baroque_mongoose

As I've previously mentioned, a long time ago I was the president of the students' union at the college of further education where I did the secretarial course which I had to do in a hurry because of my dad unexpectedly deciding to sabotage my degree. I didn't especially want to be the president of this students' union, but what had happened was that the previous incumbent had made a massive hash of it (not entirely surprisingly, as he was remarkably immature for his age), and I was a) conveniently there at the time and b) known. I was a member of the local Labour Party, which actually was the Labour Party in those days, and I had already established a good reputation within that context despite having serious reservations about the party's abortion policy at the time. (To put that as briefly as possible, I don't believe abortion is a good thing in itself. There are times when it is the best of a whole slew of bad solutions, which is why I'd still be strongly opposed to banning it; but I do feel that, rather than emphasising abortion as a solution, we need to be looking at what kind of social factors drive women to have abortions and seeing what we can do to fix those. But at the time there was quite a strong "free abortion on demand up to birth" mentality within the party.)

So I had my arm twisted into standing for president, duly got elected, and completely turned things around... not, I hasten to add, on my own; I had the full support and backing of an excellent staff-student liaison officer. I also had a student executive committee who were... varied. Some of them were pretty good. Some were a bit up and down. One of them was, frankly, a bit of a liability (he was nice enough, but far too easily influenced, and there was at least one occasion when I had to do some serious diplomacy to pull his backside out of the fire and then go and yell at him about it afterwards). I didn't half get to work on my negotiation skills in that job.

And then there was Jhangeer. He was, I think, the anti-racism officer. I liked Jhangeer very much; he was by far the most mature of the lot of them. He got on with things, he did a good job, and he was a really interesting conversationalist. He was a Muslim, so we had a lot of discussions about religion in general and learnt a good deal from each other. He was also, sadly, not very well; they didn't know whether he had ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, but either way he was frequently admitted to hospital, and - tragically for someone of Pakistani background - he couldn't eat spices. I thought that was very hard.

Jhangeer wasn't just interested in talking to me about Christianity. He was fascinated by religions in general; whatever your religion happened to be, if he didn't know much about it, he'd want you to explain it to him. And one day he told me that there were a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses in Sheffield and the number seemed to be increasing.

"Oh," I said. "I didn't know that. What makes you say that, in particular?"

"Well, they're building a new JW hall near Hyde Park flats," he explained.

I blinked. I lived, at the time, quite close to Hyde Park flats, and I passed them every day on the bus. "I don't know anything about that," I said. "I know they're building something, but I thought it was a..." (here memory fails me, as it was a very long time ago; I can't recall what I thought they were building, so let's say a sports hall. It may or may not have been.)

"No, no," Jhangeer insisted. "It's definitely a JW hall. It says so on the sign."

"OK," I said. "I'll have a look next time I pass. This is very interesting; I don't know anyone who's a Jehovah's Witness." (I used to - I was at school with one, as it happened; but I didn't in Sheffield.)

So, when the bus went past the flats, I took a closer look at the new building. And there, indeed, I saw the sign Jhangeer had been talking about.

It read: "J W Hall, Contractors."

Current Mood: artistic

All right, I did promise to tell you about M's horse-manure business, so this is it.

It was a thing of beauty, in fact. M explained how he and his mate went round to the local stables, where they were paid to take away the manure. So then they had a lot of horse manure, which they took round to the garden centre, who would pay good money for quality manure. The garden centre, however, also had something they'd happily pay them to take away (I can't recall what it was now); so they took that away, and then went on to their next stop, where they'd sell whatever it was. Rinse and repeat, round in a circle, until at their last stop they were paid to take away something they could then go and sell to the stables. They were making two lots of money at every turn.

I said, "That sounds amazing. It's the ideal business. You make all that money for very little outlay. How was it you stopped doing that?"

M shrugged.

"Oh," he said, "it was me mate. He got sick of shovelling horse s**t!"

Current Mood: silly

Well... today I was going to tell you all about M's horse manure business, and I'd even thought of a good title for it; but that will have to wait, because yesterday's D&D session was absolutely priceless. (Also, yes, I would normally be in church at this hour, but British Summer Time happened... on top of the fact that I've been waking up too early for the last few mornings and it all caught up with me today, so I got the double whammy.)

Anyway. I had our intrepid party exploring a small but moderately complex cave system; this little halfling girl had climbed up onto a ledge right at the back somewhere and got stuck, and her sister had come running out to get help, so the party obviously came in to rescue her. And, of course, this being D&D, there was a good deal else in the cave as well as this poor kid on the ledge.

The very first thing they found was a case of six bottles of finest brandy. As far as they were concerned, that was pretty much random, but I'd put that there for a good reason. What they didn't know was that there was a mimic deeper into the cave system; for those who don't know, a mimic is a moderately big monster which can take any form as long as it's about the right size, and very often it appears in the form of a large wooden chest. They have quite a nasty slam attack, plus - and this is where the brandy comes in - they secrete a strong adhesive by means of which they can grab hold of you and do you further damage by crushing; however, alcohol will dissolve this adhesive easily. Basically, I'm giving them a bit of help if they have the sense to use it.

So most of the party are just picking up the brandy... and then the paladin tries to stop them. He says it's stealing. Of course I think "oh no...". Fortunately, the bard decides to try to convince him that it's all right, they're just going to take it back to its rightful owner, since after all it's not safe in here! The bard rolls a 26 for Bluff, so even though the paladin rolls 22 for Sense Motive, he's convinced, and the brandy ends up in the rogue's haversack. Phew.

After a while (and dealing very adroitly with a centipede swarm in another cave chamber), they reach the entrance of the chamber with the mimic in it, and the wizard asks if her weasel familiar can smell anything in here. Good weasel. Obviously a mimic is going to smell a bit weird to a sensitive little nose. I say, yes, he can smell something strange that he's never smelt before. They enter cautiously, they see the mimic (which is masquerading as the classic battered wooden chest), they learn that the odd smell is coming from this chest. The paladin, who knows all about mimics, promptly attacks it; and, of course, that blows its cover, much to its annoyance. Initiative is rolled (which basically means battle is on).

So when it gets to the mimic's turn, of course it attacks the paladin; and, unfortunately, it rolls extremely well. The paladin has the best armour rating of the whole party, so he's hard to hit, but the mimic hits him. The paladin ends up badly damaged and, inevitably, stuck to the mimic; and if the rest of the party don't manage either to free him or kill the mimic before its next turn, he's going to take further crush damage automatically on every round.

They get him free with the aid of the brandy he very nearly stopped them taking. Which is delightful. What's more, the helpful weasel can now no longer smell anything in the cave system, because the paladin stinks of fine brandy... so if they'd happened to run into the otyugh, he wouldn't have been able to alert them till they were almost on top of it (they didn't; they found and rescued the child first).

As GM, never make the mistake of assuming you're the only storyteller in the room. You get to write the main melody, but the players are going to add their own harmonies and ornaments, and more often than not those are bloomin' amazing.

Current Mood: amused

I don't know what it is about me that drives other people to slap labels on me with such blithe confidence, completely irrespective of the facts. Not all that long ago, someone earnestly informed me that I couldn't hold down a job, despite knowing quite a lot about my life history. I've no idea why they decided that, because there is actually zero evidence to support it. I've certainly had a great deal of difficulty getting jobs in the first place, for a whole slew of reasons... obviously my dad sabotaging my degree was a big one, but also disability hasn't helped (the same person equally earnestly informed me that disability discrimination is illegal in this country and therefore doesn't exist, to which my response was pretty much the same as that of the golem in Terry Pratchett's Feet Of Clay... "To Make A Hollow Laughing"). But if I do manage to get a job, I have no problem at all holding it down. My first major paid job was a one-year contract; it was the presidency of my college students' union, it didn't pay a living wage but we somehow managed on it anyway, and I refused to stand for re-election (despite being asked to) because I had had enough of working full time for less than half what would have been the normal minimum wage if there had been a minimum wage at the time. My second was working for the lingerie business, which I enjoyed and was very good at, and which I'd be doing to this very day if the aforesaid lingerie business hadn't gone b... er... well, it went out of business.

And then I managed to land a clerical job. Which I stuck for seven years, which was actually more than twice as long as anyone else in the same job; if you had that job, you ended up either being invalided out due to stress (which was what happened to me), or moving up-and-sideways, or just moving sideways, or (in one especially sad case) committing suicide. To be fair, I don't know how far the job contributed to the suicide, because that person had a number of other problems too, but I'm pretty certain it didn't help. I'll be honest and say I seriously thought about suicide myself while I was in that job, which just proves how bad it was, because that is a long way away from how I normally think. Apart from that one spell, I haven't been suicidal since I was in my teens.

