galadhir

Challenge 4:

Make a Top Ten list for your favourite relationships in media and tell everyone what you love about them. This covers all kinds of relationships - romantic, sexual, platonic, professional, rivals, acrimonious, family, found family, something else not mentioned here. So, bring out your friends, lovers or enemies, whether canon or fanon. If it involves two or more people interacting in some way, it counts, so go wild!

The first one that comes to mind is Rush and Young from Stargate Universe. One of the joys of SG1 is the relationship between Jack and Daniel (the military leader and the scientist,) and SGU posits 'what if this central and vital relationship was instead between two people who couldn't trust or rely on each other at all? Wouldn't that be fun?' And yes, yes it was. The show does a fantastic job at making the audience nearly... so nearly throw our sympathies completely behind one of them, only to pull the rug out from under us and start feeling that maybe the other one is right after all. I love it.
In one of those love triangles that are completely calling out for polyamory, I love the relationship between Roy Kent, Jamie Tartt and Keeley Jones on Ted Lasso. Roy and Jamie go from being mortal enemies to best friends, while Keeley goes from going out with Jamie to going out with Roy, to going out with neither of them but also being in the best friend triad. Seriously, they should all date each other.
Lan XiChen and Jin GuangYao from The Untamed. My goodness, talk about love at first sight! And then JGY saves LXC's life and nurses him back to health and wins the war for him and makes sure he has enough help to rebuild his sacked sect... and then the guy who broke his little brother's heart tells him that JGY is evil? Does not compute. To me the special thing about LXC is that you can see how he would have given JGY a fair hearing even after everything came to light, had he not been tricked into acting rashly. Those Lans do love well, even if not always wisely.
I should say 'the relationship between Celeborn and Galadriel' because I have written about it a lot. The thing about it is that I had to think about it a lot if I wanted to write Celeborn at all, because it's a huge deal for him. I personally don't really care about it, except in the sense that I care about him. I think it says good things about him, though, that he's at least not the sort of insecure, weak minded little man who is intimidated by a strong woman. So I tend to write him as having the kind of self-assurance that is indistinguishable from humility - he doesn't need to prove anything to anybody.
Qui-Gon Jinn + the Jedi Council. This is another case of what I think of as humility, and many other people see as inflexible stubbornness and pride. I see Qui-Gon as someone who follows the will of the Force wherever he thinks it guides him. Given that the Jedi are called a religion, I think this can be seen as having a strong faith and therefore praiseworthy, even if it means that some people blame him for unleashing Vader on the universe. An interesting case study on how an established religion tries to contain one of their troublesome saints.
Loki + the gods/the Avengers/basically everyone. Like most queer kids I felt an immediate kinship with Loki the mythological figure, who was outcast and blamed for everything, even things he clearly hadn't done. Initially therefore I was very keen to get him forgiven and accepted into a less judgemental group. However, as time went on I started to appreciate why a group might have problems with a character who can't see a boundary without wanting to cross it. Now I'm like 'I still hope he gets redeemed but I think it's going to take someone a lot stronger than me to handle it.'
Khan/Joachim (from Star Trek, the Wrath of Khan) and Ra/Anubis (Stargate the movie.) Possibly even Jin GuangYao/Su MinShan. I'm putting these together because I do love the homoerotic tension of a villain with his chief henchman who is slavishly devoted to him. Not much else to say, just... the love! From terrible people to terrible people! There's something really poignant about it.
General Hux + his father. Hux's father was a child brainwasher who invented the brainwashing techniques that were done on First Order troopers. And he hated his son, while Hux both returned that hatred but also secretly yearned for his father's approval. How much was Hux brainwashed by his father too? No one knows. A toxic relationship but very interesting if you're trying to assign blame to Hux for being such a piece of shit. How much is he responsible for what he is? Can he be saved or is he too far gone? These are the questions the very tiny Hux fandom is asking itself.
Colonel Young + David Telford from SGU. What the heck is going on there? These two are apparently the best of friends while Telford is doing his level best to sabotage Young at nearly every occasion. Things get better after Telford is discovered to be brainwashed and working for the baddies, but he still tries to blow up an allied civilian planet at one point. And yet Young forgives him again and again, even for breaking up his (failing) marriage and making a move on his wife. I think 'what the heck is going on there?' sums it up entirely.
Jack/Ianto. I almost forgot this one but I was so obsessed with it at the time. What a trailblazer of a TV relationship it was! You know, Ianto's shrine is still there in Cardiff. People still visit and bring flowers. I thought Ianto was a very interesting character - he is probably the original of the fandom ghost, that sharply dressed but surprisingly lethal twink that turns up in every fandom given time. Or maybe he just hit that archetype by accident. Jack was less interesting imo, but also a trailblazer for his time.

