greenwoodside

Radio Snippet

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:40:00 GMT

Zoned out of work and into the radio in time to catch this gem (56.20 minutes in):

Laura Cannell: I got really into it and was researching how fairy rings occur, you know, in the grass. Shall I tell you a secret?

Tom McKinney: Go on.

...

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Apart from that, reading an article in The Conversation 'Macron plays "Trump Whisperer"' with the banner image showing the French President and the Thing in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles made me want a play or fanfic or both: The Ghosts at the Back of the Room. A running commentary from the ones who were there before.

Just which ghosts I can't decide. With Versailles the options are almost limitless. But Moliere and Louis XIV sprang to mind, as well as the difficult court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, whom I 've had a reluctant softspot for since watching Le Roi Danse in my mid twenties.

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Mae'r Ddaear yn Glasu

Sat, 16 May 2026 09:50:04 GMT

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.

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Mate Cocido

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Life

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Books

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Audio Books

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Music

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Twas on one April Morning

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:35:43 GMT

I still haven't got round to repairing my laptop keyboard, and that makes it somehow harder to sit down and casually write something on a whim. Instead, I've steadily amassed a notepad file of material over several evenings.

Something I often think, but rarely write about, is how much I love Dreamwidth. I keep an eye on LinkedIn for work-related reasons and it somehow manages to get continually worse, and I listen to a fair bit of spoken word radio; some parts of which, sadly, seem to be ~~falling under the shadow of Mordor~~ adopting aspects of mainstream social media's PR slop bucket. But then there's Dreamwith, and it's full of people writing about diverse, fascinating subjects for free, sharing their enthusiasms and being nerdy and down to earth at the same time. It's my internet Good Place. Long may it survive.

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Holiday, reading/watching, Christmas cards

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 10:45:51 GMT

( Holiday... )

( Reading/watching... )

I feel like sending Christmas cards. If you'd like a Christmas card, please leave your address in a locked post or, if that's not possible, let me know and I'll share my email. Be warned that while I'm very organised about buying Christmas cards, and even at writing and stamping them, I tend to fall down when it comes to actually posting them. So the card will definitely arrive, but it might be in time for Christmas 2026 or 27.

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My friend Kat

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 11:29:12 GMT

This is my first attempt at Crowdfunding. I wish it were for something fluffy and daft like a Guiness World Record attempt at creating the largest ever vegetable samosa, but that will have to wait since a long-time fandom friend needs help.

My Tumblr post

The appeal itself including a slideshow of Kat's recent project, a vest embroidered with all manner of fantastic sea-life. (Importantly: there's an octopus).

Please help if you can either by giving or sharing. Signal boosts matter.

In RL news, I am redecorating/renovating the house I bought last month. I want to do a long post about the books I've been reading and listening to, and the TV I've been flaking out to late in the evening (Slow Horses! Foundation Season 2! Murderbot!), but I have a score of tins of paint waiting for me, and they are cruel mistresses.

ETA: World's Largest Samosa

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Life update, Book of Dust,

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 08:24:29 GMT

I still haven't fixed my laptop since breaking two keys (f and v) while trying to write code for an evening course in December, and it's made me even worse than usual at updating Dreamwidth.

Books Read Recently

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
The Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett (skimmed the second half; it never clicked with me)
All of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books and Troll books
Yr Hobyd by Tolkien, translated into Welsh by Adam Pearce (loved this, but had forgotten the complex bullying/protective relationship of the dwarves towards Bilbo; I'm not sure if it was more influenced by Tolkien's school days or his WW1 service. I enjoyed the gentle irreverence with which the narrative treats Thorin's sense of his own importance, though I was also reminded of Gethsemane by Kipling: "The officer sat on the chair/ The men lay on the grass..." Weird hierarchies are of course not the preserve of dwarves and regiments. In my last job, I knew a manager who practically kow-towed and wagged his tail when a senior IT person joined a video call, after grunting at us, his underlings. That same job introduced me to a range of middle management whose internal translators had rendered their job title back to them as 'Grand Sultan' )

Watched

The Residence -- so much fun; I binge-watched the whole thing in a way I haven't felt compelled to do for years
Die Walküre (dir. Barrie Kosky) -- less fun, but excellent version. I loved Christopher Maltman's Wotan in both this and last year's Rheingold.

