I have effectively been kicked out of LiveJournal, since it has stopped recognising my password, and is only accepting updates from an e-mail address that is long defunct. Oh well. Ta ta, more than fifteen years of posts. My fanfiction, luckily, is all on Archive of Our Own.

There's been a lot happening in the garden this year. The house next door got sold and a four-storey hostel is being built on the site, so they cut down ALL the trees, so suddenly that side of my garden had no shade and a clear view into my porch. My landlord hurriedly put up a nice high fence, and planted a lot of quick-growing bamboos in front. The monsoon has come early, so water is not a problem.

And then the old mango tree by the gate fell after a heavy rain softened the soil, and had to be removed, causing some damage to the guardhouse and the roof of the outdoor picnic table and benches for them and the gardeners. Once that was repaired, I had a chat with the garden company about what to put in its place, and we decided on a lot of jasmine plants (which Housekeeper can use for her altar, and the guards and gardeners can too), and some Tabernaemontana divaricata.

The gardeners also checked the other old mango tree, which is at least 40 years old, so right at the edge of lifespan (notwithstanding this incredibly advanced age it produced several hundred fruits this year, which were distributed among all our employees). It had been nicely shading my bedroom windows, but turned out to have termites and fungus, so half of it had to be lopped off too. Luckily crow nesting-season is over, and we also didn't have to cut the whole tree down.

The Yellow-Vented Bulbuls the world's stupidest bird have managed to choose the only other bush in the garden that is within easy vertical acceleration distance of my cats, who are now lurking nearby every morning when they are let out for their post-breakfast constitutional. Housekeeper is doing her best to keep an eye on the hatchlings, but given the parents' suicidal real-estate preferences I am not optimistic.

In cheerier news, the second citron tree (the first one died), which produced one gigantic 1 kg fruit five years ago and nothing since, beyond growing huge and bushy to a good three metres tall, now has eight fruits including another huge one that is almost ripe. I am very pleased. The garden company is rather astonished, and I have promised them a fruit for growing on.

And one of the dragon-fruit plants has produced two flowers, which will hopefully develop into fruit.

Friends who know me in real life, thank you very much for your concern and good wishes, for which I am glad and grateful. I am alive and well, at least so far. Things could be worse.

My housekeeper is away on holiday, and my (now) four cats are extremely unhappy about the sudden drop in service standards. However they now have free, make-your-own-fun feline psychodrama to entertain them instead, as Three-legged Cat (TLC for short) has graduated from the poolside gym to the dining-room (since housekeeper is not around to cook for guests I will not be using it). The maintenance people at the office have built me a lovely bamboo and chicken wire screen with which to block the doorway, so that he can see and be seen (and smell and be smelled) while not being allowed to be in direct contact with the original incumbents. I don't intend to go further than that until Housekeeper is back.

I was hoping to use this time to lose those last seven kilos that will get me down to a mice spot in the middle of my BMI range, but so far, people have been giving me food as if they fear I will starve otherwise. Which is also very sweet and kind, and it is furthermore fabulously excellent home-cooking, but does make the plan that much harder to implement...

In the antediluvian days of LiveJournal, before there was the Archive Of Our Own, all my fic was posted there. By the time LJ booted me out AO3 existed, and I'd put everything I'd written there, so I never quite got round to posting on Dreamwidth as well. I write Tolkien fic mostly, in the rather niche category of Silmarillion gen, and all more or less in the same universe, though there is also a gigantic Star Wars Sequel Trilogy ensemble fic that is in progress and almost finished.

So here is one of the recent ones. All that anyone needs to know is that in this version of the Trousers of Middle-earth Time, Mablung of the Ithilien Rangers and Elanor Gamgee, Sam's daughter, collaborated on a decades-long project to rescue and rehabilitate Sauron's fell-beasts.

"The Last Flight of Elanor Gamgee"




( Read more... )

Now that the GLP-1 agonists are dealing with obesity and its long train of expensive medical consequences (as well as, apparently, a lot more conditions mostly to do with other forms of overconsumption), obviously the next universal problem the solution of which will make a lot of people and companies Very Very Rich is:

BALDNESS.

This isn't just a problem for men, though they have the most visible problem. But women lose hair too, and given the social importance of hair for women it's something with serious psychological effects for them too. Find a way to reverse and prevent baldness or thinning hair, and the world will build a six-lane expressway to your door.

Manmohan Singh, 6 September 1932 - 26 December 2024, Prime Minister of India 2004-2014

James Earl Carter Jr, 1 October 1924 - 29 December 2024, President of the United States of America 1977-1981.

My friend and teacher, who died yesterday aged 90, whom I will not name because she was a private citizen.



Their deeds were virtuous and meritorious, each in their scale. May their names be remembered with honour.

My next door neighbour is a great cat-lover, has two of her own, and supports a whole community of cats (sterilised, vaccinated and fed by the security guards) in her very large compound. While visiting her for dinner, we noticed that the three-legged cat (henceforth called 'TLC' for convenience' the missing hind-leg was accidental not congenital, because I remember seeing him with all four in earlier years) was covered in blood. Her vet was hastily summoned and heroically arrived notwithstanding that it was 9pm, TLC was captured, escaped, recaptured, sedated, injected with antibiotics and his several wounds including a slice along his foreleg (probably from razor wire) so deep that bone was visible, were cleaned and stitched up.

Since neighbour is currently in the process of socialising her new second cat, also a previous rescue (lovely chap but doesn't get along with the incumbent at all), I volunteered my own staff and premises as sick-bay for TLC until his wounds are healed, and he is well enough to be castrated and either adopted by someone or released back into the compound next door.

