baroque_mongoose

In honour of the latest Internet meme

2026-05-02T08:45:47Z

There are many good sources of copper;
I can quote you a score of them here,
But if you want copper that's proper,
Don't buy it from Ea Nasir.
He'll rob you, he'll scam you, he'll bilk you,
And if it's not one it's another;
For all he can get he will milk you,
And then he'll be rude to your mother.

His speech will be sweeter than honey
While he's trying to get you to buy,
But all that he wants is your money,
And you, once he's got it, can die.
He's a villain who's trying to mask it
With a smile and a whimsical joke;
So don't touch his Mystery Basket -
You're buying a pig in a poke.

Don't fall for his charm and his jollity;
Those "pure copper sheets" are quite thin,
And while he's extolling their quality
You'll notice they're more than half tin.
Oh... what? You've already bought metal?
Let's look and see what you've been sold;
You may need a lawyer to settle...
Great Scott, do you think you've bought gold?!

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Make it sew!

2026-05-01T09:10:06Z

When I was growing up, my mother had a sewing machine which I wasn't so much as allowed to touch, let alone use, because Children Break Things. This even applied when I was in my teens and being actually forced to use an electric sewing machine at school. My mother's machine was not electric; it was an absolutely beautiful old manual affair, and when I say "old", we're talking the second half of the 19th century. I'm fairly sure she got it from her mother, and I don't know where she got it from, but it may well have been her mother before her. It had an inlaid plinth and a solid wooden carrying case, also inlaid, and she made a fair few items of clothing on it because it was cheaper than buying them (it still is, if you know where to buy your fabric, though I understand that is no longer the case in the USA). You used to be able to buy "cut out and ready to sew" kits by mail order from magazines, and she liked doing that from time to time. Much as I hate cutting out, I personally wouldn't touch one of those with a barge pole, because a) you don't get to choose your fabric, and b) I have enough fitting issues to provide material for an entire practical class on the subject, so I need to do a lot of pattern alterations before I ever start cutting anything. (Don't get me wrong; I'm extremely happy with my figure. I wish I'd had it in my 20s rather than being stick-thin and straight up and down. Nonetheless, it is a bit of a nightmare to fit properly, because manufacturers don't draft for it, or indeed, usually, anything even close.)

The sewing machine I was obliged to use at school was quite different. It was a cheap 1970s electric job, it was extremely noisy, and it was not easy to control (and this is me talking; someone once brought an engraving machine into school to raise money for some charity, so I went along and engraved my two teeny tiny pocket knives with the mock-tortoiseshell handles, and everyone gathered round to laugh at me because they expected me to make a complete mess of it, and in fact I controlled the thing so well that they were all stunned and couldn't believe it was the first time I'd used one). I hated it with a passion. We were all supposed to make skirts. I didn't even want a skirt. I wanted a pair of trousers. But no, this was the pattern, and you had to make the wretched thing (it didn't even have any pockets, so you can guess just how often that skirt got worn afterwards), and you had to do so on this horrible sewing machine. And the moment I'd finished it, I swore I'd never use an electric sewing machine again and went straight back to doing it all by hand. After all, I still wasn't allowed to go near Mum's.

Fast forward several years; Mum hadn't done any sewing for a long time, and decided she no longer wanted the sewing machine, so I said I'd have it if my sisters didn't want it (they, obviously, had a higher claim on it than I did). However, the one who was interested in sewing had a machine already, so I was able to claim it; unfortunately, by this time it didn't work, and I couldn't get it to do so. My sisters retrieved it from my Sheffield house when I was ill in 2016 and returned it to Mum, and it remained in her house until she died... indeed, until, I think, probably yesterday.

A few days ago, my sister sent me a copy of the probate valuation for the contents of Mum's house, and the sewing machine was listed. I'd completely forgotten about that. She asked me if there was anything on the list that I wanted, and I said, yes, please, I'd like the sewing machine; I don't have room to set it up here, but if I'm able to move that should change. (I don't need a vast amount of space, but I am not moving anywhere smaller than here. This place is around my lower space requirement limit.) So we had a little discussion about it and I was reminded that it's not working at the moment. I said, that is not going to be a problem now. I am on the FreeSewing Discord, where there are several people with expert knowledge of vintage sewing machines who'll be able to help me get it working if I need them.

And so this is what's going to happen. My sister, who has loads of space (it's just her and her husband rattling about in a spacious four-bedroomed house), is going to look after the machine for me until such time as I'm able to move, and in the meantime she's going to see if she can either fix it herself or find someone else to do it; if that doesn't work, we'll talk to the FreeSewing crowd (one of these folks owns about 150 vintage sewing machines, which she has lovingly restored - I have no idea where she puts them!).

I still won't use it for everything. Sewing machines come into their own for long seams that aren't going to be under any appreciable strain; but if the seam is in any danger of breaking, it's best to do it by hand, because then if it does break it won't completely fall apart. Also, you can't understitch all the way round a collar facing on a machine.

Even so... I'm looking forward to being allowed to use it at last.

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Wilfred the Penguin

2026-04-30T09:03:37Z

When I was at university, I used to know this bloke called Joe who was literally given Spanish.

No word of a lie. It's very unusual, but he was called to do missionary work somewhere Spanish was spoken, and he didn't have much of a natural aptitude for languages, and... next thing he knew, he could speak and understand Spanish. I don't know exactly how much work he put in himself, but I do know that it was nowhere near enough, in ordinary circumstances, to get him to the level of fluency which he in fact achieved. I mean, he was pretty flabbergasted himself. So, after he graduated, he went off and did his missionary work wherever exactly it was, and he was gone for quite a few years; and when he got back to England, much to my surprise he looked me up and came to see me. We'd always got on pretty well but never been especially close, and we hadn't been in touch at all while he was away, so I don't even know how he found me or why he took the trouble; but he did. And that was when I found out he'd been given something else, as well as Spanish.

Joe had not seen me for ten years or more. During that time, I had developed a very strong fondness for penguins. He had no way of knowing about that by ordinary means. Nonetheless, he brought me... a cuddly penguin.

Specifically, this was a Plonka Penguin. If you're over a certain age, you'll remember those well; they were drawn by someone who signed the cartoons as "Miranda" (much later I found out it was a man), and they were all over greetings cards during the 1990s. You could not walk into a card shop without seeing these wonderfully goofy penguins getting up to ridiculous antics, and I absolutely loved them. They were always drawn a certain way: they were grey and white rather than black and white, they were distinctly pear-shaped, they always looked (deliberately) a bit wonky, and they all had little tufts on top of their heads. They were usually also at least a bit cross-eyed.

So Joe walked up to me and presented me with this penguin, and I took one look at all his wonky, cross-eyed, delightful gormlessness and concluded that a) he was clearly ver' ver' drunk, despite having just been given to me by a missionary, and b) his name was Wilfred. Sometimes I struggle to name cuddly creatures, but not this time. Wilfred was just the clear and obvious correct name.

I'm a writer. A good plushie is a three-dimensional story in its own right, and Wilfred is a most excellent plushie. He simply oozes character. While I would never encourage over-indulgence in alcohol in real life, Wilfred's established personality of a bumbling but very affectionate old soak is entertaining and has gone from strength to strength over the last thirty-odd years. He's travelled everywhere with me; he's been to a number of interesting European cities which I visited primarily for d'Artagnan's concerts, and sometimes he's been to the concerts themselves hidden in a bag, because d'Artagnan is very fond of him too (like me, he's a sucker for a good plushie). When I went into hospital ten years ago, I was too spaced out to pack everything I needed, given that I was a lot more dangerously ill than I knew and it was after one in the morning; I forgot my toothbrush, but I didn't forget Wilfred. He not only went into hospital with me, but he even got to sit through my emergency operation. The nurses gave him a bath... he did rather need it. He'd been cuddled quite a lot lately.

In fact, Wilfred is even better travelled than I am, because unlike me he's been to the USA. A friend of mine had a girlfriend over there for a while, whom he'd met online through me; and she was particularly fond of Wilfred (I used to post a lot of photos of him getting up to various mischief at the time), so my friend asked if he could possibly take him over to see her when he went to visit. Unfortunately that relationship ended in a shower of sparks, but Wilfred apparently had a good deal of fun over there and made friends with the girlfriend's cat.

But I think the most moving Wilfred interaction has to be with the lady with dementia in hospital; sadly I can't remember her name. It might have been something like Hattie. This lady was very confused and never really knew whether it was day or night, but she was extremely sweet... and she latched onto Wilfred. So, usually a couple of times a day, she'd wander over to my bed to come and see him, and I'd hold him and make his head move so he looked as if he was having a conversation with her (he's remarkably expressive like that), and she'd be delighted. I wanted to send her a photo of him via the hospital when I was finally discharged, but unfortunately it turned out I wasn't anywhere near as well as they'd thought I was, and I was back in an entirely different hospital within the week, because by this time I'd gone down to stay with my sister to convalesce.

Anyway... just before my 60th birthday, I was talking to someone online and for some reason the subject of Plonka Penguins came up, so I went to look for one of the cartoons so I could show them, and my search led me to eBay... where there was another Wilfred. I looked, and I thought "if you're still here on my birthday, I'm going to rescue you."

She was, and I did. So Wilfred now has an almost identical long-lost twin sister.

Her name is Wilma, because of course it is!

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Please don't ring the mobile!

2026-04-29T09:27:58Z

One of the very many ways in which Jankyville is... well... janky is that the mobile phone reception is terrible. On all networks, apparently. Every now and then I get an engineer round who's been contracted by the landlord (a reasonably decent housing association) to do the "annual" gas safety check, except it's more like every 9-10 months because they're very hot on anything to do with safety, and sometimes they have to ring their office. They get out their mobile and I say, "Um. Good luck with that. You might want to go outside."

You can always tell if they've never worked in this town before. Those are the ones who just grin and carry on, then they're really surprised when they can't get through, and they look at me again rather apologetically, and they go outside. At which point it might take them a couple of tries, but they'll get through eventually... for a few minutes, anyway. Then they come in and say something like "wow, the reception's really bad here, isn't it?" And I just smile and nod. I did, after all, try to tell them.

I do have a mobile myself (I believe I've explained earlier that it's not a smartphone), but it really only ever gets used when I'm outside Jankyville, which doesn't happen often. If I'm relying on the mobile, I am either travelling or in hospital. The mobile lives on my desk next to the computer, the reason for this being that Ocado insist on sending me texts as well as e-mails, so I need to have it to hand; but if it actually rings, which is very rare these days as I have most people trained not to use it, I reply with: "Hallo. Why are you ringing the mobile? My land line number is X."

