What I Did on My Holidays - The Fiends arrive en masse, and there is Rock!

The Fiends began to arrive in force.

After breakfasting with Siri, Jess & Paul I met OSS and Phiala at the airport. They bravely took on the roles of being my first passengers as I also collected my hire car, and made my first tentative efforts at driving on the wrong side of the road.


I think it was OK. We didn’t hit anything, and neither appeared to be shaking when we arrived at the Water Street Inn!




More Fiends - Fluffy, Revelle (Fluffy Junior) and Emily. So naturally, we went hunting for lunch. After all, a hungry Fiend is a Cranky Fiend, and who wants that?

We also looked at the exciting Lift Bridge, which goes to Wisconsin.

There is a drive-in church just the other side, but we didn't go. there is a guy in a Gondola, too. we considered going for a ride, but we didn't think we'd all fit at the same time.



The afternoon was taken up with checking in and talking.

It turns out that where fiends are gathered together, much conversation will ensue Who knew?




We invaded the Inn’s patio and rearranged the furniture to create one giant fiend table, and were all sitting there when Ms Fabulous herself arrived, with Nathalie.

Quiche, wise woman, lurked in her car observing us for a little while (and quite possibly scoping out potential escape routes) before coming over to introduce herself. We did all have Skull bedecked name tags, courtesy of Phiala, to assist in identifying the guilty…


Itroductions over, the partying began. Paul & Lorraine totally Rocked! Dr Wicked live broadcast the whole thing, and we had the pleasure of extra guitar from Adam and drumming from Dylan.


The hat Adam is wearing to indicate his position as band-leader is Revelle’s, and although it looks pretty damn good on Adam, it looks even better on Revelle!




These ‘Paul & Lorraine’ guys are pretty good, y’know. You should go and see them if you get the chance…


Did I mention there were also bagpies?

In which there are several Fiends

My flight from Chicago to Minneapolis was delayed by about 35 minutes, but on the plus side, when I arrived I was met not by one, but by two Fiends, Siri and Aleta. After getting me checked in at themotel we headed to the International House of Pancakes for supper, we talked, although having been awake for about 20 hours by that point my memories of exactly *wat*we talked about are a little hazy!

Siri and I then spent the day on thusday visiting Stillwater, including visiting Dairy Queen, which is no doubt commonplace to many, but had a slightly unreal feel to me because Dairy Queen is an esablishment which belongs in books about America, not in real life....We also found a secondhand book store and some ice cream (Maple Pecan....Mmmmmm)

And lots of sunshine. And we went into Wisconsin, mostly because It Was There. It seems a lot like Minnesota.

This evening we met more Fiends - El & her roommate, laserlady, Aleta and Gayle, for dinner, and belly dancing.

I should perhaps make clear that we were observers, not participants , in relation to the belly dancing. anything else would have required much more beer.

Did I mention I'm having fun?

In which there is a lot of travel

My journey started Tuesday evening in a mad rush to leave work in order to get home, apologise to the cat for abandoning him, collect my luggage and get on a train. To my relieved surprise, and unlike the last time I tried to get to Heathrow by rail, everything went smoothly and I arrived at the airport a little earlier than I’d expected! And a gentleman even carried my suitcase up the stairs at Bath station for me, which was as pleasant as it was unexpected. (there are no lifts there, which if you have a bad back and a heavy suitcase is a bit of a disadvantage!

I stayed overnight at the Yotel which has the advantage of being comparatively cheap (if there is only one of you) and inside the airport so it is easy to get to the correct terminal in the morning. It is also surprisingly comfortable, although with my usual, irrational, pre-travel nerves I didn’t sleep very well!

Wednesday morning saw me trundling round to T5 where I was stunned to be able to go through security without having to queue, which I took to be a Good Omen. So with time on my hands I treated myself to breakfast pancakes at Gordon Ramsey’s Plane Food restaurant. (My verdict, OK, and if you are going to be eating overpriced and fairly uninspiring food which, let’s face it, if you are in an airport you are, it is probably nicer than most. And the waitress was friendly, which always helps.

My flight to Chicago was full but uneventful, (and ‘uneventful’ is what I look for in a flight….) and the clouds cleared to allow me to look down on he Bristol channel, and later on Goose Bay and lots of bits of Canada which seems, from what I could see of it, to be covered in trees and lakes and not a lot else! We had a very slightly bumpy landing, so that a couple of cases fell out of the overhead lockers on to the business class passengers, but apparently without damaging any of them.

