greenwoodside

Right now, gardening is my fandom. It's been on my fandom wish list for a long time, but this is the first year I've really been able to turn it into an active practice, as opposed to reading about it. There are eleven small tomato plants grown from seed now dotted around the house and in the sunniest spots outside. I've got maybe seven little beetroot seedlings, a pot of perpetual spinach that's vigorous enough to eat from, and a determination to persuade some monarda didyma seeds to germinate, no matter what. I lack the necessary vein of ruthlessness to be a really good gardener, but even being a bad gardener is rather fun.

Photos

May is the season for taking photos of absolutely anything interesting with no attempt at restraint. 

Remains of a garden. From other angles, you can see the shape of long-abandoned flower beds. Now, a single tulip flowers amongst the nettles. (BTW, this is not my garden! I'm not that bad!) 



The ramparts at Oswestry hillfort, covered in bluebells. 

Standing on the Walls of Wales. There's an upland heath that I visit fairly often, which I've known all my life as World's End. As an adult, I learned the name really belongs to a valley and an old farm at its south-western end, and not to the heath at all. But when I go walking up there, I think it will always be World's End in my head. 

Mate Cocido

Inspired by theseatheseatheopensea, I tried some mate cocido. The scent is pleasant, slightly perfumed without direct comparisons. If it's reminiscent of anything, then perhaps of fresh hay. 

The flavour to me is a lot like standard green tea. Possibly because I've blasted my taste buds into insensitivity with years of excessive chilli sauce consumption. I'll have to try some of the stronger Yerba Mate to get a better idea of the difference. (I can definitely feel the caffeine though). 



Sadly no beautiful gourd to go with it; at least the mug has approximately the right shape!

Life
 

Since I moved, I lost my place on the South Wales waiting list for adult autism assessment. A request at my new GP surgery two months ago has led to me being transferred to the (bottom of) the waiting list for people in my area. Naturally, I need to fill in another form. 

After twenty years of wondering about it without certainty, I do want an assessment. But after twenty years, a few years more doesn't matter that much.  

Books

I realise that I neglected to mention some books in my last post. Since one of them was certainly among my favourites of the year, I will amend that.  

Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot. I started this last year, but broke off because the circumstances of my life at the time weren’t right for long-form non-fiction. I came back to it earlier this year, and I’m glad I did. Monbiot sets out clearly the many problems with how the human race currently feeds itself without being hectoring or self-righteous. He then looks into possible solutions, with a perspective that encompasses both hope and scepticism. He’s not a believer in magic bullets. Still, I felt better after reading this, if only for knowing that there are people out there trying to envision and create reform.

Heresy by SJ Parris. First in a murder mystery series set in 1583.  Bounced off this in the first chapter. It didn’t seem well written and had a slightly cartoonish feel. I should probably give it another chance since I don’t recall the details of why I disliked it, save that it felt as if it was flattening Italian Renaissance/Inquisition history into a shape that would be easy for 21^st century readers to swallow. I could have been wrong, and the writing could certainly improve.

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. Sherlock Holmes and Watson investigate the case of a missing Treasury official in a steampunk imperial world full of toxins,  biological enhancers, and massive leviathans that threaten everything in the vulnerable outer circle. I enjoyed this one about equally to the first instalment (aspects of plotting less, but the overall setting more); especially the queasy relationship between the unofficial colonizers and the nominally independent outpost felt well-realized, an area Bennett has previously visited in his Divine Cities trilogy. I wasn’t that thrilled about the twist regarding Ana Dolabra (the Sherlock Holmes character). I would have preferred it if her secret, such as it is, is that she’s completely unmodified i.e. just very uniquely neurodivergent.

Bennett rushed the main relationships in Divine Cities and tried to squeeze pathos out of them that they hadn’t really been given a chance to earn, so it just read to me as sentimentality. He’s taking things more slowly here: honestly, Dolabra and Kol (our Watson) could well lead a series of books before Bennett attempts to pull out all the organ stops and play both them and the innovative biohazard world out. The next book is due out in August; thankfully there’s no mention of ‘finale’ in the blurb.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. I gave up on this part-way through. No plot and shapeless characters all full of a kind of bland niceness that’s probably pleasant in RL but makes for deadly dull fiction. I imagine that someone who doesn’t much like science fiction/fantasy could like this book.