Preparations for The Book of Dust: The Rose Field

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Additional thoughts after the reread (in Welsh, as practice):

Gwnes i fwynhau teithiau Lyra, Pan a Malcolm ar draws Ewrop, ond roedd agweddau yn dod yn ailadroddol -- er enghraifft, pan fyddai Lyra yn gofyn am al-Khan al-Azraq (the Blue Hotel), roedd y broses yn cymryd gormod o amser. Nid oes angen i fi glywed sawl tro: 'Ydych chi'n gwybod ble mae'r Gwesty Glas?' 'Nac ydw. Ond mae'n lle drwg iawn iawn iawn -- peidiwch â mynd!' (*cleciau taran*)

Darllenais i ddoe am gefndir Pullman. Roedd ei dad yn beilot RAF yn ystod gwrthryfel y Mau Mau yn y pumdegau. Cafodd ei ladd ar ôl i awyren ddryllio a dyfarnwyd Distinguised Flying Cross wedi ei farw. Fel oedolyn, ac efallai hefyd fel oedolyn yn ei oed a'i amser, darganfuodd Pullman fod ei rieni ar fin ysgaru; cafodd ei dad problemau gamblo. Gallai hyn roi ongl mwy diddorddol i gymeriad Olivier Bonneville, mab ofnadwy i dad gwaeth. Mae hefyd yn dechrau egluro hoffter Pullman ar gyfer 'action men' fel Lord Asriel, John Parry a Lee Scoresby. Mae Pullman wedi dweud ei fod yn bwriadau ysgrifennu cofiant, a dw i'n edrych ymlaen at ei ddarllen.

Ydy pob cymeriad pwysig yn Pullman yn brydferth/rhywiog/enghraifft drawiadol y dynol ryw? Mae'n dechrau mynd yn annifyr. Roedd yr adroddwr yn dweud am Alice (Alice! Fy ffefryn): 'doedd hi ddim yn bert, ond gallai fod yn boeth; aî dynion yn wallgof amdani'. Wel, iawn.

Rwyf yn teimlo diddordeb cryf mewn dioddef seicolegol Lyra a Pantaleimon. Beth bynnag, tybed a fuodd Pullman erioed yn ysgrifennu am gymeriad dynol gwryw a ddioddefai yn yr un ffordd-- ac yn ysgrifennu gyda chydymdeimlad?

Ar ôl gwylio 'Conclave' a hefyd darllen ychydig o hanes y Dadeni, dw i ddim yn meddwl o hyd bod llwyddiant Delamere ar gipio'r Magisterium yn gredadwy iawn. Byddai wedi bod llawer yn fwy cymhleth. Petai ond Pullman yn darparu mwy o rwystrau yn ei erbyn, byddai Delamere wedi edrych yn fwy deinamig ac effeithiol fel 'big bad'.

RL Stuff

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New job + move + reviews

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 10:57:50 GMT

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Resurfacing + reading and watching in 2024

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 20:37:08 GMT

Semi-disappeared for the last four/five months – I owe quite a lot of comments and emails, and am just beginning to catch up. The main reason was an intensive evening course that, combined with work, just about ate up all my energy for anything other than pure recreation (books, walking, bits of TV). Plus, after that and probably because of it, I had a minor health problem and decided I was dying, as is my wont.
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I made a happy food-related discovery over Christmas.

Make some basic flatbread in a pan (I used self-raising flour, water, olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and a sprinkle of sugar). Get a jar of harissa paste.

As soon as the flatbread is ready, rip pieces off it while it's still hot and dip it in the harissa. Tell yourself you can stop after one piece. Don't. Byddwch lawen a gwnewch y pethau bychain. Rejoice and do the little things.

