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Watching the Detectives

First things first: the week wound up being unexpectedly tiring/ill-making but for good reasons if also stressful ones, so that made me erratic again. But at this point it would be erratic of me not to be erratic, I suppose.

Anyway, got a lovely

yuletide assignment, so fingers crossed, but I was very happy not to be an initial pinch hit! Not in itself, because that can be very cool and the only time I was a fairly early (I don't think it was initial) pinch hit I got 3 treats, BUT I went all out for 4 super-obscure requests and I nevertheless matched with someone! There was a visible offer for Enigma which also made me happy, but that means nothing, as bucket offers are invisible & visible ones may well be offering/not offering characters that would prevent matchability. BUT STILL. Someone not me also looked at it and went, yes, there should be fic! XD

I'm determined to catch up a bit with my watching posts, and we now enter the point that it really did become the summer of the cosy detectives, and this is still not all of them, and I didn't even bother including s3 of Beyond Paradise which I also watched in this same stretch, or started, anyway:

* The Drama channel finally came through with s2 & 3 of Miss Scarlet & the Duke! They showed s1 in 2023, which I loved, and I've had to wait all that time for more & I thought they'd lost the rights to it or something. It felt like at least three years! Unfortunately, I did accidentally manage to miss the first two episodes, but overall, again a thoroughly engaging run & I enjoyed it a lot. My favourite ep was where she and her rival detective guy (not the Duke) got snowed in a hotel in France or somewhere and had to work together and against each other to solve it. Top notch, full marks for trapped together and rivals forced to work together tropes done v well.

Not technically a cosy though. It is a lot of fun and isn't especially dark but nevertheless nothing with this banger of an opening credit sequence can be counted as cosy. Only downmarks being for William and Eliza clearly never going to be getting together, although, tbf, they do have good reason for it. Anyway, excellent, would totally be fannish if I was writing much and could get hold of it properly.

* Ch5 then chimed in with Murder Most Puzzling, which was only 4 episodes long and my DVR bailed on recording two of them (there were a lot of things all on TV at the same time, it was difficult for it), but this was daft yet surprisingly good in many ways and starred Phyllis Logan, finally freed from Downton Abbey and allowed to swear and also solve crime as the famous Puzzle Lady, with the complication of her not in fact creating her own puzzles - her brilliant introverted niece with relationship issues actually did that. Is a bit hard to rate exactly due to missing half of a very short series.

* Drama's original series Outrageous, about the Mitfords, which I mentioned several times while I was watching it, and does remain one of the best new TV series I've seen in a while - lively, engaging, able to navigate the more serious aspects pretty well too & a great cast.

* Finally gave up on Ghosts (US) about two or three eps into s4, though, because while it can be fun and sweet itself too, there's just so much painfully formulaic writing in so many of the episodes, the scales tipped from fun-if-flawed to just not worth it any longer and I remembered that I can just tap out if I want to, so I did. (I mean, it does make me appreciate how damn good UK Ghosts was, but I can do that by rewatching it).

Then there were some films I watched upstairs (whether by iPlayer on my tablet, or managed to get to on the dvd despite summer) which I will write about and some I watched downstairs which I cannot write about because I watched them. They were good. I was extremely tired (ill). It was summer. It is ridiculous with the ME/CFS to note that, at the same time, with the same level of brain and (lack of) energy, I took in significantly more of the things I watched upstairs on a bed whereas things I had to watch downstairs sitting up, I'm just *shrug* I watched it. (I listed all these in a post once before, so I mentioned them already). But, yeah. It's ridiculous. It's no wonder people always just wind up thinking we're making it all up. (Please don't open the window, all my energy will depart and I need to be lying down to watch films, sorry. By myself. Quarter of an hour at a time. Very slowly.)

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Stray Kids "Astronaut"

Entry tags:

meme,
music

Dept. of Memes

Music Meme, Day 4

A song that you know all the lyrics of: This one initially felt difficult, until I remembered recently hearing on the radio (yes, I still listen to the radio; I don't spotify) Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road." It was one of the songs on "Born to Run," the album that catapulted him into fame's corrosive klieg light.

He was young, and the lyrics he wrote here are full of the kind of thoughts a young person thinks of as wisdom. These days I hear different things in the song than I did when I first heard it, particularly in the rough way he treats the woman, Mary, in the song. Still, I remember it so well because Bob, Dr. Gonzo and I put it into our small repertoire when we were a monumentally unsuccessful rock and roll band. We loved singing it - Bob on the melody, Dr. Gonzo and I doing two-part harmony.