When I started this job, I had two bosses, M and K. M was awesome. He and I were as different as cheese and Wednesday; you could pretty much guarantee that if one of us was bad at something, the other one would excel at it, and we both recognised that and made a great team. He was also a great character. He liked to derail conversations by telling people he was in a mental hospital when he was 16 (he was; he worked there, and, my word, he had some stories). He once asked me to translate his motto into Latin for him, and like an idiot I agreed to do it before asking what it was. I should have known. M was a Geordie and, shall we say, very straightforward. I ended up handing him a piece of paper bearing the words "numquam stercorem accipio", and he was so delighted that he printed it out in big letters and stuck it on the wall of his office. And then there was the quiet morning when there wasn't a lot to do, so he called me into his office, sat me down, and asked, "Did I ever tell you about me horse-s**t business?"

I said, no. So he told me. It was long, and amusing, and it's probably an entire blog post in its own right for a later date. Suffice it to say, for the time being, that it wasn't a metaphor. This business really did involve a lot of shovelling.

If I'd just had to work for M, all would have been fine; but, sadly, K was in the equation to start with, and when M went off to take up a professorship elsewhere, I was stuck with K all the time. And she was not in any way a reasonable woman.

I think the first point at which I realised she was going to be a serious problem, rather than just someone I had a bit of trouble working with (and right from the start I realised I was far from alone in that respect), was the time I walked into the office one morning and discovered that I had a new e-mail provider. All my work e-mails were on this new account; nothing was missing. Unfortunately, one of the things I routinely had to do as part of my job was send out mass e-mails to various groups within the organisation, and this new provider had no way of doing that. M didn't know anything about it, so I went to see K, complained I now couldn't do my job properly, and asked her what on earth was going on.

"Oh," she said, "we're testing this new provider, so I just transferred you over to them. I know you're all right with tech stuff, so I thought you wouldn't mind."

"But I can't do my job properly!" I protested. "It has no way of allowing me to send mass e-mails. It's not fit for purpose."

"Oh. Well. I wasn't expecting you to get all upset about it."

Right. So... you change my e-mail without any consultation, and then it's my fault when I'm upset because the new system isn't letting me do something I need to do for my job? Right. This is a bit more serious than the airy "oh, you don't really need any disability adaptations" that I got from her when I first started (after I actually injured myself due to not having a particular adaptation I needed, she changed her tune rather fast).

I could go into all sorts of detail about the individual things that she did, but it would be depressing, so I shall just summarise. She was very controlling and she micro-managed (to the point of instructing people to use her favourite font for a document which was personal to them, not her, and would only ever be seen by about three people). She tried to order people around when she had no authority to do so (and there was a string of complaints about her as a result). She told people off for complimenting other people, because, apparently, that was somehow an insult to her (because it wasn't her you were complimenting, I think?). She made everyone under her do things exactly the way she would do them, rather than concentrating on results and just letting people do what worked best for them - she seemed to have no concept that anyone could possibly work in a different way from her. She told other people off for doing things that she did all the time. She randomly decided certain things were insulting or offensive (notoriously, one of them was beginning a sentence with the word "Well...", despite the fact that she did so herself regularly). She was extremely unpredictable; you might be all right if she was in a good mood, so you were on eggshells around her all the time. (I got to the point where I could not only tell she was approaching due to the distinctive clack of her high heels, but I could also gauge pretty well what sort of mood she was in from the sound. Because I had to.) She was also another labeller; she labelled me "aggressive". I was actually terrified of her, so I have no idea where she got that from, but nonetheless she sent me on an assertiveness training course to "deal" with this. And when I explained this to the course tutor, she said, "What is she talking about? You're not in the least aggressive." Yes... I knew that. Everyone else who knew me also knew that. But K was like my parents; if she decided something about someone, that meant it had to be true.

She really was in an unfortunate position. The thing was, she was absolutely brilliant at process. You wanted a process designing, she was the person to ask. If she could have had a job merely doing that, not only would all the people she'd otherwise have managed have been a lot happier, but I'm quite sure that so would she; because it wasn't just that she was an appalling manager - she was also a spectacularly insecure one. I'm convinced, looking back, that most of the reason she was so overbearing and inflexible was that on some level she knew very well she was a terrible manager, and so she had to try to prove to herself that she was a good one by over-controlling. Apparently such jobs do exist these days, but they didn't at the time; if an employer wanted her process skills, they had to give her management responsibilities too, and then just deal with all the resultant wastage. I wasn't the first person to collapse out of that job with stress, and I'm very sure I was also not the last.

But... I did last seven years. And I didn't kill myself, in the end. That has to count for something.

Current Mood: calm

I haven't said a lot about my studies lately because they did get rather messed about. My mother being ill was obviously stressful (from October we didn't know how long she was going to last, but we knew it wouldn't be too long), and of course I wasn't well myself for most of December; so what happened with this module was that I got off to a terrific start, then didn't do much for quite a while because it was so hard to concentrate, then got back into gear and am now motoring along with it. It's really just as well it's not a maths module this time, as those tend to require much more sustained effort, whereas with this one as long as you get the assignments in on time (and I did have to have one extension in February, when the Mum-related stress was particularly bad) you can do everything else whenever you like.

Being back in gear, however, is very satisfying. I have just finished a short course called "Moons of our Solar System", which you can, if you wish, find here: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/moons-our-solar-system/content-section-overview?active-tab=description-tab Most of these short OpenLearn courses have been excellent, but this one has been so far the best of a very fine bunch. I have enjoyed it immensely, and if you have any interest at all in planetary moons, including our own Moon, this one is for you. It's free, it's nominally 24 hours (though it probably won't take you as long as that, even though it's quite video-heavy, unless you delve into all the extra bonus material, of which there is a lot), and you get a badge at the end to show that you've passed it. And it is a whole lot of fun.

Obviously, there is a fair bit about our own Moon; after all, so far it's the only moon in the solar system where we've managed to land anyone. But there's plenty about all the others too. Every major moon in the system is covered, along with several of the more interesting minor ones. (Did you know some asteroids have moons? I didn't; but there it was, a photo of the asteroid Ida and its tiny moon Dactyl.) I knew Europa probably had an ocean of liquid water under its frozen crust, but I didn't realise it's not alone in that respect. A number of other moons of Jupiter and Saturn probably also do. I learnt all about tidal heating, which is the reason many of the outer moons aren't totally frozen; it's probably also what powers the huge amount of vulcanism on Io. (You like active volcanoes? Io is your dream destination. It's covered in them.) I also learnt about cryovulcanism, which happens on worlds where the rock is primarily water ice with an admixture of other ices, and the "magma" is mainly liquid water. I learnt about different types of terrain and how they were probably formed.

And then, of course, there's my favourite moon of all. Titan. I just love Titan, so I already knew a fair bit about it, but I still learnt some new things. Titan is one of Saturn's moons, and the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere (indeed, the atmospheric pressure on Titan is about 1.5 times that on Earth). This atmosphere is about 97% nitrogen, but that other 3% mainly consists of hydrocarbons, predominantly methane and ethane, so you have smog, basically. You can't see the surface of Titan through the atmosphere - it took the Cassini spacecraft and the Huygens probe to do that. Titan is so cold that methane (with a bit of ethane) does exactly what water does on Earth; so there are rivers and lakes on Titan, and it rains, and it's even possible there may be lightning. I mean... that's wild. Not only that, but due to Titan's unique combination of dense atmosphere and low gravity, if you wore a suitably insulated bat-suit you could fly there under your own power. What is not to like here?

It's not all text and videos, either, no matter how informative. You can play Moon Trumps, too. (Do not put that in a search engine. You'll just get images of an obnoxious politician superimposed on a lunar background talking about how he wants the Moon, pretty much.) Moon Trumps is a card game devised by the OU; for some reason, the first time it's linked in the course, the link doesn't work, but the second time it does. You play against the computer, though I have to say I'd love a set of actual cards. The way it works is that each card has a photo of a different moon (some well known, some very obscure), together with some data: size (I think in terms of diameter), density, orbital period, and orbital radius. You pick a card at random and then choose one of the data points about your moon; so, if you got our Moon, that's pretty big, so you'd generally be safe selecting the size. If the data point you've chosen is larger than the corresponding one on the card your opponent picked, you win both cards (unless it's orbital period, when the smaller one wins). Otherwise, your opponent wins the cards. It's a good game and you learn quite a lot by playing it.

I reckon today it'll probably be more astronomy (White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars, anyone?). But I suspect that whatever course I do, it'll have a hard time beating that one.

