That chill in the air

Via Theresa, another quiz:

Snake!

I’m the snake print Doc Marten…
I’m a wild child and I live on the edge baby!

Which Doc Marten are you?
(by *coffeebean*)

Which reminds me: I need to look for a new pair of docs in Scotland (they are marginally cheaper, oooh, and maybe I can get them duty-free, too, must check that) I was intending to go for plain black, though, not snakeskin. I’m not sure which model to go for, though. Something like this would do me nicely:

I’d also really like a pair with the Union Jack.

Ahem. Money, money, money. The Union Jacks may have to wait.

Apparently, someone found my site searching for “Disney’s Greatest Hits On Ice” on Yahoo. Huh? I can’t help but feel they must have been disappointed in their original goal. Hopefully they had a laugh before checking another link out. Well, I do have the Disney’s Greatest Hits double CD, maybe I’ve mentioned it at some point?

I’ve seen so many comments about fall coming the last few days. There have been a lot of comments at work, too, and that’s easy enough to explain – but how come the fall feeling has arrived all over Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic at the same time? Maybe it’s just a case of me noticing the comments because I have been having that fall feeling myself?

The change here has been marked. We’ve gone from 20+ degrees to “brr, it’s cold in the shadow” what seems like overnight. It’s great. I’m not a summer-person, in fact, summer is probably my least favourite season (with Spring and Autumn sharing the top spot). I like chilly air. I like rain. I like wind. I like curling up with a book under a blanket, knowing that it is cold and unpleasant outside, but I also rather like going for a walk in all the “unpleasantness”. The one mitigating feature of summer is thunderstorms, but there are too many days of excessive sun and heat. I’m glad it’s almost October.

Autumn is also a much better season for travelling than summer. This is not my attempt at persuading myself because my holidays start Sunday, simply a statement of fact as I see it. There are less people (my misanthropic tendencies have been mentioned before), and the people that are around are more likely to be locals and so A. more fun to talk too anyway and B. more likely to be able to tell you such things as which of the village’s pubs serves the best food, and when (you know those “Good Food Served All Day” signs? They are often inaccurate on several counts). There is also, at least for me, a limit to how warm the weather can be before all I want to do is find an airconditioned room and stay there permanently (or at least until hell freezes over). Whereas the limit to how cold it can be before travelling becomes really uncomfortable lies safely below anything I am likely to get south of the polar circle outside the months of December, January and February (which, you will notice, do not classify as “autumn”). The light, certainly thinking in terms of photography, tends to be more interesting in autumn (or spring), too. In summer, I tend to take my best pictures at dusk, the light at mid-day is too harsh. This is a preference, naturally, and also probably due to my lack of technical finesse as far as photography goes.

Tuesday morning when I got up I realised I was up before the sun (not by much, though) – the sky in the east was almost indecently pink. That was the first sure sign of autumn for me. The other was that chill in the air that makes you catch your breath when stepping out of a warm house.

Looking forward to the trees turning yellow and red. In the meantime:

Voice in my head:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
and be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one, as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other as just as fair
and having perhaps the better claim
for it was grassy and wanted wear,
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them, really, about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I saved the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh,
somewhere ages and ages hence;
two roads diverged in a wood and I,
I took the one less travelled by
and that has made all the difference.

(Apologies to Robert Frost for inaccuracies in the punctuation, I’m quoting from memory.)

What’s with this exhaustion?

Still tired. Hoping the holiday will set me up nicely, as the autumn and winter will be majorly busy. If not, I may decide to turn into a hibernating animal. I could certainly do with a few days curled up under a duvet doing nothing much at all.

On the bus this morning one girl was reading an essay in English on the British Empire (as far as I could make out) to another girl, in a rather heavy Norwegian accent and a rather penetrating voice. There is a lot to say for audiobooks on the bus, and the fact that it blocks out most other noise is certainly not the least of it. Considering how misanthropic and demophobic I am, it’s quite surprising that I rather like public transport on the whole.

Voice in my head: Narcissus Boy (Alanis Morisette)

Ground Force

Mmm. Ground Force is on BBC Prime every Thursday. Nice. Not to be missed. Of course, I have no garden. Who cares?

At the end of Thursday’s episode (sorry, forgot to mention this on Friday, so forgive the inconsequential rambling), the lady who owned the garden they did the surprise makeover on said “Ooh, you’re a handsome one!” to Tommy right at the end, and he shouted “Did you get that?” at the camera. Which makes me wonder whether this is not something he hears pretty often. I mean, my taste may be a little odd (only to be expected, really), but I think he’s dishy. He can come put down (up?) decking for me anyday. Despite the fact that I have no garden.

Hm, maybe he’d be good at putting in kitchen units, too? I’ll need someone to help me with that at some point this autumn.

Better change the subject, drooling’s really bad for the keyboard…

Came home from my grandparents today, and collapsed on the sofa (who’d have thought sitting around could be so tiring, eh?). Anyway, I decided it was time I saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s – I saw the other three films in the Audrey Hepburn Collection in a heap last week, but I’ve been putting BaT off. I had the novel (it’s more of a novelletta, isn’t it, really) a little too freshly in memory, and so expected the film to be depressing. Was it ever? Well, only in the sense that playing such havoc with an excellent piece of literature is depressing in itself. A happy ending??? I’m all for happy endings in general, but not with a story like that. And where did the male gigolo stuff come from, I ask you?