Immigration took about an hour, and then they let me into the country, which was a relief. Although it does mean that the US government now has my fingerprints, a picture of my iris’s and quite possibly a piece of my eternal soul.

It was raining in Chicago. Quite spectacularly, if briefly. Since I didn’t go out of the airport this really wasn’t an issue for me. I merely add it in the interests of full disclosure.

Of course, one of the things bout coming to America as opposed to other countries is that everything is in English, and as one airport terminal is much like another, there is that unsettling feeling that perhaps you haven’t travelled anywhere at all, but have simply been sitting in an aircraft while someone rolls pretty pictures of clouds past the windows for 8 hours…

I write this in Chicago airport (so they say, anyway) - reassured to know that my onward flight to Minneapolis does indeed appear to exist and that I do appear to be booked on to it. It’s also clear that I could after all, have booked the flight an hour earlier, but I think he extra time waiting is a price worth paying for not having to get stressed about whether I would get through immigration and security in reasonable time. The gods of travel being what they are, had I booked on the earlier flight I would probably have found that my flight from London would have been delayed, the queues at immigration and then security twice as long and my nerves in shreds. Now, if only the wifi here were free……

Stamps & Stories

I now have some lovely new stamps, designed by Dave McKean and accompanied by some (very) short stories by Neil Gaiman.

I couldn't quite decide whether to get the 1st Day Cover, or the Presentation Pack, so in the end, I got them both.

The 1st Day Cover (which comes with franked stamps, and it's own day-of-issue postmark which was also designed by Mr McKean). inside is a card with (in this case) the very short stories, about Dragons, and Pixies, and Fairies, and mermaids and giants.

The presentation pack is unfranked, 'mint' stamps, and has the most amazing artwork, in addition to that on the stamps themselves. I keep returning to this, and each time I see something new. I am thinking of getting this framed to go on the wall, as it seems a waste to keep it tucked away in a box!

The presentation pack also includes the stories, and having bought both, I was surprised to find that the stories with the presentation pack are actually little longer - inside the 1st day cover they must have been edited so that they all fit onto a single, envelope-sized card. So I am glad I got both, as it means I have both the post-mark, and also the longer stories and the extra art! And I have, of course, also bought some stamps to actually, you know, stick on letters when I write to people. I was expecting the pictures and the words to be good, when I first heard about them, and they do not disappoint!

In Which Very Little Happens (With bonus Cauliflower!)

Today has mostly involved running errands. I had to take my car for its MOT test, and to have the repairs from my bump completed - which turned out to be more expensive tha expected, as I needed 2 new tyres, and also the other drivers insurers are being a bit slow so I had to pay the excess. I should get it back, sooner or later, but in the mean time it's another £100 which together with £140 for tyres and balancing and the MOT itself makes quite a big dent in this month's budget.

On a happier note, the car now has a new exhaust pipe instead of the cracked one, and a new reat panel (although this does rather show up how dirty the rest of the car is. Maybe I should consider washing it!)

Also, becasue the people doing the MOT test (who are different to the people fixing the car generally) messed up - having made the booking, for a 10.30 test, over 3 weeks ago, they called yesterday to say they could only do it at 9.30, which meant getting up earlier than I'd planned. Not too happy about that at the time, but it did mean I didn't waste any time today.

I have friends coming over for a meal tomorrow so I have been tidying and cleaning, and buying food.





And when I went out into the garden to cut the grass, I found to my pleasure and surprise that one of my cauliflower plants is making a cauliflower!!





I realise, of course, that there are those who might feel that the appearance of a cauliflower, on a clauliflower-plant, is not, in fact, particularly surprising. However, it was quite surprising to me, for a number of reasons.


For one thing, I did not intend to grow cauliflowers at all. I aquired the seedlings when they were at the slightly pathetic 'two leaves sticking out of a shot-glass sized plant pot' stage, and owing to a combination of poor labelling by the garden centre and poor seedling identification by me, I realised shortly after arriving home that I had bought cauliflowers rather than lettuce. This was probably just as well really, as the slugs ate all the lettuces I did maneage to plant, whereas the cauliflowers are holding their own.


