"Give me a lever and a fulcrum and I could lift the earth."

Well, gosh, back to the grindstone. I’d forgotten such early hours existed – first thing this morning was a bit of a trial, though Katie had put the bread machine on timer so there was the lovely smell of freshly baked bread wafting through the flat. Tragically, it was too warm to do anything with and I didn’t have time anyway, so tant pis. Still, got up and out as I should, and got to work on time so woo.

Things I Did Over Easter

1. Watched series 3 (and some of series 2) of Lewis. I love Lewis. I never thought I would, but there you go.

2. Watched the first few eps of The Big Bang Theory, which is actually lolarious. ( I present into evidence a couple of quotes as to why. )

3. Saw my relatives.

4. Cooked roast chicken with trimmings and made pavlova for people*. Was party to the brilliant invention of a new game show format, Cream or Meringue!!!, which I think will fit in nicely with my planned lifestyle channel (tentative title: “How to be quite shitty at life AND YET STILL AWESOME”). Drank pink wine. Actually, no, I lie. I had the merest sip of pink wine. I did, however, have two glasses of white.

5. Did 1 (one) lot of laundry.

6. Made chicken stock with the leftover chicken carcase and then used most of it to make squash risotto with the leftover squash. (The rice wasn’t leftover from anything; it came out of a box.) Risotto tasted slightly odd. May have been the stock or the addition of the leftover pink wine. Who can tell?

7. Watched City of Ember, which I really loved and would recommend.

8. Learnt the countries of Central and South America, and started on the Caribbean and Asia (with a nod to eastern Europe: I learnt my countries back when the Soviet Union still brandished its hammer and Yugoslavia… yugoed its slavia (hmm), and I have never really come to terms with any newly created countries (other than the Ukraine, which was fine because it’s where Illya Kuryakin was born (either in canon or fanon, I can’t remember which))).

9. Read vol 1 of House of Mystery, which I really, really like, and then read issues #6-12. Still with the liking.

10. Read #10-17 of Angel, which I enjoyed to begin with and then the last couple were a bit meh, and I don’t think that much of the art, and I’m not sure I’ll bother reading any more.

11. Read vol 9 of Powers, which I enjoyed, though I have to say I was expecting a bit more after the climax of vol 7 (vol 8 was a bizarre – though very good – break from the main storyline).

12. Read vols 4, 5, and what will be vol 6 of Jack of Fables, so as to get up to speed for the Great Fables Crossover.

Things I Did Not Do Over Easter

1. Give praise for the resurrection of J.C.

2. Receive any form of Easter egg. This may or may not be related to number 1.

Things I Plan To Do In The Following Week

1. Go and see 17 Again with katie__pillar and klo_the_hobbit tomorrow, which I am looking forward to SO MUCH IT’S NOT EVEN REAL.

2. Hang out 1 (one) lot of laundry.

3. Watch more Lewis.

4. Contemplate buying first series of Lewis.

5. Start planning Shakespeare party properly.

6. Decide whether to buy single issues of the Great Fables Crossover, or wait for the trade(s).



* Actually, I reckon that could be a pretty damned good socialist chant: PAVLOVA FOR THE PEOPLE!!

Writer's Block: Taxmen and Poetry

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Actually, I have far too much poetry that I love to really narrow it down, but the first thing that popped into my mind:

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.

(Lepanto, by GK Chesterton)

Here amid firs and a final sunset flare
Recorder and hautbois only moan at a mouldering sky.

(The Old Liberals, by John Betjeman)

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light

(Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, by WB Yeats)

...then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

(To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell)


listen i says to him
old man youve never been to hell
at all there isn t any hell
transmigration is the game i
used to be a human vers libre
poet and i died and went
into a cockroach s body

(the cockroach who had been to hell by Don Maquis)