Snake-eater by T Kingfisher. This one came out of leftfield since I hadn’t realised she had a new book out. It completely charmed me. No idea how to describe the genre. Southern Pumpkin Gothic? It’s a kind of gentle horror novel that’s very much in love with its desert setting. I understand from the Afterword that the author recently moved to New Mexico, this representing a return to the landscapes of her childhood for her. The writing is tinged with that honeymoon enthusiasm for a new place, blended with an eye for detail and character. Snake-eater also inspired me to plant more bloody seeds, though I live on a hill in Wales; there are environments out there that less like Arizona; I just can’t recall them right now.

Slow Gods by Claire North. The latest finished book, as I hurry to get through a pile of library reservations that all arrived at once. It didn’t seem vastly innovative being, in effect, a somewhat disguised and literary take on a superhero story in a space-faring distant future. It’s a likeable novel, written with a sense of lyricism and compassion. Something seemed a little – missing? Although we see different civilizations, they mostly feel like something planned out carefully on paper that doesn’t take full flight. The protagonist being introverted, distanced due to their condition, and autism-coded sometimes makes it more of a book about how to exist as a social being against the odds than anything else. Which is admirable and elegant, but somehow now perfectly satisfying. I will, however, certainly read more works by Claire North.

Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Fourth in a series about a far future in which different species have been ‘uplifted’, developing sentience and a collaborative intelligence. Also likely the setting for his excellent novella Elder Race. This novel was fine and readable as the author’s work generally is, but rather weaker than the earlier books. It leant too much on telling rather than showing, perhaps because of the huge timespans involved. And didn’t seem to really be going in any interesting new directions, while at the same time trying to do too much at once.

That said, the twisted dynamic between Kott and Pil in the thoroughly nasty First Age team of space pioneers who exiled themselves due to pride and blind ambition – that did feel new, and in the end quite touching.

The Faith of Beasts by writing hybrid James S. A. Corey. Sequel to The Mercy of the Gods, which followed a research group that along with a three thousand other humans was taken captive by an aggressive, imperialist alien species who place no value on life and everything on status and utility.

Here, we’re back with the remains of the research group who, after proving themselves useful to their masters, are trying to adjust to improved material circumstances and the morally abysmal reality of their situation. Dafyd tries to keep the remaining humans alive by getting them to do what they’re told, and in return is seen as a traitor and a useful idiot by most of his own side. Other characters throw themselves into love affairs as a distraction from the horror of their situation. By the end of the book, we’ve reached the point where at least one survivor is ready to abandon the ideas of both freedom and revenge, and choose submission. ‘Think about chickens’, he says.

The sense of psychological pressure and claustrophobic social dynamics make it stand out amongst other ‘space adventure’ stories.

Minor criticism: there are a couple of situations where two different characters do something very very stupid. In one instance, this plays out brilliantly. The mistake that’s made is absolutely in character and aligns with everything we’ve previously seen about this character (Tonner’s) behaviour. But in the other case, it just irritated me. Jessyn, the culprit, has just been praised for her ability to make shrewd decisions that take multiple factors into account. Then, while her allies are utterly dependent on her, she does something that only a character who knew they were in a novel could really hope to succeed. Grrr.

Oddly, both this series and Tchaikovsky’s features a sort of assimilatory alien whose modus operandi tends to involve the death of the creature it’s possessing; both assimilators are acting without any malice and both, in the latest instalments, are concerned with reforming and establishing themselves as individuals.

Also, there is a giant slug who likes military strategy and sarcasm. <3  I think I’d give The Mercy of the Gods five stars just for the slug.

The Dungeon Crawler Carl books by Matt Dinniman. I tried, I really did. But I found the protagonist mildly obnoxious and insofar as I could stir myself to any reaction, rather hoped he’d be eaten by a mook. Made it as far as book three, waiting to see if there were hidden depths or I’d suddenly get the bug, and it just stayed the same.

Next library book on the pile is Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Urbane young woman from 1950s Mexico City goes to visit her favourite cousin in a remote part of the country, where she's living with her English husband, descendant of a silver-mine-owning clan. 

