Liadnan

We interrupt this lengthy hiatus to observe that Zelensky's 'Servant of the People' though not currently on UK Netflix (I will not be surprised if it is put back soon) is on Youtube, though admittedly the subtitling is a bit erratic https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSoP62RB3ymnt6ct60SF-2ZsSpC_Mbrjv Worth watching even if the circumstances weren't as incredible as they are.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1526186424113096&id=100001652582799

I loved the Pliocene-Milieu Sequences, I remember being overjoyed when Intervention came out and they had a significant influence on me as a teenager and in my 20s. I last re-read my way through the whole thing last year and they still do it for me.

Happy Christmas everybody.

Chesterfield hardly the ends of the earth, still, since we're on journeying:-

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

And from Daniel Ladinsky, after St John of the Cross:-

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy,
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

For various reasons, mainly living in a tiny house, most of my books live in my room in chambers (which is why I resist becoming involved in room reallocations).

If I spin round in my chair I can see, in a tall pile in the corner, the fantasy and sf books of my childhood I can't bear to part with, ancient corgi editions for the most part. Most of them will probably never be re-read. Life is, I think, possibly too short for another run through Eddings (well, maybe).

But one I have re-read occasionally over the years, most recently only last year, is probably one of the first F/SF novels I read (outside Tolkien and things of which my mother approved, DWJ, Aiken, Cooper and the like): Dragonflight, together with its sequels (up to and including the White Dragon, and there should be a copy of the first prequel somewhere), along with a copy of The Ship Who Sang that I had forgotten borrowing from the library in about 1987 acquiring. The only one that is easily accessible without bringing the stack down is Dragonsong, which appears to be a 1981 reprint: it's likely I bought it with birthday booktokens or the like that year. I have a vague idea I'd first picked up Dragonflight a year or so earlier in Winchester Public Library, on spec and caught by the Michael Whelan cover.

A few commenters on posts have made claims that she was a fantastic writer, she wasn't, at least not in the sense I would use that term. But I loved and love those books and characters, and I'm fairly confident that some day when I'm feeling glum I'll pull them out again. I don't think I'd say the same about, for instance The Colour of Magic which I must have read (including brilliant affectionate parody of the Pern novels) not long after.

And from reading her, so much else followed (more than from reading Tolkien, DWJ & co I think, though I don't think McCaffrey is, objectively, as good as any of those).

One of the first women, alongside Andre Norton and a few others (May?) to make much headway in SF&F too, and given how mysogynistic the genre can still be now (eg Harlan Ellison) I wonder how much worse it was then.

Farewell Anne McCaffrey, and thanks for 30 years of reading habits.

On my way out the door to St Pancras and thence Chesterfield (first time in my life I haven't been to my mother's for Christmas). Just the ritual dance of "have I left the oven on, is the house Campion & Gertrude proof" to do. (So glad we have very kind neighbours who love them and stay at home for Christmas).

A wonderful Christmas to you all, whoever and wherever you are.

In one and the same day I have been irritated beyond measure by (a) twitter, which increasingly seems to be a forum existing mainly so that smug celebs, -and wannabees- can start bandwagons for people to fall over themselves to jump on without bothering to stop and think in the process - the fact my own knee-jerk sentiments may sometimes be with the resulting mob doesn't make it better - and (b) epic length tedious essays on email lists - which would still be tedious even if they weren't tendentious. Which in this particular case they are.

The internet was a bad idea and must be stopped.

Whut?

Why do Amazon think I am in need of my very own One Ring?

I realise now that when I voted LibDem, in my Labour/Respect marginal constituency, what I was really voting for was the "progressive coalition" and that I should now feel angered enough to be turning to the Labour party.

To discover the views of the "progressive coalition" I look to the voting record of Ben Bradshaw, one of those who has explained it all to me by banging on about this again and again: it turns out that it includes strong progressive policies like being strongly for ID Cards; against laws to stop climate change; for the anti-terrorism laws of the last decade, ministerial intervention in inquests and a stricter asylum system; and opposing an inquiry into the Iraq war.

Yes, that's it. And what I really wanted was for the Ministry of Justice to remain in the hands of Jack Straw, someone I believe to have colluded in torture, and for others who I believe lied to take us into a disastrous war to remain in government as well.

It certainly couldn't possibly have been true that not only did I object to all of that, I put a very high priority on those specific issues.

Guardian injunction.

Not my field at all but has something happened to article 9 of the Bill of Rights while I wasn't looking? This doesn't quite fit with my understanding of how that works these days, particularly in the light of subsections 13(4) and 13(5) of the Defamation Act 1996, (nb that the privilege is not limited to defamation actions). And John Wilkes is spinning in his grave.

Good to see the Speccie coming to the Grauniad's defence though.

"Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?"

ETA: Trafigura have now caved, shortly before the return date of 2PM today. Thought there were a surprising number of journalists round the back door when I went over this morning.

ETFA: the main story is to be found here, and see also Wikipedia. Do we think Trafigura, and Carter-Ruck, are maybe learning a bit about unintentional viral anti-marketing and the Streisand Effect? Though I can see some merit in Daniel Davies' suggestion that the Guardian may have been rather clever. The original injunction was granted on 11th September and Rusbridger twittered to that effect that day. On 12th October what he said was "Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?" with a link to the Guardian story but no mention of a further injunction. What is not entirely clear to me is whether there was actually a further injunction on the 11th or 12th October covering reporting of the Parliamentary question listed for today, or whether it was merely that the 11th September injunction was so widely drawn as to cover reporting a parliamentary question, and/or Carter-Ruck insisted on the point (perhaps arguing it would be contempt) until withdrawing the whole application a couple of hours ago, shortly before the return. In which case it may be material to observe, as Davies does, that Farrelly has connections to Guardian/Observer people. Of course the point would not have arisen until someone actually did ask a question in the House.

Either way, the Grauniad deserves applause, as do BBC Newsnight, who are also in the frame on this one.

I have been known to criticise programmes such as Judge John Deed (shurely Deed J, and why is he always on circuit, and what is a QB judge doing hearing family applications, and and) for slight inaccuracies in their depiction of life at the Bar and on the Bench. This morning I have finally realised that in truth, it's only my* professional life that is sadly lacking in drama:

Exhibit 1 Exhibit 2

Incidentally, am slightly perturbed by this "secretive world of millionaire lawyers". I must have missed all the memos.

I do recommend the latter article by the way, it includes a rare display of humour by the Mail in the caption to the last photo.

Heigh ho, back to the Scott Schedule. "Item 44, reinstatement of pigeon-netting..."

*Prompted by Frankie in comments, the emphasis in that sentence should lie on "my", there's little drama in the rest of my life atm either. Can't be arsed to redraft the sentence, I now have three applications tomorrow and the skeleton for one of them is going to be seriously late.