The World Spins Madly On

Life is quietening down a little. I can't decide whether to be relieved or paranoid.

Basically, my life has been nuts since about April. It may have been earlier than that but, to be honest, I don't really remember before April. I thought I couldn't remember earlier than late May, then I remember that I was running a fest that posted in May, so that covers April!

I kind of want to tell you all about it, but it would take too damn long and you're probably not that interested anyway, so I'll just hit the highlights:

Late April - trying to get things organised for fest which posted all through May.

May - posting the fest, and a 4 day trip to Lisbon with J.

June - J came to stay for a couple of weeks. She had her Viva in Exeter, so I drove her down. We took a couple of days and spent a little time in Exeter, Beer (no, I'm not kidding), and Lyme Regis. Training dig was on, as previously mentioned. What I don't think I mentioned is that BBC Breakfast News showed up to film us for a piece about volunteers in Archaeology, so I ended up on National TV. Yay? I think smarla's wedding was in June, so that must be when A came to visit. We mostly hung out, and she did her bridesmaidly thing. We went to London for a couple of days, right when that heat wave struck. OMG, you guys, 30 degrees in London is not OK. We went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and to Harrods, and the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, and shopped a lot, because that is how A rolls.

July - We had an Open Day at the training dig site as part of the Festival of British Archaeology. The highlight of which, for me, were the Medieval re-enactors. They were camping, so once the punters had gone I wandered over and ended up practicing archery until I got blood blisters on my fingers, having dinner with them, and generally hanging out. They seemed quite keen to adopt me, and I had a whale of a time, so if I can find time somehow I may try and get involved. I could learn sword fighting, you guys! And then I went to my very first con. It was a small one in Canterbury, and I had a ball, met lots of people and generally overcame all the social anxiety I'd been having about it. Then there was more hole-digging - the Roman site was pretty interesting, but more tedious than last year. We're pretty sure that they were recycling glass and extracting silver from lead, though. (The site is not far from the main road to the lead mines at Charterhouse, so that would make sense.) I spent the first few days of the dig camping on site with the woman who was organising it. I probably shouldn't mention all the slightly tipsy driving around fields we did after hours. >_> (Please note that bit about fields - we would no way in hell have gone on the road.) Then there was another Open Day, this time about prehistory on Bathampton Down. I did a lot of burbling away about things and ended up in the local paper. I think that might have been my 15 minutes of fame. Alas.

And then it was somehow August - Which was the second week of the Roman dig, a few days to myself, and then off to Spain for a couple of weeks holiday, visting my cousin. I am such a wimp about the heat. I do not do well when the mercury goes over 30. While here I've been to Ronda, the Malaga Feria, and Antequerra, but mostly I have been by the pool.

At the end of the month, my brother and his wife (lol, my brother has a wife. I will never get over that) are coming to stay for a couple of days before she goes to Italy to do a Masters course. After that, my brother will be staying with me for a while, depending on if/when he can get himself a job over here. I think that might be it? At that point I may have access to enough time and brain to keep track of my f-lists.

Meanwhile, I have missed all of Torchwood: Miracle Day so far. I was going to try and catch it, but then I didn't, and now I'm not sure I can be bothered. What say you, f-list? Is it worth the effort to catch up?

I have had a very busy week with the orchard and moving stuff at the farm that BACAS use as a base. Two days at the farm, two work days at the orchard (one in the pouring rain) plus the Wassail yesterday. In addition, I had yoga on Tuesday, choir on Wednesday, and the BACAS lecture on Thursday. On Friday I finally sorted out all the Stuff I have acquired for the orchard and BACAS. This entailed a trip to the tip, and to Argos for a bookcase of a very specific size.

For the curious, here are the two songs we're doing for choir at the moment.

( Youtubez )

taldragon and lazyknight came over from London for the Wassail, which went really well. The weather was fine and not too cold, which was brilliant considering how much rain we've had this week. There was music and fire and cider, and a chap called January who led the proceedings. I handed lazyknight my camera, so there will be pics soon!

