This is labelled (1) because I intend to post more: every time it occurs to me, a picture of an object I like and the story behind it.

My grandfather made this for my mother when she married in 1954. I inherited it in 1998. The two spoons on the left came with the rack, as well as the two spoons-with-a-hole in the back row on the right (one pointed, one round). It’s clear that I don’t use the spoons-with-a-hole as much as the rest; only for cake batter (so slightly more lately) and some sauces. I bought the three round spoons on the right in the front row when I moved out of my parents’ house in 1979. The two oval spoons (third from left in the front row and the one behind it) I bought to fill up the rack because most of my mother’s spoons smelt too much of cigarette smoke and I had to throw them away.

It’s always been on my mother’s wall and on my wall, except for a few years in the house before the last when we had no place to put it. It wasn’t easy to hang it up: these tiles sit on a sheet of wall-finishing board on top of what felt like drywall to the drill, which is half an inch or so in front of a sixteenth-century wall I didn’t want to touch. So I had to drill very carefully, swapping drill bits twice: the crack between the tiles was soft, the wall-finishing board tough, the drywall soft again. But it’s now firmly on my kitchen wall, where it belongs.

A while ago some people on the rec.arts.sf.composition newsgroup tossed the idea around to have a dedicated IRC channel where people could drop in and out to talk about writing (and, as writers do, about cats, chocolate, and just about anything else), to shout out wordcounts without littering the newsgroup, and to ask “what’s that word again?” in someone’s general direction and get an answer immediately so it doesn’t stop the flow.

This disappeared into the general Usenet nowhere for a while, until it came up again just when I happened to have time, so I went and set it up. It’s been up for two weeks now and it’s started working as intended. People drop in and out and talk about anything that happens to be relevant or interesting (though, at the moment, very much about bread-baking; the other hardcore baker and I have already got two other people to take it up), shout out wordcounts, ask for words and toss around plot ideas.

Some people feared that the IRC channel would take the interesting discussion out of the newsgroup, but that seems not to be happening: the chat is mostly social and practical, immediate, whereas the more thoughtful discussion is still in the newsgroup, and even comes back to the newsgroup from the channel (“that’s a good idea, shall I post it or do you want to?”)

It’s not exclusive, though it’s ex-directory: if you don’t do Usenet, but read this and think you’ll fit in with a loose group of …er… idiosyncratic writers, don’t hesitate to drop in. It’s #rasfc on irc.freenode.net, and if you mention my name (I’m irina_r there) someone will know where you’re coming from.

But they were too pretty to leave in the shop, especially at half-price.

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Because there was no handy bus to where I wanted to go. Also, it was splendid weather for a bike ride, sunny and crisp but not too cold.

Or, alternatively, I decided on the bike because that’s where I happened to be when I made the decision to write what I’m writing now, rather than in a seat near the front of the No. 5 bus to Colmschate.

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Tenor: Up?
Me: I’m already up.
Tenor: I’ll sing alto.
Choirmistress: <nods>

Even some people in the choir looked boggled. But it was perfectly clear: this was at the end of Matins when the pitch is usually very low, and people are more comfortable if they take the next part up. Altos (there was only the one of me) sing the melody which sopranos usually have, sopranos the third above that tenors usually have, and tenors (there was only the one of him) take the alto part. Poor basses, who can’t go up, but they can sing the lowest notes an octave higher.

This usually goes seamlessly, but we had a large sprawling choir with some people who don’t come to evening services often so it had to be confirmed.

That I was “already up” was because at that point I tend to be so tired that I don’t get the alto part right: it’s got lots of fourth-up jumps, like the beginning of “Away in a Manger”, and I overshoot that by a quarter-tone at least and raise the whole choir because, confound it, people are used to me being in tune and follow me. So I play it safe and sing the easier melody, which has the added benefit of being so high that I don’t have much room to be sharp.

…or a really small elephant?

This is Rhynchocyon udzungwensis, the grey-faced sengi, a giant elephant-shrew. According to Galen Rathbun who discovered it, it is “the first new species of giant elephant-shrew to be discovered in more than 126 years”.

It weighs almost a pound and a half and is easily the size of a rabbit. I wouldn’t want to find that in my stew.

A gentleman dining at Crewe
Found quite a large mouse in his stew.
Said the waiter “Don’t shout
And wave it about,
Or the rest will be wanting one, too.”

It’s actually more closely related to normal elephants than to normal mice.

No icon this time, but a painting by Rembrandt, because it’s hard (perhaps impossible) to find an icon of the Prophetess Anna by herself rather than as an extra at the Presentation.

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It’s the Feast of the Presentation today. We were practicing the stichera and the canon for weeks beforehand, so that gave me time to think about the actual words. Especially the canon in the third tone, which has “every male who opens the womb” to the most earworm-prone part of the tune. It made me wonder, among other things, what happens if the firstborn is a girl: don’t girls count at all, so the womb isn’t considered open and her younger brother is regarded as the firstborn? It’s even more intriguing because I have only daughters myself, but fortunately I don’t live in Old Testament times.

Luke 2:22 Now when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the LORD”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

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