I have just joined Bluesky, but it does seem to be very worthy and very focused on the big issues of real life, so I don't know how long I'll last over there.

I'm doing it again already, spreading myself too thin. That's it now. No other sites of social media allowed. I already know I can't keep up with one, let alone two. (Or three, in fact, since my non-writing real life friends and activities are all on Facebook.)

As the title says, The Boat of Small Mysteries is out today :)

BoSM cover art

You can get it on Amazon here, or everywhere else (Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple etc) over here.

When a new disability ruins Emily’s life and family turns her out, she finds herself forced into a nomadic life on a narrowboat. With very little money and even less physical stamina, she doesn’t know if she has it in her to forge a whole new future on her own.

In the idyllic surroundings of the British waterways, as she moves from place to place she encounters a series of small mysteries. Can she solve them and find a new purpose for herself in the process? Or must a missing person remain lost and the case of the body in the lock remain unsolved?

Half cozy mystery and half fond ode to the narrowboat life, ‘The Boat of Small Mysteries,’ is a charming tale of resilience and intuition, sure to appeal to anyone who enjoys BBC Four’s Canal Boat Diaries, or the gentle adventures of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books.

Currently it's out in ebook only. The paperback is in the works but I am waiting for the proof copy to arrive so that I can check that it's ok before I release it.

It's also currently at 0.99c as an early bird discount, but it will be going up from that probably on the first of March - to the heady heights of $2.99

First book in seven years! I am sick with nerves over how it will go. There's a lot to be said for a few years of rest--it's all new to me again.

Plateaued on the diet, mainly because I gave blood on Thursday and just ate everything in the house that evening because I felt wobbly and in need of food. I imagine that not being able to go out cycling because of rain/because I was banned from heavy exercise by the blood transfusion service also contributed.

Cycling is not looking good this week either as it continues to rain. I'll have to do the exercises attached to the diet instead, and at least I can pick the weightlifting back up, although it doesn't help that I am going to give evidence in my son's autism assessment on Wednesday - which is normally a weightlifting day. I guess that means this week weightlifting is Tuesday and Friday instead.

Life gets in the way of all our goals, and this is normal. Just have to do my best and hope it is better than nothing.

I have at least replanted the baby apricot tree out of the pot it was in and into the raised bed where it will have a chance to stretch its roots and grow a bit better.

Now to go and get the shopping for the week, come back and clean the kitchen, make lunch (and dinner?), then hopefully there will be time to edit another chapter on the narrowboat novel before it's time to eat the dinner and go to belly dance class.

It occurs to me this morning that I no longer have any social media. No one I used to talk to on Tumblr is still active on Tumblr, so all I use it for now is to reblog things. As the people I follow fall for new media that I haven't seen, the feed becomes more and more incomprehensible, and I feel very isolated.

I also feel like we tried a lot of things and we found out that the old ways are better. You know? Streaming was great but then suddenly we didn't own anything, so it's good to go back to buying DVDs. 'Social media' was great but then suddenly we didn't know anyone, so it's good to go back to a platform where you can actually speak to people.

