Good grief. I despair.

I have been reading some of the fall out following the decision not to deport Stephen Lawrence's murderer, and people's attitudes really bother me. This chap killed a man. Vee bad. But what gets me is the emotional way in which people seem to respond, and expect the courts to respond. "Rah, he's a killer... if anyone did that to my family, I'd want them hanged... rah, rah, rah."

You know what? If someone murdered one of my family, I'd damned well want them hanged as well. Possibly drawn and quartered. But that's EXACTLY why I should be given no say in the matter. My emotions would be beside the point, and would merely muddy the waters. The law cannot be a slave to rampant emotionalism.



On a happier note, it's my birthday!! And, in the traditional, er, tradition, of listing my birthday presents, I received some Monsoon vouchers from my parents, and some pretty writing paper, flower shaped cookie cutters AND the most genius t-shirt with a cartoon of Spock on it saying "That is soooooo illogical" (♥ ♥ ♥) from Katie. I love birthdays. Sadly the weather does not seem to have noticed that it is supposed to be a HAPPY day. Pah.

(no subject)

Questions from nicolap...

Why does Lesley call you Liss Havilland in the introduction to her book (this was bothering me last night)? Do you in fact have many identities?
I do have many identities, yes. *looks shifty* Back when I first started making websites etc, back in my teenage days, that was my webly pseudonym. Which was fine and dandy, only then real life started to intrude on my internet life. Slightly awkward, actually, because in the GO/CS world people tend to use their own names, and I embraced the internet via Buffy and Star Trek etc, where everyone just had usernames, so I ended up feeling hideously dishonest and a fraud. But it's still just me.

What should I cook for tea tonight? (I was inspired by your spinach risotto, it was very fine)
Spinach risotto is a gift of the gods. *g* Um... Lasagna. Lasagna is a beautiful dish that is vee easy and yummy. Oh yes.

I have never seen an episode of Supernatural. Is this a grave omission?
Weeeelll, it depends on one's televisual tastes. It's touted as a horror film a week, but it's not particularly scary, and some of the plots are a bit silly. But the main characters (apart from, obviously, being utterly pretty and lovely) are very well characterised, and also can be very funny, and more people should watch it, because it's culty joy with a squidgy emotional centre and a brilliant soundtrack.

Do you remain a northerner at heart?
Yes, I think so. I think when you've been brought up somewhere, and you have such strong ties to an area (Sheffield, in my case), it's hard for that to ever go away, even when you've moved all over the place. A lot of the time, I don't really miss it a great deal (I hated Sheffield in my youth - it was a fairly shitty city, though it's much better these days), but when I go back, it does feel like home. I know London fairly well, but there's a difference in knowing a city that you've lived in as an adult, and knowing one that you've lived in as a child, and that your parents and grandparents etc etc have lived in forever. Wherever we drive in Sheffield, my mother drove when she was taking her driving test. My grandparents cannot refer to TJ Hughes as TJ Hughes. They can't even manage House of Fraser (that building's previous incarnation). For them, it's still Walsh's. Harry Walsh would, apparently, turn in his grave... The closing of Jessup's Hospital led to endless reminiscences about giving birth to my mother there... There's a programme from a pageant for George V's first visit to the city after becoming king (in about 1911) that has my great-grandmother listed as 'an Ethiopian child'...

Also, I'm blatantly a northern lass, still, which I suspect is what you meant by the question *g*. Ee, how I do like to witter...

When you are (even more) famous and a film is made of life at Fangirl Towers, who will play you and Katie?
I have no idea. Cool people, obviously. Oh yes. I dunno. What do people think? Who could portray us on the silver screen. I mean, Nicole Kidman for me, obviously - the resemblance is marked...


Anyone else want some questions?

Pointless meandering...

It’s funny, Nicola’s question got me thinking about Sheffield, and how much of my family’s history is embedded there. I mentioned not being able to drive anywhere without my mother claiming that she had driven along that very road for her driving test. But sometimes it feels like everywhere has that sort of connection. I used to go on the bus past High Storrs School every day to get to school myself, and my aunt was head girl there (she’s still indignant about the speech day fiasco, but we’ll not dwell…). Back in the day, my great-uncle was head boy there as well. Various family members went to school there. Or Abbeydale School, where I took one of my music exams, and which is where my mother went to school (she still has uniform joy, to this very day). Or catching the bus into town, and going past the old grammar school (and God knows how long it’s been since that actually *was* a school), where assorted other relations went (including my grandparents – my grandmother was on their hockey XI – and Cousin Rosemary, who went out with Grandad before he met Grandma). And I have my own memories of life at the High School – sitting on canteen drive with our lunch; catching the number 60 into town, and hoping to get to the bus stop before the Birkdale boys got out, because then the buses weren’t so busy; stopping off at the newsagents to get a quarter of sherbert lemons (or kola kubes in Karen’s case); sitting in the botanic gardens across the road at lunchtime once we got into the Sixth Form; going to the dinky sandwich shop in Broomhill; endless speech days in the Octagon; catching the supertram out to the Don Valley stadium for sports day, and lolling about on the grass trying to do as little as possible and failing to sum up any kind of house pride (not least because Stanley always came either 3rd or 4th at everything – we were definitely *not* the crack house!); going along to the university theatre to watch their French students put on random plays; wandering vaguely towards Broomhill with Catherine for her A-level Geography project and actually managing to get *lost*.