When I heard it recently, I started to sing along, until my throat thickened with tears, possibly because I remembered singing it when I was young and thought I had what was wisdom - I don't know. But I know every word, every syllable of the song.

Watch on YouTube

And just to be completist, here are links to the previous days' entries.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

It's Sunday...

... and grey and wet and unpleasant...

... so of course our heating isn't working.

Technician did an emergency visit, determined what parts to order...
... and they'll be installed this week.

Time for old-school heating:

... nope, can't get the vid of my ... er... the German is Ofen, but it's not the cooking kind? Oven can't be right, Stove? ... to work... *grumbles and pokes teh interwebs*

Entry tags:

1SE for October 2025

Watch on YouTube

Regarding the penultimate video (30 October): Whenever the bloke goes away, Astro goes into a heightened state of alertness. He comes into the front room every evening to inspect the adult humans. If he finds me alone, he will go and sit on the mat by the front door. He curls up and faces me with his ears back, half-closes his eyes, and stays there until I go to bed. He follows me upstairs and curls up on the landing. I don't know if he stays there all night, but I often find him there when I get up in the morning.

If he sees both of us in the front room, he will come and stand on me for a short while, make biscuits on my legs, and then transfer to the bloke's lap, where he rolls onto his back and flops out blissfully. It's as if he can't relax completely if Alpha Cat isn't present.

Comet, on the other hand, couldn't care less about us in the evening. He's only interested if Humuhumu is around and has left her door open so he can sleep on her bed. When she isn't here, he walks around the landing and gives occasional plaintive yowls.

Current Mood: touched
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Stray Kids "Runners"

Entry tags:

Dept. of Memes

Music Meme, Day 3

A song that makes you cry: As I get older there are more pieces of music that seem to bring tears to my eyes, but one song never fails to make me weep, sometimes so hard that I have to force myself to stop; Paul Simon's "An American Tune." Paul Simon does his own song proud, but I find that these days, I love Willie Nelson's version. There's so much weariness laced with stubborn hope in the song's words, and Nelson sings as if he's known every day of that weariness, and gotten up every day with that stubborn hope somewhere in his heart. And the words about coming in the age's most uncertain hour? Now I weep even more as I listen.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: determined

Entry tags:

How is it November Already?

So my revised target for writing this year has been to start each new month with more words than I finished that month the previous year with. Largely due to the fic part of my writing brain having unlocked itself back in July I have been solidly making that target since then. This month however was always going to be a challenge because, well, last November I wrote nearly 13,000 words. However, while I did not come anywhere close to that I will be starting November with 6000 words more than I started last November with - which given that my monthly target is around 6300 words, feels true to target.

33609 / 75000 (44.81%)

Once again I'll be doing

mini_wrimo with a target of 250 words a day. (Signups are still open if you're doing a writing challenge this month and think it might be useful.) I'm also doing Nablopomo as usual, so between here, my film blog and my food blog I'm planning to blog every day. (We'll see!) I'm giving myself an overall target for this month of 10,000 words with a stretch goal of 15,000. Given that according to my spreadsheet my daily target for this month is 333 words a day (which has a pleasing ring to it) I should really have signed up for that, but that would require me remembering to put the figures in the spreadsheet before signing up and I did not do that. Also I know from experience that 250 words is sustainable over the month so why set myself up to fail?

385 / 10000 (3.85%)

Also, I am now on holiday from work for a fortnight. I very much need it. *basks*

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Another white night last night. Finally drifted off well after 3 and was ripped out of sleep five hours later by a caller who at once hung up on me. And I was having such a nice complicated dream too, details of course irrevocably gone. Something to do with plots and poitics in an imaginary country. Rolled over to go back to sleep-- I get up at 8:30 for nobody-- but couldn't. Thus spent the day awake and heavy-eyed and grouchy.

Grouch contributed to the current bête noir, which is people who press the 'audible signal only' button at intersections, thinking they're going to make the light change by doing so. I know people don't read signs but on days like today it irks me unreasonably. If I weren't a Torontonian I'd ask them 'why did you press that button?' and see what they had to say, but I am and I don't. Luckily or un-, the audible signal no longer sounds when people press it: which is tough on the semi-sighted.