Update: Okay, I’ve now almost finished this. Enjoying the setting and most of the writing, with a few reservations about the prose (see: alabaster skin and clichés) and predictability. I know there are some very powerful reasons in many parts of the world why having an old white guy as the villain makes sense, but without careful embroidery then it can get rather tired in a genre setting. Also, it bugs me disproportionately that the family at the centre, the Doyles, are described as English, with no acknowledgement of the Irish roots of the surname. Yes, this is a really trivial point. Still, at least while checking my own beliefs, I learned that Arthur Conan Doyle was of Irish Catholic descent on both sides. Don’t know how I failed to be aware of that. Anywaaaaaay, I am very likely to read more by this author.

 

Audio Books

The Once and Future King by TH White. A compilation of White’s books inspired by the Le Morte d’ Arthur.

It’s easy to see why The Sword in the Stone, the first novel describing Merlin’s tuition of the young Arthur, ‘The Wart’, is the most popular. The tone is humorous and full of gentle fun at the expense of an Edwardian-esque age and society that, when White was writing, was fading into something else, if anything of the kind ever really existed: Sir Ector and Sir Grummore chatting about Eton and quests over port; the birds in the falconry following a Kipling-like military ethic.

King Pellinor, the bespectacled, hopeless, irritable, kind chaser of the Questing Beast, is, as it might be phrased by White himself, a dear.

You can see how White could have influenced Terry Pratchett, even if there’s no single line where you can point and say ‘ah-ha! There it is!’ and politically they were I think far apart – White was an occasional humourist, Pratchett more of a satirist with the anger of all real satirists.

After The Sword in the Stone, White, I think, moves closer to Malory, and the tone becomes steadily more serious. Most of the time, this is not to the benefit of the writing, which is tinted with racialism and loses its lightness and fancy. But there are some deeply moving passages, such as this, from The Ill-Made Knight, the Lancelot book that made me unexpectedly sympathetic to Lancelot:

“He loved Arthur and he loved Guinevere and he hated himself. The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which must surely be his. But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice. Under the grotesque, magnificent shell with a face like Quasimodo’s, there was a shame and self-loathing which had been planted there when he was tiny, by something which it is now too late to trace. It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.”

From reading Helen McDonald’s wonderful H is for Hawk, which when not talking about goshawks is talking about TH White, I knew he had the requisite 20^th century writer’s awful fucked-up childhood. The pain in passages like the above must have had very real roots.

A final point: White is intensely, obliviously misogynist; all his love and kindness is directed towards the male characters. The females get at best a kind of condescending pity. He would possibly be quite shocked to be told this, since he disparages some characters explicitly for their misogyny – while in the next breath, writing something hugely dismissive about women.

 

Music

I listen to a lot of music when I’m working, and if something jumps out at me in a good way (not in an ‘oh dear god, whoever thought atonality was a brilliant idea, make it stop, please’ way) I copy the title, paste it into an email, and send it to myself, then drop the email into a music sub-folder. Then forget it exists over long spans of time, until the moment comes of pleased rediscovery.

One of the more charming oddities to appear on Radio 3’s Night Tracks:  

amplify the purrsitive by Laura Cannell (and, presumably, Smudge, Felix, Tigger and Smokey).

Very relaxing if you like cats. Unless at some point you’ve owned a cat that jumped on your head at 3am with its claws out to make you give it breakfast. If you don’t like cats or owned a guerilla generalissimo cat with sharp whiskers, cold eyes and a stopwatch to monitor your mealtime performance, then listening to extended purring might just be traumatic

…

I knew I must be having a good Bank Holiday weekend when an ear worm started up in my head of its own accord as I walked back from the nearest grocery shop.

The ear worm was Bold Archer, and the reason it was a promising sign is that it’s one of the relatively few songs from the folk ballad rattle-bag that doesn’t end horribly. Never get attached to the characters in them; they’ll just end up being hanged, burned, murdered, shot by accident because their boyfriend thought they were a swan, turned into a musical instrument, dying of a broken heart, falling in the thick of battle etc. (See also Jim McDonald’s guide Things I’ve Learned from British Folk Ballads).

But Bold Archer is different. It’s a jailbreak song with the usual jumble of versions that accompany old ballads. Its roots in the lawless Scottish Borders are perhaps most visible in the casual contempt for the forces of order in the person of the sheriff, though this is given a nationalist turn in the American take. Brass Monkey use Harry Cox’s tune, played with a Morris-style bounce, that shows pictures of kangaroos and hares to my motor cortex.

“And then they ordered the music to play

It played so sweet and joyfully

And the very best dancer among them all

 Was Bold Archer who they set free.”