Xenon's Seventh Circle

I have no idea how it came to be almost a year since I last posted. I knew that that "Every Day In February" thing was a bad idea! Seriously though, everything got away with me a bit this year. More work, which is good, but also my father's health deteriorated somewhat, so between work, and doing extra stuff for my folks, everything got a bit mad. I've tried to keep up with you all, and reply to posts when I've had the brain for it, but I do confess to falling asleep at the desk quite a bit over the summer! There certainly wasn't the brain for posting. Don't know quite what I would have posted, anyway, since I hardly read or watched anything, and my days were a whirlwind of working, watering, weeding, and a few other things that didn't begin with W.

Anyway, sorry for being so absent, although it seems that we've all been a bit slow to post this year. Can't believe that it's the first of December tomorrow. I think I left my brain behind somewhere in May. It looks set to be an "interesting" month, doesn't it. To those of us who are registered to vote in Britain, good luck, and use your votes wisely. To those of you who are in America, it possibly needs a little more than good luck, but the Republicans might do the right thing when it comes to Impeachment. And to those of you in Australia, hopefully there'll be a change in the weather. Not that it's the weather that we need to change in the longterm, but it's a start.

Happy December everybody. And I trust we've all seen the Who trailer? It is most happy-making.

Fandom: Department S and Doctor Who
Characters: Annabelle Hurst, Liz Shaw, Stewart Sullivan, Jason King, Sir Curtis Seretse, the Brigadier
Gen, c.5800 words

fandom_stocking fic for thisbluespirit

( ... )

I keep forgetting to do this - and when I don't forget, I never seem to have the time. But I have watched things! And some of them aren't Lucifer. For one thing, how good is Doctor Who at the moment?! I'm delighted with the new series. Jodie Whittaker feels more like the Doctor that I grew up watching than any of the other New Series takes on the character. No "lonely god" nonsense. No super-powerful being. Back to being a cosmic hobo (albeit a really, really clever one). I like her gang lots, I like the group dynamic, and I'm having fun. Also, they don't seem to be trying to make each episode BIGGER than the last, and the music hasn't annoyed me once yet. It's remembered that it's only supposed to be incidental, and not a constant cacophony of howling voices. Huzzah. So I am happy about all of that.

Also, the other day I happened to look at a TV guide for the first time in about three years, and I saw that a channel called Talking Pictures TV were showing a 1954 film called It Should Happen To You. Not a very well known film, but it was Jack Lemmon's first big role, and it also starred Judy Holliday. So obviously I had to record that. I watched it at the weekend, and it was daft and entertaining, and very 1950s. Judy Holliday was wonderful. She's almost unknown now, which is terribly sad. Primarily a Broadway star, she only made a few films, because she died young. She really lights up the screen though. She's magnetic - and with a great singing voice too. I first saw her in Bells Are Ringing (1960), the film version of one of her Broadway hits. She stars in the film with Dean Martin, and I very much recommend it if it ever comes up on TV. Anyway, It Should Happen To You gave her a good opportunity to shine, and raise more than a few smiles.

My beloved Top Of The Pops repeats have hit a low point - Chris de Bleurgh at number one forever with Lady In Red. Impressively, it's even worse than I remembered. And, just to make things even worse, they let him sing it live, just him and his piano. Seriously, it's what the fast forward button was invented for; although the iPlayer doesn't really do fast forward. They should look into that, just in case he's ever in the charts again. More seriously, all this means that we've arrived in August of 1986. I'm starting secondary school any time now. This is extremely disconcerting. Some things you really don't want to live through again, even obliquely.

Not reading much lately. I've been sorting through some books to see what I can get rid of, so I've been sort of re-reading a few old ones. Currently half reading Shadowmancer, by GP Taylor. It's definitely going in the jumble box!

Mostly though, I'm still watching Lucifer. Loving season three. It got an increase in episodes, and they decided to use them by going old school, and doing a bunch of standalones. It gives the support cast more of a chance to shine, and they've come up with some brilliant little detours from the main plot. The field trip to Las Vegas was wonderful, and there was also a fun flashback episode, showing Lucifer's arrival on Earth, pre-series. The internet doesn't seem to enjoy it all nearly as much as I do, as not every second of every episode is spent focused on The Ship, but whatever. I don't think I'll ever understand modern telly viewers.

