baroque_mongoose

My Lent devotional did, in fact, arrive yesterday, about an hour after I posted the entry about it. It turned out that the substitute postal worker had, indeed, delivered it to my house number. Just... not my actual flat. He'd delivered it to the same number on another street on the other side of town altogether, and the lady who lived there very kindly came and brought it round, which I thought was above and beyond. (The two street names did begin with the same letter, but all resemblance ended there; the first words were not similar in any other respect, not even general shape, and I live on ---- Way, while the lady to whom it had been delivered lives on ***** Drive.)

The whole business reminded me very much of something that happened about six months after I moved here. At that point, the place was so new it was very hard to find any maps that included it; there are people in this town who have been here longer than I have, but not so many. Now, as I explained yesterday, this little block contains the odd numbers n to n + 10 inclusive; and one day I came home in the scooter to find that someone had left a parcel for number n - 2, which, by all rights, ought to be next door. I thought, "oh, I'll just take it round now," so I stuck the parcel in the basket on the front and went looking for this place.

Our street is, to be fair, a bit odd. It is a street of two unequal sections. The longer one runs alongside an open area (there is a building on it, but I'm not sure what its official street address is); if you're coming up it towards my flat, the open area is on your left and the even numbers from 2 to about 60 are on your right. There are a lot of numbers because some of them are flats, like this building. Then you get to a roundabout, and our street continues on the other side of it. I am in this shorter section, which finishes where it meets another street at the top; this section has (low) odd numbers on one side, and much higher even numbers on the other. We'll say for convenience that I live at number 19 and I was looking for number 15, which is not the case, but it means I don't have to keep typing n all the time.

Anyway, I went all up and down this street and there was no sign of number 15. I was befogged. As far as I could see, the odd numbers started at 17 [equivalent], and nothing lower than that even existed. I tried looking for a map but drew a blank; fortunately, however, it was a Tuesday, which was the night some good friends of mine had a board games evening. I attended that for quite a while until Sibyl started getting stroppy in the evenings as a regular thing (previously she was more likely to do it in the afternoon). So I went round there and asked if they knew how to find number 15, since they are among the few people who've been here longer than I have.

They didn't, but they were able to find a map with the information. Let's just say no wonder I couldn't find it. To get to number 15 from my flat, you need to turn right at the roundabout, then turn right again down a lane, and that brings you into a car park (larger than ours, but then there are more flats). Facing the car park is a medium-sized block of flats, which does, admittedly, back on to our street, but since there is no direct entrance to it from our street it makes no sense to me that it should have our street address. And yet it does.

I went round there on my way home, figuring it wasn't too late and the resident would probably still be up. He was. I delivered his parcel, and he was greatly relieved; it turned out to be his new contact lenses, and he'd have been stuck if they'd been delayed for much longer.

Ironically, the street where my friends with the board games evening live is even worse. I remain convinced that whoever was in charge of numbering that one was either as drunk as a lord or simply threw all the numbers out of a hat, because the system as a whole makes no sense; it's one of those streets with multiple branches which are all called the same thing, and the numbering within any given branch makes sense, but the way the branches fit together as a whole makes none at all. To be completely fair to delivery staff, I have to say this town is a nightmare.

Even so. "---- Way" still doesn't look remotely like "***** Drive"...

My first D&D-related novel had a pretty simple overall plot; there were quite a lot of bits of subplot, and, as always, the characters were in the driving seat, but in D&D terms it boiled down to "here is a high-level adventuring party with a specific quest, this being to find and rescue Lord Smallpiece's vampire great-uncle". The great-uncle turned out to have been kidnapped by an archlich who was very interested in the fact that (unlike all other known vampires) he wasn't evil, and wanted to find out why so that she could create an army of non-evil undead (the idea being that they'd still obey orders, but they couldn't be turned by good clerics); and, of course, once you've got an archlich in the story, that archlich is going to be doing a good deal more than just kidnapping the odd vampire. So there was plenty of interest coming from that, and various NPCs had to get involved, and there was all the character stuff you'd expect; but basically, it was simple. Travel from A to B, complete quest, and... well, originally it was going to be "and then all go home to A", but that happened for only one of our party, for a series of complicated reasons.