For another thing, I don't think that I have really been nurturing the cauliflowers correctly. I don't think proper gardeners grow cauliflowers in planters on the patio, so they are probably only growing at all because unlike me, they (the calulis, not the the proper gardeners) have not read the Pocket Vegetable Expert which explains that they need deep, rich soil to grow, and to be fed, and hoed, and that they are not easy vegetables. Mine seem fairly relaxed so far, but perhaps they will get more difficult when they are older. Unless I eat them before that.

I also feel that there is something ingerently unlikely about cauliflowers. It doesn't seem as though such a large vegetable could grow from such small beginnings - they look as though they ought to grow on trees, perhaps, instead. Perhaps they do, mostly, but mine haven't had the memo?


I have some tiny corgettes growing, too - mostly only 2'-3' long so far, but with luck they will continue to evade the slugs until they are big enough for me to eat. (they are not growning on the cauliflower plant. They have separate courgette plants which they are growing on)


It makes me happy.

In Which there is Bellringing

I mentioned in my last post that we went out so that my parents could go bellringing, which is a little unusual, especially outside the UK, so I decided to expand a little on what it is.

So: I am a campanologist. I couldn’t help it. My parents both are, and I (and all my siblings) were taught to ring when we were too young to know any better.

Video of ringing (c) Docklands Ringing Centre

So. It involves ringing church bells. Change ringing is a uniquely British thing to do. There are other countries which have ring-able bells, but these tend to be in places which were once English Colonies, so there are small numbers of towers in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Africa. But the vast majority of bells, and ringers are in the UK.

It’s different from the way bells are rung in most other countries in that the bells are mounted on wheels, and turn full circle for each stroke, you need one person per bell, so it is a group activity – most towers have 6 or 8 bells, but some have 10, 12 0r even 16 – and the aim is to ring methods (based on mathematical permutations of the bells, rather than ringing tunes, as is more common with continental campaniles.


There are many such methods: the order in which the bells ring changes on each ‘stroke’
e.g.
1 2 3 4 5 (ding)
2 1 4 3 5 (DONG)
2 4 1 5 3
4 2 5 1 3
4 5 2 3 1
5 4 3 2 1
5 3 4 1 2
3 5 1 4 2
3 1 5 2 4
1 3 2 5 4
1 2 3 4 5
(this is ‘Plain Hunt’, which is the simplest possible pattern.

Others are more complex…

And each bell can only ever move one ‘place at a time
e.g.

starting from
1 2 3 4 5
The 2nd can swap places with the treble (no 1)
2 1 3 4 5
Or with the 3rd
1 3 2 4 5
But can’t ‘jump’ by swapping with the 4th or 5th, because that would involve moving 2 places at once.

Then there is the beer. Beer and bellringing go waaaay back. Ringers used to be paid in beer, and although sadly that custom has now lapsed, it remains the usual practice for the ringers to decamp to a nearby pub following an evenings ringing.

I am something of a lightweight where ringing is concerned. I learned to ring when I was about 11, gave it up in my rebellious teenage phase, took it up when I found that being up in the tower ringing absolved me of having to actually be in the church listening to the school’s Founders Day service, and became enthusiastic again when I went to university and discovered beer.

But I never became fanatical about it. One of the things which more, shall we say, enthusiastic ringers do is ring peals. A peal involves ringing 5,040 (or a little more) changes, and (depending on the number and weight of the bells) takes between 2 ½ and 3 ½ hours to ring. Non stop. As you have to concentrate, this can be quite hard.

I have rung peals. But I don’t make a habit of it. Other than peals, and quarter peals (which as one might imagine are shorter - 1,260 changes, or about 40-45 minutes) ordinary church-service-and practice ringing involves shorter bursts of 5 -10 minutes. Much more manageable.

clip of the ringing from last Saturday.

And did I mention the beer?

I don't ring much at present, I have a long standing problem with my shoulder which means I can only ring small, lightweight bells, and I can't even do that at the moment because I have whiplsh from my recent RTA, and I know from experience that trying to ring with one hand ends badly 9at least for me) But I WILL be back...

