On winspit Ledges
Dec. 7th, 2025 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
puddleshark
So much rain this week. In the past few days, the flood plains here have undergone their usual winter transformation, from green fields with cattle grazing in them, to wide grey lakes with swans swimming on them. The lanes have turned into shallow streams. It's still too windy to go walking in the woods, so I drove down to the coast again, to follow the sheltered track down the valley to the old quarries at Winspit.
( Grey sea, grey sky )
To-read pile, 2025, November
Dec. 7th, 2025 01:48 pmrmc28Books on pre-order:
- Platform Decay (Murderbot 8) by Martha Wells (5 May 2025)
Books acquired in November (and all read!)
- Testimony of Mute Things (Penric & Desdemona) by Lois McMaster Bujold
- Goalie Interference (Austin Aces) by Kim Findlay [7]
- After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian
Books acquired previously and read in November:
- Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
- Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
- Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
- Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
Borrowed books read in November:
- Murder at the Grand Raj Palace (Baby Ganesha 4) by Vaseem Khan [3]
Rereads in November:
- Heated Rivalry (Game Changers 2) by Rachel Reid
- Tough Guy (Game Changers 3) by Rachel Reid
- Common Goal (Game Changers 4) by Rachel Reid
- Role Model (Game Changers 5) by Rachel Reid
- The Long Game (Game Changers 6) by Rachel Reid
Yes there's a TV adaptation of Heated Rivalry, no it's not available (legally) in the UK yet, also I have had no time to watch it even if it were. But watching it is very definitely in my future plans.
[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited
Just one thing: 07 December 2025
Dec. 7th, 2025 06:50 amjazzyjj posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
awesomeersIt's challenge time!
Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.
Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!
Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!
Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.
Go!
Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.
Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!
Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!
Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.
Go!
Guardian RPF Fic: Closer
Dec. 7th, 2025 12:37 pmkat_lair***
Title: Closer
Author:kat_lair
Fandom: Guardian RPF
Character: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Tags: Getting Together, Mutual Pining
Rating: T
Word count: 2,072
Summary: Bai Yu will not accept any of this quietly fading away and out of each other’s lives business, hard won friendship diluting into occasional messages and polite, meaningless smiles at industry events. He had fought for this friendship, goddammit, chipping at Zhu Yilong’s defences carefully like an archaeologist at a rare find, with gentle jokes and quality time and listening as his chisels.
Author notes: This was afandomgiftbasket story for facethestrange
Closer on AO3
( Closer )
***
Title: Closer
Author:
kat_lair Fandom: Guardian RPF
Character: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Tags: Getting Together, Mutual Pining
Rating: T
Word count: 2,072
Summary: Bai Yu will not accept any of this quietly fading away and out of each other’s lives business, hard won friendship diluting into occasional messages and polite, meaningless smiles at industry events. He had fought for this friendship, goddammit, chipping at Zhu Yilong’s defences carefully like an archaeologist at a rare find, with gentle jokes and quality time and listening as his chisels.
Author notes: This was a
fandomgiftbasket story for facethestrange Closer on AO3
( Closer )
***
Sure as the morning light when frigid love and fallen doves take flight
Dec. 6th, 2025 10:47 pmsovayCrossing recent streams, tonight I participated with rushthatspeaks in a reading of The Invention of Love (1997) in memoriam Tom Stoppard with a Discord group that does a different play every week. I was assigned Moses Jackson, the straightest himbo ever to play a sport. I consider it a triumph for the profession that I did not catch on fire enthusing about field athletics.
When I read in passing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) had begun life as a one-act comedy entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, I went immediately to fact-check this assertion because it sounded like a joke, you know, like one of the great tragedies of the English stage starting out as the farcical Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter and then a ringing sound in my ears indicated that the penny had dropped.
Speaking of, I have seen going around the quotation from Arcadia (1993) on the destruction and endurance of history:
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Stoppard was not supposed to have known the full extent of his Jewishness until midlife, but it is such a diasporic way of thinking, the convergent echo of Emeric Pressburger is difficult for me not to hear. I keep writing of the coins in the field, everything that time gives back, if not always to those who lost it.
rushthatspeaks in a reading of The Invention of Love (1997) in memoriam Tom Stoppard with a Discord group that does a different play every week. I was assigned Moses Jackson, the straightest himbo ever to play a sport. I consider it a triumph for the profession that I did not catch on fire enthusing about field athletics.When I read in passing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) had begun life as a one-act comedy entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, I went immediately to fact-check this assertion because it sounded like a joke, you know, like one of the great tragedies of the English stage starting out as the farcical Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter and then a ringing sound in my ears indicated that the penny had dropped.
