juliet

Things I have been doing this week:

• Harvesting weeds and experimenting with herbal teas from actual herbs (thyme with a little honey is good for sniffly blocked-up-ness, it seems).
• Hanging out with Finlay, who continues to work hard on his "lying down and snoozing" skills. He's also getting much better at down-stay, & will now stay put for long enough for me to go upstairs & fetch things, as long as I do it quickly. (This is good as the stairs aren't great for his hips, really.) His ear infection is back, so ho! for the vets where he behaved very very well until he tried to bite the vet :/ whilst having Ear 2 examined, after which he behaved very very well again. I am a little concerned but hoping it was a one-off and will spend time prodding at his ears to teach him not to react. This evening we have found out that he likes chestnuts.
• Visiting lovelybug and bathtubgin -- lovely to see both of them! Finlay came too, and we went for a nice walk around the common.
• Starting New Job! Except I'm not properly working yet because I need to observe lessons before I can teach them. First observation is tomorrow afternoon.
• Fixing sysadmin-y things for the Organisation for Transformative Works.
• Starting in on the Russian-learning again from the free online version of the Princeton Russian Course, which (so far) is very good. I am moving very slowly through it. привет!
• Dealing with the Continuing Sciatica Saga. Vascular surgeon confirms that it is sciatica rather than Exploding Leg Disease. Nice sports/remedial massage person charged me a really quite reasonable sum of money to cause me significant pain in a hopefully-therapeutic fashion (it does feel better today, after aching like hell post-massage. GP has promised to refer me to physio. Progress!
• Going climbing! Which is probably not good for the leg but hey, I FAIL TO CARE, because if I let my various joint issues stop me from doing stuff then I would have been stapled to the sofa for the last several years. (Except sitting on the sofa hurts atm too, so, um.) Anyway. I am improving! Also I fall off at intervals. Both of these are good things. (Falling off because that implies I'm trying to climb beyond my abilities, which is how you improve, right?)
• Baking biscuits. Mmm tasty biscuits.
• Contemplating NaNoWriMo.
• Buying books at the Anarchist Bookfair. Which was top fun.

Right, that will do.

I love overnight trains for the time-savings (do not waste entire day with 14 hr journey!) but do not love them for the experience of trying to sleep in an upright seat. Or even two upright seats. What I really love in overnight trains is where they have proper sleepers which I can actually afford (c.f. Russia, China, Vietnam, SE Asia generally. Actually even the London-Scotland sleepers are affordable with advance tickets, as was the Cologne-Moscow one. The Sydney-Brisbane service doesn't have any sort of sleeper.).

Anyway! So after maybe 6 hrs of interrupted sleep and a 7am arrival into Brisbane, I went in search of COFFEE and now I am vibrating slightly. (And feel a little unwell, which is my *other* reaction to the consumption of caffeine.) On the upside, actually did Useful Work (of the sort that translates into Useful Cash) over breakfast. (Should now do more Useful Work, really.)

Things that are the awesome:
* wireless modem enabling me to sit on floor in Roma St station & have internets, also in cafe & have internets, etc etc.
* nice person who let me have the time remaining in their locker for free (even if I was v slightly suspicious about this & did not *entirely* relax until I was back here & could rescue rucksack).
* it is sunny in Brisbane!
* I am going to go snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef!

Thing which is really really awesome: went surfing yesterday morning & actually got on waves at the *correct* point, viz, before rather than after they had broken. (Baby surfers learn on the white water bit; being a big wuss, I kind of got stuck there for a while.) Admittedly the waves in question were pretty titchy, but still. The advantage of having spent so much time messing around in the white water is that I'm now pretty confident/comfortable on the board once I'm on my feet. Hopefully will get a bit of surfing in tomorrow in Agnes Water assuming the conditions are anything like.

Equally hopefully, will make my bus connection (should have 15 min for a 1km walk... I might give the coach terminal a ring, they're usually quite helpful about this sort of thing IME) this afternoon. Otherwise I will have to get a bus to Fingerboard Road, wild camp overnight (I am in fact equipped to do this if need be, assuming I can get water in Bundaberg, since the next few days includes a night's pack-everything-including-water-in camping on a coral island), & get another bus to Agnes Water in the morning.

Have now booked my train ticket to Melbourne in a fortnight's time, as well as booking shipping home for Cepheus-the-bike and a tea-chest full of Stuff, and telling my not-exactly-landlady when I'm leaving[0]. Which is all a little alarming, and also sad. Not that I'll make it back home before the start of July, mind: freighter travel is what you might call *sedate* in its speed.