Anyway, this is me feeling like I really want my Dreamwidth again because there are things here I can't do elsewhere, like *journal* and *talk to people.*

Exciting news for today is that it snowed overnight. Only a light powdering of icing-sugar snow, but that's remarkable enough for this far south in England in these days of climate change.

Well, the good news is that it wasn't a very long slump, but the bad news is that this is how long it's taken me to fall off the writing wagon and to no longer be working on my novel. I'm still writing, but I'm back on fanfic, doing a time-travel fix-it fic for Jin Guangyao.

[Guanyin's Gift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/53696275)
With Jin Guangyao the main difficulty is to find a time in which he has any good choices available to him at all. So I had to go very far back *and* allow him to keep his adult memories and skillset.

I'm now belly dancing twice a week, which is lots of fun and has given me a new lease of life. But I continued to be frustrated that you could not get a nice coin belt of the right size for a plus size person, so I've started making them.

This is great for me, because I now have multiple belts that fit me and are interesting and unique. And I would like to make them available to other fat dancers who are presumably all also facing the same problem. But I can't make them as cheaply as the scarves that straight-sized people can buy on the internet for £3.99. £3.99 would not cover even the least amount of braid that goes on one of these, let alone the material.

I can't imagine selling them for less than £15 just to pay for the material and trimmings, and then who's going to pay for that?

On boat news, Son is coming to the end of his mooring in Northampton and is thinking of moving the boat up to Nottingham, where he has a small community of friends. So I imagine we'll be spending at least some time in late spring on the boat - getting him up the 12 locks of the staircase onto the Northampton arm of the canals, if nothing else. Expect more breakdowns, panicking and repairs to follow :)

They say 'be careful what you wish for' and I should have known better than to make a goal to learn to hope. How do you learn to hope? You get put in many situations where you have to practice hope...

Friday, I was peacefully going through my morning routine when DH texts the family group chat to ask if Son is okay, what with the flood warning.

Son is like 'oh heck! I'm not actually at the boat. Would I lose the boat in a flood? Should I buy enough food to survive if I'm marooned on the boat and go and be on it?'
I'm like, 'no, you shouldn't! You should stay somewhere where you'll be safe.'
DH is like, 'maybe you should! If you were on the boat, you could lengthen the ropes if the floating pontoon reached the top of its range, and at least it wouldn't risk tipping sideways and filling with water and sinking.'
Son and I are like 'Yeah, but what if it's swept out of the marina onto the river and Son ends up unable to find anywhere to moor up and can't sleep because he has to be on the tiller or the boat sinks with him on it? We don't fancy that!'
And I'm like 'well, I suppose you do also have an anchor. You could drop the anchor to keep you in the marina until it subsided again.'

So eventually it was decided that Son would go back to the boat on Friday night. The flood warning said the water would be at the highest on Saturday, and should go down after that, and we decided to hope that the floating pontoons would take the high water in their stride.*

That was an intensive day of active hope, but it did indeed turn out that (so far) the pontoons are coping.

DH and I went over there today to add clips to the solar panel boxes to prevent the solar panels from being blown off again, and Son was like 'Ugh, this door lock is getting stiff.' But we got the solar panels latched down, and the final window covered in window film, and came home.

Then at 10pm when we're sitting watching TV at home, Son texts to say 'I've just arrived back from work and I'm locked out. I can't get this door lock open at all.'

Further panic - we're nearly two hours drive away and we don't have a replacement door lock. Now what?

DH orders a new door lock from Screwfix. Then Son texts back to say 'I bought some WD-40 and sprayed it and now I'm in!'

So now we're going back tomorrow to put a new door lock on.

