and the equivalent post about Cassandra Cla(i)re's plagiarism), and boggling at the sheer level of energy all the various participants would have had to have invested not in fannish activities, but in all the feuds, deceptions and drama. And these weren't teenagers — that's what always shocks me — they were adults, many of whom with responsible jobs, children and presumably some degree of life experience. It never ceases to amaze me, and is kind of entertaining to revisit (in the sense of watching a trainwreck) with the distance of time, in a way that rubbernecking on current fandom feuds and drama is not.

Regarding Strange Grace, if you like folk horror, sentient forests with ancient mysterious forest gods, idyllic rural villages whose inhabitants have made terrible bargains with said forest gods, and plucky teenage heroes whose problems would be solved by both polyamory and heading into the dark heart of the forest to commune with the mythical creatures within, you will like this story. I still prefer Gratton's King Lear retelling, The Queens of Innis Lear, but Strange Grace is also great.

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I always feel around this time on Sunday afternoons that the weekend has somewhat run away from me, but given I have much more control of my time while I'm working from home, I feel less stressed about potentially wasting available free time and not 'using my weekend properly'. Normally by this point on Sunday afternoons I'm already switching gear into work mode, but today I'll be cooking something slow, and warm, and nourishing, drinking a bit of red wine, and curling up with Matthias to make a start on the next batch of backlogged Netflix shows, without feeling any of the tense anxiety that I normally begin experiencing as the evening shifts closer to Monday.

And then the week will start again.

I've just got home from a fabulous long weekend in Sweden. Today (Monday) is a public holiday in the UK, the second of two long weekends in May, and Matthias and I normally try to spend one of them visiting various friends who are scattered about the UK and the rest of Europe. This weekend naye and doctorskuld were kind enough to let us come and visit them — the first time we'd seen them both since they moved to Sweden. They were fabulous hosts, and it was great to be shown around such a beautiful part of the world.

We arrived quite late on Friday night, and after getting back to their flat spent an hour or so chatting and getting reacquainted with their curious, inquisitive cats, before staggering into bed for very welcome sleep. Due to our late arrival time, we got up pretty late on Saturday and had a very leisurely breakfast, after which we had a walk in the beautiful forest near their house, and a look around the town in which they now live. After lunch we returned to their flat and then just chilled out for a bit, reading, writing fic, listening to podcasts, or playing with the cats according to our respective inclinations.

And on the Sunday, they drove us to the sea. If you follow naye on here you'll have seen some photos of the wonderful day we spent on a tiny, windswept, beautiful island, as she's posted what amounts to a photo essay of how we spent our time. We brought a picnic lunch, and walked around a track that took us along the perimeter of the island, with occasional detours inland into the dappled light of the forested path. On the edge the sun sparkled on the clear water, and the wind smashed the waves against the rocks, and it was perfect. I miss the sea so much. I miss the smell and the sound and the colour of the water. Being back by the ocean is good for my soul.

Today — the day Matthias and I were to return to Cambridge — was drizzly and cold, but we still spent a very enjoyable morning being shown around Gothenburg, including sharing a cinnamon bun bigger than my head between the four of us. After a detour into an SFF bookstore (in which Matthias introduced the others to his love of terrible, cheesy pseudomedieval fantasy films), it was time to go, and they drove us to the airport.

It was a wonderful, wonderful holiday: my first time in Sweden, spent with just the right mix of going out and doing things and recharging with tea and good company in the warmth. And naye and doctorskuld were such great hosts, generous and open hearted, and so enthusiastic about showing us their lovely corner of the world.