Sometimes they'll just apologise and ring the land line, which is fine. At other times they're a bit confused, because after all everyone uses their mobile these days and nobody uses a land line, so why...? At which point I say, "Look, we can have this discussion on the land line, because otherwise we're going to get cut off very shortly." That is generally sufficient explanation.

The thing is, there's no geographical reason why the reception should be so bad here. Like the rest of the surrounding area, it's as flat as a pancake; we're not stuck in a dip or hidden behind a mountain. The reception is bad simply and solely because of the way the town is constructed. We have an unusual number of three-storey buildings here, the one I live in being one of them. While that does save space, it also means the buildings are tall enough to interfere with mobile phone signals. Of course, the whole thing could have been very easily fixed by sticking a mobile phone mast on top of the new community centre; it couldn't possibly have made it any uglier than it already is, and it would have solved a great deal of frustration. Sadly, this town has a brief but very concentrated history of failing to do the bloomin' obvious. When it was initially planned, everyone said "oh, we're going to learn from our mistakes, and we're not going to do all the things that were done wrong in [other New Town in general area]." But they did... plus a few extra mistakes that were all new and specially for us.

I'm very tempted to get rid of the mobile altogether, except that my Ocado Reserved slot is very useful and I can't have one without a mobile for some reason. There are also some companies, such as IKEA, from whom you can't order without a mobile number; they won't take a land line. I don't order from IKEA more than once in a blue moon, but I do depend on them for bedding. IKEA beds are a bit larger than standard beds, and my bed is standard, so I like the IKEA bedding because it has more overlap. But if I want to enjoy that extra bit of overlap (or, for that matter, the occasional bit of extremely good value kitchen equipment with a funny name, like my knife sharpener), I have to have a mobile. It's ridiculous, there's no logical reason for it, but there you go; apparently IKEA really hate ringing land lines for some reason.

Maybe I should e-mail IKEA and explain to them about Jankyville.

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In which I disagree, very gently, with Ogden Nash

2026-04-28T10:03:59Z

When I was five years old, my dad came home one evening with a large hardbacked book in a bright green dust cover. It was a book of poems, and he read one of them out over tea, which was an extremely unusual thing for him to do; he'd never done anything like that before, and I don't think he ever did again. My dad, for all his faults, did have an extremely well-developed sense of whimsy, although it did have to run within some quite strictly prescribed limits (later on I introduced the rest of the family to the works of Terry Pratchett, resulting in gales of laughter from everyone else and blank puzzlement from Dad, because it was fantasy and so he couldn't connect it in any way with the sense of humour that he did actually possess). And this was why he'd bought this book; it was the collected verse of Ogden Nash, and the poem he read was Custard the Dragon.

I loved the poem, and so, of course, I asked to be allowed to read the rest of the book. This was not a problem; at five years old I was already reading as competently as an adult, although, of course, many of the references were lost on me (there was a poem about something called bridge, for instance, which I knew from the context must be a kind of card game, but the terminology left me baffled; also I knew nothing at the time about American pronunciation, so, much as I enjoyed most of his outlandish rhymes, I did rather balk at the lines "Cones are composed of many a vitamin,/My lap is not the place to bitamin.") But I certainly understood enough of it to enjoy it immensely, and I read that book many times during my childhood to cheer myself up. It was a little bit like having a funny American uncle I could go and visit when I was feeling low, which I very often was.

I don't think either of my parents ever read the book again, but nonetheless they wouldn't give it to me while they were alive... just in case, I suppose. You never knew. They might suddenly get the urge to read it. I did ask them a few times if I could have it, since I knew I enjoyed it a lot more than they did, and I've never been able to get hold of another copy; but, fair enough, it was their book, after all. Needless to say, I have it now. I had been a little scared that it might not be as good as I remembered, because I've seen some of his later works in the meantime and they were nothing like as good - he seems to have gone off as he got older; but it absolutely is, and I am very much enjoying revisiting the wry, sidelong, bizarrely rhymed, and essentially kindly verse that helped to keep me going as a child. I dip into it from time to time, re-appreciating two or three poems at a sitting; it's amazing how much I remember, partly because of the rhymes, of course, but also... well, I don't know how many times I read that book, but it was a lot.

But I'd forgotten the poem in which he complains (whimsically, of course) that he can't write a book about any of his late relatives because they never did anything scandalous. I read that this morning, smiled, and thought, "no, sorry, Uncle Ogden, scandals aren't interesting."

I mean... they're not. Not really. I recently did an entire post here about my late great-uncle, who never did anything scandalous either; granted, he had one or two scandalous opinions, but as far as I'm concerned those mar his story rather than enhancing it. Scandal is actually rather tedious. We all make mistakes, and it's not very edifying to be reminded about other people's. Isn't it much more interesting that my great-uncle remained faithful to the love of his life all those years, even though she'd married someone else, than if he'd been some kind of libertine? Libertines are ten a penny and nothing to make a fuss about, but that kind of fidelity is something special and ought to be celebrated.

In the chapter I'm working on at the moment, two people take centre stage. Both of them have made some pretty serious mistakes, but there's a difference between them. Crogbor, who's the main villain of the entire book, has been brought to justice; he's broken the laws of at least three countries including his own, so what happens to him is that he is initially tried in Country A with the queen of Country B present (it's a small country, they're dwarves, and she's an extremely hands-on kind of ruler). It's entirely clear from the start that he's guilty on all the charges both sets of leaders throw at him, so he can't answer the charges; but rather than simply admitting he's done wrong, he quibbles about legal technicalities, blames other people, fails to answer questions, plays the martyr, and so on. By the time he's finished, everyone is thoroughly annoyed with him, especially the dwarven queen, who's a fine monarch but has very little patience. She takes him off to throw him in a cell while his own country, Country C, is getting itself sorted out enough to try him for high treason. If he's found guilty for that, and there's no reason at all why he won't be, he'll be beheaded; but he's going to argue and quibble and try to justify himself all the way to the block, and since that's established... well, it's boring, honestly. Which is why we won't see him in the story again, though we may get a brief report on his execution.

Telvarran, however, is very much more interesting. He, too, has got things badly wrong, mainly due to a toxic mixture of immaturity and excessive ambition (it didn't really help that he was born into a ruling family). He's currently in a prison cell. But he's now starting to accept that he got there through his own wrong choices, and he's slowly starting to gather the wisdom not to repeat them once he's released. (Not on his own. He's getting very patient help from Nivaunel and Darg. But, still, he's getting there.) He has a real story unfolding ahead of him, all about how he gets to pick up the pieces of his life and put them back together into something that works, like the Japanese technique of mending broken pottery with gold so that it ends up more beautiful than it was before it was broken. I could write a lot more about Telvarran, but there's really nothing more of interest to say about Crogbor.

Ogden Nash could have written that book after all... and I bet it'd have been fun.

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Po-ta-toes!

2026-04-27T09:20:49Z

I like potatoes.

Well, yes, I do like them as food; I generally like to bake them in the microwave, because I like them in their skins but I don't want the skins to be tough, which is what you get if you do them in the oven. But what I'm talking about today is somewhat different. I like potatoes from an aesthetic point of view. Seriously, hold a potato in your hand and have a good look at it; it's just as unique as a snowflake. Granted, it doesn't have that pretty hexagonal symmetry. Nonetheless, the shape, the precise arrangement of the eyes, all the things that go together to make that particular potato... you've never seen them before. You've seen similar, but not the same. Jerusalem artichokes are similar, albeit smaller, and they're even more fun because they tend to be a lot more irregular. (I like eating those too, though they are a bit of a hassle to prepare, and they are extremely seasonal.)

And I've always felt a little bit ashamed of appreciating potatoes, because when I was a child I made the mistake of mentioning it in my dad's hearing, and he mocked me for it viciously. I should have known, really. It was wrong to say anything positive about anything he wasn't directly interested in, though you might get away with it if he wasn't but my mum was. As it was, she said nothing, so I never knew whether she agreed with him or just felt I was about due for a major put-down because I hadn't had one for a while. I do know I ended up in tears, and I dare say I got told off for it because I usually did, though I don't specifically remember. Nonetheless, he didn't stop me appreciating potatoes; I simply learnt to be quiet about it and to feel embarrassed.

Anyway, at the moment I'm working my way through a devotional book called simply Gratitude. I can't remember the name of the author off the top of my head, but I can tell you she really appreciates her raspberry bushes; I've been hearing quite a lot about them during the daily readings, as she uses them to illustrate a number of points she makes. And this morning she was talking about appreciating the small details of God's creation, so obviously the raspberry bushes got yet another mention, and why not, indeed? At the end of the chapter, she recommended going outside so that you could do that, and I immediately thought "I don't need to go outside - I have small details of God's creation sitting right in my fridge."

Including - and this was, in fact, the very next thing that occurred to me - four fine baking potatoes, all different shapes and sizes.

And now I don't feel ashamed or embarrassed. If my dad didn't appreciate potatoes, that was his loss, and to mock a child for doing so was outright wrong. This is where I stop looking for ways to justify his behaviour and simply accept that, no, it was full-on wrong, this falls under forgiveness instead. And if anyone else wants to call me weird or stupid for appreciating things like potatoes... you know what? I don't care any more. Not my problem.

Here. Have a potato.

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Zoomorphics are fun!

2026-04-26T08:08:31Z

As a scribe, what I basically do is Carolingian minuscule lettering and knotwork illumination. However, knotwork on its own can get just a tad samey; it's very attractive and satisfying to do, but an entire border that is just plain knotwork can be a little much. So either you need to do a really big elaborate illuminated initial capital, or you need to incorporate some other elements into your knotwork; or, of course, both. There's nothing at all wrong with both. With scribal work you can really push the boat out if you're in that sort of mood.

And so, at the moment, I'm learning to do zoomorphics. I decided to start with birds, for no other reason than that I wanted to fill a tall thin rectangle and birds have two legs, so it's a lot easier to make them tall and thin if you want than it would be for a four-legged creature. (Well, yes, you could have it standing on its hind legs, but I'm only just getting into this. Your basic bird is the easiest option.)