However now, because I am too tired to concentrate on anything much I am uploading the pics I took on various holidays in 2009. Because that is how far behind I am. Oops! Anyway, here are a few from the Old Forest and Winchester Cathedral.

( A Brief Jaunt Through Hampshire )

So, I went to New Zealand.

My little brother got married, I ate a lot of sushi, drank a lot of coffee and caught up with a lot of people. (Although not as many people as I had hoped, due to the weird scatteredness of my brain of late.) I had a lovely three weeks, in all. :o)

One friend pointed out that since my rent is paid till the end of August, I could probably afford to take some time out from the working world. I thought that was a bloody good idea, so I am going to spend the next three weeks getting myself over the jetlag and rounding up my brain from the various places to which it has wandered and generally doing a spring clean of my whole life.

One of the things I had forgotten about New Zealand is the amazing landscape. I was in my home town for two days. While I was there I took this shot of Mount Erin from Te Mata Peak. I kind of miss that light and the crazy crumpled land. I hadn't realised how much.

I just downloaded the nearly 1200 pictures I took in Greece. That's nearly 120 photos a day. Er, oops?

Anyway, here's one that leapt out at me as I was scanning through them. Sunset on Santorini.

First of all, let it be known that I really bloody hate the first week after the clocks change. I get thrown by it really badly, and spend a week exhausted.

Not helped by the frustrations of not more than sporadic internet connection at work for the last two days. Emails have been dodgy at best, websites... well, it took me nearly an hour to get someone booked on a course, normally a two minute job. Heads were meeting desks all over the office.

Tired or no, I went swimming last night. I managed 20 lengths of the 50m pool. I swum a whole kilometer! Whoo!

Tonight I went to hear Philip Pullman at the Guildhall, talking about his new book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. His publishers decided to do a series of books re-imagining myths of the world - mythological fanfic, if you will. They invited a number of authors to pick a myth and retell it in their own way, which I find a fascinating idea and I'll be looking into it. (The publisher is Canongate if you're interested and don't want to wait for me to sort myself out!) I managed to restrain myself from adding it to my To Read List, but he's a very interesting speaker.

Tomorrow, I will throw a load of things in a suitcase (it's OK, I have a list) and jet off to Firenze for the weekend. I have only ever been on flying visits to Florence, and this will be another one, but this time I plan to see some of the sights I have missed previously. The Uffizi and David have been quite thoroughly Done, so this time I am going to the Palazzo Vecchio and Museo del Bargello and probably some other places that I will pick out of the guide book on the way there.

Ciao darlings, have a wonderful Easter.

There are places and times that fire the imagination. For me, Canterbury in October is one of those places in time. Here are four stories that wanted to be told.

( Canterbury Tales )

I prefer the Expressive layout, as it shows the icon for each post but the colour scheme is right.

The art for the icon is by a French artist who goes by Misstigri. You can check out her stuff here. It's lovely and whimsical.

And while we're here, have some more picspam. These are all from our trip to the Camargue area, down on the south coast of Provence.

( The Camargue )

I finally heard back from the property managers about whether I can have a cat, and the answer is a conditional 'Yes'.

The conditions are an additional 2 weeks worth of security deposit, that if it's a male it must be fixed (apparently the landlord has had a previous bad experience with moron tenants whose unspayed male cat was kept indoors and the inevitable happened), and that if I put a catflap in I have to pay to have it put in and removed again at the end of the tenancy. In short, it will be an expensive business, and therefore won't happen in the next couple of months, what with months of jetsetting, and Christmas and all. But it could happen. :oD

( And now onto the pic-spam: )

If it helps, this is in the third week of the Provence trip, so there's probably a couple more from Provence, then there's the weekend in Spain, the weekend in Kent, and now the weekend in the Cotswolds. Plus some autumnal pictures I took around Bath at leaden_sand's request. I probably won't have got all of those up by the time I go to Florence, so put that on the list as well.

I ended up buying a 2Gb card and a spare battery for my camera, because one or the other kept running out on me.

( On to the picspam! )

Let me talk to you about ( Aix en Provence )