[Edited to add: Phiala reminds me I should have mentioned Dorothy L Sayers' novel 'The Nine Tailors', which has possibly the best literary introduction to ringing there is (provided you are willing to suspend disbelief over Lord Peter's skill despite lack of practice)]

In Which it Rains (But there is tea, so that's OK)

I spent the weekend in Devon, staying with my parents. The past week has been a week of blazing sunshine and I was hoping, in despite of the weather forecast, that at least some of the weekend might be similar.


My hopes were unmet.

I arrived at about 7 p.m. on friday, and it started to spit with rain just as I pulled in to the gateway. I left at about 4.30 on Sunday afternoon, just as the rain started to clear. Over the weekend, there were occasional periods when it stopped raining, but never enough to make it worth while going out for a walk or to the beach, which was a shame (Last weekend, when my sister visited them, it was so sunny they were at the beach until after 8 p.m....)

However, despite disappointing weather I enjoyed the weekend. The luxury of having someone else cook meals, bring me tea in the morning, and so forth would make it worth while even without the added pleasure of, y'know, seeing the family.



And I spent some time wandering around the garden, between rain showers, looking at bumble-bees and flowers.




We went out, one evening, so my parents could do some bell-ringing. My bellringing is on hold at present, as hurty shoulder means I can only do it one-handed, and I know from experience that that doesn't end well, but I went along in anticipation of the pub-going part of the evening, and spent some time hanging around in an atmospheric graveyard, and finding a rather charming little skull on a tombstone inside the church.

I love how the stone mason has put in the anatomicly correct 'seams' on the skull, then added a little backwards ear.


The tomb it comes from is from around 1750. It's odd that you get these skulls for a (relatively) short period in the early to mid 18th Century, and not much either earlier or later. There were also some early 19th Century memorials to the local gentry, who seemed to make a habit of marrying late, and on multiple occasions (the men) and dying young (the women & children) One gentleman was married 3 times, and had 9 children, yet when he died in 1817 he was succeeded by his greatnephew, which suggests that none of the children (or at leat none of the 6 sons) could have survived.

Back at the house, it rained some more, and I watched the Goldfinches on the birdfeeder, and the rain on the flowers.

And although nothing happened over the weekend, I think it was practically perfect.

Sunshine & Flowers

We have been enjoying several days of blazing June, and I have been wondering why on earth I chose an office based career, and not one whch would allow me to be out in the sunshine. (Of course, I can't think, off hand, of a career which would allow me to spend nice days out in the sunshine while ensuring that I would be snug inside when it is wet or cold - and if I could, I would probably not be qualified for it, but a girl can dream...)

Tybalt and I spent much of Saturday out in the back garden, in the sunshine .

As well as enjoying the sunshine, I was also playing with my new camera, bought in preparation for my upcoming holiday, and on the basis that my exisiting camera was becoming increasingly temperamental. If I am honest, I would probably have to admit that my having dropped it on more than one occasion may have been a contributing factor to that.

I have been planning to get a new camera for some time, and have been going through the process of reading reviews, and looking at different models in shops, and getting very confused because there is so much damn choice.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that if you are talking about a comapct digital camera there probably isn't a great deal to choose between them for the average user (i.e. Me) as everything has heaps of megapixels, and such like.

Which is why I ended up going to the local small-but-knowledgable camera shop, which has the double advantage on being (a) small - so the choice becomes more limted, and thus less overwhelming and (b) knowlegable - so that they can actually give advice when you say 'this is what I have at the moment, and these are the things I like about it and these are the things I'd like it to do better', which of these cameras can do that best?

Of course, what I really want is a camera which will take photographs as if it were a digital SLR, while being as small, light and cheap as an ultra compact camera and with exactly the same controls as my old camera which I am used to, but I don't think they have started making that one yet!

So the one I have actually ended up with is a Panasonic Lumix FS6. So far, it scores on being small and light (with my dodgy shoulder, I have learned the hard way that even quite light things rapidly become uncomfortable to carry, so weight is a real issue for me)

The pictures seem at least as good in terms of sharpness etc. as I was getting previously, and it can get better close-ups, and has a little more in the way of Zoom, which is good.

On the downside, the menus etc. are a little more complex and therefore slower, and also, it is rather blue & shiny. After I had finally decided which camera I was going to buy, it turned out that they only had pink and blue ones in stock, not silver; they could have ordered a non-blue one for me, but my availability and their opening hours would have meant I didn't get the camera until a few days before I go away, which doesn't seem ideal. I suppose I could have gone and bought one elsewhere but that seems a bit unfair, after the small-but-knowledgable had spent the best part of an hour going through the options with me...