Current Mood: geeky

I have felt for quite some time that this place needs a better online alias than "New Town"; so from here on I'm going to refer to it as Jankyville, which sums it up pretty adequately. I've now lived here for the best part of seven years; but today is an exciting day, for our (truly hideous) new community centre is finally opening. Yesterday was the food bank's last session in the Portakabin, and this morning Val, our lead volunteer, is overseeing the move into the new building; apparently we were supposed to move yesterday afternoon, immediately following the session, but in true Jankyville fashion they realised they hadn't got the fire extinguishers in place in the new building yet, and it's illegal to use a public building till those are fully installed. So they were hastily installing them while we were handing out food yesterday. (I'm also told that the new building is very nice on the inside, despite being so ugly from the outside. I'm not sure why they had to make it that ugly, but it's probably an architect thing. At least it doesn't have those weird coloured panels in no particular order that seem so popular among architects these days, although the schools do.)

When I first arrived here, we had this thing called "The Wing", which was part of the original primary school (there are now two primary schools, the new one having been built in the last couple of years). This served as the community centre, and it was small but just about adequate for the size the community was at that point. Our church met in there, which is quite hard to imagine now; even then it could be a bit of a squash sometimes, and there's no way we'd all fit in there these days. However, the primary school decided it needed the space back sooner than anyone else had anticipated, so for several months we were without a community centre at all. This was pretty disastrous, to be honest. The groups who could afford it, and for whom it was practical, moved out to the secondary school, which is about 20 minutes away by mobility scooter, significantly more than that if you're walking with small children... so the parent and toddler groups took a body blow. Both the food bank and our church did likewise; our church is still there, but it was really not a good venue for the food bank (even though we didn't have to pay because of the nature of what we do). We were on the top floor, so it was awkward for people to find and they'd have to go through the embarrassment of asking at reception; and even if they already knew where we were, there was still a significant lack of privacy, because if you were an adult turning up at the school on a Wednesday afternoon it was obvious what you were there for.

So the food bank temporarily decamped to one of the neighbouring villages, which was far better for most of our visitors but quite awkward for me to get to, and in fact after Sibyl blew in the middle of a session and I had to be hastily driven home, I had to put my volunteer duties on hold (by mutual agreement) till we were able to return to Jankyville. Thanks a whole bunch, Sibyl.

Eventually they put up a Portakabin and went "there you go, we have a community centre for the time being, and now we're going to build a proper one". In any sensible place they'd have built the proper one right at the start, but this is Jankyville, and it is not a sensible place. The Portakabin wasn't bad after they fixed the leaky roof it arrived with; it was still a bit small, albeit much bigger than The Wing, but it was comfortable and it had decent air conditioning, which, given what the summers tend to be like here, was a very good thing. As a food bank, we were pretty happy with it. We were there quite a long time, and I thought it was going to be a lot longer; but they did, in fact, start building the new centre. Eventually.

And now here it is. Val says the space we have for the food bank is really good; there's plenty of room to set everything up, and we have spacious secure storage, which is essential (we run on Wednesday afternoons and the food is delivered on Tuesdays, so of course it has to be kept somewhere). I don't get to see it for just under four weeks; I'm on the rota every other week, but I won't be there in two weeks as I'll be on the way to the funeral. Well, that's something to look forward to.

My remaining question is: if it takes seven years to get a proper community centre, how long does it take to get shops?

Current Mood: blah

There are quite a few reasons why my ex-husband is my ex-husband, but his intelligence was never one of them. The man is bright. He always believed I was brighter than he was, but I'd dispute that; it's true that we were intelligent in slightly different ways, but I'd say overall we came out about even.

He was (and, of course, still is) also completely blind.

He used to joke about this thing he called the "eyesight to brain ratio", which he said most people reckoned was a constant. And I'd laugh, and say, "Seriously, nobody who's spoken to you for five minutes could doubt that you're very bright." Which was true; but, of course, most people who decided he was an idiot hadn't actually taken the trouble to do that. So, for instance, one day there were some road works in the city centre which didn't have proper safety barriers (I wasn't there, so I don't know if there was no barrier at all or just a bit of tape you wouldn't notice if you were striding along at speed with a white cane, but in either case there was not the sort of thing that should have been there), and he fell into a hole.

Along came this very posh woman who said, and I kid you not: "Excuse me. Do you know you've just fallen down a hole in the pavement?"

You know. As if he couldn't possibly have noticed that for himself. I don't remember exactly what his reply was, but I seem to recall it was fairly biting. Knowing him, he probably told her he was doing an experiment to measure the gravitational constant.

Sadly, this was fairly typical. Of course, once they actually started talking to him, they soon realised their mistake; but it was depressing how often this kind of thing happened, especially since we lived in Sheffield, where for quite a long time one of the local MPs was David Blunkett. We knew him, as a matter of fact. I didn't particularly get on with him because I found him intensely boring; he couldn't talk about anything other than politics (indeed, even Richard Caborn, who was our MP and a whole lot of fun, had to tell him off at a party for droning on interminably on the subject). But there was no denying he was both very bright and very determined, and he got things done in his constituency. With that sort of example in the public eye, why should anyone automatically assume a blind person they meet on the street has to be gaga?

And then there was the time it happened to me.

I'm light-sensitive. I've needed photochromic glasses lo these many years. One very bright sunny day, we were in the city centre and I needed to go to the herb shop on St Paul's Parade; so we went in there, him with his white stick, me with my Reactolites, which at this point were completely black from the outside. We walk up to the counter and I say, "Ah, good morning. Do you have any lovage, please?"

"Oh. Yes, we have. Do you know how to use it, dear?"

I blink. "Well... obviously. Why would I be coming in here asking for lovage if I didn't know how to use it?" (Naturally, I am thinking "why on earth am I being asked this question?". As you would.)

So they sell me the lovage, we leave the shop, and the moment we get outside I realise what was going on, tell my husband, and we both laugh so hard they probably heard us in the shop. I mean... yes, it was stupid, it was insulting, they'd never ask a question like that of anyone who could obviously see, it was all wrong, all of that. But at the same time it was still extremely funny.

I never went back there for lovage again. Not because of that incident, but because the lovage developed an impressively Lovecraftian-looking crop of maggots, and that kind of thing does rather put you off. I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere!

Current Mood: reflective

Our church has a Monday night prayer meeting on Zoom, which I usually attend, largely because it's a very good way of being involved in church life without actually having to go anywhere after dark. (The street lighting in many parts of this town is pretty terrible, apparently because the developers want to save money; they'll power up the street lights properly just before they hand them over to the town council. Therefore there are several places it's not safe for me to go after dark, because the pavements are in such a state that I need to be able to see them. Even where they've been re-done, there are still raised ironworks which could cause problems if I took them at the wrong angle.)

So last night we were praying for the church youth weekend away, which is just coming up. A group of our 11-18s are going off to a castle not very far from here, where they'll get a range of fun activities and teaching. I'm sure they'll all have a great time. And someone decided to pray for those children and teenagers who had chosen not to attend this time, not wanting them to be left out.

Of course, my immediate reaction was "oh, they won't have chosen not to attend - they'll have been told they're not allowed because it's a waste of money". And then I had to stop myself. Actually, no. None of these children is being brought up the way I was. If they're not going this time, it'll be because they've chosen not to, for whatever reason (social anxiety, revising for exams, something else booked, anything you can think of); because every single one of them has reasonable parents who value their children's choices and well-being, and will do their best to accommodate, within reason, what the children want to do. Literally all of them. That is quite a thought. They're not even going to be told it's a waste of money for them to go on trips, but not for their younger siblings; I'd be repeatedly shouted at for asking to be allowed to go on trips, even when they were strongly encouraged for educational reasons, but my sister got to go on a school choir trip. To the USA, of all places (it was perfectly safe to do that at the time). It must have cost a small fortune. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she got that opportunity; I'd just have appreciated having opportunities like that myself in addition, that's all. I'm sure it would have helped build my confidence... oh. Right. Yes. That's probably one of the things my father was afraid might happen.

But, anyway, after the prayer meeting I got to thinking about what would happen if a teenager in our church came to one of the elders and said "I'd really love to go on this youth weekend, but my parents won't let me because it's a waste of money." I am pretty sure the money would very rapidly be found; and if the parents still didn't consent, that would be an indicator that it wasn't really about money at all, and let's just say some conversations would be had. And a careful eye would be kept on the parents by our safeguarding team, because, yes, we have one of those; we have had since we were a considerably smaller church, because our elders read about a major abuse case that happened in another church, and instead of saying "oh, well, that could never happen here", their reaction was "we need to put as much structure in place as we can to make very sure that never happens here". Because, just like the disciples discussed at length in the previous post, we're all human; and because, just like my late father, you don't even have to be deliberately malicious to end up abusing children or other vulnerable people.

Thankfully, that's just a thought experiment. They all got a choice. And that's great to know.

Current Mood: contemplative

Judas Iscariot is often seen as an enigmatic figure; there's a fairly well ingrained cultural perception that Jesus had eleven good disciples and one bad one, so people have wondered throughout history why Judas was so bad when the others weren't. And I honestly think that's the wrong question.

