We actually managed to drag ourselves out to the cinema three times!
Fewer than usual last year, possibly as a side effect of having developed something not totally dissimilar to a life.
Well, that was a fine night at the Adelphi, if crowned by regret.
Dan Mawer opened with a solo acoustic spot that was entirely unreasonably good for that point in an evening, a damned fine musician and performer I'll be looking out for again, tying his songs and others into a patchwork far greater than the sum of its parts. Second up were The Deep State Collective who I'll attempt not to damn too much with faint praise - they were workmanlike and competent, enjoyable even, but failed to inspire, Sorry guys.
Then there was Where's Hollywood? Extraordinary. Brilliant. MX80 Sound meets Faust at the grass roots of Canterbury might start to hint a vector at three guitars, one drummer, no vocals, no lights. Throbbing cross-rhythm magical noise somehow in perfect balance with quiet, pastoral melody lines, all played with a tight, electrifying energy. This was their first gig outside York; it was also their penultimate gig before an indefinite hiatus. Bastards. Final performance will be at Stereo in York on 17th October: I don't know if I'll be able to drag myself out there on a Monday night, but it's going to be bloody tempting. Bit of a trek for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.6){kind=small}
hirez and the Brissle nasty racket contingent who might otherwise be interested, but burkesworks might want to drag himself along.
Headliners were Hull band BIRI, who whilst more mainstream in approach than the previous, made a very fine, loose-limbed, lolloping noise indeed. Dead tight while treating anything that could resemble C&W 4/4 with the contempt it so richly deserves, and stretching the envelope of harmony right to the teetering edge of tune, but not, quite, beyond. Fine stuff, and I'll certainly be going to hear them again soon. Also big respect due for introducing Hull and me to Where's Hollywood? even if very nearly too late. Yes.
This entry was originally posted at http://perlmonger.dreamwidth.org/161966.h
I don't often bounce off books, but over my life there have been a few that have defeated me, or that I have just discarded with contempt or incomprehension.
Over the last few years, I've made a conscious effort to retry and, thus far, have been rewarded by loving the damned things second time round. Whether this is down to greater maturity or age-related reduced higher brain function I leave as an exercise for the reader.
This post is prompted by having just … read, not re-read! … The Difference Engine. When it was first published, I think I got about a half dozen pages into it and no further; couldn't see the point, or engage with it at all. This time, I've romped through it with pleasure: a fine read with some surprising resonances to contemporary society and politics, only let down a little for me by the final lines of the coda.
Other books?
I couldn't finish Shame when I first tried; just got bogged down and ground to a halt. Now, it's (perhaps) my favourite of all of Rushdie's books that I've read, right up there with Midnight's Children.
Doris Piserchia's Star Rider, that I tried whilst working through the first few chunks of Women's Press SF releases back in the early 80s? Unreadable. I was astonished that something written that badly could ever have been published at all, let alone re-published as an exemplar of women's SF. It's been sitting on my shelves ever since, until 2007 when I finally gathered the courage to try it again before disposal: either somebody slipped in and did a substitution without me seeing, or my perceptions have changed fundamentally; I loved it. In fact, it's about time I read it again.
The Glass Bead Game is probably next to retry, another early failure that I reckon I could at least evaluate now.
There are exceptions of course, books I feel no need to pollute my mind with. I tried Dianetics once in my youth, picking it off the library shelf in the mistaken impression it was science fiction. I suppose it is, by some definitions, but the clam-worshippers are welcome to that one. I don't think I'll bother with the Narnia books I hurled away in disgust as child either; my suspicion there is that my spleen wouldnae take it Capt'n. Not a problem with Lewis or his faith (I can read and enjoy the interplantary trilogy and Screwtape, with all their goddishness), just the vomit-inducing patronising Anne Atkinsness of his attempts at chidrens' writing will never again pollute my optic nerves.
This entry was originally posted at http://perlmonger.dreamwidth.org/161782.h
Happy birthdays to ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bugshaw and fluffcthulhu; may the next Earthly rotation be a good one for both, and may the latter eat me first, when the Stars are Right.