In particular, two of our party left the Material Plane altogether; they went through a rather unusual planar portal which took them to Elysium. Elysium, in D&D, is one of what is known as the higher planes, and it corresponds to the Neutral Good alignment. (The Dantean image of heaven is Lawful Good, whereas Chaotic Good is associated with a plane called The Beastlands, which is, I suppose, a kind of idealised elven forest sort of place.) In D&D you usually go to the plane associated with your alignment when you die, and one of our pair was, in fact, Neutral Good, and so would have ended up there in any case; the other one was Chaotic Good, this being Kerian the bard. However, Kerian does have a celestial ancestor, and she comes from (and, being immortal, still lives in) Elysium. Both Kerian and his friend Lindith are healed in different ways when they enter Elysium; Lindith used a wheelchair but rapidly regains the ability to walk normally, whereas Kerian's healing is mostly psychological and spiritual.

So, of course, I had to explain exactly what it was that he was healed from. That meant I had to introduce something terrible that had happened to him in the past; and what had happened to him was this. Kerian was married to a woman called Lenamara, and he went to work for a certain Lord Solgliss. Lord Solgliss, however, was a thoroughly evil man (Lawful Evil, I think, though we never meet him in person), took a fancy to Lenamara, and decided to take her as his mistress, originally in secret. Solgliss, as we discover later, was also married, to the Lady Chioreth, by whom he had a son, Athanor. Kerian found out what was happening and was extremely disappointed about it, so he resigned his position, intending to take his wife and leave; however, Solgliss wasn't having that, and he conveniently had an advisor who had fallen out of favour. He hired an assassin to kill the advisor and frame Kerian for the crime. The unfortunate bard was thrown into the dungeons and sentenced to be hanged, but the night before he was to be executed, he somehow escaped. (We find out in the sequel that Chioreth, aghast at her husband's behaviour, hired a wizard to get him out, and that this wizard dragged him all round the planes for a while, where he had a few further hair-raising adventures but was at least safe from Solgliss, who had put a heavy price on his head.) A few months later, the truth came out - very likely with help from Chioreth, but this is never stated explicitly - and the embarrassed Solgliss had to issue a hasty public pardon to Kerian and then disown and execute the assassin. Kerian may never have found out about the pardon, because by this time he was a long way away.

Now, this Lenamara had four children; and it occurred to me that it was entirely possible that the eldest of the four might be Kerian's, but would be thought to be Solgliss'. It then occurred to me that there was a very easy way to tell, in a world without DNA testing. Kerian is an aasimar, which is to say he has a celestial ancestor; therefore any child he has is also an aasimar. Aasimars have darkvision. Other people don't.

So I decided that the sequel would be all about this young woman, Nivaunel, who thinks she's Solgliss' daughter (as does everyone else), but, shortly after the death of Solgliss, discovers that she's actually Kerian's daughter, and then she'd want to go and see her father (which can still be done, as it is possible to hold a conversation through this very unusual planar portal). That was the start, and it's still what's going on. But a huge amount of the surrounding stuff has changed.

Athanor changed first. The way I originally envisaged him, he wasn't evil like his father, but he was also very brisk, pragmatic, utilitarian, and somewhat uncaring - probably Lawful Neutral. He was going to attempt to marry Nivaunel off to this other young lord just because he wanted an alliance. But as I wrote him, I realised that he actually liked Nivaunel (there was never any question that Chioreth did; she always felt very sorry for her because both Solgliss and Lenamara neglected her), and, although the resulting alliance would be helpful, the main reason for making her marry this lord was that he felt it would be the best thing for her. She'd end up as, effectively, a duchess (very high nobility, huge house, all the rest of it), and he wasn't uncaring so much as totally unable to listen once he'd made up his mind what was best for someone. So he immediately became a more sympathetic character, even though he was still pretty infuriating at first.

Once Nivaunel realises she's not the daughter of Solgliss at all, she immediately sees that she has a cast-iron excuse to get out of this marriage; she's not nobility! (It's also a reason that Athanor, who very much thinks in terms of status because that's how he's been brought up, will instantly accept.) So she suggests her younger sister Edelna, who is definitely Solgliss' daughter, as a substitute; Edelna has been quite jealous that Nivaunel is going to marry this lord, despite the fact that he's not exactly a good catch in himself (again, not evil, but loud, coarse, and rather stupid). Like Athanor, all Edelna can see is the money and power.