The Celtic bird is a curious creature. It might be a dove, an eagle, a peacock, or anything else, or no known type of bird at all; but it invariably has a hooked beak, no matter what it is. You start by drawing a shape rather like a comic-book speech balloon, which is the head; the beak then goes into the indentation between the main oval and the little point at the bottom. It's always quite a big beak - the Celts knew nothing of finches, apparently - and you hook it. Then you put a little twist or spiral at the back of the head about where an ear would go on anything with obvious ears; this may or may not be extended out into the surrounding knotwork, depending on the design. The neck may be long or short, straight or curved, depending on the type of bird and the exigencies of the design space (mine, obviously, has quite a long neck), but it always has a border on each side. The wing is more or less a teardrop shape, ending in an acute-angled point; it has a fairly wide border along its lower edge which finishes in another spiral on the bird's shoulder. You draw a bar across that near the top, and this is where the feathers start. They may go down the whole length of the wing, or they may go only part way and stop at another bar. The tail feathers emerge from just under the wingtip, and there are usually three of them (but not always); and either one or both legs may be drawn. The feet are fairly realistic, with one toe going backwards and the other two going forwards, as is the case with most real birds. These may either be clawed or extend into the knotwork.

It takes a little practice to draw a convincing-looking Celtic bird, but because they're so very stylised it's easy once you've got the hang of it. I'm going to try hounds next. The Celtic hound is clearly based on the Irish wolfhound, but, of course, it tends to be twisted, wrapped, and knotted in all directions. You start, however, with exactly the same speech-balloon shape as you use for the bird.

I've also picked up another scroll request; this is a backlog one. This poor lady has been waiting patiently for her scroll since 2022.

Well... look at it this way. In 2022 I couldn't do about 90% of what I can now with regard to calligraphy and illumination, and I'm still learning!

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It's not as simple as that

2026-04-25T10:03:31Z

I have this book about emotional abuse. It's a mini-book, so you can sit and read this thing in about half an hour, and parts of it are excellent, like the curate's egg. Other parts of it are not so good, including the list of "behaviours which constitute emotional abuse". Yes, if many of these behaviours are happening regularly and there's a pattern to it, you can be pretty sure that emotional abuse is going on, and one or two of the behaviours are always abusive, such as outright threats. But most of the behaviours are the sort of things that anyone might do occasionally; and as long as they realise they've got it wrong and apologise straight away, that's not abuse. That's just people being people. We all get things wrong even in the best of relationships; and, while we naturally want to get things right, getting things wrong now and again is normal and in no way abusive.

I also have some difficulty with the section about how to deal with an emotional abuser, because that entire section works on the assumption that you have at least some kind of power in the situation, so that you can, for instance, tell the abuser that if they don't stop talking to you like that you are going to leave, or otherwise distance yourself from them. This works, most of the time, if you're an adult, but even then not always; what, for instance, if your emotional abuser is your boss, and you can't easily get another job? That happened to me, and in the end I was forced out of the job because I became ill with stress. (I was not by any means the only one; in fact I lasted more than twice as long in that job as anyone else, because said boss emotionally abused everyone she came into contact with except those who were in authority over her, so the turnover rate was... quite something.) And for a child, the advice is just impossible. No child can remove themselves from emotionally abusive parents or teachers, and if they start saying things like "I will no longer allow you to talk to me like that" to such people (as the book recommends you do as part of the progression of establishing your boundaries), all that will happen is that they get punished, and then the abuse probably gets even worse.

But I think the part that bothers me most is the blithe assumption that emotional abuse is caused by having been abused in some way oneself as a child. And I'm quite certain that's wrong.

For a start, most people who are abused don't go on to abuse others, so you can't simply say "the cause of abuse is abuse". It has to be more complicated than that, right from the start; there has to be at least one other factor that differentiates those who go on to abuse others from those who don't. But it is also the case that not all abusers were themselves abused. Some were, it's true. Nonetheless, the correlation between people who were abused and people who abuse others is too poor to posit any causal effect here. I don't like stats, but I've done enough of them to know it doesn't wash.

Darby Strickland is a Christian writer and counsellor who specialises in helping victims of domestic abuse (primarily spousal abuse, so mostly wives, but also some husbands). Her take on the cause of abuse is that abusers have a worship problem; basically, they want to be worshipped. The whole world has to revolve around them. The secular writer Lundy Bancroft, whose book Why Does He Do That? is one I would recommend to anyone of any faith or none, puts it in terms of control, which comes to much the same thing. Everyone has a basic and rightful need to control their own environment to some extent, but what's supposed to happen is that when there's an overlap or conflict, people come to a compromise, so that everyone gets the best possible outcome while accommodating everyone else. So if I'm sharing an office with someone, I will probably sit near the open window because I like it on the cool side, and they'll sit over on the other side by the radiator because they like it warmer, and we'll both be happy. Abusers don't do the compromise thing, though; they have to have total control over everything in their orbit, including, crucially, other people. Both Darby Strickland and Lundy Bancroft have pointed out that abusers are often said to have "uncontrolled rages"... but they don't. They often rage, certainly, but they know exactly what they're doing. The big give-away is that if they break or otherwise damage things, it's never their own things - no matter how "uncontrolled" they appear, they always carefully choose their victim's property to break or damage, often homing in on items of special sentimental value.

This is where the "abuser as abuse victim" thing comes in, I think, because for a few people, if they've had no control at all as children over anything that happened to them, they ping back the other way as adults and now they feel they have to control everything, whether that's through an unfocussed desire for vengeance or a fear of ever being controlled again themselves. But you read about plenty of extremely abusive types who had a privileged upbringing and weren't abused in any way, and they want total control because they just think it's their natural right. It can happen in all sorts of ways; the school bully who grew used to disregarding the feelings of others may never mature enough to understand why that's a bad idea. The young man who behaves perfectly well at work may never have learnt to respect women properly (because his father didn't) and end up abusing his wife. Whatever leads someone to become an abuser, it always boils down to this desire for excessive control, which may or may not be conscious; I'm quite sure it wasn't in the case of my boss, who, looking back, abused and controlled other people out of a deep sense of personal insecurity. She literally had no idea she was doing it, and she just couldn't work out why everyone who ever worked for her either left due to stress or found another job within (on average) two to three years. She thought it was a really unfortunate coincidence. I felt sorry for her, even while I was actively doing my best to get out of her clutches.

I'm pretty sure she wasn't abused.

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Relative values

2026-04-24T09:51:07Z

One question I often find it useful to ask myself is: what am I still doing wrong, or at the very least sub-optimally, due to the pressures that were put on me when I was a child? This is not about blaming myself, I hasten to add; children do whatever they can to cope with whatever is thrown at them, and if what is being thrown at them is something they should never have to cope with, then very often the coping mechanisms they develop will turn out to be maladaptive in the long run. That is not the child's fault. The strategy they're using is the best they can do at the time to protect themselves from the situation they're in. However, that strategy will often persist into later life because it's been established as a habit, and it is then likely to become at least unnecessary and at worst actively counter-productive. So it's a good idea to look at what one is doing from time to time, ask if it's still a good idea, and tease out why one is still doing it; and, if it's not still a good idea, start work on changing it.

That's why I'm now taking active steps to reconnect with my relatives.

When I was a child, relatives were dangerous. All of them, but not all for the same reason. They fell into two broad classes: the ones who thoroughly approved of the way I was being brought up (which, I think, was just my maternal grandmother, who was a holy terror, frankly), and those who didn't, or at least wouldn't if they had any idea what was going on. Grandma was just intrinsically dangerous for the same reason my parents were, but the others were dangerous indirectly... and the nicer they were, the more dangerous they were, because they were a potential threat to my parents' carefully built narrative about me. Not that they'd have seen it that way consciously, of course, because the entire carefully built narrative wasn't conscious (had it been, they'd have seen the problems with it). So I had to be isolated from them as much as possible.

My father didn't like having relatives in the first place. I don't actually think he disliked them as people; I suspect he'd have got on with them perfectly well if he hadn't been related to them, or if he'd had e-mail available at the time and been able to communicate with them that way. (You did not talk to people on the phone for any length of time in my parents' house, because the phone was expensive; in fact, children weren't allowed to use it at all, other than to say hallo to some relative who had rung up. The only exception to this was a friend of my father's, who would ring him up and talk to him for hours. You always knew it was this person on the phone because Dad's end of the conversation would consist almost entirely of "Oh... yes... right... absolutely... definitely... yes... go on..." and that kind of thing. But since that person was paying for the call, it was all right.) But, no, he was related to them, and that meant he had to go and see them sometimes, or they had to come and see us sometimes, and that was terrible because it threw out all his beloved routines. He'd do nothing but complain about it. I remember once asking him if I would just become a relative once I grew up, with the heavy implication (not in any way lost on him) that his attitude to his relatives was so bad that he wouldn't want to see me. He didn't answer that. And one of my sisters recalls realising that she'd just said something quite rude to one of our aunts because the way Dad talked about her had rubbed off on her; she apologised straight away, but it was a bit of an eye-opener for her. I do think Dad believed that particular aunt was rather stupid. I don't think she is; I don't always agree with her, but that doesn't mean she's lacking in intelligence. But if you disagreed with Dad, it meant there was something wrong with you.

So what would happen was this. We would be taken to visit relatives, or they would come and see us, and the visit itself would be very enjoyable, at least from my point of view; but afterwards there would always be the telling off. Because I'd have got it wrong. I would have eaten too much and that was greedy, which was rude; or I would not have eaten enough and that was picky, which was also rude; or I would have talked too much, in which case "they don't want to hear all about you!" (even if they had specifically been asking me questions - I was told they weren't really interested in me, because basically who would be? They were only doing that to be polite to my parents); or I wouldn't have talked enough, in which case I was unsociable. Whatever I did, it was wrong, and whatever I tried to avoid doing, I'd be in trouble for having done whatever the opposite was. Asking in advance how much I was supposed to eat or talk was also wrong. That was Being Silly, which was one of the great childhood crimes. (Adults were allowed to be silly. Adults being silly was, I was informed, hilarious and I should laugh, and I had no sense of humour if I didn't. Children being silly, however, was absolutely wrong, and the worst of it was that you didn't know when you were going to do it. Any innocent question could be labelled Being Silly.)

So, of course, I grew to dread seeing relatives, which was the idea. To repeat, not consciously. The entire thing was going on just under the surface. My parents would have been absolutely horrified, and denied it vigorously, if someone had said to them, "You are making your eldest child dread visiting relatives so that they don't find out that you are making said child the scapegoat for your own inability to cope with children." But they were. My sisters, thankfully, were spared the post-visit lecture; whatever they'd done, it wasn't important. They weren't the ones who had to be conditioned.