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Why are there no video clips of the 1999 David Copperfield when you need them?

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 16:33:36 GMT

Maggie Smith has moved on.

Also, it would have been my Dad's 87th birthday today. Happy Birthday, Dad.

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Behind with replies/si vales valeo

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 10:46:40 GMT

I'm behind with replying to comments and behind with replying to RL emails. Hopefully will get caught up in the next few days. I'm at the start of almost two weeks of annual leave and a burst of actual hot summer weather in the UK has made me very sluggish and lazy. Effect added to since I'm reducing my caffeine consumption over the break. (In order to get a really strong hit when I restart work, naturally!)

I can see that the journal of theseatheseatheopenseais struck through. I hope all is well.

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Red Island (2023)

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 22:04:31 GMT

Caught Red Island (2023), a film heavily influenced by writer/director Robin Campillo's own biography, and I'm so glad I did.
( Spoilers... )

Didn't get yet another job. I'm not sure how many job interviews I've done this year. Next time, I think I may just avoid making any reference to my current occupation and focus entirely on examples from before I started here. The frustration creeps in when I talk about Employer X, however much I want to hide it. A 'Storm the bastille!! Ca ira!!"" undertone creeps in. Interviewers probably think I'm going to either guillotine them or cry over my laptop if they give me a job.

Am also thinking of small projects to do at the weekend to a) hook another employer and b) raise my rather tender self-esteem.

I flunked various questions this time, but my blank uncomprehending stare when one of the interviewers asked about work-life balance may have been my most triumphant failure. I'm not even a workaholic; I've just had to lean into whatever workaholic traits I have over the last year or so because it's made rational sense to do so.

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11.28 Before I head into work...

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 10:35:10 GMT

Thérèse Coffey lost her Suffolk seat. She hasn't been a Minister since 2023, but was was distinguished by being an extraordinarily ill-suited choice for the portfolio of Health Secretary and later Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

I'm going to need so much coffee.

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03.22 Plaid win Anglesey/Ynys Môn

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 02:30:43 GMT

Sweet speech (delivered in Welsh) from the new Plaid MP. She seemed to be fighting back genuine tears.

Afterwards, her family all hugged her and cried.

I was reminded a little of the water family in Elemental (Pixar, 2023) whose efforts to avoid crying are in vain.

ETA: Urk. Farage has won his seat. Do hope he turns out to have a congenital heart defect.

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02:57 Tone deaf election night award

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 02:01:40 GMT

Politicians, just stop and think before you let the words "my Rolls Royce" cross your lips. Though Tim Collins is an ex-soldier, and apparently has Coriolanus-like levels of political dumbness. Courtesy of Rory Carroll at The Guardian:

It does not quite match “the people have spoken, the bastards” level of sulk but Tim Collins, the army colonel who gave a famous speech to troops before the invasion of Iraq, has made some choice remarks about the voters of North Down who declined to elect him.

“People in North Down, I think they don’t want someone who doesn’t live in Northern Ireland,” Colllins, who lives in Kent, said after being eliminated.

“They’re interested in local politics, they’re not interested in cutting VAT, they’re not interested in international affairs. They’re interested in potholes and hedges.”

The Ulster Unionist party candidate made headlines during the campaign when comparing the cost of insuring a car in Northern Ireland to insuring his Rolls Royce. “It’s Northern Ireland, they don’t understand these things,” he said at the count centre. “The point I was making is that an expensive car is cheaper to insure in England than it is here.”

eta: I've hit the point of being unable to get the Dreamwidth cut to work. Surely that means it's time to go to bed! Also, Keir Starmer has won his seat. I do wonder if Labour political advisors/staff sometimes have nightmares after eating too much cheese where their man wins the election but loses his constituency. Kind of like Bonnie Dundee winning Killiecrankie but getting killed in the process, except funny.