Mostly I do not regard my camera as an accessory, so I'm sure I shall get over the blue-ness.

In other news, I am still finding I am very achy and stiff following my RTA - spending 10 mins lying flat on my back on the floor every few hours seems to help, but although I can do this when I am in the office, (although it does attrach some slightly odd looks) it isn't really practical when I am in court, as I was today. *sigh*

In Which there is an Author, a Reading, and a Signing

About 10 days ago, I went to check out Patrick Rothfuss’s, blog and noticed that he was doing several signings in the UK, and that he was trying to arrange one in Taunton, subject to being able to get from Glastonbury to Taunton. I thought, 'Hmm. I have a car, I live practically next door, I was planning to take Tuesday as a day off work anyway, and I think that Authors going to bookshops and meeting readers and fans is a Good Thing....' so I sent him an e-mail offering my chauffeur-ing services.

Which led, pretty much directly, to my being in my car, en route to Glastonbury, on Tuesday morning, to collect an author before travelling on to Taunton

Rothfuss is the author of The Name of The Wind which is his first novel and the first part of a trilogy, and which I can definitely recommend (unless of course you are likely to become fretful or aggrieved at the fact that books take longer to write than they do to read, and that therefore you will have to wait for parts 2 and 3...
He is also a very nice guy, and an interesting conversationalist.

The signing in Taunton was small – as it was on a weekday and arranged at short notice there weren’t huge numbers of people there, which from the point of view of an attendee was great, as we got to hang out & chat. I'd like to think that we made up in quality what we lacked in quantity.

We all talked - about reading, and writing, and whether the books you love are hoarded or pressed upon all comers, and whether it is ethical to donate bad books to libraries, and about swine flu - Pat was fighting off a bug of some kind, so we were considering getting T-shirts, 'I met Pat Rothfuss and all I got was Swine Flu' - and about Serenity, and urban fanatasy and genre writing.

And then, after Pat signed further copies of the book for the shop. (We tried to persuade him to sign other author’s books at random, but we were unsuccessful)

We headed out to Vivary Park, where we sat in the sun for more conversation. We addressed the question of whether having a child, and reading aloud and telling stories to him/her will stand Pat in good stead when it comes to doing the voices when reading his own work, or whether it will simply mean that book three reads “Here’s Kvothe. See Kvothe run. Run Kvothe, Run”... we talked about Santa Claus and mineral water, how we see different characters from the book, and then Pat read to us from the second book – just a taste, to whet the appetite.

And then we all went for dinner.

Where conversation included asking questions about the book and it’s inspiration, but also all manner of other subjects, such as the plural of Lego and some nice Italian food.

I don’t know whether all fans of The Name of the Wind are as companionable, or if we just struck lucky. It felt like spending an afternoon with a bunch of old friends, except I hadn't met any of them previously.

It was a lovely day.

I don’t know how Pat would rate me as a chauffeur, but I would certainly recommend him as a passenger!

In Which Jeremy Hardy Speaks to Bath

On Sunday evening I headed in to Bath once again: I bought a ticket some time ago for tonight’s show, by comedian Jeremy Hardy I was in two minds as to whether to go, because although I very much wanted to hear what he had to say, I’m still very stiff and sore after the accident on Thursday and wasn’t sure whether I would be able to sit for 2 hours or so in the theatre’s picturesque but not always very comfortable seats..

I decided to go anyway, on the basis that I could leave at the interval should it prove too uncomfortable.

I’m not sure how well Jeremy Hardy is known outside the Radio 4 – listening public – he is a regular panellist on ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’, and has often appeared on ‘The News Quiz’, as well as having had his own Radio 4 show (‘Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation’) and appearing in various TV programmes, including QI. which led him to explain to us that he also does Glastonbury, to try to build up a younger audience, the R4 demographic being a 'risky' one...

He’s a funny guy. Very conversational style – some anecdotes, commentary about religion and politics, immigration, MP’s expenses, going to the gym, and the poor drinks generally available in theatre bars.