Then Edelna started to change on me, too. Initially, she was just a very immature sixteen-year-old; but once Athanor agrees that substituting her would be a good idea, that goes to her head (combined with the discovery that her elder sister is not, after all, A Lady). She becomes extremely demanding and arrogant, tries to order Nivaunel about, and finally tries to take a piece of jewellery which has just been given to Nivaunel by Chioreth, on the grounds that it is "too good" for a "mere commoner" and therefore she should have it. At which point I realised she'd changed her alignment. She was probably True Neutral before. Now... she's Neutral Evil. I was as shocked as all the rest of the characters were.

And then there's Lord Mortovan the Quick. He is, of course, Morto from the first book, originally a thief (among other things) living by his wits; now he's been ennobled for his part in the defeat of the archlich, and employed by Their Majesties as a spy. He's a bit of a chameleon because he has to be; once you're a noble, you're expected to talk like one and know all the other odd social rules. Fortunately he's a very quick learner, though his lowly origins do occasionally somewhat betray themselves in his speech. I knew he was no longer a thief (he really doesn't need to be, and he was never one who did it for the thrill); but I didn't realise quite how much of a conscience he was developing until he had to explain why he hadn't told Athanor something he must have known due to a magical item he possesses. And when he did, I realised that a) he was telling the truth (he's actually never been keen on lying, even if only because he's bright enough to know anyone using magic can potentially pick up on it), and b) that meant he's definitely not Chaotic Neutral any more. Welcome to the Chaotic Good alignment, Lord Mortovan. That's going to make things interesting for you in your career as a spy.

As a result of all this stuff going on, the party (which in this case is very low-level; Nivaunel, who was originally going to follow in her father's footsteps and become a bard, instead turned into an embryonic cleric, for reasons that were still closely connected with her father, and even Mortovan is probably no more than about third level - two levels of rogue and one of wizard) didn't set off till the end of chapter 4. And I thought... this is awfully slow, isn't it?

Actually, no, it isn't. There's been a lot happening, and D&D stuff doesn't all have to happen on the road or at your destination. Nonetheless, I still suspect this is going to be longer than the first book.

Well, church was... interesting this morning. Don't get me wrong, it was a really good service (it always is); this time it was a family service, which means that all the kids stay in rather than going out to their age-related Sunday school groups. That means that you get all-age teaching for most of the service, often in the form of little sketches, games, or quizzes, involving child volunteers; then there's a shorter sermon than usual, more aimed at the adults, and the children get colouring sheets to keep them occupied during this time. And we were looking at John the Baptist; we didn't have any songs that were specifically about him, so some bright spark decided to set some simple words about him to the tune of what is normally a pretty annoying nursery rhyme. I like the John the Baptist version much better, if only because it just has three verses, whereas the nursery rhyme can go on pretty much as long as you can make up verses to fit the template.

However, there did seem to be a higher than usual number of things going wrong. One of them was the weather, to be fair, and there wasn't much anyone could do about that. I don't mind if it's cold, and I don't especially mind if it's raining, but when it's both and there's a fresh wind blowing straight in your face, it's a bit much. But the main thing was the tech. Our tech was really not behaving as it should.

Normally, when this happens, I don't really care. I can project my voice, and the other singer I'm usually on with can do the same. But I was coming in with the tag end of that cold, and so I wasn't going to be doing any major projecting, and Bev (the other singer) didn't really know two of the songs, so we needed the mikes to be working. One or two of the music group mucked about with them a bit, but to no avail; some of the tech was working, but not all of it, and definitely not the mikes.

Again, normally, that's not a problem, because whoever's in charge of tech comes and fixes it. Unfortunately, the person who was on the rota to do the tech today was not only not there, but uncontactable. We have a few people who do it, and the bloke in overall charge is called Rich; if he'd been on duty this morning it would all have been fine, but he wasn't. (Thankfully, the missing tech person turned out to be all right in the end. He'd just had some kind of emergency, and the mobile reception here is notoriously bad, so I wasn't entirely surprised he couldn't be reached.)

So... we had to get Rich, quick. And no, I'm not going to apologise for the pun. :-D

It took even Rich a little while to sort out whatever was wrong; he asked me to talk into my mike, and I got through almost the entirety of the Jabberwocky before he fixed it. But he did, and all was fine in the end. Phew. (We will not talk about the fact that the final song, which neither Bev nor I knew very well, was played as written in the practice and then quite differently when we actually sang it in the service; Bev doesn't follow the music so she just went with the flow, but I do, and so I got totally lost. Such things happen from time to time.)

Well... I think I'd be a bit worried about a church that ran like clockwork all the time!