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02:16 -- Labour take Vale of Glamorgan

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 01:20:04 GMT

Background: Vale of Glamorgan is one of the richest areas in Wales. It has some of the highest property prices, and it some parts feels more like one of the richer areas of the West Country was dumped on the wrong side of the Bristol Channel. If you own a charming thatched cottage in Merthyr Mawr, you have made it. (Great place for cycling and visiting Norman remains too, incidentally, plus other historical sites. I regularly go on at length about the wonderful medieval wall paintings in the church of Llancarfan).

Anyway, Glamorgan isn't true blue, but it has been Tory since 2010, and this was a seriously big swing to Labour.

Probably my last post of the night. Normally I'm in bed by ten. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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00:29 Number of coffees: 2

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 23:38:08 GMT

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22:02 Oh dear the Tories are losing how sad

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 21:10:43 GMT

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Reading/Watching/Life

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 20:36:45 GMT

All media consumption is still pointing due escapism.

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ETA: Oh yeah, and I've been watching Doctor Who. Favourite episode so far is 'Dot and Bubble'. Enjoyed the Beatles episode more than most since apparently I really like OTT villains with dance numbers – so have been well served recently. Unimpressed by the Moffat contribution and thought the Bridgerton one dragged in places. Was thrilled to see Sian Phillips, the divine and deadly Empress Livia, in 73 Yards. My mind is still boggling a little at the idea of Aneurin Barnard as a future very Cymreig Welsh fascist overlord.

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Hail and farewell, CJ Sansom

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 20:10:42 GMT

I read his Shardlake books in December 2019 and January 2020, very much in 'what, I'm supposed to go to work? do the washing? spend time on things that aren't reading? wtf world??' mode. I probably won't reread them, because gripping as they were, the last one was brutal.

I will watch the TV show to see if it can catch something of the novels' atmosphere.

It sounds as if he had been working on another Shardlake book. It would be wonderful if he'd managed to get it finished, or near-finished, but given that his long illness seems to have been so dreadful, I doubt there's much hope of that.

Guardian obituary link

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Watching and Reading

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ETA: snippet of interesting/good news just spotted Plato's final hours recounted in scroll found in Vesuvius ash. I've been hearing for a couple of decades now about how technological advances will allow more of the scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum to be deciphered wholly or in part. I'm sure there have been successes before this one – I just haven't heard about them. At a guess, they involved no big names from history.

In this instance, the reporting isn't that great. [understatement] I've only had a quick look, but couldn't see a link to the research/source. Also it took me way too long to find out that the new information apparently comes from the work of one Philodemus of Gadara (1st century BC Epicurean philosopher).

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RIP Lynne Reid Banks

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:22:24 GMT

I did a double take when I checked the news this morning on learning that the author Lynne Reid Banks died yesterday.

Lynne Reid Banks's children's book The Indian in the Cupboard was among the many that my dad read to me long before my age hit double digits. I can remember very little of it, and nothing at all of the problematic material about Native Americans. What I do recall is the attempt to bring back a WW1 army medic with the help of the magic cupboard, only for the cupboard door to open on nothing but his clothes and medical bag. The quoted passage in the linked blog entry reads as very sentimental to me now – the suck fairy has definitely paid it a visit – but it made a strong impression on little me.

That first double take was because I'd assumed she died long ago. She was born in 1929. That makes her nine years younger than Rosemary Sutcliff and Richard Adams, six years older than Susan Cooper, 14 years older than Michael Morpurgo, and 17 years older than bright young thing Philip Pullman.

And she had one of those crazy 20th century writer's biographies that I had no idea about till reading her obituary and an article from 2017 about running away to live on a kibbutz with sculptor Chaim Stephenson

. ........

Easter wasn't great. I caught some kind of odd virus that started off like food poisoning, then turned more into a migraine, then ended up as a cold. Saturday and Sunday consisted of lying down doing a bulk rewatch of Avatar: The Last Airbender (the proper animated version, not the live action thing that came out this year).

Actually, as viruses go, then once I'd got over the hypochondria ("What if I've caught BUBONIC PLAGUE and MEASELS and BIRD FLU? SHOULD I BE PUTTING MY THINGS IN ORDER??"), it was almost welcome. It was nice having a guilt-free excuse to be completely unproductive. Except that the news of a forthcoming solar eclipse in the USA combined with my choice of viewing material left me haunted by the nagging feeling that I should be drinking jasmine tea and planning to invade the Fire Nation.