Hepburn was divine as usual, of course, but even she couldn’t save such a disaster.

Ah. Friday. Scattered thoughts.

Going to my grandparents’ this weekend. My parents will be there, which is why I’m going, because it means that A. I get to see my parents and B. I will not be the sole receiver of attention from my grandparents.

I’ve brought only two books. On the other hand, I’ve barely started either and they are both 500+ pages. A bit excessive? Who cares. How am I to know today which book I’ll feel like reading tomorrow?

Excellent news: They’ve started the weekly wine lottery at work up again (they used to have it, but it’s been dead for a few months) and I won a bottle today. The drawback is that my grandfather is staunchly against alchohol, so I can’t open it tonight. Actually, maybe that’s an advantage rather than a drawback, because if I opened it tonight I’d have to share with my parents and on the whole I prefer letting them pay for the wine.

Over lunch today we were discussing 30th birthdays. In Norway, if you’re still unmarried at 30, the tradition is that you get a peppermill as a present (or several peppermills, depending on your number of friends and how funny they think it is). One of the girls complained that she had been looking forward to getting one, but that her mother had told people not to and so no one had dared. Which is silly. I mean, I look forward to my 30th birthday immensly simply for the hope that someone will actually get me a decent peppermill (have you seen the price of those things?).

From annoyance at not receiving we strayed onto the difference between men and women in this respect. Both sexes get the peppermills, but the ridiculously large ones are apparently more often given to guys by their friends. My theory is that essentially, women go for the “cool, possibly expensive, but still useful” models (whether they are chosing for themselves or a friend), guys, however, see it as a phallus symbol, and so to them, naturally (or idiotically), size matters.

Just a thought.

Now, more stupid quizes:

I am Aurora!
Which Disney Princess are you?

I am also a tomato. Apparently. Can’t be bothered to link that one, though.


:: how jedi are you? ::

Hmm. Not sure I want to BE Samuel L. Jackson. Be with, maybe. Mmmm, SLJ in kilt on Parkinson. Mmmm. Must see film with SLJ in kilt. Mmmm.

Ok, time to call it a day (week – Friday, YIPPEEEEEE!!)

Sound of the moment: 5000 miles or whatever it’s called. Urgh. Get out of my head!
Age of the moment: definitely middle aged – am soo looking forward to sleeping in and just pottering about all weekend

Headaches

Well, I kept away from the television yesterday – so I guess you could say I agree

And this morning I woke up with a headache.

“The 20th century?! I could pick a century out of a hat, blindfolded, and come up with a better one!”
(Old Mr. Larrabee in Sabrina Fair, equally applicable to the 21st, as far as I can see.)

Travelling companions

I was reflecting on travelling companions just now, and I thought I’d go into a bit more depth on teh subject than would be desirable in the book review (as it has little to do with the books). What I mean is – in real life, as well as in the travel writer – I like the kind of travelling companion who wants to be there, or at least, would rather be there with me – travelling – than, say, back in the office, or at home watching television. You’re allowed your moments of “I miss my own bed!” naturally (I have those too), but you need the sort of enthusiasm for travel which means that if someone really offered you the chance to go back home you’d stare at them aghast, not jump at it. I like the sort of travelling companion who will sit down and laugh with me when we arrive (by bus) in St. Ives in the late evening of 28 December and find that I’ve booked the B&B from the 29th and we have nowhere to sleep. Not the sort who panics when we arrive in Stratford and find that the B&B isn’t actually a B&B and so we have nowhere to sleep, on the other hand we have a car and are a three hour drive away from home. WE ARE NOT GOING TO DIE! DON’T PANIC! For &%#&’s sake. IT’S FUNNY!. That may have been the moment when my conscious mind started to realise that maybe me and this person were not meant for each other after all. Or it may have been earlier when he… No, let’s not get personal here (though, hey, if you’re reading this and feel I might possibly be referring to you, please let me know… that you’re reading this, I mean).

I also rather like the kind of travelling companion who is happy to go his/her own way while I go mine and meet me for lunch or dinner, and not insist that we spend every minute in each other’s company despite the fact that we want to see wildly different sights (I’m going to spend an hour browsing this bookshop and if you want to sit in the corner and sulk because you wanted to see the football stadium then be my guest, but I am not going to come to the football stadium afterwards – there’s a perfectly charming little museum just down the road that I want to see and that’s all I’ll have time for today). Sociable, but not too sociable.

Ok, now for a FUN quiz (thanks Nicolette):

abstract

find your poetry style

Sound of the moment: dog barking outside
Age of the moment: 23

Where were you?

It’s 11 September (as if you didn’t know). Yes, I remember precisely where I was when someone exclaimed “Oh, my GOD!” and we all ran around like headless chickens trying to find a tv that would work. I remember the feeling of unreality. Coincidentally the same feeling that I had about four years earlier, watching shocked BBC presenters trying to keep from crying and thinking “This has to be some really sick joke, Diana can’t be dead.” (And I didn’t even particularly like Diana.) Two events so very different, but that have both been frozen in time in a way very little else in my life has.

I wasn’t intending to say much about it, really, but I have something else on my mind, and complete silence on the subject would be odd, I think. Other people have had more to say.