Beyond Selidor

This past weekend was a long weekend in England, and Matthias and I went down to Devon to visit our friends C and L, and their two small daughters (aged four and six). We've been friends for a very long time; Matthias and L were best men at each other's respective weddings, and Matthias is godfather to their older daughter, but for various reasons, we haven't seen each other in person for a very long time. Thankfully, things worked out, such that we were able to stay with them from Friday evening until Monday afternoon.

It was a lovely few days. The weather cooperated (not always a given in that part of the world), and we spent a lot of time wandering around in pretty National Trust gardens, fruitlessly assisting the daughters as they waved a metal detector over the sand at a beach (although they had more luck filling buckets with shells), and answering endless questions that started with the word 'why'. It's actually relatively easy to find activities that suit both adults and small children, provided you're able to go outdoors, and this past weekend worked out well in that regard. (The two girls are very good walkers, particularly as their parents have a sneaky trick on any walk of giving the children a bucket each, and asking them to collect the ten 'most interesting things' they find on the walk.)

It was not exactly restful (I was exhausted every night), but I had a wonderful time. You'll get a feel for things via this photoset — golden sun, lush green vegetation, clouds hanging like cotton wool in the blue sky.

It rained all week, and then on Saturday, the clouds rolled back, unfolding across the clearest, brightest winter skies. This was opportune and perfect, since Matthias and were joining friends (or, I guess at this stage, friends of friends would be a more accurate description) for their monthly walk. (In line with my aspirations to lead a slightly less restricted, hermit-like existence, this walking group seemed like the perfect, low key way to open up my world somewhat.) On the last Saturday of every month, they pick a local-ish hike, and whoever wants to come joins in.

Yesterday's walk was circular: 8km or so across the fields and woods near Stetchworth. Like everywhere in this area, it was a pretty flat landscape, and because it had been raining all week, it was muddy, soggy going — which made what would otherwise have been quite an easy amble somewhat tough going. My boots ended up caked in mud, and although it didn't feel physically challenging at the time, once I'd stopped moving, I realised my legs hurt a lot — in a good way. I imagine in summer it would be a very different experience, but mud is an occupational hazard in this part of the world at this time of year.

I could not get over the sun-drenched expanses of sky, sweeping above, clear blue interspersed with cottonwool dots of low-hanging clouds. After what feels like weeks of grey, the contrast was remarkable, and really did a lot to lift my mood (which has been very low for what feels like a very long time) — I imagine being out in the open air, with other people played its part as well. This photoset gives you a good idea of the whole vibe.

We had time for a quick drink in the garden of a seventeenth-century pub in Woodditton, trudged back across more fields and forests beneath the setting sun, and made it back to the carpark where we'd started in the last moments of daylight. As we were driven back to Ely, the moon rose, and hung, huge, yellow, and low to the horizon, looming above us as we made our way through the darkening fens, adding to the magical air of the whole journey.

Today was a more typical weekend day: swimming through sunshine first thing in the morning, river loop walk with Matthias ending up in the courtyard garden of our favourite cafe/bar eating food truck food for lunch, a challenging yoga class this afternoon just prior to opening up Dreamwidth and composing this post.

It's been another slow week, reading wise (my reading has not been helped in general by my low mood), but I did finish a single book: Lud-in-the-Mist (Hope Mirrlees), an early 20th-century fantasy classic that I'd always meant to pick up, and had the serendipity to find left out on the front step in a box of books being given away for free by a neighbour down the road. (This is a good street for such things — now that I've read the book, I'll give it away myself once I've gathered together a few more books I no longer want to keep.)

Lud-in-the-Mist is a strange, meandering, fable of a book — it's always interesting to read early fiction with fantasy elements published before the conventions of the genre were established (and indeed before fantasy was perceived as being a firmly distinct genre). It's set in an indeterminate fairytale world whose inhabitants have anxiously banished any thought of the magical and fantastic — to the point that it's a social taboo to even mention them — but, as in many similar stories, the fantastic continues to encroach on the human world, with potentially dangerous consequences. I always love reading stories in which the the otherworld and the human world bleed into one another, their boundaries porous and interwoven, their inhabitants interdependent in spite of their best endeavours. The fairies of Lud-in-the-Mist are uncanny and inhuman in the best folkloric tradition, and the story is told with a resonant, lyrical beauty.

Beyond that, I've been finalising my Once Upon a Fic signup (in the end, I went with the same fandoms as last year, since I still feel there are good stories to be told in those for which I've already received gifts, and some are fandoms which I've requested before without luck), and gearing up for the upcoming work week. I'm hoping the joy and light and hope of this weekend will be enough of a drastic reset to carry me through — the start of a springtime of the mind, as it were. For now, I'll build up some kindling in our wood-burning stove, turn on the string lights, and light some candles: warmth and cosiness, shining through from the end of one season and the tentative start of the next.

I'm happiest when my days are filled with a good mixture of stuff, and that's certainly been true this weekend. In list format, in no particular order, I've done the following:

Read so many books, in a variety of genres (about which more in a review post later in the week)

Done a variety of yoga sessions ranging from the intense to the stretchy to the restorative

Roamed the outdoor market in the rain, picking up vegetables, fruit, bread and cheese

Swum a kilometre

Pottered around on Dreamwidth, overwhelmed by, and grateful for, the response to both my snowflake_challenge posts and the return of my Friday open threads

Walked out through the muddy fens with Matthias, under clear skies

Now I've got curry simmering, fragrant on the stove, and I'm winding down, and resting.



Today's snowflake_challenge prompt is: In your own space, talk about an idea you wish you had the time / talent / energy to do.

( Unfinished visioncloths behind the cut )

Yesterday was pretty much close to perfect. Matthias and I had been talking for ages about going on longer walks around Ely — I never feel at home in a place until I've gone wandering, and given there's little else that can be done outside the house as a social activity, it seemed a good idea. But we've always been either too busy, or the weather has been appalling, and we kept putting it off.

In any case, we finally did the 12km round trip to Little Thetford. To make it a round trip (rather than simply walking there and walking back), you do the first half through the fields (boggy, with dark, rich earth scored deeply by tractors, waiting for the seeds for this year's harvest), then carry on beyond the village until you reach a marina filled with houseboats. At this point, you turn around and walk back along raised paths beside the River Ouse. It's so flat here that the cathedral looms out of the landscape, wherever you are, reflecting the sunlight. The walk was windy, and filled with birds, and very, very satisfying. I've put up a photoset over at ronnidolorosa.

Then it was back home for Thai take-away for dinner. We followed that with our annual watch-through of all the Eurovision songs for this year's competition. As always, it was a mix of the ridiculous and the sublime, interspersed with the utterly inexplicable. (Prime candidate for the latter is Finland's entry this year — inexplicably, they sent a nu metal band, which Matthias inevitably dubbed 'Helsinkin Park'.)

My favourites (or at least the ones that made me the happiest) were:

( Cut for embedded videos )

I really need some Eurovision icons.