This post brought to you by a combination of caffeine and sleep deprivation. Whee!

[0] NB: anyone sending letters that will leave the UK after about the start of May, or parcels[1] that will leave the UK after the start of this week: these should prob be sent c/o my cousin Carol in Melbourne.
[1] This is not just wild optimism, I am expecting at least one parcel before I leave :)

I have had a very busy week!

Wednesday I headed up to the Blue Mountains, for a day's walkabout with Blue Mountains Walkabout, an Aboriginal owned and guided operation. It was, of course, absolutely pissing it down, but they don't cancel for bad weather, so we set off as planned from Faulconbridge. (Three of us plus Evan the guide.)

(A general note: any statements made about Aboriginal culture are my best understanding of what I've read about/been told. I am very open to any corrections if I've gotten things wrong & anyone reading this wants to correct me!)

( walking about )

I'd very strongly recommend it to anyone who's in the area -- very much worth it. Although I was shattered by the time I got home!

I have also been doing much socialising: met cryx for coffee on Thursday, in a nice fair-trade place in Glebe which had vegan chocolate cupcakes! And the company was excellent :) Friday night I went over to geekboyoz's, for pizza & several episodes of True Blood (which is gory, slightly ridiculous, & has a ludicrous amount of sex in, but which is v entertaining). And I am v fond of just hanging out with nice people. Then yesterday I met up with electricant for a couple of beers at the Red Oak, which is a beer cafe/microbrewery. Good beer & good conversation = a splendid thing!

Things that I have broken this week:
- my socks (see above).
- the Tab key on the eeeeeepc, after it booted up with weird keys-not-working, & I took some keycaps off to have a look, and then broke the Tab key getting it back on. (And halfway broke the 2, as well.) Next time I booted it: no problems. GO FIGURE.
- the extension cable on the USB modem (at least, that is my current conclusion for why it drops out intermittently if I'm using the extension cable when on the sofa).
- my plans for returning home, in that the freighter to SF is now delayed, so I won't make the QM2, & am thus getting a freighter from Philadelphia to Tilbury instead. And will miss Glastonbury, & uon's sister's wedding. Boo. Still: could be worse. Thumbs crossed nothing else changes!

I have also discovered that I appear to have developed some kind of surfing-dependency. Hadn't been in all week (due to bluebottles at first, & then torrential downpour), and have been off/on grumpy all week. Went down this morning & spent two hrs pissing around on a board (I am getting better!), came out feeling outrageously cheerful, and got lots of work done in the afternoon. Fvck knows what I'm going to do when I get back to London; either visit Brighton[3] a *lot*, or find something else equally cheering.

Surfing is aces partly because I really don't think about anything else *but* the waves & what I/my board is doing for the entire time I'm in the water. And the waves just keep coming! It's like meditation, but with additional going 'zoom'! And then falling off and getting half a ton of water & sand up your nose, but there we go. (I have surfing calluses on my hands now. I am v proud.)

[0] Songs have many functions in Aboriginal culture: lore/laws, social information, stories, navigation... a songline is a route between various sacred/ceremonial/etc sites.
[1] The Aboriginal group that used to live here were the Darug, but the last full-blooded Darug person died in the 19th c -- the population was very heavily hit by a smallpox epidemic immediately after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. The only Darug remaining are people who have Darug ancestry -- they're trying to recapture/rebuild what they can of their cultural knowledge, but a lot of it is lost forever now. Evan said that he spends a lot of his spare time looking for Aboriginal sites in the Blue Mountains.
[2] Dreamtime is not a very good translation of the concept -- I get the impression that it doesn't translate well at all into English. I've heard it before translated as lore/laws/cultural understanding (by the Anangu people up by Uluru). Evan described it more as a way of being/experiencing; as being in touch with country/land and with what's going on around you. The link between lore/understanding and country is very, very strong in Aboriginal culture.
[3] I gather Brighton has a surfing beach?

What I was going to do last night:
* watch some TV;
* knit a bit.

What I actually did last night:
* was struck by INSPIRATION whilst cooking dinner, and got this fic (which has been hanging around nearly-finished for a good couple of months now) finished and posted;
* spoke to my parents;
* wrote a long email to uon about the brokenness of my social brain;
* watched a couple of very good vids;
* knitted a bit.

So I think that was a successful change of plan.

Now I have to do WORK, and get it finished in time to get to Mardi Gras on time.

(This posted from the iJournal Mac client, which seems to work fine with DW.)