Speaking of, I have seen going around the quotation from Arcadia (1993) on the destruction and endurance of history:
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Stoppard was not supposed to have known the full extent of his Jewishness until midlife, but it is such a diasporic way of thinking, the convergent echo of Emeric Pressburger is difficult for me not to hear. I keep writing of the coins in the field, everything that time gives back, if not always to those who lost it.
(no subject)
Dec. 9th, 2025 09:53 pmconulyThe Trump administration’s NSS announces a dramatic reworking of the foreign policy the U.S. has embraced since World War II.
And that's not the most alarming thing about it.
And that's not the most alarming thing about it.
Poem: "Portrait of the Artist Feeling Liminal"
Dec. 6th, 2025 08:25 pmjjhunterThe pearl at my ear is a lacquered grey seed
My lips strong red from wind's chaffing
I do not feel my middle age as any lessening
Here I am, a portrait of myself more vividly
Among old oaks I am still a hot young thing
Mind like a swallow sketching possibility on the wing
They say uncertainty ferments fear
I feel the old familiar thrill of stepping out of known into becoming
___
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
My lips strong red from wind's chaffing
I do not feel my middle age as any lessening
Here I am, a portrait of myself more vividly
Among old oaks I am still a hot young thing
Mind like a swallow sketching possibility on the wing
They say uncertainty ferments fear
I feel the old familiar thrill of stepping out of known into becoming
___
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Saturday 6 December 2025
Dec. 6th, 2025 05:49 pmmerryghoul posting in doctor_who_sonicDo you have a Doctor Who community or a journal that we are not currently linking to? Leave a note in the comments and we'll add you to the watchlist (doctor_watch).
Editor's note: Because of the high posting volume and the quantity of information linked in each newsletter,doctor_who_sonic will no longer link fanfiction that does not have a header. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Off-DW News
The War Between the Land and the Sea (spoilers)
Blogtor Who: preview
Doctor Who News: Doctor Who Magazine #624
Blogtor Who: trailer
Blogtor Who: The UNIT personnel in the show
Other news
Blogtor Who’s Friday Video of the Day is a preview of the Series 10 soundtrack
(News from![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
blogtorwho_feed and doctorwhonews_feed, among others.)
Communities and Challenges
dw100: Challenge #1069: foundation
Discussion and Miscellany
purplecat with a photo of the Sensorites
Fanfiction
Completed
Just a Man bybadly_knitted [Jack, Doctor, Ianto | PG]
Rude Comments bybadly_knitted [Rose Tyler, OC | G]
If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.
doctor_watch).Editor's note: Because of the high posting volume and the quantity of information linked in each newsletter,
doctor_who_sonic will no longer link fanfiction that does not have a header. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!Off-DW News
The War Between the Land and the Sea (spoilers)
Blogtor Who: preview
Doctor Who News: Doctor Who Magazine #624
Blogtor Who: trailer
Blogtor Who: The UNIT personnel in the show
Other news
Blogtor Who’s Friday Video of the Day is a preview of the Series 10 soundtrack
(News from
blogtorwho_feed and doctorwhonews_feed, among others.)Communities and Challenges
dw100: Challenge #1069: foundationDiscussion and Miscellany
purplecat with a photo of the SensoritesFanfiction
Completed
Just a Man by
badly_knitted [Jack, Doctor, Ianto | PG]Rude Comments by
badly_knitted [Rose Tyler, OC | G]If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.
Write every day: Day 6
Dec. 6th, 2025 10:33 pmluzulaWell, it's great that it's the weekend, but my day was SO FULL and I'm very tired (in a good way) and did not even write an alibi sentence. Ah well. How about you?
Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 5:china_shop, sylvanwitch, badly_knitted, goddess47, chestnut_pod, trobadora, brithistorian, sanguinity, cornerofmadness, carenejeans,
Bonus farm news: We went and got four trailer-loads of manure from a nearby farm with horses. The ducks thought Christmas had come early (they love eating worms).
Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 5:
china_shop, sylvanwitch, badly_knitted, goddess47, chestnut_pod, trobadora, brithistorian, sanguinity, cornerofmadness, carenejeans, Bonus farm news: We went and got four trailer-loads of manure from a nearby farm with horses. The ducks thought Christmas had come early (they love eating worms).