For a start, they were all flawed human beings, and the Gospel accounts don't skate over that in any way. Peter puts his foot in his mouth on several occasions, once so badly that Jesus has to rebuke him sharply ("Get behind me, Satan!" - you know, if you heard that from Jesus, you'd be pretty sure you'd messed up big style). James and John (John! The one who eventually became the apostle of love, and hands down my favourite New Testament writer!) asked Jesus for places of honour in the Kingdom and wanted him to rain down burning sulphur on some town where they hadn't been welcomed. We read about the disciples completely failing to understand Jesus to the point where they couldn't so much as take in what he was saying, squabbling among themselves, and generally acting like... you and me. Of course, the accounts do mention that Judas was also a thief, but he doesn't appear to have been significantly worse than any of the others. He wasn't even the only one who betrayed Jesus; in different ways, all of them did, with the possible exception of John (and I'm not even 100% sure about him, but he was certainly known to the high priest and therefore allowed into the courtyard, where he was able to record some of the events surrounding Jesus' trial; the rest were probably supplied by Nicodemus). Most of them simply ran away. Peter tried to be some kind of use, and ended up disowning Jesus three times... just as Jesus had said he would. Those eleven "good" disciples were no better than any of us would have been in the same situation, but - and here's the bit that really matters - they knew it. And after Jesus was raised from the dead, they came back to him to be forgiven, restored, and eventually transformed. Foot-in-mouth Peter became a powerful and effective preacher. Hot-tempered John became the gentle, encouraging elder we know and love from his letters.

Judas could have been forgiven and restored in exactly the same way as all the others. But he wasn't. He committed suicide. And that, to me, is the real enigma of Judas.

I'm indebted to Elyse Fitzgerald here for a take on Judas I'd never previously considered. I don't know, of course, whether she's right or wrong; but I do know it's psychologically very plausible. Judas, after all, just like all the other disciples, had given up everything to follow his Rabbi. For all his flaws - and we all have those - he was, in effect, a committed Christian. But what may have happened was that he simply, and tragically, misunderstood the nature of Jesus' kingdom.

The crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem certainly did. They thought he was coming to deliver them from the Romans, which explains precisely why they were so fickle; once he'd been arrested by those same Romans, their disappointment welled up into anger. After so much promise, he'd been arrested after all! They must have felt he'd let them down. They can't have taken a great deal of whipping up by the chief priests to demand that he should be crucified. What if Judas thought the same thing?

If that was what he had in his mind, the whole thing plays out very logically. Here was Jesus in Jerusalem. The crowds were on his side; one spark of rebellion in the right place and the whole city would go up like a tinder box against the hated Roman occupiers. And yet Jesus appeared to be doing nothing at all to claim his kingdom. What was to be done? And so Judas conceived a bold plan to force Jesus' hand. If he was betrayed to the Roman authorities, he'd have to defend himself, and he'd have to step up as the rightful King as a result. It was a cunning and resourceful move, and of course Jesus would thank him for it later. Why, he'd probably give Judas some high position of command, since he could be trusted to get things done.

But, of course, Jesus didn't do any of that. There was no question of having his hand forced. He didn't have to do anything just because Judas (or anyone else, for that matter) decided he should have to. He not only didn't defend himself, but he had to tell Peter to put his sword away; he'd come to free us from the power of sin and death, which was a great deal more important than freeing Jerusalem from the Romans, and he knew exactly what he had to do in order to accomplish that. Judas, of course, didn't see any of that, because neither did any of the other disciples at the time. All he saw was that his beautiful bold clever plan had gone horribly wrong, and now he would never be remembered as a cunning kingmaker, but simply as a traitor.

He couldn't see anything beyond that. So he killed himself.

Whether or not that's the right interpretation, Judas was not some fiend incarnate. He was human.

Like you and me.

Current Mood: pensive

I had to postpone yesterday's D&D session at the last minute. This turned out to be just as well, because for one thing a parcel arrived rather sooner than I was expecting it (it was from Buy Wholefoods Online, who are very good, but normally you expect them to take a week), and for another I inexplicably ran out of energy mid-afternoon and had to take a short nap. A nap! At my age! I'm only in my early 60s. (I did have to take afternoon naps regularly when I had Sidney, but that was different, because he used to wake me up around 3 am every night because either he'd blown or he was just about to if I didn't get him to the loo. But that did have an obvious cause.) I think what's going on is that my sleep quality is rather low at the moment, which is not like me; so we'll see if it settles. I didn't sleep especially well last night either.

However, the reason for postponing had nothing to do with either parcels or unexpected naps. It was entirely due to time zone confusion. We have a transatlantic player (I can't recall whether she's USAian or Canadian), and she initially said she'd have to leave half an hour early. I said, no problem, I'm sure we can finish in that time. Unfortunately, what both of us had forgotten was that the clocks over there change three weeks before they do here; I believe it's similar in the autumn, but I can't remember who changes first or how big the discrepancy is. So, about an hour before the session was due to start, she realised that in fact she was going to have to miss half the session if it went ahead, because she was now an hour forward (relative to here) of where she usually was.

So we agreed to postpone, and we also unanimously agreed that we hate clock changes. I've hated them for years. It's not quite so bad in the autumn, but in the spring we go an hour forwards and I end up jet-lagged for most of the subsequent week. It may well have made sense in the days when lighting was not too good, but these days it really doesn't matter; the extra daylight during waking hours doesn't justify the inconvenience caused. Especially since the world as a whole doesn't do it in synch, and I believe some places don't do it at all (including, I believe I'm right in saying, the state of Nevada).

Oh well. They get to explore my small but moderately fiendish cave system next week; and, right now, I'm off to church. I may not make it this time next week, though I'll obviously do my best. The clocks will have changed...

Current Mood: tired

For the funeral, I am being accommodated in Mum's house, which I'm really pleased about because it's a bungalow. While I'm very happy to stay with my sister and her husband, who are both lovely, they have stairs... which I need to get up and down by shuffling on my bottom. (Yes, I can walk a short distance, so I could potentially try to do it standing up, but given the state of my balance it wouldn't be safe. Last time I was there, I'd go downstairs in the morning and then up again at night, and if I'd forgotten to bring the next blister of pills down or whatever, I'd have to ask someone to go and get it, which wasn't really very satisfactory.)

It looks as if I'm going to be put in there along with Elder Niece and Elder Niece's Boyfriend; I'm going to call them Rose and Mike, which are not their names, but they are short and convenient for reference. I didn't know Mike existed until last night, and I was informed at that point that Rose was in the process of moving in with him.

"Oh," I said, "are they thinking of getting married or is it one of those modern relationships?"

"I don't know," replied my sister. "Things are much more complicated these days. There are more steps. But I think they're probably going out."

At which point I laughed, and said that I would rather expect that (at the very least) if she's moving in with him. But it does rather illustrate my point. Modern relationships are bloomin' confusing.

When I was growing up, it was all very simple. You went out with someone, which didn't mean what it does these days; it pretty much did literally mean you went out with them. You'd go for a drink, or a meal, or to the cinema, or whatever. It was expected that you didn't sleep together at that stage, and most people, as far as I know, didn't; there was always the odd one or two, but not a majority. Sometimes that worked out, mostly it didn't, but if it didn't you just went out with someone else once you'd got over the break-up. Eventually you found someone you were really happy with, and who was equally happy with you. You then got engaged, after which you got married, and then you moved in together. That was how I did it (not that I did a great deal of it, since I never found anyone I could seriously imagine actually wanting to sleep with, even after getting to know them for a while), and, should I ever be in the situation where I could sensibly get married again, that is how I will do it again in future. It works. Granted, it does work particularly well for me because I'm on the asexual spectrum; I don't know how well it works for other people because I've never been them. But a set-up where there is no pressure to sleep with someone after half a dozen dates is, as far as I'm concerned, perfect.

These days, as far as I can work out, it's not a linear progression. It's a flowchart. The general expectation has totally flipped over; it used to be that if you slept with someone before you were married, that was odd, and now it appears to be that if you don't sleep with someone almost straight away, that is odd... which, honestly, seems like far too much pressure to me. So now what happens is you meet someone, then not so very long after that you start sleeping with them (even if you don't know them very well) because that's expected, and after that... well, it branches. You might decide to move in together first. Or you might decide to get engaged before you move in together. Or you might decide to (or, indeed, accidentally) start a family, and then move in together. Or you might, as previously, split up, except that now the stakes are much higher because you've already slept together, so the breakup is that much worse, but that's all right because it's just what people do these days.

