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This week...
Sep. 20th, 2025 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zero_pixel_countLife continues hectic!
Last weekend I schlepped to Oxford, where I certainly haven't been for a couple of decades at least (and even then probably 'some theatre and its loading dock' was probably the extent of it) for R's hen do. Which was not in the least the whole sequinned plastic tiaras / pink sashes / trolleyed by midafternoon schtick, partly because we're all in our 40s and 50s, partly because R was like 'yeah no', and partly because R was also like 'no I'm inviting my best mates regardless of gender' so that was all very comfortable actually. There was a bit of a theme - which my brain interpreted as 'bugsy malone in wonderland' although that is not actually what D. who was organising it said! So I made a novelty waistcoat with some alice in wonderland quilting cotton, as you do.
( In the course of the waistcoat making... )
And the day itself was very cool, those of R's friends who I didn't already know were cool, the park & ride was not particularly sketchy even late at night, etc.
Soraven wrote a piece years back, broadly about how, you know, there's a tendency in some circles to laud sparseness in fiction, and how that impacts anyone who's trying to write in a setting which isn't [quasi-medieval-europe or whatever the genre equivalent is]. One of the examples they used was 'the Pitt-Rivers bell' vs just 'the bell' and while at the time I was getting some additional context, I clearly wasn't getting all of it.
( I've now been in the Pitt-Rivers museum. For about three minutes... )
But at the time I was mostly like 'oof, I don't like it in here and I don't think the middle of R's hen do is the moment to stop and unpack that' and went back to the natural history museum to look at stuffed/model birds* and shiny rocks**.
*that display I liked, because they were grouped by habitat and had a little bit of blurb, so even if I wasn't actually learning - on account of not taking notes - I could see how learning would have been possible.
**which I actually do find pleasing to look at, and would have gotten more out of if I'd known to do some prep work and e.g. have the list of Waking the Dawn -plausible gemstones to refer to.
And then next week, which has suddenly crept up on us, we have another wedding (not R's) so it really is all just a bit non-stop around here.
Last weekend I schlepped to Oxford, where I certainly haven't been for a couple of decades at least (and even then probably 'some theatre and its loading dock' was probably the extent of it) for R's hen do. Which was not in the least the whole sequinned plastic tiaras / pink sashes / trolleyed by midafternoon schtick, partly because we're all in our 40s and 50s, partly because R was like 'yeah no', and partly because R was also like 'no I'm inviting my best mates regardless of gender' so that was all very comfortable actually. There was a bit of a theme - which my brain interpreted as 'bugsy malone in wonderland' although that is not actually what D. who was organising it said! So I made a novelty waistcoat with some alice in wonderland quilting cotton, as you do.
( In the course of the waistcoat making... )
And the day itself was very cool, those of R's friends who I didn't already know were cool, the park & ride was not particularly sketchy even late at night, etc.
So
raven wrote a piece years back, broadly about how, you know, there's a tendency in some circles to laud sparseness in fiction, and how that impacts anyone who's trying to write in a setting which isn't [quasi-medieval-europe or whatever the genre equivalent is]. One of the examples they used was 'the Pitt-Rivers bell' vs just 'the bell' and while at the time I was getting some additional context, I clearly wasn't getting all of it.( I've now been in the Pitt-Rivers museum. For about three minutes... )
But at the time I was mostly like 'oof, I don't like it in here and I don't think the middle of R's hen do is the moment to stop and unpack that' and went back to the natural history museum to look at stuffed/model birds* and shiny rocks**.
*that display I liked, because they were grouped by habitat and had a little bit of blurb, so even if I wasn't actually learning - on account of not taking notes - I could see how learning would have been possible.
**which I actually do find pleasing to look at, and would have gotten more out of if I'd known to do some prep work and e.g. have the list of Waking the Dawn -plausible gemstones to refer to.
And then next week, which has suddenly crept up on us, we have another wedding (not R's) so it really is all just a bit non-stop around here.