The World Spins Madly On

Nabbed from soberloki and cluegirl

When you see this, post a poem in your journal.


you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

- Soup for lunch! Baxters Tomato and Parmesan with Roast Garlic is SO GOOD OMG.
- Mum is still in Spain, and Flatmate has gone to Cambridge for the weekend, which means an evening with the whole house to myself. I love the feeling of being alone in a house.
- My foreign holidays are now over for now, but I can start booking flights for Florence and NZ. My brother and his fiancee have set a date, so I'm going to be home around the 3rd of July next year.

Yeah, yeah, I'm behind. Way behind. Have three days all at once.

On Saturday we sat around over breakfast deciding what to do. In the end we decided to go to Cordoba. It was supposed to be pretty wet all afternoon, but not as bad as Marbella, where we were, and neither Mum not I had been to Cordoba before.

Cordoba is beautiful, and its old Mosque is magnificent. It came in grey and windy in the afternoon, but the rain held off altogether. We had a lovely meal in a decidedly quirky restaurant and then went to a flamenco show.

The show was very much a Tourist Special, but the quality was outstanding. I don't know if you've ever seen flamenco danced properly, but it is breathtaking. The music is totally unique - it utterly disdains most traditional patterns of melody and rhythm, there is nothing comfortably familiar to relax into, it grabs your attention and holds it every second. The dancers were amazing. The sheer passion that goes into the dance is stunning. Most of the performances were female solos. One in particular was absolutely riveting - you just couldn't take your eyes off her. It's also unusual in that the dancers don't dance to the music, the musicians play to the dancer. There were two guitarists and two vocalists and they were all keeping time to the dancers' feet. I am pretty astounded by the skill required to do that. It's hard enough when you're watching a conductor. The show was two hours, but we had no sense of that much time passing. It was an amazing experience.

Sunday morning was clear and sunny, and it was around 30 degrees at lunchtime - much more what I got used to in Provence than what we'd had here in UK. We went around the castle and its gardens, which were beautiful. They also had some amazingly intact Roman mosaics. Also, I randomly bumped into a woman who occasionally works for my company. I had no idea she was in Spain at all, and then there she was, so we had a little chat.

My flight home, a Squeezyjet flight due to leave at 2340, left... wait for it... early, allowing me to be in bed not much after 2.30. (No really, that's a good thing. I once got in from that flight at about 5.30.) I had taken the morning off, but ended up calling in sick for the afternoon, so spent the whole day in my lovely snuggly bed, which was great.

I got tagged by mrsalemp for this one. You're not supposed to refuse to tag 8 people, but I'm gonna. Post it to your LJ, if you like. Replace any question that you dislike with a new, original question.

( Let's talk about me )

Another Book Meme, because I like them. I think someone has resurrected this, because "The Big Read" was run back in 2003. I imagine it still applies though. It's interestingly different from the LibraryThing list that went around. Neil Gaiman doesn't appear at all (a travesty!), nor does the Silmarillion, despite being in the top 10 from LibraryThing. My guess would be that part of it is difference in question - The Big Read asked for favourite books, Library Thing looked at books most often marked as "unread". The other difference is in sample - The Big Read was advertised to the British public, LibraryThing appeals to... certain types of people. (I haven't used it, but I might be about to start.)

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike through any books you would rather poke yourself in the eye with than read ...
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.

( Debitha vs The Big Read )

Quick stats:
Read: 26
Loved: 7
Would like to read: 4
Would sooner poke my eye out: 9

Most of the rest, I don't really care about. I don't really get on with Literature. *shrug*

I haven't done a meme in ages. Apparently I am... challenging. :oD

Your result for What Spice Are You Test...

You are Ginger!

0% Habanero, 20% Sage, 0% Thyme, 40% Ginger, 20% Garlic, 10% Curry, 10% Cinnamon and 0% Oregano!

Take What Spice Are You Test at HelloQuizzy

OK, so holding_pattern posted this a while ago, and I never actually got around to looking at it. So now I am posting it in lieu of actual content.

This is EW's top 100 films of the last 25 years.

Bold the ones you have seen
Put an asterisk after the movie title* if you really liked it
Cross it out if you saw a film and really disliked it
Underline the ones you own
Italicise films you'd like to see

( A big list of films )