And we drive through Gleadless, and Mummy shows me Grandad’s ‘patch’ from when he was a GP there, and where GG used to live before she moved to Reney Drive, and past the Northern General, where Grandad worked for a while back in the day (and where, thinking about, my mother was allegedly *conceived* - on a hospital bed, during one of Grandad’s breaks when Grandma had smuggled herself in – I just don’t think about it…), and down Bradford Road next to the golf club where Grandma and Grandad Hallatt (Grandad’s parents) lived for about a million years, and up along Lodge Moor where Daddy lived (next door to the house where, in future years, my English teacher, Mrs Storrs, would live), and Scout hut where he went to Scouts, and the golf course up along there where he caddied (very badly), and walking down the Mayfield valley where he used to play when he was little.

My grandparents bought their house in the 60s. It’s just down the road from the house-next-to-the-golf-club where Grandad lived when he was little. I think I’ve spent time there every summer since I was born.

I had the same Latin teacher as my mother (albeit at different schools).

I don’t know – it’s nice, I think, to feel linked to a place like that.

La la la - come and look at me, everyone...

Questions from morganmuffle:

1. What is your favourite city in the whole world and why?
London. I love it. Obviously there are crap parts, and the transport infrastructure needs a damned good spanking, six of the best, trousers down, but I love that there are a million different theatre options, and you go and walk anywhere and find bits of history, and yet it's modern at the same time - there's no sense, really, that everything must be preserved and kept exactly the same like there is in some places - everything just keeps moving on, higgledy-piggledy.

2. Which season do you like best?
Autumn. Can still be nice and warm and sunny, or sunny and really cold and beautiful, or a bit nasty requiring lots of scarves and hats. Everything else is too hot and too cold, and it rains too much in the spring. In the seasons in my head, obviously...

3. Would you rather be a child in the Maynard, Bettany or Russell family?
Ooh, tricksy. My first impulse is Maynard, because the Bettanys suffered from mass absenteeism and the Russells had the heavy-handed father. Joey might have been a bit much as a mother, but I love Jack. Hmm. Might have to stay with the Maynards. I'm a daddy's girl, and neither Jem nor Dick would have been good enough.

4. Which SPN crackfic plot would you most like to see actually onscreen?
Well, obviously, it has to be either bodyswap or genderswap. I think, despite the unfettered joy of genderswap, it would have to be bodyswap, just so you had Jensen and Jared doing it. (Come on, Kripke, you know you want to...)

5. What's your favourite type of cake?
Hmm. I think probably my lime and coconut cake. It's vee yummy. Cake is a Good Thing.

Yes, I think this can now qualify as spamming...

Questions from xanantha:

1. If you were able to influence three matters of government policy, which would you pick, and why?
i. Education - I know I'm speaking from a position of someone academically bright who benefitted from a bonne education, but I would bring back grammar schools. I think this disingenuous crap about all children being taught the same is ridiculous and does not take into account the differing needs of the children. Also think the university system needs a massive shake-up, because higher education is a bit of a joke.
ii. Health - I think more people should be encouraged to take up private insurance where they are able to ease the burden on the NHS. I know this would present problems of its own, but at the moment the NHS is sinking, and some real changes need to be made, changes which Government is not willing to make because whatever they do is going to be unpopular.
iii - Human Rights - I think politicians need to stop attacking judicial decisions made on human rights grounds, and need to be firmer when it comes to human rights abuses on the part of our international allies. Yes, camps at Guantanamo Bay, I'm looking at you. I don't know what, if any, pressure our Government is putting on America to close those camps, but whatever it is, I don't think is strong enough or public enough.

2. If you had three weeks holiday & could go anywhere (real or imaginary, money no limitation etc) where would you go?
Ooh, now putting that "imaginary" part in makes it very different... I would go to Briesau, where there's a branch of the international Chalet School, and get caught up in some dreadful meteorological disaster with a school party. Perhaps there would be some doctors involved in the rescue, perhaps not. One never knows. (I know, that's slightly pathetic, but there you go. In the real world, I'd like to go to New York. Or, no, a tour of east coast/Southern states in a Civil War kind of way. Or, ooh, here we go. Road trip. Oh yes. But me and Katie are going to do this. When we can afford it. And, y'know, drive. It's all planned out...)

3. If one art form were to be eradicated from the world forever, which would you get rid of?
Blimey. Hmm. Sculpture, I think I could manage without. It would be vee sad, but better than the alternatives.

4. If you could appear in a radio programme (from whenever, of any genre and so on) which would you be in & if you were not yourself which character/persona would you represent?
I would be Violet Elizabeth Bott.