Obviously I'm not in any way implying that traditional marriages don't break up; for goodness' sake, mine did. All I'm saying is that, on average, people are going to have a lot more bad break-ups if they do things the modern way than if they do them the traditional way. If they consider that acceptable, fair enough; I'm not judging them. I'm very much one for "you do you, as long as doing you doesn't involve treading on anyone else's toes". But, by the same token, I'm going to do me, and that involves not accepting any pressure to sleep with someone I don't know very well just because we've been out for a few dinners. And, frankly, if that person thinks I owe him that because of the few dinners, I'm better off without him anyway. If that's what he wants, there are sex workers who'll sort him out.

Anyway. I am looking forward to meeting this Mike and seeing what manner of person he may be; Rose is a sensible type, so I'm assuming she's probably picked a good one. And, my sister being also a sensible type, she's ditched the expensive hotel we had for Dad's funeral (they served a totally outfacing amount of food, and they were incredibly slow to get it to us), and substituted a nice buffet meal at a golf club, so we can all eat whatever amount we're comfortable with, and Sibyl should hopefully behave herself a bit better. (She blew at one in the morning the night after Dad's funeral. I was not surprised.)

As funerals go, it shouldn't be too bad, I think.

Current Mood: confused

A quick correction to yesterday's entry: all the coronation stuff is confusing even if you are in the SCA, as it turns out. It is the new rulers of Drachenwald who are being crowned, not, as I previously said, the Prince and Princess of Insulae Draconis. The confusion came about because I contacted the principality signet to see if any scrolls were required for Coronation, and he told me that the new Prince and Princess had only just been selected and were probably still wondering what had happened, so they hadn't requested any scrolls yet. But, no, that didn't mean it was their coronation; it simply means that the principality signet deals with any scrolls requested by the Prince and Princess, whereas the kingdom signet, who is a different person, deals with any requested by (at the moment) the Kings. Reigns last for only six months. It's a sensible amount of time.

Anyway. I had an e-mail this morning from a regular correspondent who a) is highly intelligent, b) had some pretty bad things happen to him when he was a child (including a nine-month stay in hospital when he was an infant; that wasn't the worst by any means, but it was the thing he specifically alluded to in this e-mail), and c) is autistic. Well, he says he isn't any more, but let's say the jury is out on that. He was certainly autistic during the entire period when I was dealing with him in person. And what he had to say was that he felt there might be a link between high intelligence and dopamine addiction. He then went on to say that he'd had to find ways to distract himself during that lengthy hospital stay in his infancy, and he felt that that had caused a dopamine addiction which led to him getting distracted (by media and the like) when he should have been giving his children full attention.

I told him gently that I didn't think there was any link between high intelligence and dopamine addiction. I'm about as intelligent as he is on balance (less so in some ways, more in others), and I'm not addicted to dopamine or anything else - not even codeine, though I've been on a high dose of that for the last ten years, as they routinely give it to you to slow your digestion if you have a stoma. (They took me off it cold turkey to replace Sidney with Sibyl. I didn't even notice. Therefore I can't be addicted.) The theory of the stay in hospital causing dopamine addiction is more plausible; nonetheless, the phenomenon of getting distracted when one genuinely needs and/or wants to pay attention to something important is not really to do with dopamine addiction. It's an autistic thing.

My adorable nephew has both autism and Down's Syndrome. He's a lovely child, very cheerful, with a mischievous sense of humour and an awesome sense of rhythm; nonetheless, he is undeniably a handful. You do need to keep both eyes on him at all times, in particular because he has absolutely zero sense of danger and a passion for exploration. This is the boy who once got out through a window, stark naked, and managed to run off as far as the nearest supermarket before he was caught (not massively far, but still not a trivial journey). My brother-in-law, his father, is also autistic, though not nearly so obviously; he's a really nice bloke, also very intelligent (he has a PhD in topology). And he cannot - and knows he cannot - be left alone in charge of Adorable Nephew, because sooner or later he will get distracted, no matter how good his intentions. That is exactly what was happening with my correspondent.

And, I believe, also with my father; but he was at a great disadvantage in relation to the other two, because he didn't know he was autistic. He couldn't know. It wasn't even identified as a thing until he was in his late teens, and even then he probably wouldn't have been recognised as autistic because the children who were being studied were so autistic that they were largely shut off from the world. My father was more like my brother-in-law; he was intelligent and could work round it, to a large extent (and, indeed, it had its benefits for him - he was an outstanding accountant). Nonetheless, I'm quite sure now about what must have happened.

Both of my parents wanted children; however, when I came along, my father rapidly discovered he couldn't cope with me. That, obviously, wasn't the sort of thing he could accept or admit, even to himself, because he'd always had it instilled into him that everyone could automatically cope with their own children even if they had difficulty with other people's. So if I was too much for him and he needed to go and listen to a record while my mother kept me out of his way, then, logically, that meant that I was simply the wrong sort of child. If he'd only had the right sort of child, everything would have been fine. And so, of course, everything that happened after that needed to reinforce this narrative; and when my sisters were born, it became even worse. Obviously my father wasn't going to decide he now had three wrong children, so if he couldn't cope with my sisters, that again got put onto me. I was the scapegoat for my sisters long before they were old enough to do anything actively wrong. (My mother went along with all this because of course she did; I thought for a long time that she was the one in charge, because she was forceful and aggressive while my father was quiet and apparently laid back, but no, it wasn't like that at all. Most married couples end up with compromises, so that they have things this particular way in this particular situation to please one partner and then a similar thing elsewhere to please the other one. With my parents, everything actually revolved around my father. My mother just did everything the way he liked, and what she liked never came into consideration; so of course he was quiet and laid back. Life was running in the grooves he had dictated for it. When he died, it took her a long time to get used to the fact that now she could use the hi-fi, watch television whenever she felt like it, and even have her eggs the way she liked.)

So, obviously, I knew I was the wrong sort of child; and I spent my entire childhood trying to work out who I was supposed to become in order to be the right sort of child, and therefore gain some measure of acceptance and tolerance from my parents. (I knew very well it was who I was, rather than what I'd done. I was a very well-behaved child, mainly because I thought that would help. It didn't.) But I now know I was completely missing the point. My parents couldn't tell me who they wanted me to be, because they didn't know; and they didn't know because "the right sort of child" didn't exist. No matter what sort of child I'd been, I would inevitably have been the wrong sort; and once I was established as the wrong sort of child, I had to remain so. If my parents had ever admitted that I was even nearly as good as my sisters, they'd have had to ask themselves a lot of hard questions, and neither of them had the introspective capacity to do that.

It occurred to me this morning that the amount of money in this disputed legacy is roughly about a third of what I could reasonably have earned during my lifetime if my father hadn't sabotaged my degree (this is assuming I didn't take any particularly high-powered jobs, since I probably wouldn't have wanted them). It also occurs to me that if I don't get the money, I'll have to give up on my current degree, which means that my father will have sabotaged it twice, in effect.

I think I understand him, at last. He couldn't have risked my doing as well as other people. That might have suggested I was just as good as other people, and I think he literally could not have handled that.

Current Mood: rueful

In the SCA, monarchs rotate on a regular basis, which seems an excellent way to do it; of course, they're also not really monarchs but duarchs, if I may coin a word. From the very beginning of the SCA, nobody has ever fought for him/herself in a tournament; you fight for your consort. You may be married to, or in a romantic relationship with, this person, but equally well you may not; the last Prince of Insulae Draconis, Etienne, reigned with Princess Susannah, who was old enough to be at the very least his mother and possibly his grandmother. Etienne is actually married to someone else, who presumably didn't want to be Princess. Basically, your consort just needs to be someone you consider worth fighting for, and there aren't any restrictions on their gender. Indeed, in the next tournament coming up, we have Lady A, who is fighting for Lord B and being fought for by Lord C; and that sort of thing isn't uncommon. Then there's Lady D, who is definitely straight, but quite happily fought for Lady E in the last tournament. A consort in the SCA is basically a friend you trust to be able to rule with you if you win the tournament; and it's also not uncommon for someone to rule more than once with different consorts. It is, in any case, joint rule. The consort isn't there for decoration - they're there to work (and being SCA royalty is quite a bit of work).

All of which explains why, at the moment, Drachenwald has two Kings, Tuomas and Gilbert. I don't really know King Tuomas, but King Gilbert is a jolly nice bloke. And Their Majesties put out an appeal to the artisans of the realm for small tokens to be handed out to people attending their first court.

"What a good idea," I thought, "and how thoughtful of Their Majesties to start such a tradition." It was only later I discovered that they hadn't started it; this particular tradition has been going for years. I just didn't get anything at my first court, so I had no idea one was supposed to. They'd probably run out of tokens at the time.

So I bought five of those dinky little square manilla boxes from Hobbycraft, and what I'm doing at the moment is decorating them with knotwork. Their Majesties expressed a preference for the Drachenwald colours, which are red, yellow, and black; that could look a little stark if one wasn't careful, so, after some thought, I decided to keep the black to a minimum. I'm just using that to outline the knotwork. The knotwork is being done in red, and the background yellow. I've painted the insides of the boxes white, just because the manilla is rather dull on its own.

