As 1 and 2 went for our flu and covid shots today. Here are the lights of Scott Hall Road in the evening dark as we made our way home with achy arms but relief that we’d finally got around to it.
A2 is now rereading An Uncertain Place, by Fred Vargas again.
Binfire Day
We woke to the election of Trump. Bonfire of the sanities!
A2 is reading Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand by Fred Vargas, one that we’d missed on our previous Vargas-fest.
Bonfire Night
Happy birthday Guida!
A2 is rereading Seeking Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas. A1 is reading Polostan by Neal Stephenson, in which we learn much about the Wobblies, the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, balloons and cosmic rays, Magnitogorsk in the USSR, Bonnie and Clyde, the Communist Party of America, the sport of polo, the Bonus Army, quantum physics, Hoovervilles, and much else. Various real figures play pivotal roles: Niels Bohr, Generals (then Major) Patton and MacArthur and Lavrentiy Beria among others. An unsurnamed “Dick” is also very important, who is clearly the womanising polymath genius Richard Feynman. This enthralling read is the first in a trilogy, but the small 300-page size (for a Stephenson book) gives credence to the rumour that it’s actually been finished but the publishers wanted it split into three parts. Well, more money for them…
Heaven and Hell
Thank you for the beer Gez. We had shepherd’s pie and Parkin with custard for our family meal and scored a mighty 11.5 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading Judgement Prey* by John Sandford. A2 is rereading This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas. Can’t believe that any cat, let alone a fat indolent creature that has to be carried everywhere, would run 35 kilometres on the scent of a missing person.
Hallowali
It’s a festival of lights in one culture (but no fireworks this year) and an excess of pumpkins, ghosts, skeletons, witches and bats in another. Here’s next-door’s creepy display.
October was the second coldest October on record and has less rain and sun than average.
A2 is rereading Bryant & May: Strange Tide by Christopher Fowler and A1 is rereading Fowler’s Bryant & May: The Victoria Vanishes in an annoying American edition. If there’s one thing I can never imagine Arthur Bryant saying, it’s “cell phone” — but oddly, this is the only thing that’s been Americanised: there are still sweets, not candy, pavements rather than sidewalks, colours not colors and so on. Which made the ubiquitous changing of “mobile” or “phone” even more noticeable. And irritating. These books are quintessentially English — more specifically, Londonish (if there’s such a word), and Americanising them is just wrong. I don’t want US-written books to be Anglicised, so why do the opposite? US readers aren’t idiots.
Fun Guys
Puffballs in the mossy ginnel.
We had roast chicken and trifle for our family dinner, did this week’s and last week’s quizzes and scored 9 on one and 11.5 on the other.
A1 is rereading Bryant & May: Wild Chamber by Christoper Fowler. A2 is rereading Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. What a good book.
Enlightenment
It’s Light Night! A2 went to look but only got as far as the first illuminated street. Still, seeing is being.
A1 is rereading Bryant and May: The Burning Man by Christopher Fowler. A2 is rereading Bryant and May: Wild Chamber, also, unsurprisingly, by Christopher Fowler, and finding it as disturbing as the first time round.
Autumn Colour
A pretty tree. A2 spotted a bloke photographing it and stopped for a quick chat but instead got a lengthy lecture. Mansplainers eh?
We had chicken stew and apple crumble for our family dinner, did 2 old quizzes and scored 10.5 on one and 11.5 on the other.
A1 is rereading Bryant and May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler. A2 is rereading Fundamental Disch by Thomas M Disch.
Up, Up and Away
Goodbye Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, seen at last in the far distance as it heads back to the Oort Cloud. Sorry we missed you in your full glory.
Critter of the Day: Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale
A handsome Hawthorn Shield Bug strolling on the kerb. The photo isn’t over-processed; the beetle (and the concrete) is really that spotty.
A2 is rereading Fun with Your New Head by Thomas M Disch.
A Foggy Day
The fog hung around all day; no chance of the comet, but here is the marvel of a cobweb coated with jewels.A1 is rereading Strange Tides by Christopher Fowler. A2 is rereading The Man who had No Idea by Thomas M Disch, who has more ideas than you can shake a stick at.
Cloud of the Day: Cirrus Vertebratus
(Actually a cloud of yesterday; today’s clouds were drizzly nimbostratus and still no comet.) This cloud has a backbone!
A1 is rereading Bryant and May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler.