Thus accomplished nothing today beyond getting a scrip from the pharmacy and cooking up the (rarely come by these days) chicken livers in a ginger orange sauce. It's been so long since I've had them that I forgot my recipe calls for green onions to go with and didn't buy any, but I did add frozen, putatively Canadian, broccoli for extra iron. I hope it's not just Green Giant putting maple leaves on their packages but eyes were too gunky to decipher the print on the label.

This blog assures me that every November I sneeze and cough and run at the nose so my current waterlogged state is simply same old, same old. Any antihistamine or sinus meds I can find of course have Tylenol in them so it's probably just as well that my system has taken against alcohol. However, when I finally weighed myself this morning after six weeks of cowardice, I discovered that last month's overindulgence in Black Russians and crême liqueurs had no lasting impact and I'm actually down half a kilo. So must keep it up. Winter and its couch potatodom are fast approaching.

Entry tags:

finland

Pastry and donut (do donuts count as pastry?) market

There is a wide distribution of flaky pastries that are very good in Finnish grocery stores, even little ones. The danishes and chocolate croissants and the pecan ones are some of my favorites. I like these more than donuts in general, so it doesn't bother me much usually, but:

The state of Finnish donuts is lamentable.

The most popular kind here is a berry jelly-filled donut rolled in granulated sugar or topped with pink icing. Ring donuts with pink or chocolate icing are not uncommon. But glazed (my 3rd favorite) and Bavarian cream (my 2nd favorite) are unknown, although the plain pastry cream is very occasionally, and I've never seen an eclair (my favorite), not even a frozen one. It's almost annoying enough to get me to try making them (but not quite).

Because I prefer the texture of flaky pastry, I usually like these more than I miss eclairs and Bavarian cream, but. Sometimes I just remember for some reason - usually something I read or watched - and get very sad.

Entry tags:

swimtrek

Vacationing Sardinia

... from the island's main harbour, Olbia, it's an hour's drive north to the nice little tourist harbour Palau where the ferries to the La Maddalena Archipelago (where the SwimTrek takes... water) embark.

I'd passed through last year, so I knew which campground I wanted, because... SEA! beach!

( moar pics ;) )

Entry tags:

Poem: "One Big Beautiful BS"

One Big Beautiful BS -
that the sludge of the past could ever be forever burned without consequence

Whose bones are they breaking today
drilling out the marrow of our good earth
emptying out communities to collapse in upon themselves?

perhaps they expect neighbors will be eating neighbors the very next day
all these hoarders so eager to end good governance by the people, for the people

( boys in masks waving guns )

___
Last edited: 01Nov25

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Entry tags:

10/31/2025 Meeker Slough

I finally got down to South Richmond Marshes after weeks of failing to do so for no good reason, and while I enjoyed it, I'm glad I didn't go sooner. I'm probably forgetting the schedule of Fall arrivals (I should look it up) and it was early afternoon not early morning, but I was surprised at how few land birds I saw. I remember the path from parking to slough as being quite birdy, but literally no one today. I knew the ducks weren't in yet in any numbers and I was late in the tidal cycle for many shorebirds, but I saw a shortish list of species. A Common Yellowthroat in that location was a surprise, although the habitat is right, and it was fun to see three American White Pelican flying overhead, closer than usual but still pretty far away. ( The list: )

The most disconcerting thing about this foray was the driving. ( cut for stuff about me and cars )

Entry tags:

The Friday Five on Halloween 🎃

[Cutest crochet pumpkin, sitting on my laptop.]

Did you vote in your most recent applicable election? (If you're not yet old enough, do you plan to vote in the future?)

Yes, I did. We had a by-election yesterday, in fact. I am very pleased to report that the Reform candidate was soundly defeated.
Have you ever protested or attended a march?

On a handful of occasions. The first was when I was still in high school, protesting Desert Storm. It is the only time I ever cut school and got detention.
What political issue is the most important to you?

Wow, that is a big question. I think probably human rights. Without the enforcement of a level of fundamental respect for others, we have terrifyingly little recourse from people who would happily trample over everyone else.
Are you a member of a party in your country? If so, which?

Yes to the first question. I’m not putting the answer to the second in a public post.
Do you ever plan to run for office?

I’ve been a paper candidate before, but I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. It’s very nearly mandatory to have to use social media to campaign as a candidate, and I’d rather not.