I'm a sucker for books in the grey area between fiction and mathematics/science; they're usually categorised as fiction, but they're not quite, since you can learn quite a bit of actual information from reading them. I used to own copies of both Flatland by Edwin Abbott and Flatterland, the modern sequel by Ian Stewart; as you'd expect from Ian Stewart, Flatterland is not only educational but often very funny. For those not already familiar with the concepts, Flatland (written in 1884) was an introduction to the concept of higher dimensions, written from the point of view of two-dimensional creatures coming to terms with the existence of a third dimension. Flatterland takes this a little further and talks about non-Euclidean spaces, which may well sound scary if you're not a mathematician, but Ian Stewart knows exactly what he's doing. He can explain even quite abstract concepts in terms that anyone can understand. I would very much recommend both books, preferably together.

And then, some time last year, d'Artagnan and I were talking about George Gamow, who was another brilliant scientific explainer with a lively sense of humour, and he asked if I'd read the Mr Tompkins stories. Amazingly, I had not, though I had read all of Gamow's books I'd been able to get my hands on in my late teens. So, on d'Artagnan's enthusiastic recommendation, I bought a copy. (I should probably add here that d'Artagnan is not just an outstanding musician; he's also very much not shabby on the physics front. He has a joint degree in Natural Sciences and Music, which is an unusual combination but it could have been specifically designed for him.)

Mr Tompkins is great. He's a rather ordinary chap who has all sorts of entertaining adventures in what appears, at first sight, to be a completely extraordinary world... except it isn't. Not really. Gamow is actually showing his readers what relativistic and quantum effects would look like if they were discernible at a human scale. It's hard science dressed up as delightful and often hilarious little stories, and it's beautifully done. While it's now a little out of date, as inevitably happens, it's still a very fun read, and I'd particularly recommend it if you know an intelligent secondary-school-age child with an interest in physics; there aren't really age limits on it, of course, but a child who's just starting to discover physics will really be struck by the wow factor.

When this kind of book is discussed, someone always mentions Alice in Wonderland, which to me is interesting because it's not one of these books, though it was, of course, written by a mathematician. (Lewis Carroll was a prolific creator of mathematical puzzles, many of which were published in magazines at the time.) The other-worldly fantasy element is there, but it doesn't have a mathematical or scientific basis; Through the Looking Glass does contain a chess game which can be reconstructed from the text, which is clever and intriguing but not quite the same thing. Even so, I think I can see where people are coming from with this. All of these books follow the adventures of a character from the "normal" world who is somehow pitched into a strange and unfamiliar world; and whether that world is based on quantum physics or simply a vivid imagination (possibly, in Lewis Carroll's case, augmented occasionally with the aid of a hookah, although nobody is 100% certain about that despite the existence of the Caterpillar), the character still has to negotiate it somehow. Half the fun of these stories is in how that character does that. You can be a fine mathematician or scientist, and you can even be excellent at explaining those subjects, but you won't be able to write a good story of this type unless you are also a good character writer.

I have a decent all-round scientific background, but it's not good enough to write this kind of story. On the other hand, I can write characters, and I do know a man who does have an appropriate level of scientific ability...

When I first went to university, there was this wonderful train that went straight through from Glasgow to Harwich, stopping very conveniently at Oxenholme (which was my nearest station, although I lived in Kendal) and Sheffield. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use this excellent train for very long before they axed it, which meant that now I had to change at Manchester Piccadilly. At that point, you really didn't want to do that, because that station was horrible. It was that awkward period between the time when there were porters everywhere who could help you with your luggage and the time when there were plenty of lifts, escalators, and even travelators, so that you didn't need help with your luggage; you might just get a porter if you were very lucky, but mostly you were struggling with a lot of luggage up and down stairs, and heaven help you if you had a bicycle. They did, I hasten to add, do that station up after a while, and now it's one of the best on the network.

So now I had a new routine. I'd go from Oxenholme to Manchester Piccadilly, and change there for Sheffield. Sometimes the Sheffield train would go through New Mills Central (or "Nung Fnertwep", as posted a little while ago), and sometimes it wouldn't, but in all cases you'd get some lovely views over the Pennines, you'd know to put your book or crafts away as the train shot past Grindleford (it very rarely stopped there), and you'd be standing up and gathering your luggage together at Dore. Simple.

Well. Usually.