If I do this again I'm priming them; these boxes are a little too absorbent for comfort, so they're tending to dull the colours slightly. I think it's livable with, but I'd have preferred something a bit livelier. It also means I need two coats of paint on everything, and having to paint and then repaint complex knotwork designs is kind of fiddly. Nonetheless, they're starting to look good. Each box has a different square knotwork motif on the lid; you can get a multiplicity of different designs from the same basic grid just by putting the break lines in different places. They will, all being well, go to Coronation with me in June (this, by the way, is the coronation of the new Prince and Princess of Insulae Draconis, not the Drachenwald one... yes, I know, it's a bit confusing if you're not in the SCA), and then Their Majesties can duly dish them out.

It's just a small thing. But with everything else that's going on around now, it's really helpful.

Current Mood: cheerful

When I was seventeen, my parents got a car for the first time. They had to do that because the bus my dad had been catching to work for the last thirteen years was being axed, and fortunately my mum had kept her driving licence current, just in case. Several of my contemporaries were getting driving lessons, and so of course I asked if I could have them too, as I thought it might possibly turn out to be useful; it wasn't that I really wanted to drive, but there might come a time when I needed to.

That was a really stupid thing to do. I should have known. I got shouted at for asking. Well, of course I did.

Fast forward four years. Now I'm 21 and at university, my sisters are 17, and - again, of course - they get given driving lessons without question. I wasn't even resentful; that wasn't because I was some kind of saint, but simply because I was so used to that kind of thing happening. However badly I was treated, I could always at least rely on the fact that my sisters wouldn't have to put up with the same thing. And it very briefly crossed my mind to ask for driving lessons again, but then I realised two things. One was that I wouldn't get them; but, more importantly, I now knew I didn't really want them. I was, at this point, living in a city with excellent public transport, and I planned to stay there once I graduated. As long as I lived there, I wouldn't need to drive at all, and since I didn't want to learn simply for the fun of it (and never had), then why get shouted at again for asking for lessons?

So I never did learn to drive, and I've therefore never owned a car, and that's been astonishingly freeing. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying cars are bad. I appreciate a lift now and then, when I need one, which isn't very often. But I have saved a huge amount of hassle and expense by not owning one. When I worked for the University, my boss at one point got very frustrated and asked me why I always had more money than she did when I got paid less. I replied, "It's simple. I don't run a car." (And I also happened to know that she lived on the tram route, and therefore not running a car would be an equally easy option for her.)

She ditched the car. I was a little surprised she did that, because most people, once they have a car, need it; but credit to her for that. I think she ended up happier without it.

I don't have a TV either. It seems to be very much taken for granted that, when you grow up, you get a car and a TV as soon as you can; indeed, I know one person who seemed to think that having a car was some kind of essential marker of full adulthood, and, even though he knew very well I didn't want a car, kept telling me that I should do this and do that "and then you'll be able to get a car". Similarly the TV, although that doesn't seem to be considered quite so essential; nonetheless, it is expected that you will own one, in particular by the TV licensing people, who hassle you about the licence every year. If you don't need a TV licence, you have to make a formal declaration that you don't own a TV, because it is so universally expected that you do. And, again, I don't think TVs are bad; it is possible that there may be something on now and then that I might want to watch. However, the amount I would want to watch it wouldn't justify the licence fee, and I don't like TV very much on the whole, so I wouldn't want to watch it simply in order to feel I'd got my money's worth out of it. The thing is, I much prefer to be doing something. I don't enjoy being passive. Something has to be pretty gripping before I can simply sit and watch it without doing something like knitting to keep me occupied while it's going on.

Oh, and I don't own a smartphone. I did honestly try with that one. Everyone went on about how good they were, so I tried one out for two years or so before the benighted thing finally broke, and, with huge relief, I replaced it with an ordinary stupidphone. (To be fair, I rarely use my mobile, and I wouldn't have it at all were it not for the fact that there are some websites where you can't buy anything unless you give them a mobile number... and IKEA is, unfortunately, one of them. It's where I get all my bedding.) I discovered that using the Internet on a mobile phone really doesn't work for me; the screen is too small so you have to scroll all the time, but, more than anything else, the keyboard is incredibly annoying to use. I'm a competent touch typist. You cannot touch type on a mobile phone keyboard. And if I'm not going to access the Internet on my mobile, then I don't need it to be a smartphone. Great that they work for most other people, but they don't for me. I'll stick with my laptop, thank you very much (and, in any case, the mobile reception round here is frankly awful).

I'm not an ascetic. I have plenty of things I do use and get on with, like the laptop, and the washing machine, and the air fryer, and so on. But there is still something remarkably liberating about not owning things you don't especially want just because everyone else expects you to own them. You're not under any obligation to do that.

Ironically, my parents' original refusal to get me driving lessons probably sprang from a fear that my being able to get around as I liked would make it more difficult to control me; but it actually meant that I had more money in the long run than I would otherwise have done, so it was harder for them to control me financially. Kismet, I suppose. Anyway, at least that side of things all worked out well in the end.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Before I get into the body of this post, a very brief update: I've spoken to quite a number of people about my decision, and all of them bar one are fully convinced that I'm doing exactly the right thing. That one person is Athos. Athos is a very fine bloke, but he's also not a Christian, so inevitably he doesn't fully understand my perspective; it's also true to say that, while he fully acknowledges and sympathises with the fact that I found my childhood extremely painful, he hesitates to call it abuse. He prefers to think of it in terms of my parents being very old-fashioned... which, indeed, they were, but that's by no means the full story. There were many periods of history in which children were devalued (and we have ancient books of terrible parenting advice, at least one of which pretty much boils down to "all right, it's fine to love your children, but just don't make that obvious to them in any way"); even so, I know of no period of history where it was common practice to submit your children to a constant barrage of opprobrium, sarcasm, and contempt. That, honestly, has always been abuse, whatever period of history you lived in.

As a somewhat relevant aside, I recall, as a child, reading the part of the Bible where the children come running to Jesus and the disciples try to stop them. You can just hear them now, can't you? "Go away - don't bother the Rabbi; he's far too important to have time for the likes of you." And Jesus isn't having any of that. He welcomes the children. He makes a point of doing so. He is happy to give them time, and to bless them. And whenever I read that, I always used to think, "Jesus was such a wonderful person, but he'd have been in so much trouble with my parents for doing that. They'd have been so angry they'd probably even have told him off in front of his disciples, for giving children the idea that they were of any importance."

And now I look back and think: yes, he would. And I'd have really enjoyed seeing how he dealt with it. That is not how I actually became a Christian, but I do remember thinking even then that I'd rather follow Jesus than my parents. Why wouldn't anyone, in the situation I was in? And, although I didn't become a Christian till my early teens, I'm pretty sure it happened because God took that thought at the time and said "yes, you do get the choice to do that".

Anyway. What I really want to talk about today is formal dress.

Some people seem to have a natural talent for it. Porthos is one of them. Even when he was basically a friendly blimp, he was still capable of looking effortlessly well turned out, and now that he's lost so much weight he's even more dapper. He has always been able to rock a fancy waistcoat; I was a little afraid that losing weight would compromise that somewhat (a bold design does well on a large canvas), but no, he's still doing that with aplomb. Both d'Artagnan and I, however, are honestly pretty hopeless with formal dress; in my case that's not usually a big deal, but of course poor old d'Artagnan is supposed to look shevelled and kempt for anything up to three hours on stage (one of the Bach Passions, for instance, when more often than not he's singing the Evangelist, so he's kind of conspicuous). Neither of us has any trouble looking nicely put together the moment we've finished assembling ourselves; no, the problem is staying that way. Either of us could pretty much rumple a suit of full plate armour.

It has to be said that by the time d'Artagnan has been on stage for ten minutes he's usually starting to deteriorate sartorially, but by that point it doesn't really matter because he's also started singing. And once most people hear that, they're not going to care if he's wearing an old sack tied up with a bit of rope, frankly. Not having the voice of an angel myself, I had to find a different solution; and I did. It was called a sari.

Saris are wonderful. The thing is, in India, everything is going to crease no matter what, so what you do is you go in for clothing whose elegance doesn't depend on not getting creased. The sari is a superb example of this. They are also, despite the standard Western perception, actually not hard to wear.

