The moving moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.
Books read in January
1. Liked: short stories suited my energy levels.
Disliked: none were quite scary enough for me!
2. Liked: got a clearer view of the War of the Roses.
Disliked: the dense networks of names - often I had no idea who she was talking about!
3. Liked: finding out about Kaye Webb who edited most of the books I read as a kid.
Disliked: Grove’s writing style, she likes to skim over things.
4. Liked: I love King’s prose, I love time-travel stories, I love his recreation of small-town America in the 50s. I was gripped, pretty much all the way through.
Disliked: King is too verbose, he needs a braver editor! This could have been a third or more shorter and been much better for it.
5. Liked: the first half was amazingly gripping and thought-provoking.
Disliked: wtf? what did it all mean?!
6. Liked: I really enjoy this series, easy to read, moderately interesting.
Disliked: as usual Kinsey is best friends with the people in the case, within a day of meeting them. Her ‘sleuth’ skills always seem like good luck rather than good detective work. AND the conceit of doing the whole alphabet in the 80s wore thin long ago - she crowbars a couple of 80s references into this one for the first time, obviously been reading her reviews.
ambivalence … or a meditation on the march of time
On my 20th birthday I drank so much that I remember nothing after about 8pm. The next morning about 40 birthday cards were lined neatly up on the mantlepiece in my bedroom. I have no recollection of receiving any of them, but I knew I had enjoyed myself. For my 21st birthday, I drank so much port that I had to lie down at the bus stop. From then on, birthdays have been a, a let-down and b, a harsh reminder of the march of the time, a march that gets faster and faster, til your feet are going ten to the dozen just trying to keep up with it. The day before my 30th birthday I hyperventilated at the thought of not being in my 20s again; ha!! now I’d like to go back in time and slap myself around the face.
Having now been officially 33 for a little while I can pretty much decide not to worry about actual chronological numbers but, at some point, I realised that if you go away for your birthday it is all much easier to bear (that is, ignore). So for the last few years I have been in a cottage by the sea on my birthday, and it has been just wonderful, cold, bracing and beautiful. Anyway, so today is my birthday. And I am not by the sea. In fact, I am exactly, to a mm, where I would usually be (in this chair, in front of my monitor). But it has been ok - in fact, I would go so far as to say it has been very nice. I had a meal out with Mr Sam and 4 friends last night, and today I opened lots of cards and presents in bed, fed the foxes, fed the birds, fed me and Mr Sam (we had scrambled eggs and ‘bacon’ and bagels), and Mr Sam made me a banana loaf especially, despite being “not a fan” of bananas (wtf??). We bathed the doglette and I am still in my pjs (life is too short for a structured waistband when just hanging about the house), with mojitos promised for later.
Maybe then the point is that it doesn’t matter where you are. It is 2 years ago today that I bought my first Blythe,which has been a very positive thing; and I am married to my best friend, who I like more each day. At this point in my life, I am very happy, happy enough to actually feel surprised and thankful about it, so having a happy birthday is, perhaps, easier to achieve.
Our very late honeymoon …
As a couple - actually, what am I saying, as individuals, nothing to do with couple-stuff, this is what we are like - we like to go home. I went to BlytheCon in London last October, to be away for two nights of dolly-fun. Did I manage it? No. After BlytheCon I went home, because (for the first time properly in my life) I have a very happy home life. Similarly, my tenuous grip on actually getting it together to go on holiday (cf. if you have pets and you adore them, you will hear my pain at this point) has receded alarmingly since me and the Hub got together, simply because we like to be at home. We’ve been to Toronto, Spain and New York together, and I’ve been to Australia twice, but neither of us are massively well-travelled (always too poor) and nowadays, well I am afraid that a cottage in Whitby, walking our little doggie on the beach, is just peachy.
We were given some gifts of money for our wedding last month, enough to cover flights and some accomodation for a ‘Big Trip’. Predictably, we have dithered over it, wondering whether to just go to Europe for a weekend because, you know, home is where the heart is, and the pets. So lame.
So, rather astonishingly, I mean, we ARE astonished, we have now booked our flights for our very late honeymoon. We go to the west coast of american in September for a road trip from San Francisco to Vancouver, stopping off at Portland. We are already excited, and afraid. Haha! We will miss our doglette, and our cats, and our home.
But of course, this is also wonderful, and we feel privileged and happy, and we can just go home afterwards, having had an adventure.
the community of Blythe
You may think, here we go, some old guff about how wonderful everyone is. And, indeed, you would be right. Except it is not guff, it is the total truth. But first, since this is my blog and I can do wtf I like, I am going to backtrack a little …
I have never been a mixer or a joiner. I tried Brownies and dance classes and all that when I was little and came home traumatised. All those people? jostling around? No thanks! And I have never had an actual definable ‘hobby’ (unless youthful attention to drinking and dancing can be counted). So (although I bought This Is Blythe when it was first published) I finally adopted my first Blythe (a Cinema Princess, good luck not good judgement) on my birthday, January 29th 2010. I didn’t know about flickr or plastic paradise (now blythe kingdom). But I soon found out and it was life-changing, in so many positive ways. It is sociable. It is creative. It is supportive. (Occasionally there is a bit of dolly drama but it in no way outweighs the good.) I am proud to be a part of this lovely, gorgeous community of good-hearted folks - I don’t care, I AM, I know it sounds like an Oscar acceptance speech, but truly, these are GOOD people.
Thank you good people, please accept this cyberhug from me (()) xx
I already knew this. But in the last 24 hours this has been re-confirmed to me. 100 people have joined our flickr group and agreed to donate money to get Fee to BlytheCon in October. Those are wonderful, kind people. The world isn’t going to go to shit after all, because those people exist.
2 things I love: Blythe dolls and vintage Pyrex (this design is my favourite: ‘snowflake’). Living in Northern Europe means a fight with the light for about half of the year! So I was quite pleased with the light in this one, despite it being a dark day, helped by a south facing window, a white background, and a small mirror.
Fee and BlytheCon UK
The reason I’ve set up this tumblr account is to see if myself and Camilla can rope in 100 people to donate a minimum of £4.50 (about $6.90) to get Fee to BlytheCon UK in October. This would amount to £450 which would pay for her to get from Norway to Manchester, 2 nights in the same hotel as BlytheCon, entry to the convention and the after party, and then a flight home.
If you are a flickr friend of Fee’s you will know what a terrible year she had in 2011, diagnosed with cancer out of the blue, the treatment, the side-effects, and now the aftermath of ongoing treatments, some of which leave her just as unwell as during her illness. She has frankly and movingly told us about her ordeal; we have seen her fear and, most of all, her bravery.
Now she is having her benefits removed and will have to find a job, having barely had time to recover! One of her wishes for 2012 was to attend BlytheCon in Manchester (she was too ill to attend in London in 2011). So we would like to make her wish come true!