This entry was originally posted at http://perlmonger.dreamwidth.org/161280.h
Having spent all of yesterday working, as the rain rained like rainy rain outside (or inside, in the case of the kitchen: we have a flat not-entirely-still-a roof situation there), we decided to go Out today. To the sea, and to the aquarium shop just outside Skirlaugh to buy more turbo snails¹, whatever inclemency the sky might hurl us.
As chance would have it, friends Piers and Gill in Donnie got in touch in the morning; they were going to Brid, and would we like to meet? So that's what we did, at The Best Fish and Chip Shop in England, which just happens to be at 149 Marton Road in Brid. Very, very good it is too, as we all found scoffing the food in the German Barge - it was a rare moment of sunshine, but dry seats were hard to come by outside where it had precipitated while we waited for our fish, and we didn't fancy eating standing up. Mac and I had had half an hour walking on the beach before: north in the sun with the wind behind us, then back south battling the gale into the gathering storm, so appetite was a given.
After a good while deconstructing the state of the world, we drove down in tandem to the aquarium shop, where turbo snails there were none. Woe. We compensated in slight excess by buying two red shrimp, a Royal Gramma (that'll be a fish, m'lud), and three diverse little frags of coral instead.
After that, back in tandem to Hull, where, sitting on the frosted glass walls of a well-furnished room, we drank mint tea and grew in static mindpower. Sorry. What I meant was that we sat at the dining table drinking Earl Gray or Assam, and had a good natter, while the new aquatic arrivals compensated with their new environment before final entry.
Royal Gramma George (all our tanklife are called George) wasn't having any aclimatisation nonsense though, and slipped out of the plastic bag into the tank without so much as a by your leave, and vanished to our eyes, causing consternation and worry. Se² emerged for a visible swim some quarter of an hour later unworried, before vanishing once more. Turns out that hir species likes to grub around to find a safe rock retreat to defend, so that's what se's been doing.
Piers and Gill have returned home to Donnie now, and we're about to consume the bubble'n'squeak with a fried egg Mac's constructing for us tea. Which will be nice, and a good start to the tail end of a good day.
ETA And now we're about to drive to Selby to collect an unexpected 4" Yellow Tang. This is not sensible. We're doing it anyhow.
ETA2 Home again, with Yellow Tang George getting used to a new home thanks to judicious use of a turkey baster. As are a starfish and another coral. Oops.
¹ We had a spate of turbo snail losses (they're there to help clean the tank); they chose in succession to dive down the water return pipe into the sump below, before I tied a washing tablet bag over the pipe mouth to stop such adventure. Some survived to be rescued (as did Clown Fish George when they did the same), some didn't.
² Apologies if gender neutral pronouns upset; how do you sex a Royal Gramma?
This entry was originally posted at http://perlmonger.dreamwidth.org/161228.h
I'm aching in bits I didn't realise I had.
I blame the flies.
We've been infested with fruitflies for days now, and part of one causal chain is that our compost bin (modo redux) was in the back yard just a couple of metres away from the French windows. Didn't matter much last year, as the French windows weren't, and the back door that isn't any more didn't get left open, but now the little fuckers swarmed outside and straight inside whenever the doors were opened.
Something had to be done, and logistically that could only be modo relocation to the back of the yard by the bike tent.
This position is right in front of the (ancient, disintegrating) back fence, and our back neighbour, who put up a nice new fence behind ours last year, is happy to share theirs with us; seemed sensible, then, to tear down that part at least of our old fence before shifting the compost. However, between the yard proper and the line of our old fence was a remnant of the old stepped border: whoever slabbed the yard, decades ago, didn't want to split slabs and filled in the gap round one side and the back with slabs embedded deep in the ground but standing maybe 15cm proud, with their outside gap filled with hardcore topped with concrete. Most of that's gone, opened up and filled with soil at the side, and opened right up by a slab width (the bordering slabs moved out) for ¾ of the back. That last job was done, poorly, by my tenant while we were down Brissle way, with the side border slabs extending into the new back bed, and the slabs closing the bed on the other side being too short.