Entry tags:

art,
rl_25

(no subject)

There's an art gallery across from Loblaws that displays canvases in its front windows so people sitting drinking their Starbucks can view them at leisure. One in particular intrigued me. It was an interior scene, very simple: you were looking from either a table or a bed, out the window at a snow covered yard and a pale green fence. Inspected it more closely as I was returning home. It isn't representational at all. It's squares and rectangles in shades of green and cream, perfectly abstract. Checked it out again next time I was at Loblaws. Nope, table, window, yard, clear as day. I don't know if it was intentionally trompe l'oeil or purely accidental but it was very cool. Gallery is now exhibiting someone else and I don't know if they still have the painting. Couldn't go in to check because rain + October mean the walker's wheels are coated in leaf detritus and mud no matter how often I wipe them, but maybe when things dry out.

As I was eating my roast beef sandwich, someone spoke my name. It was Elmtree's dad, here on one of his return trips from Germany, so we chatted about this and that and what all he does archaeologically in Germany. Analyzes prehistoric grains, evidently, to see where they come from and what they say about prehistoric diet. Then came home to SND putting what looked like paper maché mushrooms on poles in her front yard. No, they're squid: the tentacles will light up when it gets dark. They go with the giant green papier maché tentacles her roommate made and was affixing to the porch roof. SND is very into decorating for the various seasons. Of course Oliver is currently having fits and cows at all the People! strange People! coming to the front door!! He's in the yard but can see them through the gate and, as ever, does not approve.

Entry tags:

Rare Pair Recs

For the

rarepairexchange I received a lovely Still Star-Crossed fic (that had good worldbuilding, good characterization, and excellent research backing it up):

you and you are heart in heart (2,289 words). Even now, two months after Paris’ defeat outside the walls of Verona, unrest still fermented. The peace treaty which had once hinged on Benvolio’s execution now hinged on Benvolio and Rosaline’s wedding.

And there was a lot of other good fic that you should check out. Here are some I liked:

Taking Chances Together (1254 words)
Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Spock/Nyota Uhura
Additional Tags: post s2e1 Amok Time, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Summary:

A musical collaboration turns into more...

In Splendid Sunshine Dressed (1868 words
Fandom: Casablanca (1942)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rick Blaine, Victor Laszlo (Casablanca), Ilsa Lund
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Getting Together
Summary:

Rick is invited back into Ilsa's life... but what about her husband?

Here's to We (1233 words)
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lorraine Anderson/Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan
Additional Tags: Slice of Life, Friends to Lovers, Character Study, Epistolary, Margaret Backstory Typical Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Episode Tag: s06e21 Temporary Duty, Episode Tag: s07e19 Hot Lips is Back In Town, 12x100
Summary:

Snapshots of Margaret and Lorraine's relationship from 1932-1952: growing up, growing apart, and finding their way back.

I Prayed For You (2445 words)
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Father Francis Mulcahy
Additional Tags: Developing Relationship
Summary:

Francis gave something away in hopes of comfort. BJ held that comfort close, even in the late hours.

Or Father Mulchay's trip takes a bit longer than predicted, long enough for some reflection on something developing. (For the 2025 RarePair Exchange!)

How the Halcyon Song Lingers (1348 words)
Fandom: Little Women (2019 Movie - Gerwig)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Theodore "Laurie" Laurence/Amy March
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Parenthood, Married Life, Fall Vibes, Domestic Fluff
Summary:

A glimpse of family life with the Laurences, as Amy and Laurie go for an autumn stroll with little Bess.

Heart's Got Everything to Do With It (6700 words)
Fandom: Tin Man (US TV 2007)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wyatt Cain/DG
Characters: DG (Tin Man), Wyatt Cain, Azkadellia (Tin Man), Jeb Cain
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Kiss, Queen DG
Summary:

It was like the Quest had never ended at all; DG had just run out of signposts to follow. Well, except maybe one....

Heart Murmur (2856 words)
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Reunions, Cunnilingus, Hawkeye Pierce's canonical ED
Summary:

The woman who took the stage was a brunette, fading peroxide-blonde tips neatly tucked into a bun and graying at the temples. She looked better in a pantsuit than she ever had in fatigues, and she’d looked damn good in fatigues. Someone in the crowd wolf-whistled. She tapped her note cards to the podium with a glare that could jump start spontaneous combustion.