Consequently, I've tended to keep my relatives at a distance all my life. I regret that. Most of them are really nice people; and I don't want them to think I don't value them as such, just because I got all that toxic gunk dumped on me when I was growing up. There is no more toxic gunk and it's well beyond time to acknowledge that.

I need to start taking back some things that were stolen from me as a child. And it's never too late to do that.

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We just want to listen...

2026-04-23T10:13:53Z

I really never imagined I'd write a book about a war, not even a fantasy one, but that's what I'm doing. The ramifications of that are proving very interesting, however, because while I'm reporting on all the cat-and-mouse stuff that is happening at the border, the main focus is on various people's stories and how they relate, or don't relate, to the current war.

The one I want to talk about today is called Telvarran. He has fallen upon evil times, and in this case it is entirely his fault. Telvarran was the heir to the Regency of Chiderene (this being a province in the east of the realm which is large and prosperous enough to have its own regents); however, he was so wild that his parents packed him off to a monastery to learn some discipline - the same one where Edelna, whom I've previously mentioned, was packed off for the same reason. Neither of them learnt any discipline; in fact, they escaped together and made for Kernet, the capital city of the realm. Somewhere along the route, Edelna got pregnant and Telvarran promised to marry her, not necessarily in that order. However, when they reached Kernet, they were met by Nivaunel (who is Edelna's half-sister, and had been asked to find her) and her friends, who had to inform them that Lenamara, the mother of Nivaunel and Edelna, had been stripped of her title because the King and Queen had investigated and decided that it had been awarded in error (and thus Edelna had also lost her title; Nivaunel, not being a lord's daughter, didn't have one). Since Lenamara had also been guilty of various misdeeds, she was put to work in the palace kitchens. Telvarran dropped Edelna and the baby like a hot brick on the spot, saying he could hardly be expected to marry the daughter of a kitchen maid. His parents took a dim view of this, and decided that his twin sister (half an hour younger) and her husband should now inherit the Regency; later he was arrested for thieving, and they stripped him of his title altogether. At the end of the second book, we leave Telvarran in prison in Kernet, working off his debt for the theft by copying out books, since he has a good hand; Edelna and the baby, meanwhile, are just setting off for Falcon Keep, the regional capital of Chiderene, so that the baby can be legally adopted by the new heirs, with Edelna as her nurse. The baby therefore remains in the line of succession, although her biological father has been neatly excised from it.

By the third book, they've arrived in Chiderene to discover that there's a growing threat from Kalbir, the nation to the north. Kalbir has a new king, who's a usurper, and his sidekick is a very nasty cleric by the name of Crogbor. Most of the Kalbiris are very suspicious of arcane magic (though not divine magic), and therefore it isn't openly used; however, the reindeer nomads who live in the far north are fine with the idea - they're just not that good at it, since most of them are illiterate and you need to write magic down if you're going to develop it and pass it on. However, one tribe discovers a technique called "circle magic", by means of which several casters can pool their power to cast much stronger spells. Crogbor finds out about that and makes use of it. He also finds a diamond mine (though there is this little wrinkle that it's not in Kalbir; it belongs to the dwarves across the western border, so it needs to be exploited in secret), and that means he's able to pay white dragons to help, because diamonds are what they most love. Older white dragons are able to cast spells naturally. It also makes it easier for him to hire casters from elsewhere... at least, until the local dwarf queen finds out he's mining on her land, but that's another fun subplot.

And there's Telvarran, sitting in prison in Kernet, and it's safe to say he's unlocked about level 20 in disgruntlement. Crogbor knows that if he gets him out, he'll be the perfect puppet ruler to install in Chiderene; so he hires one wizard and one white dragon. The wizard gets him out and delivers him to the dragon, the idea being that Telvarran flies into Kalbir on the dragon looking very impressive.

It doesn't happen like that. Crogbor is strong in many ways, but he doesn't know enough about arcane magic, so he's not always aware of what it can do. It can, as it happens, locate Telvarran in mid-flight, enabling a skilled wizard to teleport onto the dragon's back behind Telvarran, grab him by the ear, call him a "traitorous little bugger" (if you've been reading my work so far, you'll now know exactly which wizard it was!), and teleport back with him before the dragon knows anything about it. Telvarran is currently serving the rest of his sentence in a magically warded cell in the Regents' palace in Falcon Keep, while his parents discuss whether or not he ought to be tried for treason. And, meanwhile, they have the idea of asking Nivaunel to visit him, knowing that she was able to help Edelna to get back on track.

Nivaunel is not at all sure she can help, but she's willing to try; so she goes to see him, taking Darg with her. Telvarran knows who she is, so he thinks she's been sent to preach at him. Possibly the Regents think the same thing. Nivaunel has other ideas. She says, basically, "Tell us your story. We want to listen."

Telvarran doesn't believe her. He's seething with resentment, completely unwilling to accept that his situation is his own fault, and complaining about having lost his "rights"; he hasn't, of course, or at least not permanently. He's temporarily lost his freedom, but he will get that back. Everything else he's lost was a privilege and not a right. And after a while, he gets so angry that Darg says to him, "You can hit me, if it'll help." (Darg, remember, is well over two metres of solid half-orc.)

Telvarran points out that Darg is wearing full plate armour. Darg had temporarily forgotten, because he wears it all the time when he's awake. So he offers to ask Nivaunel to help him take it off so that Telvarran can hit him, and adds, helpfully, "I promise not to hit back."

By this time, Telvarran is starting to feel a complete idiot. Embarrassed, he declines the offer; he says it's not as if it'll do any good. Finally, he admits that he's not sure why he's angry, but it's probably not with Nivaunel and Darg.

To cut a long story short, they do eventually persuade him that they are, in fact, there to listen. As Nivaunel puts it, he's made some bad choices and those have left him somewhere he doesn't want to be; so if they can collectively get to the root of why he made those choices, it may help him to make better ones in future so that he can get to where he does want to be. They're not going to tell him to do anything unless he specifically asks them for advice.

I had almost no idea what those two were going to say when they walked into Telvarran's cell. But I'm really pleased with what came out, in the end.

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The joys of spontaneity

2026-04-22T08:16:11Z

I don't like restrictive routines... which was another of my many sins as a child. I was supposed to like them, because Dad did. I was supposed to feel comfortable with them. I do sometimes think I'd have had life at least a little easier as a child if I'd been autistic like he was; however, I was a long way removed from that. I was entirely too imaginative for my own good from a very early age - one of my earliest memories was of being given a doll's cot, which I promptly turned upside down and used as a spaceship. I was then told off for not playing with it "properly", because I was apparently supposed to find it so much more fun to put some stupid doll into a cot than to fly to the Moon. They did, after a while, get used to the fact that I played imaginatively rather than routinely, though I don't think they ever stopped thinking it was weird.

I was, incidentally, supposed to play this "game" which was called House. It went like this. You were grown up, and you had a house. That was all. You stayed in this house and you didn't go anywhere. But I knew very well that all grown-ups had houses unless they were really unlucky, so just having a house wasn't anything to exercise your imagination. What about all the interesting things that grown-ups did? They didn't simply sit in their houses admiring them. House was extremely boring, and so, for that matter, was collecting stamps, which I was also expected to do. It wasn't as if anyone would ever buy you the interesting stamps, or allow you to buy them for yourself; no, you were supposed to collect stamps off letters, and you might get a very occasional foreign one, but most of them were all the same. I don't know why on earth I was supposed to collect stamps, but I dutifully did for a while, then when my parents forgot about it I hid the stamp album and it was never spoken of again.

But I digress. I don't object entirely to routines, since they can be useful in freeing up mental CPU space to deal with other tasks. I have a few that allow me to remember certain regular activities on autopilot. My problem with them is when they become inflexible and get in the way, which is one of the reasons I resent my pills so much; they really kill spontaneity. Because I have to take the dratted pills half an hour to an hour before every meal, if someone at church invites me to lunch on the spot, I can't just say "oh, yes, thank you, that would be great!" I have to go home and take my pills, and then I can't eat for at least half an hour after that, but I do have to make sure I eat within the hour. And it's infuriating. Travelling is even worse; everything ends up revolving around when I take the beastly pills, and I feel both trapped myself and an encumbrance to other people. Routines are a good servant but a very bad master.

As a child, though, I was expected to run on them, and to be as upset when they were disrupted as Dad was; so the idea that I might want to break a routine myself simply never entered anyone's head. (After all, I didn't officially even have any desires or preferences that originated from me, only those I was told to have.) Consequently, one of the few really good memories I have of childhood is the time I managed to break a routine... and get away with it.

It was like this. I regularly used to listen to a radio programme called Dial a Scientist. It was a good programme and I enjoyed listening to it (and appreciated being allowed to do so), but this particular week I didn't want to, because it was a beautiful day and it was blackberry time. I wanted to go blackberrying instead. After all, this was the Lake District, so it might well be pouring down the next day. So I asked my mother if I could go blackberrying.

"No," she replied. "You want to listen to your programme."

"No," I said, "I don't want to listen to it today. I want to go blackberrying."

"Don't be silly. You want to listen to your programme."

Now, normally I'd have just sadly capitulated, because usually trying to explain what I actually wanted rather than what I'd been told I wanted got me into trouble; but this time I was desperate. I knew I might not get another chance this year. So this time, unusually, I persisted. And Mum was busy doing important grown-up things, as she generally was, so she wasn't really listening, because I was only a child, after all, and therefore not at all important; and she finally said "yes". I charged out of the house before she could change her mind, grabbed the trug from the garage, ran off as fast as I could, and spent a blissful hour or two filling it with blackberries. I came home with a full trug and a huge smile.

"Where have you been?" asked Mum.

"Blackberrying," I replied, astonished. "You know. You said I could go."

"No, I didn't!"

"You did! I kept asking and asking, and finally you said yes, so I went."

"Oh. Well, I must have said yes to something else, then. And you've missed your programme now."

"I know. I wanted to go blackberrying instead."

I was pretty sure I'd get into a whole lot of trouble; but for some reason I could never fathom, I didn't. I'd broken a routine; I'd done what I wanted to do rather than what I'd been told I wanted to do; and I'd made an honest mistake, which was a big no-no for children. But I didn't even get shouted at. Amazing.

It wasn't always awful being a child.