I have been up to many many things in the last couple of weeks.

uon and I had a splendid time touring New South Wales in the Kiss-Men (c. catsgomiaow van for 12 days. We went across the Blue Mountains, up the far side (so into some of the flattish, hotter, parts), then back up into the mountains and across the Great Dividing Range to Tenterfield, for the Exodus festival. The whole "mountain" thing was occasionally a little bit of a trial, since the van did not like going up hills very much and tended to overheat a bit. I can sympathise. There was only one occasion on which we turned the engine off and heard the radiator bubbling...

Beastwatch included:
* kangaroos grazing 50m away from the van as uon cooked dinner (that was in the Warrambungles National Park, which also had amazing STARS. And a to-scale model solar system en route to it, because there's an observatory up there. We have photos of most of it but the inner bits because we didn't actually go to the observatory.)
* more kangaroos bounding across the road etc (also in Warrambungles).
* wallaroos, or possibly wallabies.
* not one but TWO GIANT LIZARDS, as in about 1.5m long. I suspect them of trying to get in touch with uon's Alien Masters.
* lots of birds of various sorts.
* a possum! On the last night, when I woke up in the middle of the night & wanted to go to the beach to look at it in the moonlight. Possum was more exciting than moonlit beach, tbh.

The festival was fab, once we got over our fear that a little light rain on the Friday meant OMGELEVEN OCEANS OF MUD (everyone else was remarkably unbothered & seemed to be treating it as a nice break from the blazing sunshine. They were of course Correct.). There was a river about 2km away which we (along with everyone else) went for a swim in, which was absolutely lovely. More festivals should have rivers. Nice rivers, not "of mud" rivers. It also had a waterfall: best. massage. ever. Gum trees are particularly well suited to pretty shiny psytrance lights - the whole site was gorgeous, and remarkably litter-free.

On the way back, we managed both to cover 700km in two days in a van with a top speed of about 90kph; and to score a couple of afternoons on the beach. Hurrah. The v equitable division of labour continued, viz, I drove, and uon navigated, fed me water and chocolate, operated the iPod and magic radio whatsit, put up with me singing, provided alcoholic beverages on arrival at each evening's destination, cooked dinner, and washed up. He is either a sucker, or very very nice.[0]

( Sydney and my birthday )

uon to the airport on Saturday (wah!), & have spent my time since then primarily trying to sort out gainful employment, unpacking, etc etc. Also wandering around the area, which has been most enjoyable. V v much looking forward to spending 4 months here - and it's incredibly freeing, not knowing anyone and not having any responsibilities beyond "making the rent". (Which is not to say that I don't miss y'all, I hasten to add. I'm having fun, though :-) )

Bed now - I have to get up earlyish tomorrow to wait in for the arrival of a shiny new fridge. Oh! And there are photos of my lovely flat available!

[0] To be fair, a significant chunk of that lot is definitely Passenger's Job not driver's; and it was quite a tiring van to drive, being elderly and a little recalcitrant, so expecting me to operate dangerous things like knives and fire after a day of van-wrangling might have been unwise. Which only leaves the washing-up, and as anyone who has seen uon at a party after about 2am knows, he is peculiar and actively seems to enjoy washing-up. So I'm not lazy. Honest.

I appear to have cut all my hair off. More accurately, marnameow did it for me. I think it's about at a no2 all over, except done with the kitchen scissors, because a) I was bitching & complaining & threatening to shave it all off anyway because it needed a cut, & b) we'd both had Some Wine.

I am not yet *entirely* sure of my opinion, but I've been thinking about going Really Really Short for ages, so...

I virtually never see films at the cinema but this week saw No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers' latest) on Tuesday with marnameow & dogrando; and then St Trinian's on Friday with uon. They were both v good in very different ways, although NCFOM had rather more in the "people drowning in their own blood" line (I probably only actually watched about 95% of it & had my eyes shut for the rest). St T was awesome fun, and very very silly. uon commented:
"I was expecting to see a shit film, but what I actually saw was a rather good music video."
which I think is about right.

Curiously, I suspect that St T would have suffered more, of the two, from being seen on TV screen rather than cinema-size screen. I also think that I only liked NCFOM because it was done by the Coen Brothers and therefore was able to stay just the right side of not-horrible (re blood, serial killers, etc).

Then last night went over to spikeylady & ciphergoth's, and saw assorted lovely people and generally had a splendid evening. Hurrah. Today I feel a little "tired" (copyright atommickbrane) but need to resurrect myself sufficiently to drill holes in the outside wall so I can put plant-pots on shelves there.

Also I have only 2 days left of being not-30.

