A stake in the ground
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speranda's LiveJournal:
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| Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | | 2:48 pm |
| | Sunday, November 9th, 2008 | | 4:04 pm |
Hamlet
I'm just back from Stratford upon Avon, where I went to see the RSC performance of "Hamlet" on Saturday evening. It was a splendid, exciting performance, which would have been thrilling even if it had not starred two favourite actors. It isn't often that Shakespeare in a modern setting works for me, but this one worked really well. I booked the tickets way back in February and, even then, 8th November was the first Saturday evening I could get, so I had been looking forward to this treat for a long time; it was every bit as enjoyable as I had expected, and more. See http://www.david-tennant.com/temp/id200.html Current Mood:  ecstatic | | Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 | | 9:21 pm |
Flamenco
I've had my first lesson in flamenco dancing. It was all stamping and clapping. I think it is going to be fun and good exercise when I get the hang of it, and manage to stamp and clap in the right rhythm. Current Mood:  bouncy | | Monday, August 25th, 2008 | | 5:17 pm |
Audley End House
Today I went to Audley End. I have been several times before over a long period of time but the big attraction this time was to see the servants' wing, which was opened up earlier this year. It was fun to see re-enactors busy in the kitchens, laundry rooms and dairy; it struck me as a good job for a role play gamer. We very much enjoyed the splendid organic kitchen gardens and glass houses, with their magnificent range of varieties of fruit and vegetables. Capability Brown would surely have been horrified to see the usually-splendid view from the house to the Temple of Concord ruined by the many vehicles that brought visitors to the house on this busy day; I gather things are back to normal outside peak time, with the view as it should be. Current Mood: happy | | Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 | | 7:19 pm |
Grand Tribunal 2008
I'm just back from a wonderful weekend steeped in Ars Magica. Grand Tribunal 2008 was held in Cheltenham, similarly to the first such event, which was held last November. It was a great success, thanks to CJ's excessively hard work, to his helpers Lorna and Kevin, to David Chart , the game's Line Editor, for making it happen in the first place and leading discussions during the weekend, to Atlas Games both for providing goodies for the very profitable raffle and allowing us to have the magnificent con T-shirt, to the gang taking part in a parallel event in California at more or less the same time, to all those who ran games, and to everyone who attended and made it all so enjoyable. Most of us just wanted to chat on Friday evening. We did this first over a meal in a local restaurant, then moved on to a nearby pub which very kindly gave us use of their basement room. This meant we could talk about the game without frightening other pub-goers. A folk-lore expert named Dave presented a short paper on sky-ships in legend, which set the right tone from the start. I enjoyed this, and also valued the opportunity to meet again a number of people I first met at the previous Grand Tribunal gathering, and to meet those who were attending for the first time. In all there were about 30 people, including enthusiasts who traveled from Japan, USA, Germany, France and Norway as well as the British contingent. Saturday morning saw some table top gaming. I had great fun playing a cat with fire-starting abilities in Matt's splendid 'apprentices' adventure. Saturday afternoon was filled with CJ's big freeform, where I had a very entertaining role to play. I never did find out a lot of what was going on, but there were so many plot lines that this was inevitable. Two attendees had brought along loads of costume so everyone had some sort of outfit and it all looked splendid, as the photos show. I was expecting to run a small freeform game myself on Saturday evening, but there were not enough people interested in trying it, probably because it was run twice last year by the author. There was plenty of entertainment anyway, with the raffle,the live link with the US event, and listening in on the table top games. On Sunday there was more chat and two tabletop games available. Many of the attendees got together to enjoy a huge pub lunch and then we drifted apart, hoping to have an opportunity for another Grand Tribunal next year. I have uploaded a heap of photos. http://sheila-thomas.fotopic.net/It is password protected; email me if you want the password. Current Mood:  exhausted | | Thursday, July 24th, 2008 | | 4:51 pm |
Help with a mystery item
 Does anyone know what these are meant to be? I spotted them in a shop window between the main square and the main bridge in Graz. My immediate thought was "Pointy hats!" but on crossing the road it became obvious that the pictures were orientated such that the cones were intended for viewing point down. The largest must be about a metre tall. My second guess was to hold popcorn, but you'd get too much into a big one and no easy way to reach it out of the bottom. So, what might these be for? Current Mood:  curious | | Saturday, June 28th, 2008 | | 10:27 am |