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Ambisinister

2026-04-21T09:14:57Z

I'm at about 9.5 kHz this morning, but that does vary a bit depending on whether or not I've just blown my nose; the main obstruction seems to be in my left ear, which I think is the (slightly) dominant one.

It is generally difficult trying to decide which side of me is dominant. The only place where it's easy is my eyes. I have a dominant right eye. Everything else either goes mildly one way or the other, or there's no strong dominance at all. In particular, I don't have any noticeable hand dominance. On scientific tests I come out very weakly right-handed, but that can easily be attributed to my parents declaring me right-handed when I was a child because they didn't know it was possible not to have a clear hand dominance. (They didn't have any problem if someone was clearly left-handed, I hasten to add. My sister was, and they didn't give her any trouble about it at all. But I was told off for not using my right hand because apparently it wasn't possible to be left-handed half the time. I did go back to doing things in a way that was more natural for me when I wasn't being watched.)

In fact, it's a little bit more complicated than that. While it's true that there are quite a lot of things I can do equally well with either hand, and quite a lot more that I have been conditioned into doing right-handed but wouldn't take much practice to be able to do equally well left-handed (writing being in this category; I spent a couple of weeks at university being unable to use my right hand due to a thumb injury, and my consequent left-handed notes were a bit slower than normal but still perfectly readable), there are also certain things for which I definitely do have a preferred hand. And it's not always the same hand, either. My left arm is noticeably stronger than my right arm; I don't know whether it is like that by nature or simply because I've always preferred to carry things in my left hand, but, of course, the fact that it's stronger does reinforce that preference. The same goes for anything requiring the admittedly rather modest amount of oomph I possess; if it needs strength, I will automatically do it left-handed. On the other hand I very much prefer my right hand for sewing; my left hand is not incapable in that respect, and there are times when it's very useful to be able to use both at once, but the right hand is my primary sewing hand.

And then there's the computer mouse. When I first started using a mouse, I was still convinced I was essentially right-handed because I'd been told I was (despite the considerable body of evidence which demonstrates that it's not at all as simple as that; mind you, at that stage I was also still convinced I was ugly and several other extremely negative characteristics, for exactly the same reason). And mice are generally set up for right-handers in any case as default, though you can alter them. So I duly set up the mouse on the right side of the computer and tried to use it.

It went all over the place. I struggled horribly.

I was puzzled. This ought to be intuitive; and one of the negative labels I had managed to shake off by this time was "clumsy", so I knew it wasn't that. Maybe it just needed a bit of practice? I carried on, and continued to struggle horribly, until I finally had the bright idea of swapping it over to the other side. Perhaps my left hand would cope with this thing better.

It did. Very much better. I was now suddenly using a mouse like a normal adult rather than a toddler with ADHD. I didn't bother swapping the buttons over because I didn't know how to do it at the time (this was, after all, my first mouse), so I got used to having them where they were, and that is still the set-up I use. Mouse on left side, buttons as per usual. I do all my digital painting with the mouse, at that, so it is not simply the case that my right hand does the fiddly work and my left hand does the donkey work. There literally aren't any nice simple lines you can draw regarding my left/right balance.

My parents liked nice simple lines, so they drew them regardless. I don't have to bother about those now.

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Beep!

2026-04-20T09:35:49Z

This cold has been causing noticeable high-frequency deafness. My hearing is normally excellent for my age across all frequencies; I do have trouble (and have had all my life) picking out conversation from background noise, but that isn't a hearing problem, that's a brain processing problem. I keep my headphones permanently plugged into the laptop, so if it beeps (as it does when I get a Mastodon or Discord notification), the beep will come through the headphones and therefore be extremely quiet. Normally I can hear that from the kitchen; at the moment I can't hear it at all, so I have to rely on the visual cues if I am sitting in front of the laptop. Since that doesn't necessarily imply that I'm looking at the screen (I may be doing crafts or scribal work), I'm currently missing a lot of them.

And then there's the air fryer. On Friday I made banana loaf, and I slightly goofed about the cooking time (each loaf takes 40 minutes, rather than the 30 I had in my head), so the air fryer was still going when I put my headphones on to wait for my sister to show up on the regular Friday evening Zoom call. I could hear that just fine, headphones notwithstanding, as it is a low-frequency purr. I could also, naturally, hear when it stopped. But I couldn't hear the beep at all, and that startled me; I'd normally take that for granted.

Yesterday morning I ran the washing machine, which has a much quieter beep. I wasn't wearing the headphones. I couldn't hear that, either.

So I went here: https://sound-tester.com/frequency-test I then tested my hearing range, and found I couldn't hear anything above about 9 kHz. In the process, I discovered that quite a lot of people over 40 can't either, cold or no cold. I'm over 60. Even so, I know what I'm used to being able to hear!

This morning I tested again. I'm now topping out at about 9.3 kHz, which is a significant overnight improvement, and it tells me I'm finally on the mend. About time, too, because I've had the dratted cold for more than a week now. I look forward to finding out what the top of my hearing range normally is!

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One piece of chocolate

2026-04-19T09:27:25Z

The cold is still present, and it's causing high-frequency deafness. Normally my hearing is very good across the entire spectrum. On Friday I had my headphones on because I was waiting for my sister to join a Zoom call; I could still hear the low-frequency sound of the air fryer without difficulty, so I could tell when it stopped, but unusually I was almost unable to hear the beep. This morning I've had the washing machine on, and that has a much quieter beep than the air fryer; even so, I can normally hear it just fine. Not today. I have heard no beep at all. My sister, who got the cold four or five days before I did, also still has it, so it is a particularly long-lasting one - which, we are both agreed, is most irksome.

Anyway, today I want to talk about Bob the Lodger deciding to lose weight. I was quite used to people at work saying they needed to lose weight when they didn't, but it had to be said that Bob did. He was, let us say, a podgy lodger; and he decided he didn't want to be, so he came to me for advice.

"Well," I said, "you could make a really good start by not absent-mindedly nomming your way through an entire 400 g block of Cadbury's Dairy Milk most afternoons while you're coding. I'm not going to tell you to stop eating chocolate altogether, because then you'll just crave it; I don't believe in forbidden foods. But I think if you ate better quality chocolate, you would be able to eat a lot less, because it wouldn't take so much to feel satisfied." This, I might add, was something I knew from experience; when I was extremely poor, I used to buy these rather doubtful chocolate drops from the local covered market because they were dirt cheap. They weren't that nice, but nonetheless I found myself eating more of them than if they had been better quality, because I was trying to get enough "chocolateness" out of them. I'd have been better off spending a little more on my chocolate; it would probably have saved me money, as I'd have eaten less of it.

I didn't have to explain all that to Bob because he immediately saw the logic of it. So he asked me, "Do you have any better quality chocolate in the house?"

And I said, "Is the Pope Catholic?"

What I had, as it happened, was Lindt chilli chocolate. Dark chocolate, so quite a full-on chocolate hit as well as a spice hit. I also knew very well that Bob the Lodger was not especially spice-tolerant; he thought a Sainsbury's prawn curry ready meal was very hot (most other people will tell you it only just barely qualifies as a curry). And so, because I am not cruel, I warned him. I explained that this was good chocolate, but it also had chilli in it and he'd get quite a kick. He listened, and decided to try it anyway.

"Mmm," he said. "I see what you mean. This is very good chocolate... ah... er... ???!!!"

I have to say, the progression of expressions on his face as the chilli revved from 0 to "decent madras" over the next thirty seconds or so was pure comedy gold. To be fair to him, though, he did recover himself masterfully.

"You're quite right," he said, still blinking. "I wouldn't want to eat more than one piece."

He went on the Atkins diet in the end... but that's a whole 'nother story.

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It is not good for the man to be alone

2026-04-18T09:43:43Z

There is this Discord gaming server I'm on (not my own - this is a rather bigger one organised by a bunch of Irish SCA members), and the other day we were talking over there about co-operative games, which, broadly speaking, I like. There are always going to be a few exceptions either way (I always thought I didn't especially like Hanabi until someone else pointed out to me that every time I play it, Person X is involved, and Person X is not really the best person to play Hanabi with... which is, to be honest, a fair point, though I do get on with that person in general); but generally, if you want to try to get me interested in a new game and you're telling me what it's like, "co-operative" will score positively. (And "trick-taking" will score negatively. I don't especially enjoy that type of game. But each to their own and all that.)

It seemed that everyone in the conversation was of the same mind. Even the WoW players, of whom there are many on that server, said that the thing they most enjoyed about that game was their guild - the co-operative element. And then someone observed that there's a particular subset of people who get really wound up about co-operative games... and it's the people I always refer to as the "doomers". You know. Those folks who are convinced the world is going to end and they are going to survive it, whatever happens to anyone else, so they've got a shedload of ammunition and enough tinned beans to last them for 15 years.

I do not grok doomers. At all. All right, I suppose from my perspective I'm going to struggle anyway, because if civilisation collapses I'll be dead within weeks no matter what, because I'm medication-dependent. But even without that, I look at these people and I think "where is your mutual support network? What happens when you're ill (which you certainly will be, sooner or later)? Who's going to look after you then? What happens when you need to do something which you don't have the strength, or the resources, or the intelligence to do on your own? And what makes you think that surviving entirely alone would be worth doing in the first place? You wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement, would you?"

It's really not rocket science. Our prehistoric ancestors had a great deal more sense than these doomers. They survived in often hostile environments (ice ages, anyone?) not by disappearing into their own individual little caves with a stone axe and a frozen mammoth carcass, but by living in close-knit, mutually supportive communities. I occasionally find someone on the Internet marvelling at the discovery of a hominid skeleton with a mended bone, revealing that the rest of this person's community took care of them while they were recovering rather than just abandoning them. Well, yes, of course they bloomin' did that, because that is Survival 101. If Grag has broken his leg and can't hunt, you set the bone and take care of him, and then a) eventually he recovers and can help the tribe with the hunting again, and b) if the same thing happens to you later, you bet Grag will take care of you. And nothing's changed in that respect. Just as for Grag, so for Aloysius Q Doomer of Kansas; but Aloysius has decided to isolate himself from his fellow humans, so if he breaks his leg in the traditional apocalyptic setting, he's a goner.

We are, essentially, social creatures. (This isn't quite the same thing as "sociable"; introverts like me need to recharge after spending time with other people, however much we enjoy doing so. In fact, for me, one of the great joys of the Internet is that I get to be as sociable as I want to be but without mental battery drain! By "social", I mean we are mutually interdependent.) And I think that's something to be celebrated, rather than fought against. We are much stronger together than alone. That's the way we were designed.