Margaret looked the same as ever, even brunette—like she was fully prepared to crush a man into dust for seeing her as less than she was.

The Broadwood Grand (4827 words)
Fandom: Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Colonel Brandon/Marianne Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility)
Additional Tags: Tags Contain Spoilers, Romance, Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Friendship/Love, Romantic Friendship, Love Confessions, Falling In Love, Piano, Family Fluff, POV Third Person Limited, Requited Love, Requited Unrequited Love, Present Tense, Regency Romance, Inspired by Jane Austen, Inspired by Music, Happy Ending, Extended Scene, Canon Compliant
Summary:

Marianne Dashwood’s heart is an ocean, deep and vast and rich with life. He has seen it shimmer with the sunlight of affection, roil with the storms of heartbreak, and reel into the calmness of acceptance; but the breeze will blow when it chooses to blow, and Brandon—ever ready with his sails—would wait forever for good winds.

One Kiss is All it Takes (1470 words)
Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lando Calrissian/Luke Skywalker
Additional Tags: Getting Together, First Kiss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug
Summary:

After what happened on Bespin, Lando visits Luke in the infirmary.

Entry tags:

Airing

The importance of fresh air to health, and the importance of airing things, comes up repeatedly as I read 1920s magazines. This is left over from the late Victorian medical advice, because many diseases were treated with or (thought to be) prevented by fresh air which have since been eliminated, most notably TB. (In 1910s women's magazines the language is very much reminiscent of the miasma theory of disease, even though of course germ theory was established by then.) More so in 1910s, but into the early 1920s, I see notions like:

it's unhealthy for any human being to ever sleep in a room with closed windows

lower incidence of disease in babies in tropical climates is probably due to spending almost all their time outdoors (I still wonder if this notion of low infant illness in the tropics wasn't mistaken? But it might be due to HIGH infant mortality in the US, where breastfeeding was being discouraged and babies were typically fed unpasteurized and frequently spoiled or contaminated cow's milk)

every bed in the house should be made every day and every time the housekeeper makes it, she should first air the bedding, room, and mattress, by opening the windows in the room all the way regardless of temperature, stripping the mattress to leave it bare for some hours, and airing the bedding outdoors and/or beating it before remaking the bed (I've also seen articles which only want the bedding to be aired or beaten once or twice a week)

Of course, this idea of airing bedding is also part of performative housekeeping perfection/cleanliness and cultural standards of class and gender etc, not just health.

My life is distinctly complicated by airing, because wool garments prefer to be aired, shaken, and brushed and only washed if there's no other choice. But the season when we use wool garments is also the season when it is rarely dry outside. Airing wool garments outside would mean setting up a laundry rack outdoors and clipping things to it (because it's also almost always windy through the cold months), and sometimes multiple weeks might pass before a day where I was certain they wouldn't get rained on.

waxjism points out that this is probably not a problem for people without ADHD, because the things probably only really need to be outdoors for a couple of hours, and they would perhaps notice when it started raining and be able to run out and get their laundry. Whereas in our household, putting laundry outside carries a 50% risk that everyone will forget it exists out there until the next time one of us walks outside for another reason. I guess I could use an alarm - maybe even on a day with a chance of rain if it wasn't raining yet? But so much of the autumn and winter the air just looks sodden when you look out the window, even if it isn't raining or snowing.

In constrast to our sad state, apartments almost always have covered balconies, which are ideal for the purpose of airing. I really miss that. (Our balcony is under construction right now, but it doesn't have a roof over it, anyway.) I suppose if you had to dry all your laundry outdoors (and the whole week's on one day), it would be harder to forget it was there and easier to just put the wool up at the same time. That must've been hard for the women of the period in Finland in this season though. There isn't a suitable day every week. They must've been drying things on the stoves and radiators instead.

Entry tags:

the Tommy Hambledon series by Manning Coles

A series of spy adventures written in the 40s and 50s and set from WW1 onwards. I found this series by wandering around the books on Faded Page tagged with WW1, and have been inhaling them this week, the perfect counterbalance to a bad cold and a somewhat stressful half term holiday. 'Manning Coles' is a pseudonym for two people, Adelaide Manning and Cyril Coles, who co-wrote the entire series, and Cyril Coles actually was an undercover agent in Germany during WW1 and based some of the plots on his own experiences; the WW1 story is notably more realistic than any of the others.