Three things
I spotted this in the recent entries from two Friends and decided to have a go at it, although I can't get anywhere close to their amazing lists: Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done. 1. Stood with one foot either side of the mid-Atlantic rift (*). 2. Had a role play game book dedicated to me (**). 3. Had my photo taken on the foundations of the Great Hall of Edoras (***) * Easy when visiting Iceland. ** "Black Monks of Glastonbury", an Atlas Games Penumbra D20/Ars Magica book; thanks to the author, David Chart. *** OK, I cheated. It was only the version of Edoras as used in the Lord of the Rings films. Current Mood: amused | | Saturday, June 14th, 2008 | | 4:45 pm |
Isaiah 58 - or how to get round a problem that seemed too difficult to deal with
I have lived where I am now for ten years. In that time, loads of stuff has been put in the garage, with very little order or care. I knew it needed sorting out but just couldn't face doing it alone. Then I spotted an advert in our local magazine - a team of local people was willing to help with such tasks. It was promoted as being something for the young people but adults are involved too. So, I invited them to come and help me with the garage, and they came. Last month just one lady was able to come, so together we sorted out my too-large collection of plant pots; it took about an hour. Today three chaps turned up and whisked everything else out of the garage. All I had to do was decide what to keep and what to dispose of. It took little over an hour to clean everything up, put the wanted stuff back and fill my car (mainly with now-unwanted cardboard boxes (*)). An hour later and I had dumped all the debris at the tip and everything is great! (*) You know how it is - you get a new toy but keep the packaging just in case it needs to go back, and then forget about it, and the boxes build up. Current Mood: happy | | Sunday, June 1st, 2008 | | 6:12 pm |
Fund raising and sponsorship
I am surely not the only person who thinks this business of sponsoring people to run, cycle, climb, jump etc. is daft. I do it for friends, especially children, since it is good to see them making an effort in a good cause, but it doesn't make sense to me. I certainly can't take on anything that requires me to ask people to sponsor me for such useless activities. I would be far more enthusiastic about sponsoring children to clear up all the litter in the village, or adults for clearing a bit of waste land and creating good wildlife habitat. That way the effort put in actually produces a useful outcome. Perhaps I need a sponsored campaign to promote sponsored fund raising activities with really useful results! Current Mood:  aggravated | | Monday, May 5th, 2008 | | 5:52 pm |
| | Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 | | 2:45 pm |
In praise of a lawn mower
An odd subject, perhaps, but I have just finished cutting all my grass in half the time it would have taken with my old mower, so I feel the new one deserves some publicity. Hooray for freedom from cables and for a capacious grassbox! Time taken with the old electric mower included the many times I had to stop and stoop to flick the cable out of the way (once, I failed ...) and the breaks in cutting required to empty the grassbox, plus the breaks to move the plug from one socket to another (it used to need plugging in in three separate locations round the house), and not least, the rest I needed part way through the ordeal. Not so now! The new machine runs on rechargeable batteries. I have to stop once, about two thirds of the way round, to swap the battery for the charged one. I only had to empty the grassbox five times. And no plugs and cables to worry about! The new mower is much lighter and more manoeuverable, partly just because there is no cable but also because it is plastic. It actually looks and feels a bit tacky but seems solid enough for the job and is so light I can lift it if I have to. The new mower lets me complete the task so quickly that I can now easily fit it in on a weekday evening in the growing season, so the job doesn't get left for the too-rare weekend when it is dry enough and I have time enough to do it in daylight. I look forward to a summer where my free time is not dominated by the demands of the lawn! Current Mood: happy | | Sunday, April 27th, 2008 | | 12:56 pm |
Beyond Measure: conversations across art and science
On Saturday afternoon I went to see an exhibition at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, that a friend had recommended to me as particularly suitable for scientists. http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/exhibitions/beyond.htmlI wish I could have shared it with my father. Some of the colourful 3D models of complex geometrical forms were just like those my father made and hung up around the house, and I loved some of the mathematical forms with actual or potential architectural applications. There is also a wonderful collection of single-surface shapes including very complex Klein bottles which I would love to show to bytepilot. And as for hyperbolic crochet, I wish they had been selling patterns! Current Mood: happy | | Friday, April 18th, 2008 | | 7:26 pm |
Elliott's progess