On this one particular day I caught the train from Oxenholme to Manchester as normal, then the train on to Sheffield as normal... or, at least, so I thought. It was advertised as the Sheffield train, it went from the usual platform, and all seemed to be well for about ten minutes, until I started noticing that we seemed to be going through even grottier bits of Manchester than we usually did. Oh well, I thought. Nothing to worry about. There are a lot of railway tracks in Manchester. We've just been re-routed a bit.

However, the scenery did not become any more familiar, and I soon realised that this was quite the diversion; on the other hand, I also knew that there are only so many ways you can get a train across the Pennines, so we should be back on track soon enough.

Eventually, we stopped at Wakefield (or possibly Halifax; I can't remember which order they came in). That wasn't right. At this point I decided I'd flag down the guard next time I saw him, and ask what was going on. However, it was also at this point that a bloke boarded the train, looked up and down the almost-empty carriage I was sitting in, and clocked the two nuns who were sitting just across the aisle from me. And it turned out that this bloke really admired nuns.

So, of course, he went and sat with the nuns, and told them all about how wonderful he thought they were, to their visible embarrassment; and all the while I was patiently waiting for the guard to show up, these nuns were getting their ears bent at considerable length. The Nun Admirer got off at the next stop, which was probably fortunate, but before doing so he wished to give the saintly sisters a token of his undying admiration; and it was this... thing. I have no idea what it was meant to be. It was a more or less square piece of very slippery knitted nylon, striped in autumnal colours, with long fringes on two opposite ends. And these poor nuns hadn't a clue what to do with it.

There was I, wondering why on earth we were at Halifax (or possibly Wakefield) and where the guard had got to, and these nuns leaned across the aisle and explained that that bloke had very kindly given them, er, this, and they really didn't have a use for it, so would I like it? Well, of course, I felt obliged to take it off their hands, even though I wasn't quite sure what to do with it myself; so I did. And when the train eventually stopped at Doncaster, I thought "that's it, this train is clearly not going to Sheffield, I need to get off here and find one that is". This I did - luggage, bicycle, random nylon object, and all.

Well, I was an impecunious student, so I had a large cardboard box instead of a bedside table (in fact I was, by deliberate parental policy, quite significantly less pecunious even than a regular student), and it occurred to me that I could at any rate throw the random nylon object over it to make it look slightly better. So I did that, and a few months later it needed washing for some reason, so I washed it. Carefully, by hand.

"Carefully, by hand" turned out not to be good enough; all the colours ran dreadfully and the fringes got tangled up. I had to throw it out in the end.

You really never know what's going to happen on trains...

Quite a long time ago now, I used to make seitan regularly. This was when I was living in Sheffield and still had a regular cooker (and reasonably decent health). Seitan, for those who aren't familiar with it, is... I was going to say a kind of fake meat, but that would be doing it down somewhat. Seitan is its own thing, though it does slot very neatly into all the places where you might want to put meat. Pre-made seitan tends to be expensive and isn't always especially good, but the home-made stuff is delicious, and it's quite cheap to make, at that. (Of course, that does partly depend where you get your flour. Seitan is based on wheat gluten, so you need a gluten flour; it's easy enough to get that because there's so much demand for gluten-free flour these days, and all that extra gluten may as well get used somewhere, but some people charge a lot more for it than others. I now get mine from Buy Wholefoods Online.)

Now, that stuff takes a deal of slow simmering on a hob, so for a long time I thought I'd never be able to make it again; while I do now have a separate hob, it's quite awkward for me to supervise it for the length of time needed for seitan, and I really don't feel comfortable about leaving it unsupervised, even though I can see into the kitchen from where I usually sit. (My kitchen is so small that there's no room for a regular door. There's just an opening in the wall, a bit wider than standard door width, between the living room and the kitchen.)

And then I thought... oh, wait. I could do it in the slow cooker, couldn't I?

In fact, seitan is an ideal thing to do in the slow cooker, because you can tell exactly when it's cooked; this is often quite difficult with a slow cooker, unless you keep opening it and sticking an experimental fork into the contents. (My pro tip is not to do parsnips in it, or at least not unless you give them a bit of a pre-cook in the microwave. They take for ever, and by the time they're ready everything else will be mushy and your pearl barley will have completely broken down into the sauce.) Seitan, though? You just simmer it till it floats, pretty much. My recipe says 45 minutes for the hob, which is usually just a little longer than it takes all the pieces to start floating. The other thing the recipe tells you is not to boil it vigorously, because if you do that it becomes spongy. Fine if that's what you're after, but generally it's best to go for a nice firm texture for easy slicing.