Possibly my favourite part came when Jeremy Hardy was talking about immigrants and said, "what's wrong with there being Polish people here - they have loads of them in Poland and they seem to get along alright" (I may not be quoting exactly, and of course I lack his delivery, but still...)

That, or perhaps the sample postcards to illustrate his lack of interest in blogging...

I was very, very stiff by the end of the evening but I did enjoy myself, and shall be looking out for his next visit!

In Which there is Nearly a Very Nasty Accident

I was feeling very happy and cheery as I drove home from work yesterday. It had been a pretty good day - I’d got a decent amount of work done, had some satisfied clients, and it was a lovely sunny day, making the drive home through the Somerset countryside a pleasant one.

Until, that is, I stopped at a junction and the car behind me drove into the back of my car.

That’s not my idea of a fun end to the day.

On the plus side – they did not shunt me hard enough to push me into the oncoming traffic, and they were very pleasant people – you couldn’t wish to be run into by a nicer couple, even if they were driving a BMW!

Also on the plus side, neither my little Smart nor I was seriously damaged. I have whiplash, so my neck, back, shoulder, arm and wrist (and my knee, so some reason) are very uncomfortable, but I’m reasonably confident that it is “just” basic whiplash – the hospital seemed fairly confident that I hadn’t broken anything essential.

As often happens with this kind of thing, I mostly held it together until I got back home, at which point I burst into tears all over my house-mate, (who administered tea, sympathy, food and chocolate as required for the rest of the evening)

Then had a fun trip to the local hospital. I was fairly sure that there wasn’t anything major wrong with me, and that they wouldn’t do anything for me except advise me to take anti-inflammatories, and try to keep mobile, but it doesn’t seem wise to make assumptions, particularly with a neck/back injury.

I have to admit that I am curious about how the local hospital’s ‘minor injuries unit’ copes when it is busy. I arrived there at about 6 p.m., at which time there were two other people in the waiting room. No-one else arrived after me, and I was finally seen just before 8. And then they told me to take anti-inflammatory painkillers, and to try to keep mobile and that I didn’t seem to have any bony injuries. It’s as well I had taken a book with me. After the first hour, reading 2 year old copies of motoring magazines and ‘Hello’ would start to pall.

As always with these things, it actually hurts more today than it did yesterday, plus of course there is the tiredness that comes from stress followed by sleeping badly.

But as a friend said elsewhere “very sorry to hear that, but happy that you are typing and not say, in a coma.” I’m feeling very grateful that it wasn’t a lot worse.
The kindness and sympathy of friends, and a few strangers too, was also a real silver lining.

The car looks OK – several lights lit up on the dashboard when I got in to drive back but having spoken to the garage which looks after him, they have think that probably it has damaged the crash bar (which seems logical) and the sensors – I am taking it in for them to look at on Tuesday but they’ve said if that is what is wrong it’s a fairly easy fix, and that they have the parts in stock so will be able to do it then and there.

Of course, I had the conversation with the insurance company who wanted me to take it to their ‘preferred repairer’ instead, but agreed in the end that I don’t have to. (Past experience tells me that non-smart garages tend to get confused by Smart cars, they never have the parts in stock so they take a long time) Happily they agreed that I could get it done by my garage, but warned me that if their engineer subsequently decided that they had overcharged or that the damage wasn’t accident-related they might not authorise payment. I’m pretty confident neither of those things will happen, and as the repairs are likely to be £150-£200 and I have a £100 excess, worst case scenario would be that I’d be out of pocket by £100. Not what you want, but for me, the peace of mind of knowing my car is going to be dealt with by people who actually know what they are doing is more important!

Stayed home from work today – partly because I didn’t want to try driving the car until I’d checked with the garage, and partly because I didn’t really feel up to it physically, but I’ve been able to get some work, via the wonders of the interwebs, so it isn’t a dead loss!.

Which is mostly an excuse for pretty pictures of flowers

We have had several beautiful sunny days, and the garden, small as it is, is blooming. I have aquilegia (which I don’t recall having planted – perhaps they hitched a ride with something else I transplanted from my parent’s garden), plus my surviving clematis has started to flower,

as have my pansies.
And none of my vegetables have died yet, which is a bonus.
Tybalt has been enjoying the sunshine, and so have I (although I have not (at least as yet) been rolling around on the patio!