I also read Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge, which was beautiful. I kept wanting to underline things or read them aloud to strangers.

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Mrs Baguley

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 21:34:58 GMT

To Mrs Baguley, who won the women's skeleton sled race down the Cresta Run in 1925

She might have won more, but some men discovered that doing the Cresta Run – 1.2km in 1 minute – caused breast cancer, and so women had to be stopped for their own welfare.

Who were you Mrs Baguley? The internet says your initials were J. M. So perhaps you were a Jane, or a Janet? To be hanging round an early Swiss ski resort, you would probably have been wealthy, if not laden down with riches.

If Baguley is even your real name, and you weren't using a pseudonym for some propriety-related reason.

You seem like the kind of person that should have had a poem written about you by – I don't know – Carol Ann Duffy, UA Fanthorpe, or something spiky and odd by Stevie Smith. I can imagine one of Smith's drawings illustrating your 1925 victory.

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Mary & George

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 20:16:35 GMT

Not sure what it says about me that on first noticing the marketing for Mary & George, the Sky Atlantic political sex comedy about King James I, George Villiers, and George's mother Mary, Countess of Buckingham, my immediate thought was 'will there be a cameo from John Donne?'

(According to the IMDB cast list, no).

Despite that, I would like to watch it. It's got Tony Curran in it, and it sounds like a blast. But but but -- it's on Sky, and as far as I know I've never signed up to anything that involved giving money to the Murdochs. I'm sure they've creamed off plenty from me in advertising revenue through the decades, of course, thinking of my teenage years spent watching The Simpsons on Channel 4.

My resolve may crack. Looking at the publicity stills and articles, it feels as if the director has sent me a note to say: "I made this just for you, greenwoodside."

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The LMB publishes again

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 20:11:24 GMT

Lois McMaster Bujold has a new Penric and Desdemona story available: Demon Daughter.

Joy. After she published a volume of family history then (by her standards) made a writing pause, I was worried she was going to stop forever. But no, I shouldn't have doubted, she's back with ~~my next hit~~ more.

I bet baby Jesus would look much happier in the infant and virgin portraits if he'd been given a set of the complete works of LMB instead of a load of myrrh. We see his tubby little face frowning, thinking: "Do you spell it with two rrs or one? And what sound value should I give the y? Also, ominous, much?"

Instead he could have been listening to his mam reading aloud from Mirror Dance and learning about clones in a future's future.

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New Year/Books read

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 17:55:39 GMT

Happy New Year, dear people. Blwyddyn newydd dda i chi i gyd.

Books that I've read after the cut. It's been pretty much pure escapism and adventure. Fingers crossed 2024 is a more balanced year with me being not quite so prone to trying to hide from reality.

One good thing/un peth da

I'm about 10% of the way through Unravelling by Frances Hardinge. Loving it so far and there's still lots more of it to go, so yay.

The list
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The Crown/wedi blino

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 21:21:55 GMT

I've never watched The Crown beyond a few clips from the episodes with Mark Lewis Jones playing Edward Millward, Prince Charles's Welsh teacher. Still, I've caught the fuss in the press about the latest series: Diana apparently appears in it as some form of ghost which is Utterly Tasteless and Wrong. (The rest of the show, focusing in detail on the private life of a character whose inspiration was at the time of release still living, was of course fine.)

I was a total Shakespeare nut in my teens/early twenties. Of course, Diana appears as a ghost. That's just what royals do.

Work

I started at 8.00, having left the house at 07.00. Kept going till 6.20 with a one hour break for lunch. Got back in at about 7.15pm Tired.

Welsh Practice

Gwnes i gais am swydd yn yr Alban. Ers mod i'n ysgrifennu datganiad personol sy'n defnyddio 2000 o eirau, gobeithio a gynigir cyfweliad i mi.

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