5. What about Guiding would you most like to change?
On a sort of overarching-aim-of-Guiding thing, I would change the God part (quel surprise!). I think a lot of people don't mean it anyway, and I think it's actually very excluding, which is presumably the last thing Guiding wants. Also, I think there are volunteers who could behave more professionally without losing face. Frankly.

Can you tell what it is yet?

Questions from pim2005:

1. Will you ever stop obsessing about your hair?
Nope, not in a million years.

2. If you could only ever have one fandom ever again in this life, which would it be?
Probably Chalet School, because that is the one where I have met people I can be friends with. It would be hard to do without hurt!Dean, though...

3. Would you ever work for a pathologist?
I suspect the correct answer might be no... *g* If it was a good job, yes, I would.

4. What's the best thing ever, ever you've seen at the theatre?
Arcadia, no question. The Wadham production I saw in my second year, for choice.

5. Quelles belles jambes... do you agree with this summation of Dakin's legs?
Nah, they're a bit boyly for my tastes. Posner is welcome to them...

Squeenie Drabble Challenge #22

Wee!Sam
::as requested by katie__pillar::

“…And a Spiderman costume like Tommy Matthews has! And popcorn! And,” Sammy pulled a crumpled newspaper supplement out of his pocket, “a nowl like this one.”

Dean looked at the picture in disbelief. It was of a freaky china plate with a gold rim and a picture of an owl on it. It certainly was the sort of thing you might want for your birthday. If you were a million years old and lived in house that smelt of wee.

“You’re not having that, Sammy,” he said authoritatively. It was his job to nip Sammy’s stupider ideas in the bud. That was what big brothers were for, after all. And Sammy couldn’t help it. He was only five.

“I want a nowl!” demanded Sammy. Dean rolled his eyes.

“Jeez, Sammy, you’re such a baby! That’d be a lame present. Maybe you can have a Spiderman costume – that’d be cool.” Sammy was not to be placated by the lure of a Spidey mask, though.

“Want a nowl!” He stamped a foot, and Dean decided that his father could deal with this.

“Dad!” he hollered, and moments later John Winchester’s head poked around the door, a hopeful glint in his eye. Dean had been given the job of finding out a suitable present for Sammy, and John was optimistic that he would have found something good. But Dean was not looking impressed.

“Tell Dad what you want,” he ordered Sammy. Sammy offered up a smile to his father, a smile which John found almost impossible to resist.

“Want a nowl,” he said sweetly, confident that his father would understand exactly why any person would want an owl for their birthday.

“A what?” asked John blankly.

“An owl,” said Dean, thrusting the picture at him. “Sammy,” with as contemptuous a glance as a nine year old could manage which, when the nine year old was Dean, was really quite contemptuous, “wants an owl for his birthday.” John crouched down. This was OK. He could be understanding about this.

“You can’t have an owl, kiddo,” he said, breaking the news gently. “Where would we put it?” From the look on Dean’s face, that was the wrong tack to have taken. Sammy grinned again, and pulled at John’s hand. Uh oh. The kid had actually considered this question. That was bad.

“In here, Dad!” Sammy opened the closet door. It was spacious, certainly. And… was that a newspaper bowl? “I made it for the nowl poo,” said Sammy, proudly. Okaaaay.

“Sammy, we can’t look after an owl,” said John desperately. That was obvious, right? The Winchester household was no place for an owl. Sammy looked mutinous.

“Let’s go for ice cream!” said John. The owl subject was, if not forgotten, then at the very least, gone.

…

It was Sammy’s birthday three days later. John and Dean gave him his presents: a Spiderman costume, popcorn, and a felt owl. Sammy called it Elvis, and swore to look after it forever.

…

“Hey, Samantha, look at that!” Sam deliberately ignored Dean’s taunt, and glanced across the road to the sign standing several feet high.

Fairview: Home To The World’s Oldest Owl.

“So?”

“Don’t you remember? Owls? Elvis?” Sam shrugged, and Dean ducked his head and stirred his coffee. He guessed some things you could never get back.

Squeenie Drabble Challenge #23

Harriet Vane
::as requested by mrs_redboots::

Harriet Vane woke up on the morning of her birthday with the rather lowering feeling that this year it might be rather hellish. Only recently acquitted of killing Philip Boyes, she had retreated from her usual social circle, despite the insistence from her friends that she had to ‘keep up with things, old chap, it’s the only way’. What, Harriet would like to know, did any of them know about being had up for murder? She might get a card or two, she supposed. But she was remarkably lacking on family and… well, it was vile to know that her birthday was not, for anyone, a matter of particular import.

The doorbell rang. It was a telegram boy. Curious as to who would have bothered with a telegram, she tipped him absently, and ripped open the envelope. Because the birthday of my life is come my love is come to me STOP Rosetti had it in one STOP Present to follow STOP May call to discuss benefits of marriage STOP She smiled helplessly even as she crumpled the orange paper into a ball and flung it into the waste paper basket. She was the last person Lord Peter Wimsey should be having anything to do with.

But she couldn’t help feeling it was nice of him to remember.