I know I had the temerity to think there would be less boat work this year, but that was before I remembered that there was still this list of things to do:

Take the wall panels off the inside (possibly one room at a time)
See how terribly rusty it is behind them, and sand the rust back to bare metal
Paint the inside hull with rust resistant paint
Add insulation
Put the panels back on.
Disassemble the current bed and underbed storage, and somehow get it - and the mattress - out of the cabin. Son prefers his sofa-bed in the warm sitting room by the stove, and the bed is taking up so much room. He could use that room as an office if it was gone.
Cut inspection hole in the floor, so the bilges can be pumped out with a hand pump.
Do something to stop the front window wooden surround from rotting
Get the hull re-blacked below the gunwales
Somehow plug the holes in the doors/hatch arrangement which currently allow rain into the engine room
Get an engineer out to fix the engine idle rate and check the engine mountings
Put a better hatch/door lock on.

It will be years before this is all done!

*Son's friend also has a boat, moored in a marina closer to London, and they received an evacuation warning. So that confirms my initial thought that the correct thing to do - if your boat is in the way of an oncoming flood - is to leave it and go somewhere safer. Next time we will know :)

My most important goals for 2023 were to paint Son's boat (and thus reassure myself that it wasn't in imminent danger of falling apart due to rust) and to see him settled with some kind of job with which he could support his immediate needs.

Both of those were achieved. We stripped and painted the boat over the summer, and in doing so discovered that the rust was largely superficial and the structure of the boat was sounder than I had feared.

We also stripped and painted the fresh water tank, which had been so full of rust I was worried that it was going to rust through at any moment and flood the bilges. And it turned out that it too was sounder than I had feared. It will have to be done again every year for several years running to fully eliminate the rust, but the boatyard men were not concerned about it, and as long as we keep on top of it, it should be fine.

Son is now installed in permanent mooring and has found a temporary job which will keep him (heh) afloat while he looks for something better.

I can therefore go into 2024 without the family-related stress and dread that was such a feature of late 2022 and the entirety of 2023.

I shouldn't say things like that because it tempts fate, but as of 1/1/2024 that is the situation. So I can turn my thoughts to 2024 with that ticked off at least.

Goals for 2024

Family-related goals this year

Help Daughter/Fiance arrange their wedding.
Help Son get the boat re-blacked, water tank stripped and re-painted, bow decoration painted, and engine idle finally fixed

Personal goals

I looked on the internet for 'Fun New Year Resolutions' and could not find any. Apparently you're not supposed to make resolutions to have more fun. You're supposed to be grinding away at exercise and work as though we weren't all already doing the best we could.

I can't make resolutions about health because I am now aware that if your health decides to bork you, there is nothing you can do about it. This will be the first year, I think, where I go into it fully aware of being chronically ill, and how that means that I no longer even have the illusion of control.

So, my goals are going to be small. And they're not going to be resolutions, because I am not resolved to do them if it turns out I can't. They're more like guidelines.

Write a new original novel. I've signed up for gywo to do the 120 days pledge, which means that for at least 120 days of this year I will work on something to do with my new novel.
Finish podficcing at least my major Tolkien fanfics
Get to the point where I can cycle three times a week and dance twice a week without triggering a flare-up. (I have been cycling three times a week with no trouble for years, and have just about managed to fit in one dance class with only the occasional flare. I have the feeling that increasing to a second dance class a week will require a lot of patience and care. But I think I can get there if I do it gradually enough.)
Learn how to cook good vegan food. Now I'm dairy intolerant I have to learn to cook again. As I've always loved Asian food, this is a great excuse to learn to make Thai/Korean/Japanese food myself. It's healthy, it's gorgeous, why wouldn't I? (Also vegan desserts, and - dammit - I want a cheese scone again, even if it's vegan cheese.)
Sew all the things
Start Roses & Castles painting again
Learn something difficult. It may be time for me to try maths again, or coding, or a language. Or playing the melodeon with the bases. Something that does not come to me naturally.

That will do, I think :)

Went to visit Son at his boat yesterday. Fortunately this is not quite the adventure it used to be, now he's in a permanent mooring. Long may that last! But he had unplugged the shore power when he was at ours for the holidays (because rain tends to get in the socket and trip the breaker), and his fridge/freezer had defrosted, indicating that the solar power panels were not working. So we went along for DH to see if he could fix those.

