vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. Nothing (quite) finished; various snippets. The Old Man's War reread continues, now partway through Zoe's Tale. I remain very unconvinced by the teenage girl voice in this one.

I read, like, another page or so of Bourke's The Story of Pain before needing to put it down to stare at a wall some more.

I am so close to done with Pain: A Very Short Introduction (Rob Boddice). It is SO BAD. It is SO SELF-CONTRADICTORY. It SO THOROUGHLY FAILS TO UNDERSTAND SO MANY THINGS. It wastes SO MUCH SPACE on pompous guff! I have twelve (small) pages left and am dithering over whether to push through tonight so I can ceremonially FLING IT ACROSS THE ROOM, or to actually do something vaguely resembling the sleep hygiene that means I should have stopped reading it like two and a half hours ago.

Cowart's Hurts So Good, in contrast, is thus far an absolute delight -- I'm letting myself have a page of it at a time until I'm done with the Boddice and Bourke. It opens with some extremely graphic kink, and then merrily moves on to talking about all the other ways that people actively seek out pain and their motivations for same (including e.g. the choice to write a book). I am looking forward to spending more time with this buuut I didn't take it as Light Reading to the first round of Time With Families on account of its exuberantly unambiguous dustjacket, and I'm not planning to take it to the next round of same either...

Watching. Wake Up Dead Man (the third instalment in the Benoit Blanc/Knives Out mysteries). Continues the thing I find Aggravating of deliberately leaving out key details known to the characters until you get to the Dramatic Denouement; this was not the only quibble I had, though I'm going to want to rewatch it to remind me what they were; but I did enjoy myself, and I did appreciate the recurring Object On The Mantelpiece and for that matter Blanc Plays Keyboard Instruments. Also eventually worked out that Daniel Craig's Hair Situation was bringing to mind P.T. Westmorland (Orphan Black), which is a... confusing association.

Three episodes of Man vs. Bee, in company; this is... not for me.

Playing. Inkulinati! And, with the niblings: Match Madness, The Genius Square, Rummikub, Dixit.

Cooking. A new-to-me fruitcake recipe from one of my cookbooks; a dal from the cookbook I am not actually going to manage Making Everything From by the end of the calendar year (but I am pretty close).

Eating. I have now had A Mince Pie. Also a very long lunch at the Gardeners Arms. The brownies that all the reviews of the place we wound up staying in Ardlingy mentioned (which were indeed v good).

Exploring. Wakehurst Place, both at night for Glow Wild and during daylight (a little)!

Growing. Bought curry leaves. Proceeded to strip most of the stems (freezing the leaves) and Treat As Cuttings. There's at least one of them that doesn't look actually dead yet...

Observing. OWL OWL OWL. Very talkative tawny, as we were leaving Wakehurst on Friday night. Snowdrops, also at Wakehurst, to my mild horror. And, blessedly, NOT The Charity Tractor Parade...

Comments

[phi]

I just watched Wake Up Dead Man yesterday and can't for the life of me remember the Object on the Mantelpiece. I was so distracted by the lighting almost being a character in its own right!

[davidgillon]

Snowdrops, also at Wakehurst, to my mild horror.

Now they're just being ridiculous!

[ludy]

Snowdrops, also at Wakehurst, to my mild horror.

Eep!
That is Not Right!


Obviously getting to Wakehurst by Public Transport is a bit of a nightmare wherever you start from. But it’s very easy for me to get to Haywards Heath by train if you ever would like to do meeting-up for coffee somewhen you are in the area?
(During my childhood my Mum worked near Haywards Heath (while we lived in a different part of Sussex) so I spent quite a lot of time there/at Wakehurst in the days when buses where more frequent)

[kaberett]

So noted! We historically make it down once a year for lights, which is not necessarily Great for Having Coffee (Outdoors), but will try to remember as and when we are organising for the 2026 one...