The secret of any sari is the petticoat underneath; this is what holds it in place. (I always had large pockets put into mine, because you obviously can't put them in the sari itself.) You take the plain end of the sari, wrap it around yourself, pleat it fairly heavily at the front, and then tuck all the pleats into the top of the petticoat. Then you drape the fancy end, which is called the pallu, over your shoulder. Saris are traditionally worn either alone (in cultures which are relaxed about occasional boobs appearing) or, more commonly, over a very cropped top in fabric that matches the sari. However, you can wear them over anything, and I've never been one for very cropped tops, so I generally wore mine over a blouse or a jumper, depending on the weather. At one concert, which was in Den Haag, I discovered another great thing about saris; I happened to be wearing a particularly flimsy one (you can do this, because your petticoat and other under-layers are completely opaque), and when I got out of the concert it was pouring with rain. I got back to my hotel soaking wet, took off the sari, hung it over the shower rail... and it was dry the next morning, so I could pack it. It wasn't even especially warm.

Well... you can wear a sari in a wheelchair, but it is likely to be awkward, so I don't these days; on the other hand, one also rumples less (certainly less obviously - I will still get rumpled about the seat due to sitting down, but nobody is going to notice that because ordinarily I won't be standing up), so it's a trade-off. For the last concert I made a magnificent maxi skirt.

I've yet to see d'Artagnan appearing on stage in an embroidered kurti, but I'm not entirely going to rule it out!

Current Mood: busy

It occurred to me this morning that if I had to pick only one adjective to describe my late father, it would be "joyless". That summed him up in a nutshell, and it was very sad. He had a rotten childhood (so bad he could never be persuaded to talk about it; I wish he'd had counselling like I did - it would have been a great help), and this was very much complicated by the fact that he was autistic at a time when that wasn't really understood at all. He never got an official diagnosis, but it was still very obvious. He did things like drumming on the table and fiddling with things at meals (activities which would have got any of us into serious trouble); filing his extensive record collection meticulously on cards (and each recording had a paper slip inside it, which he'd date-stamp every time he played it); playing all the FreeCell games on his computer in strict numerical order; and, of course, woe betide anyone who disturbed any of his routines. He couldn't cope with people in the house who weren't immediate family, with very few exceptions, and honestly he couldn't cope with children being children, either. The autism helped to make him an outstandingly good accountant, and he made a great deal of money, but nonetheless he never really learnt to enjoy his life.

He said he didn't have a religion, but that wasn't quite true. Never was there a more devoted member of the Temple of Mammon outside the pages of A Christmas Carol, although, unlike Mr Scrooge, he didn't see any objection to spending money on luxuries, as long as he was the one doing it. I remember having to hide new (and necessary) clothing purchases from him when I was at university, so I didn't get the third degree about it ("what on earth have you bought that for? You've got enough clothes - you don't need it!"). I'd just wear it quietly later and rely on the fact that he never noticed anything anyone wore. It worked every single time. He spent thousands of pounds on hi-fi equipment, but that was fine, because it was for him. Just him. Nobody else was allowed to touch it, not even my mother. So it was all right.

We were expensive nuisances when we were growing up, and we were constantly reminded of the fact. Every time one of us needed a new pair of shoes, Mum would bemoan the expense to Dad, at length, in front of us, so we knew what a bother we were and what enormous sacrifices they had to make for us. I invariably felt guilty about needing new shoes. We'd get one pair of shoes each (I once asked if I could have some winter boots, and got shouted at); Mum had an entire collection of shoes under the bed, because she liked shoes. She needed at least one pair to go with every outfit, and I knew that if I had to have a pair of shoes, it meant she felt she couldn't buy a new pair herself that week, and that wasn't right, because she needed to have little treats, because she had to put up with us all the time.

And then there were things like paper and sticky tape. In my parents' house (it wasn't "our house" - you weren't allowed to say that because you hadn't paid for any of it), these were doled out very grudgingly because they were, apparently, Expensive. (It took me years to discover they weren't, and it was really more about control than about money.) You couldn't just go and help yourself to a sheet of paper; you had to go and ask for one, and heaven help you if you wanted sticky tape. You'd have to submit to a lengthy interrogation about what you wanted it for, and if the purpose was deemed frivolous (which it usually was, since, after all, it was only children's crafts, and those weren't important), you didn't get any. They could, without even thinking about it, have bought us each a pad of paper and a reel of sticky tape, but if they'd done that they wouldn't have had so much control over us. It was the same with the lights; electricity was also Expensive, so you weren't allowed to put the light on without asking except in your own room, and generally speaking you'd be told no, because you "should" be able to see what you were doing in semi-darkness (and, in any case, what you were doing wasn't important, it was just children's stuff anyway). Granted, they were incandescent bulbs at the time, so more expensive than modern LEDs; but, even so, the hi-fi equipment was perfectly reasonable and affordable, so there was no sensible reason to pinch pennies bringing up children, other than that Dad wanted to. I get it. We were a nuisance. Nobody likes spending money on a nuisance. Hi-fi equipment is much better; it doesn't ever need your attention when you don't feel like giving it.

But, for all his expensive hi-fi equipment, the poor man wasn't happy, and I think there was something in him that very much resented the fact that other people were, even though they didn't have as much money as he did. He once told me he'd far rather I was successful (in worldly terms) than happy, which tells you a lot about him. I wasn't supposed to be happy; I was supposed to have a lot of money and be miserable, just like he was. When I was at university, he told me one day out of the blue that he was seriously considering disinheriting me. Of course I asked him why; I wanted to know what I'd done to deserve that. On being asked that, he found he couldn't answer me. He genuinely didn't know. He never made that threat again. I can only guess what was going on subconsciously, but certainly the fact that I was slipping out of his direct control probably had something to do with it; I also think the fact that I was suddenly enjoying life didn't help. I'd got away, at least for most of the time, from a place where I was constantly controlled, denigrated, and devalued. I had friends whom I could go and visit, and equally who could come and visit me because I was now living in a space that was controlled by me rather than by Dad. Looking back, that must have been awful for him. (I know that sounds sarcastic; it isn't. It must have been genuinely painful for him to find that I preferred freedom to the rigid slot he'd taken so much care to build for me. I wasn't just supposed to be completely controlled and poorly treated, but I was supposed to be content with that.)

I think I understand him a lot better now. The thing was, being happy despite not having a great deal of money actually went against his religion. Money was his god. He spent his entire life being convinced it could make someone happy, in the teeth of all evidence to the contrary (he was never very capable of accepting evidence when it went against his preconceived ideas). So someone being happy without being rich was, I think, a complete offence to him, though he never understood that consciously. He was notoriously bad at articulating his feelings, even to himself.

He was abusive, controlling, inflexible, and rude. But, when you get right down to it, he was also completely deceived.

Poor old blighter.

Current Mood: productive

Well. I've talked to quite a number of people, and everyone agrees that I'm doing exactly the right thing. I also feel a deep sense of peace about it. So I have just e-mailed my sister with a formal decision. If it there is no way of making it possible for me to inherit on equal terms with my sisters, then I formally decline the inheritance and direct that it should be given, in its entirety, to the Bible Society. And serve that abusive, controlling old atheist right. He'd have been absolutely furious and I do not give a straw.

Yes, it's a lot of money (it's six figures); but it's still only money. It's not a fair exchange for either my dignity or my reputation, let alone both. I also could not in all honesty claim to need it. It would certainly be very useful; it would mean I could move back up to Kendal, as I've wanted to do for very many years (since well before I came here, in fact - the only reason I'm here at all is because of my illness in 2016). But it's not necessary. I'm financially stable, and have been so ever since shortly after I finally managed to get rid of Bob the Lodger. I have something Elon Musk doesn't have (and is chronically unable to obtain): enough. I spent a lot of years not having enough, so I know what enough looks like. I'm content.

I can't go without adding that d'Artagnan has been a rock through all this. I had a rotten upbringing and a rotten marriage... but I have the very best best friend. And that's something no amount of money can buy.

My sister, who's 100% in my corner, is now doing her best to work out how to dismantle the monkey trap. If she does, excellent; if not, well, I'm not under any obligation to put my hand in it. And that's how things are going to be.

Current Mood: peaceful

I'm bad with money. Terrible with money, in fact. It doesn't matter that I've never been in any financial trouble that I caused myself (I've been in some that other people caused, but that was rather different). It also doesn't matter that I managed remarkably well on a very low income for about half my adult life. Or that my credit rating is good, and mostly holding steady but occasionally rising. Or that I pay all my bills on time. None of that signifies. I'm bad with money because my dad said so, which is exactly the same reason why I'm ugly, clumsy, unmusical, weird, inclined to extremes (whatever that meant), and totally lacking in common sense.