Drink To Yesterday, Manning Coles (1940)
The first in the series, and by far the most serious and dark of all the ones I've read. The book has a framing device of the inquest into the mysterious death of an unknown person; we then go back in time to young Michael Kingston's schooldays and his precocious skill at languages with his equally brilliant teacher Mr Hambledon. At the outbreak of war, Mr Hambledon vanishes from the school and young Michael itches to join up and eventually does so under a false name. From there he is then recruited for intelligence work and deployed to Germany as the fake nephew of Hambledon, who is also in the spy business. One of the fascinating things about this book is that the narration, which is mostly from Michael's POV, uses whatever name he's currently going by as his name in the narration; how spies have to adopt specific identities and completely subsume themselves in them is one of the recurring themes of the book. Anyway, while undercover they collect information of various sorts and Michael gets recruited by the head of German intelligence in the area (a war-wounded aristocrat with 'flashing dark eyes' who likes to take young Michael out for dinner and sardonic conversation) and sent back to England, and rapidly discovers that life as a spy is terrifying and morally complicated and involves killing innocent people and destroying their lives. He and Hambledon have a wonderful mentor-friendship-slashy dynamic, there are adventures galore and the whole story is a very good read, though with a rather dark and unhappy ending.

Toast To Tomorrow (also titled Pray Silence, 1940)
I think this one has been my favourite so far. While Tommy Hambledon was Presumed Dead at the end of the previous book, given that the whole series is about him, it's not much of a spoiler to say no, he is not dead. In fact he is in Germany, suffering from amnesia. While amnesiac he concludes that he was a good German soldier during the war, he makes friends with a wide range of people which unfortunately include Hitler, and rises to become quite powerful in the growing Nazi party right up to when he gets his memory back. The authors just throw everything at the amnesia tropefic aspect of this, it's great; in general they love to lean in to all the spy tropes and situations and dramas. Hambledon then sets about trying to make contact with London and sending them intelligence without getting himself killed by the Nazis. Tons of exciting adventures of Hambledon living undercover and trying to figure out how to make the best of his unexpected situation, with unexpected allies and enemies and all sorts of spy shenanigans and a fascinating depiction of Germany just before WW2 got started.

They Tell No Tales (1941)
Back in England in 1938, Hambledon and his faithful comrade acquired in the previous book settle down to live together near Portsmouth and are given a young and somewhat feckless agent to help them investigate why naval ships keep mysteriously blowing up. This one has a large and complicated cast and is closer to a murder mystery than a spy novel, though it's very good fun as that, with all sorts of shenanigans and near-misses and a ruthless German spy ring and Hambledon trying to teach his young agent some survival skills as he sends him out to tackle the problem. The story has disguises and mysterious shootings and red herrings and all the trimmings of a classic spy/crime drama and I had a blast with this one too.

Without Lawful Authority (1943)
This introduces two new main characters, Warnford and Marden. Warnford was a military engineer working on new designs for tanks who was cashiered after his designs mysteriously found their way into the enemy's hands; Marden is the gentleman burglar Warnford caught trying to rob his safe. In the classic Golden Age style they like each other instantly and team up to set about trying to clear Warnford's name and catch the spy who really did steal the tank designs. In the process of this they stumble across an amazing number of other spies, whom they capture, tie them up and leave with a note for Hambledon to tidy up, so then Hambledon is trying to figure out which rogue agents are catching German spies for him. It's a great romp of a plot, though somewhat marred by the ending which involves a showdown in a lunatic asylum which - well, it's period-typical, but not in a good way. But all the same it was a fun light read and Warnford and Marden are great.

And I am looking forward to reading more of these, I believe Hambledon returns undercover to Germany in the next one which should be excellent.

Entry tags:

knypplinge

Curtain rod update

We hung the curtain rod!

The curtains are floor to ceiling length and the old rod was hung just under the crown, but that's not accurate for the house's period - midcentury curtains in Finland were hung above the window, often with a solid wooden valance. So I suggested we should put the new rod there.

I don't have a sewing machine right now, though (it's time to check back with the repairman if he has time to look at it though - he said to try him again in November). I already hemmed these curtains up to about six inches above the floor just a couple years ago (after several years dragging on the floor collecting dust), and now they're even more ridiculous. There's so much pooled on the floor that they look like they've dragged the rod down from the ceiling with their weight.