Son had been keeping his rotary washing line on the roof, but there had been high winds while he was away and it was now missing. So the first thing we did was go fishing in the marina with a magnet on a string. Yep, there was the missing washing line, lying invisible in the mud. We got the boat hook around one of the arms and pulled it out, and after a quick wash to get the mud off it was as good as new.

I had hoped to make a start on painting the bow decoration - traditionally sun, crescent moon and diamonds - but it was raining, so that was out.

traditional narrowboat bow design

(An example of the kind of narrowboat bow design we're thinking of. Not Son's boat, unfortunately!)

Instead Son and I applied temporary plastic-film double glazing to all but a couple of windows. (We left a couple untouched for ventilation, since the boat is heated by a woodstove and carbon-monoxide is a concern.)

It's important that the solar panels are delivering charge to the batteries, because Son's mooring is for 11 months a year. For four weeks of the year he has to be out of the marina, and at that point he needs the solar panels to keep the batteries charged so the engine will turn on and he can have lights/charge his phone. So we were keeping an attentive ear out for DH's success in that department.

Fortunately, it turned out that the problem was just a blown fuse which had automatically turned the solar panel box off. Once the fuse was replaced and the switch flicked, DH declared it fixed. Then DH installed a light in the engine room, which had heretofore been a bit of a black hole, and we called it a day and walked into Northampton for KFC.

Not quite the Herculean and heroic efforts of previous excursions, but it is nice to make small (hopefully incremental) improvements and leave the place more functional.

Daughter, daughter's fiance, daughter's two cats and Son have left today after staying over from the 23rd. We have had fish and hamsters here before but this is our first experience with cats.

Everyone was a little worried about how the cats would take to coming to a house that was new to them. Ember, the hairless sphynx cat clearly has PTSD about car journeys and spends the journey throwing up in her carrier, and Voidstar is only 1 and had never left Daughter's house before.

But despite the usual throwing up in the car, as soon as Ember got through the door she was visibly delighted to be here and trotted around delicately sniffing everything and climbing up everyone to rub her cheek on yours.

Ember, being bald, is very sensitive to the cold and her favourite thing to do is land on your lap and nose at your jumper until you lift it up and let her come inside, where she will immediately loaf down and go to sleep.

Voidstar went under the sofa and stayed there, but by the next day was happily leaning against everyone's legs and lurking invisibly in doorways and on the stairs (he's as dark as a dark star and you can't see him if he shuts his eyes.)

Daughter tells me he is lying in the entrances of the den in order to defend us, which is very noble of him.

So I spent most of the Christmas period sitting still with Ember either purring or snoring in my lap, and the rest of the family had to bring me cups of tea and slices of Yule Log.

Not a single dodgy present this year :) I got some great trousers with foxes and mushrooms on them, and - having asked everyone for fabric - 13 metres of fabric.

And a new sewing machine! It has a serger function, and zig-zag stitch, so I'll be able to sew stretch fabric for the first time, and it will make my seams much more professional than they have been. I'm going to try it out tomorrow.

I tried wearing the coat last night, and was actually very pleased with it. It's warm, and the extra material in the skirts from the two side-triangles means that when I sit down in the coat it does not gape. It just spreads out and continues to cover my knees like a champ.

coat

Pardon DH's messy office behind me. Also I have no idea what that white stripe on the coat is. It wasn't there when I looked down at it. Some artifact of the camera, I think.

I have a nice kilt pin somewhere, which I'll use to close it instead of the morris dancing badge featured here. I'm in two minds about whether to line it with a lining fabric or just put tape over the raw edges, but the material doesn't fray anyway, so I don't necessarily need to do anything.

Also, keep your fingers crossed, but Son is currently getting insurance for fast food delivery, and once that goes through, he may actually have a source of income! Which would be both of my major hopes for this year achieved. (A source of income and a place to live.) It's not a great job, but it's better than nothing.