So I've ordered gluten flour and a large economy bottle of good soy sauce, because this recipe, as you will see in a moment, uses quite a lot of soy sauce. I have no idea where I originally found it or if it's still there, so, for reference, here it is:

150g vital wheat gluten flour
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
125 ml cold vegetable broth
60 ml soy sauce
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, pressed or grated on a microplane grater

For the simmering broth:
1 litre vegetable broth
1 litre water
60 ml soy sauce

Fill a stock pot with the water, broth and soy sauce, cover and bring to a boil.

In the mean time, in a large bowl mix together gluten and yeast. In a smaller bowl mix together broth, soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil and garlic. Pour the wet into the dry and combine with a wooden spoon until most of the moisture has absorbed and partially clumped up with the dry ingredients. Use your hands and knead for about 3 minutes, until it’s an elastic dough. Divide into 3 equal pieces with a knife and then knead those pieces in your hand just to stretch them out a bit. Let rest until the broth has come to a full boil.

Once boiling, lower the heat to a simmer. Add the gluten pieces and partially cover pot so that steam can escape. Let simmer for 45 minutes, turning occasionally. Turn the heat off and take the lid off, let sit for 15 minutes.

Remove from broth and place in a strainer until it is cool enough to handle. Slice and use as desired.

(The recipe also recommends you give it a quick sauté before adding it to recipes - they reckon about 5 minutes should be sufficient. I'm alongside that.) So, there you go - that's how you do it. And don't just take my word for it; even my mother, who's quite happy to eat meat, thinks it's delicious!

While one always has to be rather careful with generalisations, it's still basically true to say I tend to get on better with men than with women, and that I am not generally comfortable in deliberately planned women-only environments (which is the one problem I have with my church; it insists on designating certain events as "men's events" or "women's events", when in fact they are relevant to everyone). That does not mean I don't like women, or that I don't have friends who are women. I have some good ones. It's more that I don't like not having men around... again, in general. There are a very few people on this earth who make my hackles rise the moment they walk into the room, and so far every single person like that has been a man. But they're pretty rare, and they don't affect the fact that I prefer mixed company.

And I think this is at least partly due to the fact that, when there are men present, women don't tend to talk about what they've been conditioned to believe is Women Stuff... and at the top of that unholy list is weight loss. I'm not talking here about losing weight because you genuinely need to do so for health reasons. Both men and women do that and it's obviously not a problem. Whether you're male, female, or whatever else, I am very happy to listen to you explain all about what you need to do to get that bariatric surgery, and cheerlead you all the way. (And, indeed, Porthos was in exactly that situation; he had to lose quite a lot of weight by other means before they were willing to operate, but he did, and they did, and he's a whole lot better for it. He's still big, but just regular big now, rather than enormous.)

No. What I absolutely cannot be doing with is Skinny Women On Diets. And I used to work with an entire office full of them.

They were obsessed. They talked about hardly anything else. Not only that, but they seemed to have transferred the greater part of their moral sense to food; so, instead of worrying about whether what they'd just said was helpful or kind, they'd worry about whether what they'd just eaten was "morally justified" in terms of their diet... a diet they were always on and permanently worried about, despite the fact that none of them had the slightest need to lose any weight. One of the academics famously ate a bar of chocolate every day (he, incidentally, was as thin as a rake), and one of these women criticised him for it because it was "bad".

I said, "Look at him! He's too thin to start with. He needs that chocolate."

"Oh," she said, "but it's bad. It'll damage his health."

I'm afraid I lost my temper. "Listen," I replied. "Lying is a sin. Stealing is a sin. Cheating on your husband is a sin. Chocolate is not a sin, it's a food!"

I don't think that went in. She was so thoroughly conditioned that it probably couldn't. And, while I was permanently at least mildly annoyed with her and her ilk, I also felt sorry for them. They couldn't simply enjoy their food; the whole big diet-guilt lie had stolen that from them altogether. Something like a small cake, which to me was nothing more than a nice little treat, was to them an evil temptation, and if they succumbed - as they invariably did, pretty often - they then felt obliged to beat themselves up about it for at least the rest of the day. The most extreme case, who happened to be my boss, had no figure to speak of and a very gaunt face; she probably didn't quite qualify as having an eating disorder, but she was pretty close, and she'd have looked vastly better if she'd put on about 10 kg. Maybe even 20. But she thought she looked great, because all the magazines were telling her that the thinner you were, the better you looked... even if you didn't.

