May 11, 2003

I had three-quarters of an issue of Found Objects lying about on Good Friday, full of Holy Week musings, ready to finish when Easter had come. Then Easter came, and I wanted to write about Easter instead, but I was too busy celebrating to write. Now things are normal again - as normal as it gets, that is.

Writing

Back to the <expletive deleted> synopsis. Grr. I've had to abandon all my deadlines, and I've set a new one of "sent off to a publisher before 29th June". 29th June was my deadline for the first draft last year, come to think of it. Six months to write it and a full year in revision, which seems to be normal from what I hear.

Also thinking about Raneth again: I want more emphasis on the twin theme, and to show Ruzyn the priestess twin thinking, introspective, and Raneth the ambassador twin doing things. But I don't allow myself to write any of it until I've finished the confounded synopsis.

Reading

Finished rereading When the King Comes Home in Holy Week, now rereading Deep Secret. I still have The Tower at Stony Wood around, but Patricia McKillip's writing is so heady that I can only read it the way I eat candied ginger, a little at a time.

After returning the library books on Holy Thursday I stood looking at the shelves stupidly for a while, unable to pick out anything I'd remotely like to read, then went to the nearby second-hand bookshop and bought two collections of magazine pieces by Henri Knap (very, very fifties; we have three other books in the same series) for one euro total.

The World

I have a customized world clock at timeanddate.com to tell me the time in Amsterdam, Athens, Seattle and Seoul, so I know when people I might like to get hold of are likely to be awake. Nice toy!

And put on your sunglasses... Ready? Please use a browser that's not Internet Explorer 4.0, in order to get the exquisite "Netscape detected" message. This is a site about Georgia (the one in the former USSR, not the United State) that I expect to contain all sorts of things I want to read, but it's such a spectacular example of bad web design (and the maker wants a job as a web designer!) that I haven't found it yet. Here, at least, is a page about Georgian sacred music that's readable with only the sunglasses. (If you want the Cherubinic Hymn composed by King Demetre I, 1125-1156, ask me).

Here is a Mystery Worshipper's report of Easter Matins in the Orthodox cathedral in London in 1998. Clicking on "Index of Reports" gets you the current list. Ship of Fools, the Magazine of Christian Unrest, is worth looking at anyway.

Real Life

Cycling along what ought to be the city moat, though there are only stunted and much-refurbished stretches of it left, I heard a familiar cheeping. Ducklings! Nine of them, seven dark brown, one light brown and one yellow, about two weeks old, flapping embryonic wings ineffectually. Now ducklings rank just below kittens on my personal Cuteness Scale, slightly above donkey foals and adolescent mice (baby mice are icky) and well above puppies and human infants, so I had to stop and watch. I wish I could have taken pictures, but the only place to get at all close to the water is down a 45-degree slope and I don't want to risk the digital camera because of my lack of athleticness.

Kids

The boys from across the road had squirted our girls with water pistols and I thought they should be able to defend themselves, so I bought them water pistols of their own. And laid down the Rules:

Everybody gets one (1) water pistol of adequate quality at the beginning of the season. If you break or lose it, or want a better one, you pay for it from your pocket money. If anyone else breaks it you're entitled to compensation.
No squirting in the house (except over the sink in the course of filling or testing).
No squirting at humans except on invitation. Humans who openly carry a water pistol of their own are considered to have invited you.
No squirting at our own cats in our own garden, or any cats going about their business elsewhere. Dogs and insects are fair game, though if they retaliate that's your problem. Strange cats in our garden are definitely fair game.
No squirting at plants currently in the sun or about to be in the sun. (This is to protect the veggies and herbs)
No squirting at any object likely to take water damage, like books and magazines.
No squirting at anyone's doors or windows whether or not they're open.
Gardens of houses where only boys live are boys' territory. Girls in boys' territory are fair game.
Gardens of houses where only girls live are girls' territory. Boys in girls' territory are fair game.
Gardens of houses where both boys and girls live are neutral territory. Neutral territory is off-limits.

Not that it worked; the boys didn't keep to the rules and the boys' mother forbade the Water Pistol War after one of their gang had broken both Menna's water pistol and a vintage one belonging to someone's father. I fixed Menna's with duct tape; that's what duct tape is for.

Necessary Luxuries

Eating meat again after eight weeks almost means learning to cook again. But the beef stew (to use up less than satisfactory red wine) was perfect.

The ice-cream parlour in Arnhem has mint ice cream, and I intend to harvest most of the mint that threatens to take over the herb garden and try to make my own. Boiling it with sugar, like thyme to make cough mixture, seems the surest way to make a syrup, and it's easy from there.

O Tempora

Husband and #1 daughter went to the Catholic church when we had lay Matins and Typika in the priest's absence, to see what it was like. It turned out to be a First Communion service for 13 children, one of whom used to be in #1 daughter's preschool class (which makes him nine or ten, I suppose). They reported it (and the booklet they brought home confirms that) as a childish talking-down affair, not like the Orthodox church where people able to understand anything at all are treated as if they can understand everything.

They read what passed for the Gospel from the children's bible, the very one we rejected as too childish years ago.

And what's wrong with not being able to understand everything in church, anyway?

Before they fly away

Shard of a dream (bright "springtime" colours) in which I was standing outside a shop or something similar with a sign "Please come in, if you exist", wondering whether I had enough existence to actually enter. One of the children said "but if you can read, you must exist!"