So in October I had weird digestive symptoms and had to go get checked for bowel cancer, with the result that I think I've figured out that I have a newly onset case of dairy intolerance. At least once I stopped eating dairy the symptoms went away.

Then I had a horrible cold. I was just getting better from that when I came down with Covid, which lasted a good week. Then although I tested negative for the covid, I remained ill for at least two weeks afterward. Then I started to feel a bit better - enough to go to bellydancing one week. Then this Saturday I came down with a debilitating headache which feels like a migraine even though it fully fills my whole head. Light sensitivity and everything. And that has gone on for over three days now, making me miss another week's dance practice.

I think it's common for me to lose at least a month to illness during the transition from summer to winter (just like it's common for me to feel physically healthier and for all my stuff to clear up in the summer) but it's an enormous pain, and every time I wonder if I'm ever going to get better.

I guess I'll give it another week, and if I still don't feel better after that I'll go to the doctor again. At least I can tell them about the resolution of the digestive issues, which probably needs to go in any health record I might have.

On the plus side, I am occupying my rare moments of mobility and energy by making a Magyar style Rus-Viking coat, which is pretty much exactly the same pattern as my earlier Banyan, except that it has sleeve gussets that should make movement a bit easier.

Rus Coat pattern

I found the pattern in a cupboard I hadn't opened for 15 years and immediately thought 'that would be a lot easier than having to take my measurements and plot it all out by hand.'

The material is black corderoy for the outer layer and black fake fur for the lining. I've wanted a long black coat for years and haven't found one that was both warm and affordable, so I'm going to make it myself. Silver buttons and black silk lacings across the chest, I think :)

Ugh! Still exhausted post Covid. I guess it's only around a fortnight since I got it - only a week since I tested negative, and I shouldn't start panicking yet, but I'm still so tired.

I did manage to go to a fireworks display on Saturday with my family, and that was great. Son came down from the boat to join us, and brought his washing to put through Daughter's washing machine and tumble dryer. There are washing facilities in his marina but they cost like £5 a load to wash and the same again to dry.

Anyway the fireworks were great - they were let off from behind a screen of trees, so there was a beautiful silhouette effect where the lights shone out between the branches. Lots of new coloured fireworks this year that I hadn't seen before. Particularly the peach ones with trails of golden sparkles. And they were set very well to the music.

The new dairy intolerance made festival food even more difficult than it normally is for this vegetarian. All the non meat options were of course with cheese. So I ended up with the old reliable portion of chips, but at least that was something.

I have discovered that soy milk is fine, so I can still have a soy milk hot chocolate when I go out. Result :)

Yesterday (Sunday) we did the charity shops in Cambridge and had a choose-your-own-ingredients poke bowl in the Hanaki Cafe. (Avocado, cucumber, edamame, chilli & ginger with sesame shoyu sauce and peanuts scattered on top.) I managed to find a long coat in my size in tartan wool fabric which is very cool - a little bit punk, a little bit eccentric weirdo - and was only £15, so that was also a result.

All that activity was too much for me and today I am flattened again. But I am damn well going to belly dancing this evening even if it kills me (or more likely even if it means I have to spend tomorrow in bed again.) There are only like 4 sessions left before the end of term and I am not missing any of them.

I was looking at my entry for January 1st 2023 the other day, and saw I had written a list of aims for this year:

With that all in mind, my aims for 2023 are

Help my son get settled.
More practice with the signwriting, possibly starting up a little business doing sign writing and canal art.
Find some form of strengthening exercise that I can do with the hernia.
Finish podficcing Last of our kind and maybe do Derillarch's Jiang Yanli/Jin Guangyao series, and some more favourites after that if I'm still into the Untamed by then.
Maybe start writing again?

Results

I'm more or less happy with how things turned out. I didn't achieve all of that, but we're in a better position than we were before.