I can't remember how old I was when Dad decided I was going to be bad with money, but it certainly wasn't very old. Consequently, he needed evidence he could beat me over the head with. So, when I went to university, the system in place at the time was that I was awarded a grant, of which the government would pay a certain amount, but Dad had to pay a fairly substantial contribution towards it because he was well off. He therefore decided to pay a great deal less than he was supposed to, on the grounds that I "didn't need all that money". I very nearly caused a lot of trouble by managing on that amount somehow, despite the fact that a significant number of my contemporaries who were on the full whack got into debt. However, fortunately for my dad and his fixed idea, I lost out on some £400 worth of benefits due to an administrative error of some sort (at that time, students could claim benefits outside term time, and were generally expected to do so); so I had to ask him if he could give me that money so that I could finish my degree. Well, that was it. He was vindicated. He had his evidence that I was bad with money. I should have been able to save that £400 out of the reduced amount he'd allowed me. So he could refuse with a completely clear conscience, leaving me high and dry without a degree.

I got married because, when I told my mother at the age of about seventeen that I didn't want to get married, she shouted at me. How could I be so selfish? I was supposed to martyr myself bringing up children like she had. She was a very forceful woman, so unfortunately I believed her. I remember sitting there on my wedding day thinking "I have to go through with this or I'll never hear the end of it"; and I did, and of course the result was a disaster. I married a man who turned out to be genuinely bad with money (he also had a drink problem, which didn't help), and spent the next several years finding all manner of ingenious ways to economise so that we could at least more or less manage despite his tendencies. That was how I took to drinking coffee very weak; he liked it quite strong, but it was expensive, so I went down to less than half a teaspoonful per cup so he could carry on drinking it the way he liked it. When he finally ran off with someone else, I financially disconnected from him, and was horrified to discover he had an entire string of bank accounts I knew nothing about, several of them jointly with his girlfriend, and all of them overdrawn (some considerably). So I needed some help at that point to get back on my feet financially, and that was all my fault, of course. (And we won't even talk about the difficulty of getting a job with no degree and a disability. The fact that I landed any jobs at all, even temporary and poorly paid ones, was pretty amazing.)

Then there was Bob the Lodger, who shared the bills until he ran out of money, at which point he calmly announced that he was going to stop paying for anything because he couldn't... but he wasn't going to leave. I was simply expected to support him, and to get into debt to do so if I had to, because obviously someone had to. I tried to get him to claim benefit, but he refused point blank to do that, on the grounds that most of it would be taken away by the Child Support Agency and would then not actually go to support his own children (for whom he had actually been paying support directly, independent of them, till the money ran out). I never understood why he thought it wouldn't support his children, but he was very much like my dad; once he had an idea in his head, there was no getting it out again. But, anyway, he thought claiming benefit would be Bad and Wrong for that reason. I didn't understand that argument either, but of course it's rather difficult to understand philosophical arguments about that kind of thing when someone is living off you. In the end he fell in love with an American, and his dad gave him the plane fare so he could go over there and marry her... to my heartfelt relief. I get on very much better with him now he's on the other side of the Atlantic and not in my spare room.

Once I had all these various leeches out of my life, I got back on quite an even keel, and have remained there ever since. However, last night I was told the terms of Mum's will (except that she hadn't written it - Dad had, as it was a joint will, so it wasn't her fault). My younger sisters get their share of the inheritance outright. Mine, however, goes into a trust fund, as if I were a child. Or suffering from dementia. Or otherwise mentally incapable. This fund is to be administered by my sisters and used to benefit me, but I am being given no control over it.

Well, NOPE. I had to deal with enough control, humiliation, and belittlement as a child. I am no longer the scapegoat, no longer the one at the bottom of the pile. I am no longer inferior to my sisters. I am extremely tempted to tell them to give my entire share of the legacy to some deserving cause so that I can stay free. Yes, it is a lot of money, and yes, it would be useful; I want to move back to Kendal, and that would easily enable me to do it. But I'm not prepared to sell my soul for it, and I'm also not prepared to carry on wearing any of the negative labels which were stuck on me while I was growing up. I've had a whole lot more than enough.

So. We'll see what happens now.

Current Mood: angry

The book got a full edit yesterday and a new ending; the original ending was more like a chapter ending than a proper book ending - it set things up nicely for the sequel but didn't really work other than that. The new ending is very much better. It frames the entire set of events in that book between two significant, contrasting, and related deaths, and also provides a decisive break point; for the entire book there has been a telepathic link between Nivaunel and her (effectively) adoptive mother Lady Chioreth, via a pair of magic rings, and at the end of the book that link is transferred to two other characters who have recently married, but one of them needs to travel a lot and the other needs to stay in the capital city. So today's job is to get the whole lot on AO3, which basically means lightly HTML-ing it; things like italics and centred section dividers don't copy over automatically, so you have to re-insert them.

Today I am also hoping to get some of the little boxes painted. The little boxes are going to Coronation with me in June to get handed out to new members (a tradition which I thought our current monarchs had established, but no; it's been going for years - I just didn't get anything), so I need to adorn them with knotwork. It's easy and looks a great deal more impressive than it really is.

I shall also be trying very hard not to start on the third book, which will be called The Grey Cleric. The second book ends with Nivaunel and her friends escorting Edelna (Nivaunel's half-sister) and her baby to the province of Chiderene in the north-east; Chiderene is large and important enough to have, basically, regents, though they haven't yet been explicitly called that (they're a High Lord and High Lady). The baby is going to be the next heir to the province after the current regents' daughter, because she is the daughter of their son, who was originally the heir but got booted out of the succession due to the fact that he didn't take responsibility for Edelna's pregnancy (in fact he dropped her like a hot brick). So in the third book they get to Chiderene and discover there's a war on. Big Bad (name to be determined) is attacking from the north, with his sidekick, a one-eyed half-orc cleric who used to worship Gruumsh (hence the one eye) but is now in the service of a sinister new god. (As if Gruumsh wasn't bad enough.) The basic idea is that there's an ancient prophecy which both sides know about, and it turns out to be 100% accurate, but both sides have entirely misunderstood it. In particular, for most of the book everyone thinks that "the grey cleric" is the terrifying half-orc. It's not.

That will have to wait. I have too much other stuff to do, including writing a script for the readthrough; I am still trying to pin d'Artagnan to a list of dates (he's in Canada at the moment, as he quite often is - he's doing a St John Passion). When I mentioned to Porthos last month that I was trying to get dates for this out of d'Artagnan, his immediate reaction was "I can't do June or July", which made me laugh. He knows d'Artagnan very well. :-) I should perhaps have started around Christmas; my birthday is actually at the beginning of April...

Current Mood: creative

I have previously mentioned Darg, the rather adorable (and probably autistic) half-orc fighter in my book. Darg is built like the proverbial brick privy (even for a half-orc, he's really big), so he doesn't especially care what other people think of him; indeed, most of the time he doesn't even notice. (He does, intriguingly, occasionally spot some things about other people that nobody else notices, but that is slightly different. Darg can't pick up vibes to save his life, but he will unerringly pick up on anything which would be obvious if it weren't for the vibes.) So, when the entire party is knighted and he has to pick some heraldry, it doesn't even enter his head that a lot of people are going to go boggle-eyed when they see it (including Nivaunel, who's very kindly sewing it on his new surcoat for him). He just thinks "that's a nice cheerful fun sort of design".

I still haven't got anywhere to link images from, so I need to ask you to use your imagination here, which is probably better anyway from the point of view of not boggling you. Imagine a shield. Now divide it vertically down the middle. Colour the left half (as you're looking at it) red, and the right half gold.

Fine so far, but now draw a second shield on top of the first, centred, with its width and height two thirds that of the actual shield. This time, flip the colours, so the left half of the inner shield is gold and the right half red. Now do that again; draw a third shield centred on that, with its width and height half that of the intermediate shield or a third that of the full shield, and flip the colours a second time - left half red, right half gold.

I wanted to know how you describe that in heraldic terms, so, of course, I went and asked some of the SCA heralds, who speak Heraldic. I was told "per pale gules and or, on a shield a shield counterchanged". And I thought, right, thank you, that is even more boggly than the actual design... at which point another herald piped up that it might just as accurately described as "counterchanged orly and per pale, gules and or".

Orly?

It turns out that "orly" in heraldry means, more or less, "stripes of equal width", in cases where those stripes surround an area or a central point. I'm old enough to remember all the wide-eyed owl memes bearing the legend "O RLY?", so the fact that "orly" is actually a word amuses me greatly. I did, to be fair, already know most of the rest of the words, just not how to put them together properly. I knew that "gules" is red and "or" is gold; I vaguely knew that "per pale" means "divided in half vertically", though I tend to get it mixed up with "per fess", which I think is the same thing horizontally; and I knew that "counterchanged" refers to that thing where you have a field divided into two colours and your charge is on top of that division with the colours reversed. It is an extremely odd dialect.

All of which reminds me I should decide on my own SCA device, which I suspect will be some kind of triquetra. I'm fairly sure that weaving a ring through it will make it sufficiently distinctive, but I'm not in a hurry. At any rate there will not be any orly involved.

I reckon Darg should get another +1 to his attack bonus just for the boggly shield...

Current Mood: geeky

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baroque_mongoose

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