Yet these were all intelligent women, and the moment you mixed a few men into the equation they'd immediately stop talking about the dread diets and start talking about all kinds of subjects of general interest. They instinctively knew that men didn't want to hear all about their unending efforts to turn themselves into stick figures; but I was supposed not only to want to know all about it, but to be sympathetic. I'm sure they thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn't (and because I, too, openly ate chocolate and didn't flagellate myself over it afterwards).

All right. A church women-only event is not the same thing as an office full of Skinny Women On Diets. Nonetheless, once bitten...

My childhood didn't provide me with very many advantages, but one of them is that I've been very much pre-primed against weasel words. (That's a rather bad phrase, actually. I have nothing against weasels. Still, everyone knows what it means.) So when some politician tells me that "the economy" is doing well or badly, and then I look at my own experience and those of other people around me and they don't seem to jibe with that, my first instinct is to ask myself exactly what this person means by "the economy". And then, of course, there's the old chestnut "freedom of speech", which sounds like a very good idea in theory until you realise that a) the person spouting this phrase means they should be allowed to say whatever they like but you (you pleb) should not, and furthermore that you (you pleb) should be forced to listen to whatever they say, and b) they aren't including any sensible caveats about irresponsible speech. "Freedom of speech" should be like any other freedom: you're free, but you're not free to do harm. That phrase should never in any circumstances mean it's all right to walk into a crowded cinema and shout "Fire!" when there's no fire, to deceive and defraud, or to intimidate those who are vulnerable, just to take a few examples. But it's astonishing how many people seem to think it means it's all right for them (but not, of course, for Those Other People) to do those things.

I think the first time I realised how words could be twisted was when I discovered that it was all right for adults to dislike certain foods. That was fine. Adults just disliked some things, so you didn't make them eat them because that would be rude. Children, however, were "fussy" or "faddy", rather than having genuine dislikes, and must therefore be made to eat things they disliked, because otherwise there'd be anarchy or something. (This was not entirely consistent. I did, thankfully, at least get away with not having to eat eggs or bacon; but I was forced to drink tea because it was "polite" to drink it, unless you were an adult, of course, in which case it didn't matter if you didn't like tea. Annoyingly, I was not only forced to drink it, but continually told it was "nice" or "lovely", as though this were an objective thing; similarly, I was forced to eat ham on Christmas Eve because it was a "special Christmas treat", despite my vehement protests. And my poor sister was forced to eat Brussels sprouts, which I really liked, but she had the gene which made them taste bitter. If I'd dared, I'd have swiped hers and eaten them for her; then we'd both have been happy, since we never really did get large enough helpings of vegetables.)

Then there was the whole business of hitting. Adults weren't supposed to hit other adults. Children weren't really supposed to hit other children, though if I was the one who got hit, that wasn't really important (there would have been a huge stink had I been the one doing the hitting, but I never was). Children absolutely weren't supposed to hit adults - that was well beyond the pale. And we were always told that you shouldn't hit anyone who was smaller or weaker than you were... except... that adults could, and did, regularly hit children. And that was perfectly all right, just so long as you called it "smacking". That was important. If you ever called it "hitting", you would get into trouble and be told it wasn't hitting, it was smacking. Well, of course it was hitting. What on earth else was it?

Another one was very subtle. You'd be told it was, or it wasn't, time for something; so, for instance, if you were thirsty and you asked for a drink, you'd be told it wasn't time for a drink yet (even if the adult was currently having a cup of coffee - in our world, mid-morning drinks were one of a number of adult privileges which appeared to have no purpose other than reinforcing the power dynamic). I was taken in by this one for far too long. "It's time..." or "it's not time..." sounds to a child like an abstract and unalterable thing, along the lines of "it's raining". Of course, it isn't, and I eventually realised that "no, you can't have a drink, it's not time for one yet" meant nothing more than "I can't be bothered to get you a drink right now, and I don't trust you to get your own, because you're a child, and children always make a mess".

I mean, there were a whole lot more, but you get the general picture. I'm sensitive to people in power twisting words because that's what I grew up with. Now, of course, ideally, people in power should be there to represent and advance the interests of the people who voted them into power, because that's why they were voted there in the first place. A few of them genuinely do. Most don't.

Parents should also be there to advance the interests of their children, rather than power-tripping at their expense. And, thankfully... most do.