The ever-lovely uon & I spent last weekend at the Waveform Project festival, down near Exeter. And it was entirely made of awesome. Highlights, in no particular order:

• Cycling to festival! This was far less stressful than customary hanging around for bus kerfuffle. Also we got there at the same time as the bus-people from our train (much to all of their surprise :) ).
• TIPI. The tipi was amazingly great. I normally camp only under sufferance; this I found actively enjoyable. It was enormous (big enough for us + bikes at least twice over), and you could stand up in it, and there were cushions & rugs & a little table & lanterns.
• FIRE IN TIPI. Even more awesome. Plus we were able to get enough wood for 3 nights of fires just by gleaning from under a couple of trees, which was nice. Good to sit around it on Sat night with mouseboks & luciousa, as well.
• Massive hippyness. We took part in the opening ceremony on Friday night (around the wishing tree!), and the Earthdance whatsit on Saturday night, & it was as hippy as a very hippy thing, & really very lovely indeed.
• On the hippy subject: lovely chillout area, with a really sweet little garden/shrine, with plants in pots, and bits of pretty things and junk and little notes.... I now want to make one in the allotment!
• Music: fab all over. If you like psytrance, anyway. Although actually I found myself also dancing to hard dance, and gabba, and a bunch of other stuff. Even some minimal techno in the chillout area on Sunday night.
• Everyone there was nice. And cheerful, and friendly, and entirely up for a good time. And chatty - we fell into conversation with loads of people, & all of them were ace.
• Saturday night in the MonsterTent was probably the friendliest & most loved-up crowd I've been in. I happily dumped all my stuff (including phone, wallet, & camera) by the side of the tent & got on with the dancing.
• Compost toilets! I approve. Also they stayed clean - enough so that when wandering around barefoot on Sat/Sun afternoon, I didn't bother putting my shoes back on to visit them (the advantages of wooden construction).
• Stars. Beautiful clear night Friday & Saturday, & the stars were absolutely amazing. I'd forgotten there are so many.
• Civilised campsite: nobody making 'orrible racket all night or nearly setting fire to themselves & everyone around them (thank you Glastonbury Idiots) or anything.
• Lovely food - the Furnace in particular did food that actually tasted like stuff I'd eat at home. Also the Moonbeam Cafe with a storming veggie breakfast inc sosmix & potatoes. And all the staff friendly & chatty as well.
• Only 3,500 or so people - so you kept running into people again, which was nice.
• SUNSHINE. Undoubtedly this made a big difference - there was grass around, and you could sit down, and it was very cheering. Hurrah for the sun.
• V little litter. And a decent recycling/composting/etc policy.
• Dancing in the sunshine to lovely psytrance. Aw man.
• Pimms from a roving Pirate Pimms Cart!
• Police being surprisingly tolerant when surrounded by fvcked & talkative ravers on Saturday night :-)
• People doing fire poi & fire staff & so on every night by the wishing tree who were actually rather good & worth watching.
• Trees! And generally pretty site all over (we saw DEER on the way home).
• Arriving at Exeter St Davids on the way home with 50min to kill - time enough for 2 x swift halves apiece (6 guest beers!) & an unexpected chat with some v friendly elderly chaps, one of whom used to live in Bermondsey & the other work on Tooley St, in the 1960s/70s (apparently there used to be lots of prostitutes under the railway arches back then). We thought they might be anti-festival-goers but not at all :-)

I have doubtless forgotten lots of things. It was basically perfect from start to finish - I swear we spent the entire time grinning. I am totally going back next year. (As long as they keep it small, anyway - the organiser said something about the site having a 50,000 capacity. That would be rub. Up to 10,000 would prob be OK but they really really should stop there. Small festivals = Much Better.)

Edit: doop's photos, my photos.

I spent this weekend having MUCH FUN.

( Acid on Sea! )

dogrando, marnameow, & I headed to Earls Court for the Great British Beer Festival. Located fernasto (down from Manchester, hurrah), & boyofbadgers & katstevens. Drank tasty beer. Talked nonsense (some of it beer-related). Discovered that beer-decisions made much easier by the fact that it was the end of the festival & they were running out of beer. People brought me beer without me having to do much in the way of effort. Hurrah. We got all enthusiastic about going to Poptimism afterwards, but by the time we'd had some dinner, it was getting late & we were too tired, so returned to Bermondsey instead.

uon & go on a Bicycling Adventure. Specifically, on this occasion we were Adventuring to Brighton. (Which is <60 miles from home, in fact - a v pleasant cycle). The purpose of the exercise was for uon to do his super-domestique thang ;-) & pace me a bit faster than I'm normally inclined to go. Also to go swimming & for tasty food.