Pink Moon
A gibbous moon floating nonchalantly on the shoulders of a filmy cloud that has prevented us from seeing the comet once again.
A1 is rereading Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler. A2 is rereading Brasyl by Ian McDonald.
An Aurora at Last!
In the wee hours of this morning, as A1 was suffering from cold, flu or covid and A2 was wakeful with worry, the aurora alert shot up to a high level (thanks to those charged particles from the CME; see below)To the naked eye there was only a hint of red high up but a photo revealed the green wavy curtainsIt was a wonderful thing to see, at least on the screen, after so many nights of staring at black skies and taking black photographs. See the stars!
Saucy Tomato
The toms in our garden are ripening at last, and this one is blushing with shame.
A1 is reading Enlightenment by Sarah Perry. A2 is rereading Archangel by Robert Harris.
Comet Update
More from SOHO, with yet another CME (the speckles are high-energy particles hitting the camera):
The Comet Approaches
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is on its way. The image below was taken by the sun-researching SOHO spacecraft, and shows the comet moving into its field of view. Also captured is a solar flare, which — when the CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) hits the comet later today or tomorrow — may disrupt the comet’s tail. CMEs also cause auroras when they reach Earth. The weather is looking clearish for sunset time from 10 Oct, when the comet should start to become visible from here. Here’s hoping.A1 is reading The Mars House by Natasha Pulley, thus finishing A1’s immensely pleasurable tour through NP’s oeuvre (A1 really needed some distraction during recent events). TMH is a cheerful SF tale clearly playing homage to Terry Pratchett (complete with amusing footnotes). The SF elements can be a little ropey, but the writing is so splendidly enjoyable that it’s forgivable. It’s baffling why her previous publisher (Bloomsbury) refused the book and dropped her completely … she’s clearly a terrific writer with much left to say.
A2 is reading Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming.
Squabbling Squabs
Pigeons being fed in Dortmund Square.
Sundog
An evening parhelion above the chimney pots and TV aerials.
A1 is reading Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming. A2 is rereading The Adjacent by Christopher Priest.
Autumn Leaf
And so the foliage withers and falls, the nights draw in, the temperature drops, the sweaters go on, the bills go up… Last month was our coldest, wettest and cloudiest September of all time and yesterday only had 0.3mm less rain than the whole of August.
A1 is rereading The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley. A2 is reading The Future by Naomi Alderman; the tech oligarchs get their comeuppance as is only right and proper.
Another Delicious Cake
Served up by A1 for our family dinner which also featured chicken bacon broccoli cooked in our new shiny cooking pot, homebrew minestrone soup for the veggies and a selection of soft drinks including some very fruity Percy Pig flavoured coffee (thx G&D). We were on a roll and scored a mighty 12 on the GSQ.
A1 is rereading The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley. A2 is rereading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel, which features some of the characters from The Glass Hotel interacting with visiting time travellers from the Moon.
Not a Meteor
A plane shot up and fooled us for a short time. And the comet is coming!
A1 is rereading The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley.A2 is rereading The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel.
Passion Fruit
Our passion flower growing in a tiny pot has covered the whole wall with its leaves and flowers and now its lovely but tasteless orange fruits.
A1 is rereading The Bedlam Stacks and A2 is rereading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, both by Natasha Pulley.
Water Pipes
A very loud bagpiper droning away in the pouring rain.
A1 is rereading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley.
Dish of the Day: Pink Fairy Trifle
We had a lot of milk to use up (thx Gez) so our family dinner today was Vinyl Detective Macaroni Cheese (qv) followed by this trifle with the jelly made of milk instead of water. Here’s how it looked without the toppings:
Thanks to all the dairy produce fortifying our brains, we managed to score 13 on the GSQ, bringing our average back above 10 at last.
A2 is reading Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent (thx A1, but never pay full price for a cash-in crime novel by a beloved TV personality again). Susie knows a shitload (coarse slang; earliest known use is from 1954, in a translation by B Frechtman and JT Nile) of obscure words and uses them all, to the detriment of plot, character and reading pleasure.
Equinoctial Sunshine
Winter is coming but the sun is shining, with a corona.
A1 is reading Trio by William Boyd. A2 is reading The Temptation of Forgiveness by Donna Leon, which features a happily married detective with well-behaved teenage children and a love of reading Sophocles in his spare time. Nobody dies either. Weird or what?