I don't know what is going to happen to Aloysius Q Doomer and his ilk if they get what appears to be their wish and civilisation collapses. But I can make a good guess. Most of them will be wiped out early on like everyone else. And for the rest, it's really not going to be like being the protagonist in a video game.

It's going to be lonely.

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Three drunken halflings

2026-04-17T09:04:04Z

I've been trying to decide what to do about tomorrow's D&D session all week... well, in fact, longer than that, because it's postponed from last Saturday. One of our party had some unexpected travel that weekend and couldn't attend, so I said, fine, we'll postpone, not a problem, I've had a bit of trouble preparing anyway due to the funeral. This turned out to be an excellent idea, because of course this time last week I was suffering grievously from an overdose of assorted Burger King trimmings, so I was in no state to do any preparation (or pretty much anything else) on Friday.

I have probably already mentioned some of this, but I'll just recap. Lord Smallpiece of Ashwood has hired the party to find his missing Great-Uncle Algy, who's a vampire (so far, this is identical to the starting premiss of the first book, but it diverges very quickly, as the party in the book is at least 20th-level, whereas our current gallant band is only 4th-level, so obviously both the challenges and their solutions have to be very different). They have successfully discovered that the kidnappers went east, and the latest piece of information they've obtained is that there are three of them, they're all male, and they stopped at an inn called the Oaken Staff. So our party naturally will be going there tomorrow to try to find out which way to proceed. What they don't yet know is that the Oaken Staff stands at a crossroads; so, very roughly speaking, you can carry on eastwards, or you can go north or south. So they need to know which way Uncle Algy and his coffin were taken.

I thought "ah, fun could be had with unreliable witnesses here," and this rapidly crystallised into an actual logic puzzle. There are three drunken halflings in this inn, who arrived at the same time that the party with the coffin left, so they know which way they went. These three are brothers who own a farm, so they stop at this inn regularly on their way to market, and therefore the innkeeper knows them. Their names are Mott, Cott, and Stott Barleyfield, and by the time our party arrives, they've had fifteen flagons of ale; however, they have not had five each. One of them has indeed had five, but another has had three, and the other one has therefore had seven. It's not possible to tell who has had how much from their general demeanour, as they're all a bit slurred. However, in the grand tradition of logic puzzles, the one who's only had three flagons recalls everything accurately; the one who's had seven gets everything muddled and therefore makes no true statements at all; and the one who's had five will get it right about half the time. Needless to say, they disagree about which way the coffin went, and so our party is going to have to unscramble their tipsy ramblings to get to the truth.

I'm really not a high-combat DM. Obviously I'll do some combat some of the time because everyone likes it a bit and some people like it a lot, but if you have nothing but combat it gets a bit samey. I like to switch things around, and to this end I don't simply give XP for combat. You manage to recapture all the baby owlbears without either them or anyone else getting hurt? That's worth good XP in my book. You solve the drunken halfling logic puzzle? Ditto ditto.

Now I just have to write it. I expect I'll be reporting on the results later, but I do know one thing: I can make it quite hard. This party is bright and should never be underestimated!

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A small victory

2026-04-16T10:07:47Z

I was brought up not to expect to be allowed things that other people in a similar situation would take for granted. So it was just normal that everyone else in my class had things I didn't have (primarily parental support and encouragement). It was just normal that my father withheld a significant proportion of the money that was supposed to get me through my degree, but didn't do the same to my sisters. It was just normal that they got expensive school trips, and (later) work experience at the company where my dad worked, when I not only didn't but was told off for asking for these things. It's quite hard to explain to people that the reason I wasn't resentful about any of this was not that I was some kind of saint, but because that was just how the world worked in my experience. If I ever complained that things weren't fair, I'd be met with "Life isn't fair!". Which it isn't, but that wasn't the point. The point was that they weren't interested in making things fairer, because they were firmly convinced that if they tried to do that I would end up "spoilt", and that was the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to a child. I probably need to keep on underlining this, because objectively the way my parents treated me was awful; but you really have to remember that they were not in any way malicious, and they did it because they'd managed to convince themselves that I was such a problem child that I had to be put down at all times or I'd become this... monster, I suppose.

It is one thing to forgive people. It is quite another thing to recover from the consequences of what they did to you that needed forgiving. To this day, I still struggle with those. For instance, there was the matter of how I ought to price my bead earrings (they're for sale on Folksy). Making these earrings is skilled work which requires an unusual level of fine dexterity, so I decided it was fair to price them in such a way that I would earn just above minimum wage... because it's me. I know very well that if someone else were making similar earrings, I would tell them, "well, that's skilled work which requires an unusual level of fine dexterity, so it's worth at least twice minimum wage". But that's someone else, so it's different, because that's how things have always been.

But... I had a little victory the other day. It suddenly occurred to me that, even for me, it was not unreasonable at all to expect that if I put in the work needed to get a degree, I should get that degree, given that there isn't any doubt that I do have the ability required. So far, in the various attempts I've made throughout my life, I have put in about twice the work needed to get a degree, so... I should get my degree, right? Even I should be able to do that? But if I don't get the money from the legacy, I won't be able to continue with it, as things stand.

So, this is what I did. I contacted the Open University. I explained to them all about the situation with the legacy, and I asked if there might be any other avenues by which I might be able to continue to study if I don't get this money. And it felt very defiant and transgressive, as though I was trying to get hold of something I shouldn't really be allowed to have.

To hell, and I mean that 100% literally, with feelings like that. Objectively, I've been denied the degree that I should have been allowed to gain from all my hard work, and no childhood mind-tape is going to tell me any different. I may never to my dying day be quite able to accept that I'm as good as other people, but there's a line. I do stick at the idea that doing more than twice as much work as other people to get a degree is not good enough to get a degree in my particular case (by the time I've finished, it'll be something over two and a half times as much work).

It's good to know there is a line. Let's see if I can start moving it a bit closer to where other people have theirs.

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The Jankyville food bank string bag

2026-04-15T09:21:39Z

I think I've previously mentioned that I make string bags. These things go down a storm at the local food bank; they're big, they're light, and they're strong. They'll easily swallow 10 to 15 kg of tins, jars, packets, bottles, and other heavies. Of course, we do encourage people to bring their own bags, but they generally don't know that if they're coming for the first time, and even if they're not, they quite often forget. We do have other bags available, but one of these is equivalent to two or three supermarket carrier bags, plus it's reusable, plus when it finally does wear out it's biodegradable, because it's made from jute twine.

If you want to learn how to net, the finest resource I know is available here: https://archive.org/details/netmaking00hold/page/n5/mode/2up Net Making by Charles Holdgate is a wonderful little book with extremely clear diagrams. I downloaded it as a refresher course, but it explains everything so well that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to a complete beginner. You will also want netting needles, as they're called (actually they're shuttles rather than needles, as their purpose is to hold a long strand neatly rather than to pierce anything); the traditional design is boat-shaped, but it is much easier to wind modern steel ones, which you can buy here: https://www.ginabsilkworks.co.uk/search/products?keywords=netting These are also a lot better than the traditional ones if you're trying to do fine-gauge netting, because they're thinner so it's easier to put them through the holes. For a string bag it doesn't matter too much which type you use. The only other thing you need, apart from your twine and a pair of scissors, is a mesh stick. For the string bags I use a strip of aluminium edging 3 cm wide; I used to use a small folding ruler about the same width, but it drove me nuts because of the hinge in the middle. I didn't realise how much that was slowing me down till I got the aluminium strip. What the mesh stick does is to keep the size of the meshes nice and even, because you wrap the twine round it every time you make a mesh knot.

This is how you make one of my string bags. If I don't give specific instructions for a technique, then it's in the book.

Start with a 12-loop grommet (which is to say 11 mesh loops and one drop knot). Work one plain round. Now work increases on alternate rounds; every 3 meshes, then every 4, and so on, till you've done a round where you increase every 7 meshes followed by one plain round. Work 4 more plain rounds (you've now got a total of 32 meshes).

Work 15 loops, then turn your work and knot the working strand into the bottom of the loop you've just made (note that this is not the standard decreasing technique, but it works very well for this bag). Work back to the beginning of the 15 loops - you've now got 14 on the current row - then turn and do the same thing. Keep going like this till you're left with 8 loops, and knot the strand into the bottom of the loop you've just made as before.

You're now ready to make the first handle. While Mr Holdgate does cover this in his book, he also tells you that you need a second person or a solid anchor point to make a handle, and I'm here to tell you that no, you really don't. You just need your wrist and a little dexterity. If you struggle with the dexterity, by all means make the handle the way he tells you in the book - whatever works for you. But what works for me is that I now loop the working strand over my wrist and knot it into the loop at the far end of the row, then take it back the other way and knot into the first free loop on the left, and so on, repeatedly going across from left to right and back again till there is one free loop remaining, which you leave for now. Then finish the handle using lark's-head knots the way he tells you in the book (or a fancier method such as the bosun's plait if you feel so inclined). Finally, knot the strand into the remaining free loop, and finish by drawing the end inside the handle using a darning needle. You should have 16 loops remaining on the other side of the bag; rejoin the twine, and do exactly the same as you did on the first side, starting by working 15 loops into them.

And there you have it - a really good, sturdy, useful string bag. May it serve you well!

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The joy of socks

2026-04-14T09:02:48Z

I will knit a pair of socks for pretty much anyone I know, if they ask; but fitting them is something of an art, and I do need measurements to be taken in a particular way, mostly so I know where to turn the heel. What I need you to do if I'm knitting socks for you is to stand on a piece of thickish cardboard (not too thick to cut - a flap from a cardboard box is pretty much ideal), and get someone else to draw round your foot with a marker. I then need them to put a mark on the outside of the foot, directly below the centre of your ankle bone. You can now either give/send me this piece of cardboard, or, if that's awkward, you can take certain measurements from it that I can then use for calculations; and - this is important - I need them in cm. Granted, I can convert easily enough, but all those calculations work in metric, even though they were originally designed by an American. This is probably because you'd end up multiplying by some very weird fraction if they were in inches.