He has been in a small, glass-walled room previously only used for storage, which the landlord used as his gym, enjoying air-conditioning and a pool view. He managed to escape once, but was successfully recaptured. The vet is coming every day (neighbour is paying her bill, and I am paying for TLC's board, lodging and medication). He's a small grey-tabby and white, with yellow eyes, and a very friendly disposition, though now that he's feeling better he's a bit bored and lonely and is chewing up the cardboard sheet with which he has been supplied (he's willing to sleep in the basket now, at least).

The Beastie Boys were extremely curious at first, but because they can't really smell him, I'd guess, haven't had any screaming matches yet. The gym has also never been their territory. Lap-cat seems quite indifferent, but Bus-stop Cat and Scaredy-cat are a bit agitated. I do hope he can be adopted, because otherwise I might have to think about keeping him, and it would be tricky to integrate him with the other three, who are a solid family unit. Anyway, nothing can be decided until he has been made a eunuch and had time for the hormones to leave his system. He also needs to heal and then be de-wormed, de-flea'd and fully vaccinated.

For weeks, now. Monsoon season, plus a string of typhoons. Floods and people displaced in large numbers all over South and Southeast Asia. Pacific Ocean typhoons seem to be bigger than the ones in the Bay of Bengal, while packing the same punch per km/h, I suppose because they have more space to spread out and grow. There's another one spinning itself up east of the Philippines right now, on the heels of Shanshan and Yagi. And then next month the second Bay of Bengal cyclone season begins...

There's been a lot less sun this monsoon season, so the dragonfruit plants only managed to produce five this year, despite an initially promising crop of buds. The papayas seem to be happy, and everything else is growing like mad, including the homicidally slippery algae on the drive. Everyone has to walk very carefully right now. The Heliconias and the Marvel of Peru and the species Torenias are flowering intensively, grabbing every little bit of sunlight they can. My swimming-pool pump broke down, turning it a brilliant shade of green before we managed to get it fixed, and is currently overflowing (into the overflow drain, so far, fingers crossed).

Housekeeper made fabulous pineapple jam from a load of juicy but non-sweet pineapples, which was variously given away and used for jam tarts, and we grilled a couple of leftover fruits with a smidgen of sugar, which came out very well. We experimented with hot-water pastry for the jam tarts, which came out very well indeed, light and crisp, even substituting butter for lard, which is not available in processed, conveniently usable form here (and we are not going to go about rendering it down ourselves). We'll be using that recipe in future, for savoury dishes too.

The utterly delightful song "Diggy Diggy Hole", which has added itself to my list of lifetime earworms, has several equally charming versions on video, including a sweet one by Yogcast, and a very nice instrumental version with medieval European instruments by Bardcore.


But really, the ultimate version to my ear is by the Italian power metal band Wind Rose (the video is rather funny too), whose CDs I shall add to my to-be-acquired list (streaming is difficult here, and anyway, I like to own my music).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU

This is the most recent Alliance/Union universe book (2019). It has languished in the pile since then, until yesterday, when I picked it up and read it.

This is the earliest chronologically, being about the period just before the Company Wars began, and the beginning of the Merchanters' Alliance, the trade cartel that features heavily in many of the Alliance/Union books. Like most Cherryhs it's dense, information-heavy, and nonetheless absolutely gripping, even though it's set entirely on one small, decrepit and fading space station, and the action mostly consists of people plotting, worrying, thinking about plotting and worrying about plotting, and also the political, economic and psychological implications of an era and specific location when both FTL and sub-light co-exist.

I had to laugh at a review that complained that the book did not consider "cultural diversity", because it's about nothing else. The action is entirely driven by the dramatic and incompatible interests, cultures and worldviews of:

1 Earth, with its multiple national governments and their historical obsession with territorial control, this time applied to space;
2 Earth Company, the intergovernmental consortium that controls Earth's space-related activity (amusingly, Cherryh is careful to point out that it is a generous employer; Cherryh has never dealt in easy stereotypes)
3 Earth Company staff (individually unethical and power-hungry, true) imposed on the hapless Alpha Station;
4 Alpha station administration (legally Earth Company employees but with their own local interests, such as keeping their station population alive);
5 the short-haul FTL ships dedicated tradng among to the tiny string of near-Earth stations anchored by Alpha Station (in desperate economic straits and also trying to stay both alive and solvent),
6 the giant long-haul, culturally alien FTL ships (their crews are giant extended matrilineal families) from the far reaches of human space, completely out of Earth's control,
7 the different space stations, all of them essentially independent polities that are nonetheless interdependent with each other and the FTL ships that support them
8 the shadowy threat of Cyteen, Cherryh's own take on 'Brave New World', not yet known as Union but already culturally alien in a completely different way from all the other human polities

The book is set at the instant where a "jump-point" - Cherryh's FTL enabler - has been discovered near Earth, but the information has not yet been made public. Earth has been cut off from its former colonies and their colonies except by years-long sub-light travel (the differences in psychology from the civilisations where FTL is normalised that this creates is also one of the relevant elements in the book). The inevitability of Earth rejoining space-based humanity is the basis of the constant refrain "Sol is coming" used by different parties with hope (more trade so we can survive!), dread (sudden disruptive intrusion of irredentist imperialists into a delicate political and economic stand-off in the far reaches of human space), and resignation (going to happen, how can we mitigate the damage and protect our own interests).

While much of the plotting is directed at trying to prevent Earth reviving the concept of war, this time at the interstellar scale, those of us who have read the other Alliance/Union novels know perfectly well that it's about to start anyway.

Excellent, except that now I have to go and re-read all the others.