We have a medium-sized church; by which I mean there are generally about 150 people there on a Sunday morning, give or take. (This is still a little too big for comfort. There were only about 30 of us when I started attending, which was very shortly after I moved here; at that size, you know everyone. With 150 people, you don't.) However, due to the nature of the area, the demographic is pretty wildly skewed. I'm one of a mere handful of over-60s, and there's a huge number of young families, so I should think about a third of the congregation is under 18... and people are still having babies at a rate of knots.

Originally, when someone in the church had a baby, I'd knit them a baby jumper. I am still doing that, but it is extremely hard to keep up, for several reasons. Partly there's the simple fact that there are so many people I don't know all of them... and partly it's not always easy to tell when someone's pregnant.

About a year ago, for instance, there were R and P, who both got pregnant at around the same time. I didn't initially know in either case, but after a while I began to wonder about P, and as it happens she's the daughter-in-law of the friend I have lunch with on Thursdays, so I asked her. And, yes, indeed, P was pregnant, so I started knitting. About a week after I found out, it suddenly became very obvious indeed; there are some people who barely show for quite a while and then they balloon.

I was still knitting the jumper for P's baby when I noticed (at the Christmas service, I think it was) that R looked as if she might be pregnant; and I saw her husband, so I asked him, and he said, yes, she was. So I asked him when it was due, and he said "a week tomorrow". I was stunned; from the look of her, I'd been expecting him to say "about the end of April". So I said, right, I'd knit, but there was a queue... anyway, P, who'd been due first, was slightly late, and R was slightly early, so I should probably have done them the other way round, but you really never know with babies. P got the jumper before the baby arrived, and R slightly after.

This time it's little Micah's mother. Little Micah is just over a year old (about a year and two to three months, from memory), and knitting his jumper was free from complications because it was obvious fairly early on that he was on the way. But little Micah is about to have a brand new sibling, and it's been pretty much the same as it was with P; I did vaguely wonder the other week, but it wasn't obvious till Sunday just gone. At which point Micah's dad happened to wander past me, and I asked when the new one was due, and he said Friday week. Whoops. OK. Time to get out the needles in a hurry. (And I absolutely cannot recall which style I knitted for Micah, so I just hope I haven't picked the same one again.)

Well, if there's one thing I've learnt from all this, it's that there's no such thing as a typical pregnancy. Even so... everyone knows I knit baby jumpers. Maybe they could consider telling me when they're expecting? :-)

Last night I got chatting on the scribal server with an artist. This is someone who knows absolutely everything there is to know about genuine mediaeval scribal techniques; I decided right from the start that I was not going to bother with any of those (it is a very expensive hassle, plus they used a lot of animal-derived ingredients, many of which are very difficult to substitute), but I still have huge respect for those who do. And this particular person isn't just a scribal expert, but also a more general artist; she's done things like covers for newsletters and what have you. And when she heard that I had based the four main characters in my book on my three best friends and myself, she decided she'd love to do an illustration of the four of us in those roles, because she thought that was totally sweet.

I protested that I couldn't afford to commission her; but she said, no, that was fine. There was only one thing she'd like in exchange, if I could manage it. She would like some local clay from this area that she can render into pigment. She's not fussy about the colour, which is just as well, given that most clays are somewhere in the brown part of the spectrum (occasionally brick-red or grey, but most usually somewhere in between). She is somewhere in the USA, so postage won't be cheap, but it'll still be a lot less than commissioning that kind of portrait.

Well, we do have clay soil round here, much to the chagrin of various friends who want to grow carrots in their allotments; I have no idea what kind to look for or what is suitable for pigment, but I do have a lead. Apparently someone in our (SCA) shire digs clay out of their back garden, presumably to use for pottery, and I should think if you can use it for that, you can use it to make pigments. I don't know a great deal about making pigments, but I do know you have to mull things, and by that I don't mean you boil them with spices. The technique is similar to grinding with a pestle and mortar, but it grinds much more finely (you generally use an etched or frosted glass muller on a flat surface made from a similar material), and it takes ages. I have a lot of patience, but probably not quite that much.

This really is one of the great joys of the SCA; you never do quite know who's suddenly going to do something unexpectedly lovely, or from what quarter. I do, it's true, dish out a fair bit of help on my own account, mostly online, and where I can't help someone myself I generally have a decent idea who can, so I'll put people in touch. But even so, this is something above and beyond.

And there are going to be people somewhere in the USA with Cambridgeshire clay contributing to the colours on their award scrolls... and that, too, makes me curiously happy.