So, my plan was to take up the redundant back slabs, concrete cap, and hardcore; reassign vertical slabbing so everything actually fits; use the remaining bits of vertical slab horizontally to fill in the gap opened between our yard and our neighbour's fence; and (finally) move the compost bin and its throbbing contents to their new location on the newly laid slabbing.
It's all done now, and I've used muscles in the process that haven't been fired up, probably, since I dug the pnod in our old back garden 6 or 7 years ago. Extracting concrete slabs embedded 20cm in the ground armed only with a crowbar and a trowel, and with no real possibility to dig down beside, took a deal of doing. A fair deal. Particularly the one with a BFO rose bush growing right over it.
Tearing down the remainder of the old fence can await another day.
This entry was originally posted at http://perlmonger.dreamwidth.org/160943.h
In March 2011 I live and work in this house on Belvoir Street in Hull with ramtops and five cats.
In March 2001 I lived in Long Ashton, just outside Bristol, coming up to two years after ramtops and I got married, with IIRC fournine¹ cats, two of whom (Iggy and Mustrum) are here with us now. Complaining. The other two are living with Mac's daughter in Norwich now.
In March 1991 I lived in a house on Duesbery Street in Hull with my then partner Julia and our daughter Rhiannon.
In March 1981 I was living in a friend's flat in Ash Grove, Hull. We, along with our friend Chris, were filling in census forms under the influence of Albert Hoffman and on behalf of one Eric Pode of Croydon.
In March 1971 I was living with my parents in Worthing. The less said about that the better.
¹ Mac corrected me on this one - I lose track of time too easily! Sadly, the five I thought arrived after the 2001 census are all gone now: of the Yorkshire Three, Molly is (I hope) still alive and in total control of her current home, but Zool and Aliss are dead. As is Pepper and, we can only assume, PoD who vanished one day, never to return.
This entry was originally posted at http://perlmonger.dreamwidth.org/160630.h
I'm not at all sure what happened to 2010. Or, indeed January 2011.
So, very belatedly, here's what I read last year( 35 books ) and, likewise, watched( 54 films or suchlike )
There, that was exciting wasn't it?
This entry was originally posted at http://perlmonger.dreamwidth.org/160283.h
A good day. We mooched up to Northallerton through the drizzle to pick up our new old ex-eBay Neff single oven, combi oven and cooker hood, stopping at a Little Thief for a grease infusion, then across the moors as the sky cleared and winter sun shone to Staithes. A lovely place, particularly if one chooses not to notice more than in passing its suffering from the sadly inevitable cancer of holiday homes. I might even have some photos worth uploading; will look later [ETA link to photos!]. Cup of tea and CAKE! (of a rather nice coconut, lime and ginger varietal) at the caff at the top the hill, before driving across to Malton for some veg and flowers, and bacon, pasties and a pair of late-Saturday-bogof pies from Overton's.
Home now, with a car still full of kitchen gear waiting for us to have a kitchen for it to live in. With the French windows in, all we need is the kitchen door bricking, the doorway into the house opening up, plastering, new ring and sockets, gas moving, fridge (finally) being plumbed in, oh and deciding who we're actually going to get the kitchen from, and having no kitchen at all while it's rebuilt. How hard can it be?
Still, after a fine quick dinner tonight (tub of coriander chicken from the freezer, cooked potatoes from the fridge fried in turmeric+ginger+paprika+allspice+crushed chili+asafœtida+pepper+salt, and basmati rice) and a packet of Bahlsen's choccie! bikkits that seems to have evaporated between us, with tea in front of the fire: my aspirations in life may be modest, but the upside is that I can and do achieve them. My life here in Hull with ramtops and the cats is actually pretty damned good.
This entry was originally posted at http://perlmonger.dreamwidth.org/160111.h