ETA: The act of typing up this post made me decide it was too ridiculous to stay like that, so I removed the curtains and folded them up until the sewing machine is fixed. The substitute curtains are a pair of dark brown cotton paisley duvet covers - they don't block the light as well but I don't mind too much. They are about the perfect length and they weigh much less. I'm afraid once we have hemmed the curtains we may have to adjust the brackets in order to mount the third one just to handle the weight, because the regular curtains are velvet (the cotton velvet "Sanela" line from Ikea, about ten years old, with big metal grommet holes in the top instead of a pocket like the newer Sanela curtains. I am also going to cut those off and hem the top because they look too modern).

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Lee Know "Youth"

Entry tags:

Dept. of Memes

Musical Meme, Redux*

2. A song that makes you smile

This one was a tad difficult, because I'm more apt to be dour than to smile. Still, this one never fails to make me grin. Lee Know is normally known as part of Stray Kids' danceracha threesome, since he's had a lot of experience as a dancer (he was briefly a backup dancer for BTS before debuting with SKZ) and helps with choreography. He's also the group's "mom" but in this song, he got to be a kid again himself. His voice is actually quite lovely, so listening to this is a pleasure for me. Together the song and its video are absolutely grin-worthy to me.

Here you go.

Watch on YouTube

*I promise I'll try to include music that isn't KPop or the occasional anime intro or outro. But since that's where my musical head has been for the past few months, and probably where it'll be for the foreseeable future, you're going to have to suffer. Or, you know, enjoy. I'll probably have to put this caveat at the bottom of every entry in this meme exercise.

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Major and minor triumphs today. Minor was turning my mattress-- not flipping because I still don't have the upper body strength for that. Or maybe I do, but I no longer have the elbow strength.

Major was... well. Ima Ichiko has two volumes of Phantom Moon Tower side stories but only available in e-format. So I go to honto.jp and order them. And for some reason they only have my ancient-- as in preCovid-- credit card, though I swear I've ordered from them in the past three years. Well, no matter. I enter my credit card details but they won't accept the name. Has to be half-width with a half-width space between, which I could do with MS' language pack on my old XP desktop, the one that died three years ago. Chrome's language input doesn't do it. Which bugged me. Throwing morality to the winds, I went to amazon.jp which of course wouldn't sell me an ebook in Canada. I fudged a Tokyo address for it and then everything was copacetic. They sold me the ebooks, VISA registered the charge, and then... nothing. No link, just a message that it would appear in my Kindle app. The kindle app linked to my bogus Tokyo address, which in my case I have not got. Bummer. This is what comes of ignoring boycotts, and serve me right.

So days pass and I still want those side stories. Back I go to honto and try using all caps for my name, which I guess is what's meant by 大字? Still no luck. Google if there's a way to convert my qwerty fonts to half-width, and there's indeed a web app for that, which informs me that my qwerty fonts *are* half-width. Google some more and come to a guy on reddit howling in frustration about this very problem. (He was trying to register a Japan rail pass online.) Helpful commenters referred him to the same app that did diddly for me. And then a subthread said 'Put your names together if you have more than two,' with instructions. If you're John Thomas Jones, write it JohnThomas Jones. I have an initial on my card. I added that to my first name and hoopla! honto.jp now accepts me. So I have my side stories contained in a link in my gmail account. Can't transfer it to another location-- and somehow all the other very important emails in my inbox got sent to the bin where I had to rescue them-- but for the moment I am triumphant.

Well, slightly triumphant. Typing one finger on the screen is wearying, especially since I keep missing the space bar. I rousted out the bluetooth keyboard that I bought in 2018 thinking to use it again, only to discover that the cable for it has vanished. Maybe I'll try a stylus instead. My butterfingers are tired.

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10/30/2025 Inspiration Trail

It rained briefly earlier in the week, and I only got as far as the corner due to the mud load on my shoes. So the list is a bit short but there were Western Bluebirds, Varied Thrush, Hermit Thrush, and American Robins - that's all four thrushes! - and a large flock of Golden-crowned Sparrows. Then when I'd cleaned off my shoes for the second time and went to stand under the big oak in the dip, suddenly it was very birdy indeed for five or ten minutes, which is what I live for.:) ( The list: )

It's not forecast to rain so I'll try again in a few days.