Elliott has been doing very well, and it is now over a year since the tumour in his nose was diagnosed. He started sneezing a lot on Sunday so I put him back on the antibiotic pills -- it was meant to be a week off them. He is still sneezing occasionally but I have hopes of making next week pill-free. At his recent check-up, the vet said he was gradually losing weight. He is still quite well-covered, so she wasn't worried. The concern is that he will lose his sense of smell and stop eating. For Easter, my mother brought him a small pack of dried whitebait, which are very smelly. I find that breaking a few of these up into his bowl, on top of left wet cat food, will usually persuade him to eat a bit more of the food. His voice has got louder recently, or he has learned to shout -- just like his is doing now since he very much objects to me siting at the computer. Current Mood: cheerful | | Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | | 8:18 pm |
| | Sunday, March 16th, 2008 | | 8:48 am |
D&D Special session
This Saturday was the first time the Southall gaming group had met since the sad demise of Gary Gygax. We decided to set aside our usual game, which uses 3.5e rules in the Al Qadim setting, and do an ancient Gygax 1st edition module - 'Sheep on the Borderlands' (*); sorry, I mean 'KEEP on the Borderlands'. We played using Castles and Crusaders rules. We assumed the characters would be lucky to last the session so made some very simple and some daft choices. Having rolled up our old-fashioned 6x3d6 stats we picked our race and class and chose names. I decided to play a tree-hugging, vegetarian, male, elf druid named Diedne. The characters tried to spend half the time shopping but did get to the caves in the end. By the time they had fought through two linked encounters, one was on -1 hit point, another was on +1, the wizards were almost out of spells and the party was better off by a few silver pieces each. My character had done nothing much but fire off loads of arrows. We will decide between now and the April session whether we want to continue with this or go back to the desert. (*) "Sheep on the Borderlands" is a Penumbra adventure by Igor Olman and Jeff Tidball, published in Dork Tower. It contains several amusing jokes at the expense of Ars Magica, its players and the game's current Line Editor. It is quite different from the venerable D&D adventure module in all but name. Current Mood: pensive | | Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 | | 6:09 pm |
A Big Surprise
I am sure this is no surprise to most enlightened people, and maybe I did know once and had forgotten, and it is no surprise to anyone who has visited the Wren Library in Trinity college, but it was a surprise to me this morning, when I managed, at last, to make my first visit there - Eeyore was originally Ee-yore. I read it there in A A Milnes very own writing on paper, from the original draft. That made more impression on me than anything else although it was rather a thrill to see Newton's own copy of the 1st edition of the Principia complete with his amendments for the 2nd edition, and the eye-witness account of an early atomic bomb test, and a manuscript illuminated by the same artist as the Macclesfield Psalter, and lots of other good things. Current Mood:  surprised | | Sunday, February 10th, 2008 | | 3:22 pm |
| | 8:50 am |
News of Elliott
It's been ages since I wrote about how my beloved cat is doing. He is still on antibiotic pills (wrapped in soft cheese for palatability) every other week, and steroid injections, but the gap between injections has been lengthened and his condition remains stable. He makes snorting noises from time to time, so the obstruction in his nose remains a problem, but his general health otherwise appears normal, thank God. Current Mood: grateful | | Sunday, November 25th, 2007 | | 12:19 pm |
Grand Tribunal 2007
Last weekend I had a great time in Cheltenham at a small games convention specifically for Ars Magica players. About 30 people came, including several with whom I have worked on books for the game. It was so good to actually meet people I have worked closely with via email! I really enjoyed meeting other fans of the game and chatting about it with other enthusiasts. CJ, who organised the event, wrote a highly entertaining freeform game which kept us all amused on Saturday afternoon. Nathan also wrote a freeform interactive game which I had great fun playing on Saturday evening. The event was a great success and there is talk of trying to do something simliar again some time. | | Saturday, April 28th, 2007 | | 3:35 pm |
Jade Vine
 Last Sunday morning I felt in need of some peace and beauty, so I went to the Cambridge Botanic Gardens to wander around. The gorgeous and implausibly-coloured Jade Vine was in bloom. I expect it is still flowering now, perhaps even more spectacularly than last week.
The reason for needing somewhere tranquil was that our parish priest held his last service in the lovely little ancient church I have been attending for the past few years. He has been moved and the parish is to be run from Cambridge in future, which means they can't run the Mass centres. So, it was a sad occasion. I shall be attending in Cambridge from now on, leaving the parish community of Sawston after 30 years. Current Mood: calm |
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