I'll leave you with some Lucifer fanvids, as I found a vidder on YouTube who makes awesome ones. Probably some mild and non-specific spoilers (or possibly whacking great ones, depending on your outlook), so approach with caution if you're thinking of giving the show a go. Or just watch them anyway, as they're brill.

Bring Out The Bad (a compilation of the show's sillier side, as well as some drama):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysjYrEIruuw

A Little Wicked (a celebration of the glory that is Maze):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wu5Q0SW0yk

I Like Trouble (in which there is trouble):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmXhGaeH8IE

So, a little while ago I found this post, written on August 6th and then forgotten about entirely. So I de-privated it, and updated the date, and hoped that overlooking it for a couple of months didn't make me look like too much of an idiot. Except that now I find I've done it again. Several times!

Last spring, in lieu of the usual Obscure & British ficfest, there was tic_tac_woe. And I got a lovely bingo card, and started to fill it; and then came the year of rushing about like a crazy person. I now find I have four short stories I'd forgotten I'd written, posted privately (presumably waiting for me to be sure they were ready for decloaking) on April 24th and 30th, and May 12th and 18th. I haven't got a bingo, but I thought I'd better do something with the wretched things before I forget them again! So here are some links to some very old posts:

Fire & Brimstone (400 words, Captain Jack Harkness)

Toothmarks (2000 words, Primeval)

Ebb And Flow (700 words, Sapphire & Steel)

Tomorrow (4000 words, Doctor Who)

And I apologise profusely to the world for bashing it over the head four times in one post. It's nothing personal, honest.

I know, I'm rubbish at this. LJ has fallen by the wayside rather, due to general lack of time. I can just about keep up with DreamWidth, but never seem to manage to post anything! Not that there's anything interesting to post.

Currently re-reading Brideshead Revisited, after I saw a picture somewhere of Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews with Aloysius the teddy bear. I realised it had been twenty years since I last read it, so I dug out a dog-eared old copy that I had in a cardboard box in the attic (where most of my books live now, due to lack of space). I'm never sure entirely how I feel about Evelyn Waugh - thisbluespirit recently referred to him as cynical, which is rather apt - but I do like Brideshead Revisited quite particularly. I last read it in the spring of 1997, around the time that I took my finals, when I had very little else to do for a while, but sprawl in the sun in the university gardens, reading books that I probably wouldn't have read otherwise. Given that the university was a long re-purposed stately home, a story set in the era of crumbling aristocracy, and the selling-off of old family mansions, was somewhat appropriate. And in fairness, it's about a bisexual man in a very open love triangle with a brother and sister, so it's quite modern too. And the language is very evocative, even if some of the paragraphs do go on for decades. Even more so than this one.

Prior to that I read a terrific book, which I think plenty of you would enjoy. It's called West With The Night, by Beryl Markham, and it's sort of an autobiography. Beryl Markham was the first female bush pilot, and spent a lot of time hurtling about the skies above Africa, being remarkable, and thinking herself perfectly ordinary. And the writing is just astounding. Utterly beautiful and compelling. Apparently everybody has always said that her husband wrote it really, but her biographer can find no evidence that he did, and plenty that he didn't. But everybody still believes it anyway. It's not a big book, and it's out of print, but I happened to find mention of it in some article somewhere, and went a-hunting on eBay, and it wasn't hard to find. Highly recommended (and I think she wrote it).

Watching wise, I've not done much. The BBC was very kind to me, and released Out Of The Blue on DVD. This was a police drama broadcast in the early nineties, which starred John Hannah and Neil Dudgeon, and which nobody but me seems to have seen. Consequently I've been variously accused of madness and imagining. But now it's out on DVD! Proof! And it's still jolly good. The Beeb have also put out another of their old police dramas; Rockliffe's Babies from the mid-eighties, which they've never repeated, and which has trickled away into the darkest recesses of most people's memories. It's about a group of young detectives, under the care of a grizzled old sergeant, and it's rather good (and very eighties). It was my first "grown up" series, watched in secret on a Friday night, when everybody else was out, and my mother was relaxing in the kitchen, off duty. Holds up well. Horribly expensive, but somebody has thoughtfully put it on YouTube. Shut up, yes I know, but I will buy it eventually. Tony Head was just in an episode, and Brian Croucher has just joined as the new boss. Fandoms of the world, collide!