(observed)
Dec. 6th, 2025 08:05 pmcosmolinguistangelofthenorth gave me my birthday presents today! I thanked her and said I was surprised because it's not my birthday yet. But V and I always have a joint party - after their birthday and before mine - and that's today.
She sensibly pointed out that they won't see me for my birthday, as I'll be off doing family xmas things by then.
So, yeah, why not, today's my birthday.
Enola Holmes Ficlet: Courting (Un)Conventions
Dec. 6th, 2025 07:42 pmkat_lair***
Title: Courting (Un)Conventions
Author:kat_lair
Fandom: Enola Holmes
Pairing: Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewkesbury, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Tags: Implied Relationships, Courting
Rating: G
Word count: 837
Summary: Courting is, in Enola’s opinion, mostly about other people, not the two principal players.
Author notes: Written as afandomgiftbasket gift for midwinterspringwrites.
Courting (Un)Conventions on AO3
( Courting (Un)Conventions )
***
Title: Courting (Un)Conventions
Author:
kat_lair Fandom: Enola Holmes
Pairing: Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewkesbury, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Tags: Implied Relationships, Courting
Rating: G
Word count: 837
Summary: Courting is, in Enola’s opinion, mostly about other people, not the two principal players.
Author notes: Written as a
fandomgiftbasket gift for midwinterspringwrites. Courting (Un)Conventions on AO3
( Courting (Un)Conventions )
***
Thirty Six Years
Dec. 6th, 2025 08:19 ammuccamukkThirty-six years ago today, a lone gunman murdered fourteen women at Polytechnique Montréal, before taking his own life.
The names of the women were:
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz
CBC: Montreal to honour 14 victims of Polytechnique massacre at ceremony.
Globe & Mail: Progress on combatting intimate-partner violence stalling under new government, advocates fear.
The names of the women were:
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz
CBC: Montreal to honour 14 victims of Polytechnique massacre at ceremony.
Globe & Mail: Progress on combatting intimate-partner violence stalling under new government, advocates fear.
Deth of Siv, etc
Dec. 6th, 2025 03:57 pmoursinWhat is this that this thing is, when, okay, one is aware of all the woozing and grumbling about the various delivery services, but here is the ROYAL MAIL being pretty bad.
Yesterday I had an email saying they had delivered a parcel.
There was no parcel.
I looked at the proof of delivery and behold, that was Not Our Front Door they were sticking it through, it was the wrong colour and one could see the corner of a glass panel (ours is solid wood).
So I went on to their site to try and delve a bit further and, my dears, it is HORRENDOUS, one suspects it is designed to make people Just Give Up.
For example, the 'contact us' link, that actually goes to a 'Help and Support' page that lists a whole range of possible contingencies that one has to sort through to discover one that matches the occasion.
And once I had come across the Advice relating to item (presumably) misdelivered to wrong address, advice was, to contact the sender.
I have no bloody idea who the sender was being as how I was not even expecting a Royal Mail delivery, have been back over my emails and texts and no, I did not receive any previous message involving that particular tracking code.
There is a passing allusion to possible scanning errors.
The only means of contacting them is by phone, and when I tried, and had made my way through the menu options, the wait to speak to a person was 50 minutes.
I am leaving all this pro tem in case a) it was misdelivered and gets put back into the system b) it never actually existed in the first place.
But, really.
And in other, perhaps more minor (?) annoyances of Modern Life, what is this thing that this thing is of 'Cooking Instructions on Back of Label'? that you then have to detach, in the hope that it will actually come off in one piece that one can actually decipher....
ETA Parcel has now turned up, either in today's post or popped through letter box by neighbour to whom it was delivered in error.... Is friend's book I was in anticipation of.
Off to Oxford
Dec. 6th, 2025 12:58 pmrmc28I'm playing for Cambridge Womens Blues against Oxford Womens Blues tonight. My BUIHA stats page tells me this will be my second game for Cambridge WBs against Oxford WBs, hopefully it goes better than the last one three years ago. None of my teammates from that game are playing today, although five of the Oxford women are the same (and one of those five was on my Biarritz tournament team this summer).
My stats page also tells me that I have scored more points against Cambridge Huskies than for them (1 is more than 0), and that two of my current teammates were my opponents in my WBs v Huskies game three years ago. I have no memory of either of them in that game.
The Womens Blues game is immediately followed by a matchup between the Mens Blues teams, so I'm looking forward to watching that, before we all pile on the coach back to Cambridge.