Son now has a permanent residence and is therefore able to apply for jobs. AFAIK he doesn't have a job yet, but he's looking, and he's not homeless in the process. (Edit in December - he's now working Deliveroo and can afford food and fuel, so result :) )
As soon as I finished painting the name on the boat, I stopped practicing the signwriting, so no.2 has not materialized at all. However, the main aim of the signwriting - which was putting the name on the boat myself - has been achieved. Any future plans for it have been backburnered, and honestly I don't feel bad about that. It may not have been for me.
As far as exercise goes, this has been the year when I've been forced to ask myself "do I want to morris dance, or do I want to be able to walk and live without constant pain?" and I've chosen to live without constant pain.

The morris was constantly triggering my fibromyalgia and I was in pain all the time. So, 2023 has been the year when I gave up morris dancing and became a morris musician instead.

That was very depressing, and even three months ago, if you'd asked me, I'd have said everything was terrible and my life was over.

However, in September I was like 'there must be some other dance I can do, which isn't as hard on my arthritic knees and doesn't trigger a flare. Maybe something that is good for core strength too?' And belly dancing occurred to me. So I have signed up to belly dance classes, and am really enjoying it. So far an hour of bellydance class is not bothering my knees or activating the chronic illness. I get mildly warm during and mildly sore the next day, and that's ideal. It's giving me a new lease of life and I just wish I could do it more often than once a week.
Finished the named podfics and decided "why don't I podfic some of my own fic?" So now I'm slowly working my way through some of my longest fics. My schedule here has been intermittent to say the least, due to working on the boat, but it's still ongoing and I will get there.
I have started writing again! I am currently writing in The Untamed fandom, and also plotting a Fantasy novel. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have this essential part of my personality back, after years and years of block.

So yeah, not all goals achieved, but positive movement on the most important ones :)

So I tested -ve this morning. Hurray! I can now go out if I want to. I could conceivably go to the Bonfire Night display in Cambridge on Saturday, except that I still feel exhausted and dizzy and do not fancy it.

Maria from the morris is having a fireworks party of her own on Saturday and I can't say I fancy that either, but I know that DH will go. DH going to every party in existence is probably why he got covid in the first place and brought it home to me. Though honestly, if I'm going to get it anyway, I might as well go to the parties too.

Meh. I'm going to give myself another week to recover and book tickets for the fireworks display in Wilburton instead. Son will have enough notice to come down from Northampton for it, and Daughter & S-i-L have said they're up for it too. Hopefully I'll feel well enough to enjoy it too, that way.

October in the mean time was mostly taken up with medical stuff. Weird IBS type symptoms arrived out of the blue, and the doctors are like 'take this test.' So I take the test, and the doctors go 'oh, blood. interesting. you may have cancer.' And I'm fast tracked into an endoscopy appointment.

I don't honestly mind the endoscopy, though it's unpleasant and uncomfortable, but the week beforehand where I had to stop eating anything that might have fibre in it, and then I had to stop eating altogether, and then I had to gag down two pints of heavy-metal water that made me dizzy and want to throw up, and go to the bathroom until there was nothing left in my digestive tract at all... I did not enjoy that.

So I go through all of that, and then the morning of the endoscopy appointment DH tests positive for Covid.

I have a lot of sympathy for him, but noooo I can't go through all the fasting and purging again. I phone the hospital and they say that if I am testing negative then it's fine and I can still come. And I am testing negative. So I go and have my colonoscopy, and get Daughter to pick me up so that I can have it under sedation.

Fortunately the colonoscopy detects no cancer, so presumably the IBS stuff is just the Fibromyalgia doing its thing and not something I need to worry about. (Other than maybe testing to see if I've become lactose intolerant.)

Come home, still wiped out from all of that and loopy from sedation, and two days later I also have Covid.

Pretty much that was the last two weeks of October. DH is officially tested Covid -ve as of today, so I'm guessing I'll be clear by Friday, and I'm already starting to panic because I have not even started Christmas shopping.

Time to take my blurry brain and maybe write 500 words of something. If I don't, I will never get back on the horse.

