dog-days

I just found out that the informal word for bumblebee in Welsh is 'buzz shit-dog' cachgi bwm. So quaint and folkloric. I love my sort-of second language.

Patsy the sheepdog sheepdogs through two feet of water

Yes, surprised fan ingenuity didn't produce an informal one ahead of the awards. The Chinese text was apparently provided in a Word document in the voter packet.

Two old women in 1970 reminiscence about their teenage years. Rational dress, a difficult headmistress and bicycling inappropriately. ETA: Names are Effy Jones and Berta Ruck.

Haven't read it yet, but have heard good things about it. Helen McDonald and Sin Blaché's Prophet is £2.99 on Kindle (UK). Helen McDonald is best known for writing H is for Hawk, which I loved (nature/literary history/personal history/fun facts about goshawks mash-up). Feel bad about using Amazon, but am doing it anyway. If you have more money than me, it's also available on bookshop.org

Wasn't sure if it was a spoof or not. Had imagined that these days the Doctor Who theme was one bloke of any gender with a computer. Are they actually playing the instruments or just miming? It was okay, but the core theme could have been allowed more prominence.

The boards are quite a tough place, especially down this end. I've had an account since 2007; I've had this account since 2011 and I'm still a newbie and more of a tourist than a full member. Since you sound quite stressed, I guess you are real, so I apologise for letting my cynicism determine my words at the start in a post that now seems to have been vanished by a mod. Mea culpa.

Legends and Lattes (orc barbarian opens coffee shop) is 99p on amazon.co.uk on Kindle.

RIP Terence Davies. Didn't realise he was a Liverpool man till now. Tail end of the generation of actors, writers and artists who rose high from a working-class background. He wasn't young, but I hadn't expected him to go so soon. Saw Benediction (about Siegfried Sassoon) by him last year when it was in cinemas. Thought he might have one or two more films left in him. Sunset Song has been on my to-see list for a while. Will have to make time for it.

Voting is open in Fat Bear Week. 806 vs 428 then from the older bears 402 vs 901.

Fat Bear Week is back! Bear 806 jr. is still at the adorable stage. He just needs a red hat and blue coat. I'm worried about Otis. He's not looking well this year. And I love Grazer's ears. They look as if someone's stuck little blonde pom-poms to her head.

The muesli experiments continue. I might make a movie about that with Ryan Gosling and Mahershala Ali. The Muesli Experiments. This morning the extra ingredient was canned rhubarb. I'd hoped for something like stewed, fresh rhubarb; the bright red shiny stuff softened in a pan by someone wholesome on Saturday morning TV, and which they claim to have taken from their garden. Actually, this was grey and none of the texture had survived the canning process. It was edible with the addition of ginger, but was still not exactly enjoyable. Won't be adding rhubarb again unless my future life features an allotment and a kitchen.

Super. I'm glad it ended on a strong note. In that case I'll pick it up from the library when I can.

I mostly remember my parents complaining that he was miscast as Alan Breck Stewart (Kidnapped), but it's always sad when one of those actors dies who seems to have been around forever in everything.

Yeah. Generally I'd be happy, though I remember that when the final series of Torchwood passed go and collected $2 million, it was less good than the preceding more sparsely funded Torchwood: Children of Earth, as if the writers' room was filled with dreams of helicopter chases and fewer script notes. But RT Davies knows what he's doing. Well, he does sometimes.

Just remembering in the context of "he didn't help at all and was muttering nonsensical and insulting shit the whole time" how my dad, who was normally very quiet and softly-spoken, had a few sudden personality shifts for the worse during his last years with advanced Parkinson's. A couple of times it was from a medication he was given to raise his blood pressure; other times it was because he had a UTI. Once the medication was stopped/the UTI treated he went back to an approximation of his old self. Anyway, all the best. It's rough.

<snip> Probably not useful.

Don't want to derail the thread: for clarification, I was talking about the quotation, not about the character or books (which I haven't read, and probably won't unless I go on a trans-continental quest for all the volumes). It's not the kind of quotation I'd want pinned to my wall any more than I'd want it there if pussy were deleted and replaced with y** or n***** Anyway, I am actually looking forward to reading more about the books since I haven't heard of them before.

Sounds like horrendous misogynist crap to me, but different strokes for different folks I guess.

House of Open Wounds is due on 7th December. 608 pages in hardback according to Amazon. I'd like to know what Tchaikovsky adds to his porridge in the morning...

Finished Blade of Dream on the train back from a family visit. It felt like a more enjoyable read than Age of Ash, and also like a more conventional fantasy story. In Age of Ash we were mostly following low-life. Winter seemed to swallow up the whole book, and although our middle and upper class Blade of Dream characters go through the same season, they have warm baths and fires tended by servants to keep the cold at bay. Alys and Sammish don't get any of that. Our BoD characters came across as rather nicer, softer people, having not spent large parts of their childhoods struggling on the edge of existence. I enjoyed Theddan and Elaine's friendship. Even if it did come across to my jaded pov as being rather idealised, it was well-written and the way they bounced off each other was a delight. Just in case anyone Daniel-Abraham-shaped is listening, I can spot a comma splice at ten miles and have plenty of free time in my schedule that I could spend proofreading book 3. : ) ETA: From going back and reading the last page of this thread, I can see others have been picking up on Bryn a Sal and Halev Karsen.

This story has already been posted here, but it makes me so happy that I'm posting it again. When the 1700s come to the rescue. The article quotes in full the description of the skipper of an eight-metre sailing boat which broke its rudder and was rescued by the three-masted Götheborg of Sweden. Also: the Götheborg's Instagram. Plus, like any self-respecting eighteenth-century sailing ship, it has a LinkedIn account.

Yes, fraid so, the ending is too memorable for my brain to have marked it as 'disposable' as it does with most detective novel denouements! But I'm happy to reread it for the atmosphere. ETA: omg the typos...

I've been thinking of rereading Nine Tailors for a while. I've got a fondness for fenland gothic(k) (see also Graham Swift's Waterland) and NT must be tangled up in the roots of that particular niche.

The dog makes me think of The Mitchells vs. the Machines except instead of getting trapped in a dog–pig loop, here it's dog–ferret.