The purpose of the calculations is to double-check that you've got your ankle bone mark in the right place, because this is crucially important. If your ankle bone mark is wrong, I will be turning the heel in the wrong place, which is going to be a problem. The position of the heel turn is related to the width as well as the length of the foot, because the width of the foot is closely related to the thickness of the ankle; so someone with shorter but narrower feet may need the turn in about the same place as someone with longer but wider feet. It's a fairly exact science.

Well, so Porthos wanted a pair of socks, and I said "fine, I can do that," and sent him a two-page PDF with lots of diagrams explaining exactly what I needed him to do. What I got back was "my feet are fairly wide and about a size 11."

No, Porthos. No, no, no. That is not going to help me fit a sock. I told him so, and sent him the PDF again.

Our Porthos has many sterling virtues. Patience is not one of them. I'm sure he took one look at the instructions and thought "too complicated, can't be bothered with that." So, this time, he sent me the length of his foot (which I needed) and the width at the widest point (which I hadn't specifically requested). In inches. He's nine years younger than I am - why is he even still using inches?!

I heaved a sigh. This was just going to have to do. So I converted it into cm, took the corresponding measurements for my own feet so I knew how much to increase the width (my feet are pretty narrow), and also pulled up the example measurements from the PDF, which were taken from a real foot. Armed with all this, I did a very rough and ready, seat-of-the-pants calculation to work out where his heel turn ought to go; it turned out to be pretty close to where mine goes, in the end. I'm still not 100% certain I've got it right, but I did give it my best shot, so if they don't fit quite right it won't be my fault.

I would also very much like to knit socks for Athos and d'Artagnan. However, Athos simply isn't interested in hand-knitted socks (to be fair, he does have diabetic neuropathy in his feet, so he probably needs special ones of some sort), and d'Artagnan is rather complicated for reasons I won't go into here. If I did knit socks for him, I think I'd have to increase the width at the tops, since he's a cyclist; this means not only that he has disproportionately massive calves, but also that he's inclined to stuff his trousers down his socks so they don't get caught in the chain, and that requires extra width too. I hope to be able to do that some day.

Meanwhile, the cold - to use a classic SCA word - abides. It is mostly just squatting in my head; I keep expecting a runny nose, but in fact I haven't really had that yet. I'm just bunged up, coughing a bit, sneezing a bit, and feeling rough.

But I do have socks to knit!

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They don't make 'em like that any more

2026-04-13T08:35:17Z

I had a great-uncle. Well, I possibly had more than one; but Uncle, as we always called him, was the only one I knew about, and he had enough character for several great-uncles. To be fair, not all of it was the sort of character you'd want to celebrate; I'm afraid he was a terrible old racist (to the point where, when my sister had a black boyfriend for a while, we were all instructed not to tell him), and he'd probably have voted for Brexit if he'd been around at the time. But still, there was a good deal about him that's worth recalling with affection.

There was never a time in my life when Uncle wasn't old. He was born in 1900 and I was born in 1964; my parents had a photo of him as a very small child, just about old enough to walk, and he was wearing a dress, because that was what you did in those days. It made sense. There were no disposable nappies and the range of available fastenings was limited, so children of all genders were just put in dresses till they no longer needed to wear terry nappies. Those were bulky, so the dress would also hide that effectively. By the time I got to know him, he was a somewhat tubby but nonetheless energetic old buffer with a great fondness for sherry, which he never overdid... except in trifle. Uncle's trifles were notorious. I think he tipped in most of the bottle. He was equally fond of butter, as a result of which his sandwiches were quite a struggle for the rest of us; I'm pretty sure he used a cheese plane. That butter wasn't spread; it was sliced.

Uncle was an upholsterer by trade, and a very good one, so he worked at a number of the large country houses, including Chatsworth. He made a fair bit of money doing that. Of course, by the time I came along, he was retired. At that time he lived in what was supposed to be a temporary prefab just outside Harrogate, which had been up since WWII and is very probably still in good condition; it had a lovely garden, which he enjoyed maintaining although it was quite large (he even had his own croquet lawn, though I don't think he played very often). He was single for most of his life, but he married for the first time in his early eighties. Yes, you read that right. You see, he proposed to this lady when he was much younger, but she turned him down, and eventually she married someone else (who was possibly already a friend of his). Uncle just continued being friends with both of them, until in the fullness of time the lady's husband died, and after a decent period Uncle proposed again. This time she said yes. While there were many things about which I didn't agree with Uncle, I'm right alongside that one; it is far better to be single than settle for the wrong person. I think they had about four or five years together before she died.

After her death he decided he was perhaps getting on a bit now, and it would make sense for him to live close to my parents. So he bought a house which was almost opposite to them. He was due to go and see them at Christmas that year, but by then, although he'd closed the sale, he had not yet been able to move in. Uncle could be an astonishingly stubborn old cuss when the fit took him, and he decided that, no matter what, he was going to sleep in his own house. So - at the age of not too far off ninety - he strapped his bed to the roof of his car and drove across the Pennines with it; and he did indeed sleep in his own house. History does not relate what my parents thought about this, but I'm quite sure that if they'd known he was planning to do that, they'd have got him a camp bed or something.

Uncle lived in that house till he was 99, at which point, very reluctantly, he was forced to admit that he really ought to be in a care home. The problem was his short-term memory; while he had all the rest of his marbles, that had failed him badly, and he'd had several near-misses through things like forgetting he'd left the gas on. So, a few months shy of his hundredth birthday, he moved into a home, and a little later my parents asked him how he was enjoying it.

"Oh, I don't like it at all, dear," he grumbled. "Everyone is so old!"

He was, needless to say, the oldest resident in the home. By quite some margin.

He reached 100. In fact he wasn't too far off reaching 101, but he died just before Christmas at the end of the previous year. He had specified that he wanted to be buried in Harrogate, but the funeral had to be postponed due to the fact that it was impossible to get the hearse across the Pennines due to heavy snow. That was something of an irony. Uncle always hated snow.

And, almost immediately after he died, my eldest niece was born, and the family saga rolled on.

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The funeral cold

2026-04-12T09:21:28Z

One thing I'm not sure I explained very clearly about the funeral was that, when I arrived, my sister had a filthy cold. This meant that my other sister and family went to stay in a hotel instead, because brother-in-law was absolutely terrified of catching this cold; partly this is because even now he's still not fully recovered from long COVID, but mainly it's because he has an operation coming up which has already been postponed a few times, and he was extremely anxious for it not to be postponed again. So they all decamped to this hotel, which meant my sister now had free space, which meant I stayed with her rather than being parked over at Mum's house. That did mean I had to shuffle up and down the stairs on my bottom, but overall it was much more convenient because my sister didn't have to keep schlepping me (and wheelchair, and luggage) around.

Yesterday, following Friday's digestive turmoil, I still felt quite washed out. This is not like me. I will normally start bouncing back almost as soon as Sibyl starts unblocking herself. There was, of course, the fact that I didn't this time; I had to wait till I was sick later. Even so, I'd normally expect to be completely fine the following day, not just 85 to 90% fine.

And then I woke up this morning, wondered why I felt a little off, and then realised I had the start of this cold squatting evilly in the back of my throat. Once I started moving, I felt rather more than a little off. I'm a tad feverish. Heigho. At the moment that's all it is, but I am expecting the manic hanky-washing phase to have kicked in properly by tomorrow morning at the latest.

So I'm now praying very hard that neither brother-in-law has succumbed to it. The husband of the sister with the cold is A, he is very nice, and he too has an operation scheduled... for tomorrow; he's had trouble with his eyes all his life, and if all goes well he's going to get a cornea transplant tomorrow, which will help a great deal. The other brother-in-law, D, I do not especially like, though I can get on with him all right in a general social context; put it this way, he tried to sneak off to the Reform conference last autumn without telling my sister, passing it off as a work thing. I don't know whether I'm more annoyed about the nasty hateful politics or the deception involved, but I struck him off my Christmas list with the full approval of my sister. Nonetheless, he does need the operation and I wouldn't wish another postponement on him.

Anyway, with the help of some friends online I believe I have identified the Green Slices of Doom that were probably what thugged my guts on Friday. We think they were pickled cucumber. I do not get on well with cucumber at the best of times, and I would most certainly have avoided it if I'd known it was there; but it was impossible to tell what anything was because of the vinegar in the ketchup and mayonnaise, which was pretty much all I could taste other than the actual burger (and the burger was struggling). Meanwhile I have contacted Burger King and explained exactly what happened the other day, and I am rather hoping they will give me a refund. After all, it was the worst meal I've had for years and it then made me ill, so it's not exactly as if I got value for money there!

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A hearty disrecommendation

2026-04-11T09:31:50Z

Everything was fine on the way home yesterday till we stopped for lunch at a service station. There was a small food court with five different places to eat and/or drink, plus a shop at the back selling things like toys, games, puzzle magazines, and the various other things people want in order to prevent boredom on long car journeys. (For some reason, the loos were accessed via this shop, and the signposting wasn't great... well, to be honest it was almost non-existent. The disabled loo wasn't bad when I found it, though.)

I prefer to have my main meal in the middle of the day, and the most substantial option looked like Burger King. I seemed to recall they used to do a vegan burger, so presumably they still did.

Well, they did; in fact there was a choice of two, both somewhat more substantial than I actually wanted, and you had to order them using what they called a "kiosk". It wasn't really a kiosk. It was a large touch screen with a card reader at the bottom, and it was not massively intuitive (to the point that neither of us found any customisation options, though I was informed later that they were there). So I ordered a Plant-Based Whopper, and the friend I was travelling with ordered something chicken-related, I think.

It was, honestly, not very nice. I hate vinegar, and this thing had both ketchup and mayo in it (I mean, why?). The patty itself was all right - you rarely find an actually bad vegan burger these days; but I could have seriously done without several of the accoutrements. Salad, fine, but what were those weird little things that looked like slices cut from the very tops of tiny courgettes (so you got the slightly wrinkled edges) but didn't taste like any vegetable I was familiar with? So I went up to the counter and asked politely if there was any way customisation could be included on that touch-screen thing in future, which was when I found out it actually was there, but not immediately obvious. The lady asked me if I'd like a replacement burger. I said, no, I'd already struggled through the one I'd got, but thank you, I appreciate the thought.

I got something sweet to take the taste away, and we proceeded on our way. After a little while, I started to feel very tired, so I semi-dozed (I find it very hard to fall asleep sitting up, especially in a moving vehicle, but I did get quite close); and it gradually started to filter through to me that I was also not feeling very well. By the time we were nearly home, I decided it would be a very good idea to check Sibyl... and I was right. Her bag was as flat as a pancake. She was blocked.

