meteoropathy

I got my yuletide assignment. As is the way of these things, I had a brilliant idea on seeing it, wrote three hundred words and then nothing more. I'm still cautiously optimistic I might make progress soonish. I think I shall have to rewatch re-read replay re-consume the canon and hope for the best.

Here are some things that make a post.

1. Work continues difficult and anxiety-provoking. (What a surprise.) Had a meeting this morning in which there was much discussion of single farm payments, solar energy and renewables generally, inter alia; my supervisor said, sternly to all present, that we should pay attention to such things; we should keep apprised of what's happening in our world. It's a world composed mainly of anxiety and grit, from my perspective. Grit that comes off deeds, grit that accumulates in my ears and nose after a day of deeds, grit from site visits, grit under nails, grit that shit grows in. At least it's about growing things, says the part of me that would quite like to go on site visits to windswept moors in the middle of nowhere. My supervisor gets in beautiful full-colour periodicals of blue-sky pictures so we can sometimes see what the land we handle looks like to stand on.

(We have reached the turn of the year where sunset is at three thirty. I am... feeling it.)

On the brighter side, on my way to work is a Buddhist retreat and education centre. They are having a charity bake sale. The Dharma Buns. FOR SERIOUS.

2. Shim and I have spent some evenings this week listening to Warhorses of Letters, and finished today to a joint chorus of NO THEY CAN'T LEAVE IT THERE. Please tell me you are listening to this, flist. Please tell me. It is a four-part Radio 4 fifteen-minute comedy that details for us the correspondence between two star-crossed lovers, Marengo and Copenhagen. Both of whom are known to history for being close friends of Napoleon and Wellington respectively, oh, and being horses. But, as their collected correspondence tells us, terribly gay for each other, though prone to jealousy and ah, needing rolls in wet grass to compose themselves. "It's not easy," as Copenhagen puts it, "being a gay horse."

KISS KISS HOOFPRINT. I have hearts. It's nominated for yuletide, which makes them sparkly hearts.

3. Speaking of yuletide and historical fiction, which I totally was, I am re-reading the Lord John Grey novels and rather enjoying the experience. I am still very far from being Diana Gabaldon's biggest fan - I cannot, no matter how hard I try, get into her Outlander books, which are just too doorstoppish and full of deathless! romantic! hero! tropes for me. It baffles me somewhat that she can also have written Lord John Grey: Lord John, who is a terribly romantic hero, in so many ways, being as he is charming, aristocratic, classically-educated, an expert swordsman, and indefinably attractive to women. But then, he also has a sense of humour. And he's queer. And, you know, I love that, I do: I love that Lord John is queer in a way that makes sense for the world he lives in (which is eighteenth-century Scotland, and London; he was born in 1729) but also just makes sense. He's proud of it in his own quiet way; regretful that he can't ever tell his adored brother and mother; and when asked if he thinks it's a sin, his answer is that he was made in the image of God. And I love his romances, doomed as they all are by exigencies of plot; I love that they happen in and around adventure-mystery fare; and I love that he's a soldier, and it's a part of his identity with his queerness, that they both characterise him.

( this is my usual spoilery trigger warning when recommending the Lord John books )

So, anyway, I forgot to nominate, offer or request Lord John fic for yuletide, but luckily other people did not. I am reading them cheerfully, and feeling a little better about life now I have lived through another week.