The first 20mi or so were spent in extracting ourselves from London, via the A23 through Streatham & Croydon (OK at 9-10am on a Sunday but not a road I'd like to tackle later in the day). It was sunny, and a lovely day for a ride; and concentrating on navigating London meant that I got over my usual 10-mi or so hump (i.e. it takes me about that long to get into the swing of things) without really noticing it. We crossed the M25 just north of Reigate, which meant that we got to go down Reigate Hill. This is an *immense* amount of fun; sadly I didn't quite manage to break the speed limit (40mph), but only because the car in front had to brake for a corner which I'd have been able to take flat out otherwise.

Got slightly lost in Reigate, due to me not concentrating on the one-way system, but managed to extract ourselves & continue. I was doing reasonably well with the hanging onto doop's wheel (in "grim death" fashion when gradients sloped upwards; quite easily on the flat; overtaking him on downhills as I have better bike), and we were making splendid time. Stopped at the Hedgehog Inn (near Copthorne) for chips & BEER just after midday, at 32mi. Realised on departure that my rear brake was off, & possibly had been off for the duration. Whoops.

Unfortunately it was shortly after that that I registered Something Amiss with my back wheel: viz, a visit from the P****ure Fairy[0]. The customary round of cursing ensued as I struggled with the removal of the excessively tight tyre (& eventually gave up & got doop to do it. Again. I can get it back on OK, though.). Somewhat unnerved at this point as I was feeling very untrusting of the rear tyre (inspection revealed it to be increasingly bald & scarred); had brought only 1 spare inner (the other being still on the coffee table awaiting fixing after the Dun Run); and had just discovered what appeared to be a very slow flat on the front as well. We went for the "pump everything up & hope for the best" option, & planned for a detour to Haywards Heath in 5 or 6 miles to locate a bike shop.

The next couple of miles were Not Good in speed terms - inflation level of tyres makes a massive difference. We did manage to find a Halfords in Haywards Heath, though, which reassured me; and after another 5 min of pumping it looked like both tyres were doing a bit better & should hold out.

Thus off! to Ditchling & the Beacon. I was pleased with myself on the way into Ditchling, as I managed to hold doop's wheel almost all the way to the top of a couple of hills (the increasing headwind helped my determination here...). The sun was back out again in full force by now, so we stopped in Ditchling for suncream application, water, & a handful of fortifying biscuits before tackling the Beacon. We looked up the road.
d: "That big green thing up there - that's the Beacon?"
J: "Yes, yes, it is."
d: "And we're going to cycle up that? Woman, we are both crazy."

Having done my best to push myself up most of the hills, I confess to returning to my customary "granny gear & twiddle" approach at this point (doop stormed off ahead as per). I will try it a bit faster next time! Made it up successfully albeit at average speed of 4mph; and the view at the top really is fantastic, right over the Downs in both directions, and back towards London, and down to the sea. Unfortunately the next couple of miles, which should have been rapid freewheel (mostly) were instead rapid battle into headwind; but the scenery continued glorious. Then DOWN the hill into Brighton (featuring several Experiments With Rapid Downhill Braking at traffic lights, inc doop's rear wheel locking up with thankfully no ill effect), & to the SEA!

We had a swim (best thing ever!), sat on the beach, & congratulated ourselves on getting to the seaside under our own steam :-) Then took ourselves off to Terre a Terre for a very very very nice dinner. I confess that I am now thinking that this is definitely a ride that warrants a repeat performance! Although probably cannot manage Terre a Terre on every occasion ;-)

59 mi, 4h15 riding time for riding average of 13.1mph (very good for me over that distance). 7h15 total time (faffage inc pub, tyre, Halfords, suncream application, etc etc - we weren't worrying about total time at all). Must ride the Beacon faster next time!


[0] 3 visits in 3 rides, after nothing at all for 2000 miles or so. I bought new tyres today.


Today I am at work. Boo to work. But it is nearly hometime.

Yesterday I was blonde. (well, sort of)

Today I am green. Hurrah. Not sure if I will stick with it post-Glasto or go back to blue; we'll see how well it lasts (I suspect less well than the blue).

Other weekend activity included: watching the Glastonbury film at the Scoop with dogrando, marnameow, & uon & drinking *way* too much red wine (the film was ace though!); being hungover (whoops); failing to go boshing due to being knackered; lots of allotmenting (weeding & planting things & harvesting more lovely raspberries & the first blackberries); eating pizza; watching DR WHO OMGELEVEN; 2 visits to the greasy spoon; assorted exciting household chores; checking the tent for Glastonbury (it is intact, good).