It is, as I have probably mentioned before, quite amazing how ill one feels with a blocked stoma. Somehow I managed to get self, wheelchair, and assorted luggage back into the flat, unpack the minimum I could get away with for the moment, and then go and crash out on the bed. After a while I dragged myself through to set up the laptop so I could let my sister know I'd arrived home safely, managed maybe ten or fifteen minutes on there e-mailing her and catching up on stuff, then had to go and crash again. I took my pills with the intention of eating later, but the eating part never actually happened; Sibyl did, however, start unblocking herself shortly after I'd taken the pills, so that was hopeful. Normally when that happens I start to feel better quite quickly.

I didn't. I wondered why. I crashed some more. Then I moved and thought "oh no, I'm going to be sick". I had to go and get the bucket, which, fortunately, lives in the bathroom, which is next to my bedroom. And indeed I was sick; not a great deal, but since I'm on ondansetron it shouldn't really have happened at all. I did finally start to feel a bit better after that, but I kept the bucket next to my bed overnight just in case (fortunately it wasn't needed). This morning I'm basically fine but still a bit washed out.

And now you all know what not to have at Burger King.

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Funerals are weird

2026-04-10T08:44:49Z

The last funeral I went to before this one was my dad's, a few years ago. He very reluctantly reached the age of 94; to be honest I was a little surprised he didn't make his century, given that his uncle did (and thereby hang quite a few tales - we always referred to him simply as Uncle, and he was quite a character). Having said that, he'd been wanting to go for a while, especially during the last few months of his life, when he was increasingly frail and very crotchety to go with it. He'd spend half his time complaining and the other half apologising for it, which drove Mum up the wall; but in the end he was admitted to hospital with a respiratory problem, and he didn't last long after that. His funeral service, like Mum's, took place at the Catholic church in Kendal, because it's where my sister goes, and it was followed by a wake at one of the local hotels, which I am not going to name because I am not about to praise it. This hotel is very expensive, has ponderously slow service, and does not understand the concept of a "light meal". If you tell them you ate too much at lunch and all you want for tea is a sandwich, they'll still bring you a medium-sized loaf with not only fillings but an entire large plateful of trimmings, and it's frankly outfacing. No wonder Sibyl decided to blow at 1 am on the night immediately following the funeral.

We learnt from that experience. This time, after the short committal at the crematorium (a surprisingly attractive building - it looks pretty much like any large farm in the Lake District), the undertakers ferried us to one of the golf clubs in Kendal, where there was a buffet laid on, so that everyone could eat as much or as little as they liked. It was a good buffet, and they had a very good disabled loo; you had to take the lift, and it wasn't a very large lift (just room in there for one person in a wheelchair plus one standing), but it was nonetheless easy enough to get there and back under my own steam. The doors weren't a problem.

This, of course, is where you see all the relatives you haven't seen for years, and one of them comes up and starts chatting and you think "is this my cousin?", because you haven't seen her in person since she was possibly about two. (I'm pretty sure she was, but of course one doesn't like to ask. She's now divorced with a young son; her husband was violent, so she's had a fortunate escape.) Most of the time, though, I was chatting to my brother-in-law's mother, who's a very nice lady and still doing extremely well despite her age. We hadn't really seen each other to speak to since I was convalescing at my sister's (then in Cambridge) following my serious illness in 2016, so it was good to catch up with her again. And then there was the sweet old Irish lady who's lived just down the road from my parents since 19-oatcake and hardly looks any different, but is noticeably deafer than she was. And, of course, the boyfriend of the niece, who appears to have become an instant fixture (to the extent that he came along with the family to the crematorium, despite having never actually met my mother). He seems pretty nice.

The other major difference this time was that Sibyl behaved herself. All right, she was a bit out of her usual routine, but that's only to be expected; but there were no problems of any kind, or even threats of problems. I was, of course, carrying a full kit change at all times just in case, but no, she was fine. For which I am immensely grateful.

And in the car on the way back, my sister said "So...", and I replied, "...that's that." And thus it was. Everything now settles back into a new normality. My sisters and I are now the senior members of this branch of the family (I was rather startled when the priest said my name first during the funeral service; yes, I am the eldest, but I've never taken priority, so that was weird), they end up with quite a lot of money, and I may or may not. We still don't know whether that can be sorted out, but at least now the funeral is out of the way there's more time to investigate the matter.

I'm glad it was my sister who did the eulogy. She was the one who got the best treatment, so she didn't have to deal with any complicated feelings. She talked about how Mum was her first piano teacher (after which they paid for lessons for her, whereas I wasn't allowed to learn no matter how much I pleaded, because they'd decided I'd be bad at it). I actually have no idea what I'd have said if it had been me. No matter how much you forgive someone, you can't alter the harm they did; and, indeed, the entire reason you had to forgive them is that they did harm. I have very few good memories of childhood, and those I do have generally involve unexpectedly not getting into trouble for accidentally misunderstanding an instruction. I wasn't supposed to make mistakes, and it took me a long time to get over that one.

But I did forgive her a long time ago; and now I just hope God did, too.

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Turn left at Scotch Corner

2026-04-09T08:25:43Z

There are several ways to get from (approximately) Cambridge to Kendal; we went up the A1, turned left at Scotch Corner, and came down via Kirkby Stephen from the north. On the face of things that seems like a rather odd way to do it, but the M6 has a notorious tendency to get ram-jam, and my friend's satnav said the route we took was the quickest. We stopped en route at a service station for a loo break and a bag of crisps apiece, where we spotted an advertisement which read "Keep the wheels turning with a sausage roll", and my immediate reaction was to ask how that worked. I mean, yes, if you're cycling, but I don't think the advertisement was primarily aimed at cyclists!

Anyway, it was a decent journey. At one point we ran into what appeared to be a long tailback, and I got my knitting out; but it cleared surprisingly quickly. After that, there were a couple of warnings about queues but they didn't actually materialise.

Dressing for the trip turned out to be somewhat problematic. It was over 20 degrees when we left, but the maximum temperature forecast for here today is less than 10 (plus rain); so I put my boots on, reckoning I should be all right in the car with the air conditioning, and all my outerwear travelled in a separate bag. We arrived a little after half past six, to find that my sister has an absolutely stinking cold (because colds are inclined to have the worst possible timing); thankfully she's a bit better this morning, having slept well last night. However, this meant that my other sister decamped to a hotel because her husband is absolutely paranoid about getting the cold; he's not only still recovering from long COVID, but he has an operation coming up which has already been postponed a few times, and he really doesn't want it to be postponed yet again due to sniffles. So in the end the whole family stayed in the hotel, which meant there was room for me to stay here... which does mean shuffling up and down the stairs on my backside, but it also means my sister doesn't have to schlep me and my luggage around, so on balance it's much more convenient.

It turns out I've forgotten my codeine, which is a bit of a nuisance; I need it to help with Sibyl. (As I explained to my sister this morning, I am not addicted to it but Sibyl is! I haven't noticed anything different after missing it last night, and for now I've got away with it regarding Sibyl, but that is unlikely to continue.) So I have had to order a few pills via the NHS 111 website, to be picked up from the local pharmacy. The NHS may be creaking in a number of ways, but in many other ways it's still blindingly efficient. The pills will be ready in under half an hour.

And so it's the funeral this afternoon, and that is going to be weird. Because funerals always are.

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The evil you can't bash

2026-04-08T09:11:21Z

I haven't posted about the writing for a bit, so this is where we are with the third book.

In the third chapter, a teenager arrives at the Regents' palace; she's come all the way from a small town in the far south of the province, displaying considerable resourcefulness and competence in doing so. She has run away from home because she wants to see the wizards, of whom she knows there are plenty at the palace. And the reason she wants to see the wizards is that she wants them to "fix" her by magic so that she will be acceptable to her parents. Fortunately, she encounters Nivaunel first, who correctly discerns that the problem is with the parents, not with this girl, whose name is Meherret.

Meherret has suffered precisely the same kind of emotional abuse as I did; and, in fact, when I was writing her, I initially thought "I'm going to have to tone this down, because nobody is going to believe parents would really act like that". I decided not to, in the end. She has also internalised the abuse, as, again, I did (for years - though Meherret now stands a chance of being able to shake it off, as she's now being treated very differently), so she genuinely believes she's all the terrible things her parents have been calling her. Nivaunel and her friends have to spend a lot of time and patience explaining that all the evidence they have paints a completely different picture. And then, in the fourth chapter, we get her parents being summoned to... let's say discuss the matter; they're not on trial, but nonetheless the matter does need to be sorted out. Nivaunel realises that the problem is that they can't cope, and they can't even recognise that, let alone admit it; so what eventually happens is that a cleric of Pelor is sent to live with them to help them become good parents to Meherret's younger sister, who - very tellingly - since Meherret left, has started complaining that she's now being treated like Meherret. Of course she is, since the parents need a scapegoat and Meherret has left that position vacant. Meanwhile, Meherret herself remains in the care of Nivaunel and her friends, since everyone is happy to continue that arrangement; the plan is that if her parents are able to learn and sort themselves out to the point where it's safe for her to return, she will do that, but not otherwise.

Darg, meanwhile, has been thinking; and you never know quite what'll happen when he does that. Darg has been established since the beginning of the second book as a very simple (though not stupid) soul, and as far as he's concerned he knows about evil. Something evil attacks you, you bash it. Easy. But he realises that a) what has happened to Meherret was undoubtedly evil, but b) the people who did it to her weren't evil-aligned (they're both Lawful Neutral, as it happens), c) they didn't intend to do evil, and d) bashing is not the solution in this case. They need intensive help, not violence. (Arguably, they need more help than Meherret does; she's just got to heal from the damage that has been done to her, but they need a complete change of mindset.) The fact that it's not all black and white has been touched on before; Nivaunel has mentioned that alignment isn't everything, and you can, for instance, have a good alignment but a bad temper, or difficulty seeing when other people around you need your help, or any one of a number of things that don't alter your alignment but do make you less good than you would otherwise have been.

In the end, Darg is going to realise that, as Solzhenitsyn put it, the line dividing good and evil runs through the heart of every human being (and, indeed, elf, dwarf, gnome, and so on)... including his own. And Darg, bless him, has about as pure a heart as you can get in a battered world.

For the moment, he's asking Nivaunel what to do about evil you can't bash. And, as she says herself... that's a really good question.

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