Lovely evening at the pub tonight. We (the Ely and Littleport Riot morris dancers, along with some strays from the Sutton Masque morris dancers) normally practice on Fridays and then go to the pub afterward, which means we have our musical instruments on us, and frequently we have a sort of mini-session while we're at it. Tonight, a couple who has just moved into the area were around too, and they were so visibly overjoyed and delighted to find a music session going on that it made the whole thing seem more special to us too.

She broke out a whistle and joined in with several of the tunes. He - being a harmonica player - had a go on one of our melodeons and discovered he was a natural on it. Then we cleared some of the tables and chairs out of the way and taught her one of our dances. According to him, she had not seemed so happy for years - and of course this made us all feel excellent too.

Of course we invited them along on any further Friday they might see fit to attend, and hope to see them around again (and maybe to recruit one or both to one or the other of the morris sides involved.) I guess it must be nice, when you have moved to a new area and don't know anyone, to come across a bunch of people playing, singing and dancing, who are eager to socialize with you. But honestly even if you are a bunch of people playing, singing and dancing, it's also really nice to meet new people who think of that as something special. Everyone, I think, had a jolly good time.

When you have a continual cruising narrowboat license, you can moor up at any spot on the canal for two weeks, but then you have to move on and find a new spot. Son is busy trying to find a new job and having doctors' appointments, having had an operation on his toe, so he has been staying with Daughter in their house. So this meant that the boat had been unoccupied for two weeks, after coming out of the boatyard.

Moving day arrives, and we tool up to move the boat. Everything's good, we find a new mooring with no problem. Son puts back most of the fabrics that had to be taken away because of being moldy. We're all feeling quite accomplished and positive about the boat's new start... and I look in the engine bay and say, "There's a lot of water in here, isn't there?"

Swooping rush of existential dread and despair.

( read more )

Found the ugliest vase I've ever seen in the charity shop yesterday. Thought 'omg, that's the ugliest vase I've ever seen.' Then I looked at it again. And then I looked at it again and began to smile.

Then I looked at some dresses, and then I came back and looked at the ugliest vase in the world again, and decided that I absolutely loved it.

I would put daffodils in it, I thought. Daffodils would look great in that pile of elephant's dung.

So since it was only £7, I am now the proud possessor of the ugliest vase in the world, and I have put daffodils in it, and they do look great.

I am immensely pleased with this vase, and now I'm going to show it to you :)

Jolie laide vase

Fading in and out again like I said I wouldn't. Ah well, I think I have to accept that I live up to my name (which means 'of the sea') and I'm always going to be tidal.

Partially this is because I am now writing and podficcing and trying to fit in signwriting practice, and really this is one creative activity too many in a day. I suspect that if the writing carries on, the podficcing will have to go.

Went down to the boat again on Saturday and accidentally discovered that the bilge pump had been disconnected and there was water in the bilges almost up to the base of the engine. DH managed to get it connected so we could use it on manual, and we pumped the water out, but it still isn't working on auto, so keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't fill up and sink before we can get back to it this Saturday.

On the plus side, Daughter got a cat!

Ember

I didn't think I would like a hairless cat, but I'm smitten. She's called Ember. She's two and had been used for breeding, but was being bullied by the other cats there, so the owner decided she needed to go to a better home.

She's so small and delicate, and very affectionate. She'll climb up to rub her head under your chin and purr all the time. And she does have a slight fuzz, so stroking her is more like petting a cat than like petting warm leather.

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galadhir

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February 2026

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Qualified for Destiny

Entries tagged with personal

Stuff I love challenge #4: Relationships

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The Boat of Small Mysteries is out today!

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Boat stress

Final round up of 2023 and New Year goals for 2024

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Re-emerging

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When am I ever going to not be ill + Rus coat

Slow recovery

Is it too early to round up the year?

With that all in mind, my aims for 2023 are

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Free! Free at last!

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The Saga of the Narrowboat continues...

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February 2026

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