Oh, and I've also just read a beautiful little book called Now We Are Six Hundred, by James Goss, which is basically Now We Are Six, rewritten for Time Lords. You'd think the joke would wear thin, but it never does. It's illustrated rather wonderfully by Russell T Davies, and is full of rhymes about Daleks and Cybermen and Romana. Some of it is very sweet, some of it is very funny, and one or two of the poems are really quite dark. Another one for the recommended list! (And the postscript is fab.)

So there you are. See you again next year. ;)

I don't think I've done one of these in a while. I don't seem to have done much of anything in a while, except race about the countryside in a whirl, attempting to Get Things Done. Still, on the plus side, one of the Things to get Done is the allotment, which has just started to produce profusions of runner beans, courgettes (bright yellow ones this year!) and raspberries. So I'm tired, but also well fed.

Anyways, I'm reading an especially good book at the moment. I don't really know what it's about, although I'm more than three quarters through - or, that is, I have absolutely no idea where it's heading, or why, but I do sort of know what it's about. Something Awful just happened, and I'm frightfully annoyed, but still loving the book, and looking forward to getting back to it. Seriously, the prose is an utter joy. It's called Golden Hill, and it's by somebody called Francis Spufford. It's about a young man who arrives in 18th century New York, and it's entirely written in 18th century style - so it's a sort of pastiche, in the same way that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is, although set rather earlier. Apparently it won the Ondaatje prize (I don't believe I've ever heard of that, but Google tells me its quite prestigious). I recommend it unhesitatingly, if you are not scared off by meandering prose, and sentences that can go on for months.

Telly-watching-wise, I've now seen the first episode of Marchlands, so can claim to have actually seen our new Doctor in something. It's an ITV drama from a few years back, set in three different time zones (the 1960s, the 1980s, and whenever now was at the time). A young girl dies in the sixties, and her ghost makes friends with another young girl in the eighties. It clearly has some knock-on effect for the modern lot, but I haven't found out what yet. That will presumably come later. Jodie Whittaker is the dead girl's mother, and has dark hair, so I didn't recognise her at first. A Yorkshire accent - I wonder if she will keep that. So far it's diverting enough. If you're in the UK, she'll be on the BBC from August 8th, incidentally, in a new series. Trailer here. It also stars Emun Elliot who - after the eternal Paterson Joseph, naturally - was my first choice for the 13th Doctor, so I can amuse myself watching them both being doctors together. If I remember to watch it. Eagle-eyed viewers will of course recognise him from Paradox, The Paradise, and Los Malvados (cough).

There are probably other things, but I do not remember them. So I may just go and collapse in a heap. Albeit a slightly satisfied and accomplished-feeling one. With a nice book.

Day Twelve: A song from your pre-teen years.

But all my songs so far have been from my pre-teen years! Or nearly all. I think. I'm being lazy and not checking, but it's a fair assumption. Still, taken literally this one does require something from my lifetime, so we're going for something between 1975 and the beginning of 1988. In which case I choose this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm9drIwmmU4

- and my apologies that the official upload has rubbish sound quality! Somebody's over done the bass. Adam, however, is not to be discouraged.

That is still the best jacket in pop music.

In other news, I have found out that this is a thing: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1405930055/

Look at it, and marvel at its wonder. And there's a whole series of them! Up to and including Peter Capaldi. Of course they might be awful, but their mere existence has made me smile, so that's good.

Title: Tomorrow
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: G
Word Count: c. 4000
Characters: The First Doctor, Susan, Barbara and Ian


( ... )

In honour of John Barrowman's 50th birthday today (11th March, for those of you awkward enough to have drastically different timezones), here's an old favourite from days gone by:



JB is celebrating by launching a t-shirt highlighting trans issues in the States. Go John.