nineveh_uk

Over on LJ, a poll: Choose Your Own 1950s Lord Peter Wimsey Adventure.

Not quite sure how that happened. 12 ½ working days until Christmas – great, except that I have quite a lot of Christmas shopping yet to do... As ever at this time of term I am extremely tired, but I haven’t got anything on this coming weekend (other than making my sister’s Christmas present, quite a lot of housework, writing, at some point I must look at my CV, really need to start running again* etc.) and planning to keep it that way

picowrimo is over for another year. I had my best pico ever, with a word count of 11,300 and a lot of advancing of the plot. I haven’t any since Friday, because I’ve been utterly exhausted, but I’m aiming for another 3000 words before Christmas. At this rate, I may actually finish the story this winter. It is, alas, utterly ridiculous, and from time to time I wish that my longest Wimseyfic by far were not mpreg crossover crack, but unfortunately removing the mpreg aspect is not possible for artistic reasons. I know that sounds about as convincing as the excuses for nude scene in films, but it’s true! Not least because it would leave me with a big plothole concerning the reason for Wimsey’s presence in the locality when the murder is committed.

AKICOLJ/DW Does anyone have a good recipe for Lebkuchen? Having tasted the real thing courtesy of my September Austrian holiday (it lasted about 48 hours after I was home), the supermarket stuff just doesn’t cut it.

The Men’s Room, 90s TV series with Bill Nighy and Harriet Walter, has been released on DVD and I have treated myself to it. I was delighted to learn from the back of the box that the characters are sociologists (must ask my father if he’s seen it, and if not lend), but I had got the impression that it was a comedy with some black jokes and quite a lot of sex. I am a bit more concerned to learn that it’s a “hard-hitting serial, set during the Thatcher years.” I was hoping for a bigger emphasis on light-hearted fun.

*I say “again”, really I mean at all. I did go in September, but then I pulled a muscle, long since recovered from so no proper excuse.

I have freshers’ flu, and as a result am mostly lying on the sofa not doing much. I seem, nonetheless, to have found the energy to write Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey aliens made them do it*. Blame marginaliana for prompting it. Actually, she prompted Peter and Bunter, but in working that out it was obvious that AMTDI had to be H/P for the angst factor. There may also have been past consideration of the Peter/Harriet dilemma. Clearly I should never let my brain rest, or terrible things will happen. Pre-GN.

*Not actual aliens.

( The Revenge of Ali-Baba )

I had a very enjoyable evening on Sunday at the Royal Opera House in the company of antisoppist. We saw Puccini's La Rondine, which before seeing it I had mistakenly believed was his sole comedy*. It has twenties costumes, nice tunes, and Angela Gheorghiu, who I had never seen before.

On my return home, while waiting for the open window to cool my furnace-like bedroom sufficiently for me to get to sleep, the Penguin Opera Guide informed me that it was not, as I had assumed, based on La Ronde** and so all the characters would sort themselves out with the right people in the end. This was not the case. The eponymous La Rondine is a metaphorical swallow, and the plot is basically La Traviata-lite, with everyone unhappy because they are incapable of having sensible conversations.

Which led me to think of what operas would be like if people really did behave sensibly, and by a series of leaps, to the culture of opera on various planets in Lois McMaster Bujold's Nexus.

( Barrayar and others )

The non-piratical bit first. Does chanting “I am not getting a cold, I am not getting a cold” either:

(a) Promote mind over matter and ensure it doesn’t happen?
(b) Make it appear, like Bloody Mary?

I went to see the D’Oyly Carte/Scottish Opera Pirates of Penzance last night, having picked up a leaflet at lunchtime to see that Steven Page* was playing the Pirate King and thus moved from undecided to decided. The reviews had suggested it was a bit solid at times, and I definitely felt the initial tempos needed to be picked up a bit, but it perked up pretty swiftly. I’ve never actually seen Pirates before, though I’ve sung it. Mabel struck me as something of a proto-Madeleine Bassett, and the biggest laugh of the night came with “Because with all their faults, we love our House of Peers”.** Certainly the pirates’ notorious kindness to orphans puts them some rungs up the ladder of decency compared to the present lot.

I recently heard a recording of the Merry Widow overture on Classic FM that made it sound quite G&S-ish. Hearing G&S played by professionals was a reminder as to how far even the G&S-ish bits of Lehar are above G&S.

*Not the one formerly of Barenaked Ladies. This one was a definitive Sweeney Todd with Opera North when I was at university.

** I see a Brideshead Revisited crossover in which “Marquis’ Son Unused to Wine” Sebastian Flyte, instead of being got off by his family is convicted, sent down from Oxford, flees London and falls in with some pirates. He ends up a much happier man.

Following on from antisoppist’s recent post on whether Peter Wimsey enjoyed his job in advertising in part because it gave additional opportunities for stalking running into Harriet leads me to a further question:

when Peter rings up Harriet’s flat for the first time in Gaudy Night, how did he get her phone number?

Harriet has just been abroad for 18 months. Peter knows she is back because she’s been mentioned in the Times*. She has recently returned to a new flat, and a new telephone number. I think we can assume that the new number is not in the phone book on the grounds that even if she weren’t ex-directory**, which I’d expect her to be given that if she can’t avoid nasty letters from strangers she doesn’t want nasty phone calls as well, there hasn’t been time for the number to enter a new book in the few weeks in which she’s been in London again.

A quick search of the internet has not been especially fruitful, but the Daily Mail tells me that directory enquiries started with the first telephone service, so that would have been an option, except that Peter doesn’t know Harriet’s new address (she tells him that she has moved flat in answer to his comment that she has a new phone number), and if the books were being used we’re back to the original problem of her not being in them.

So how did he get the number so quickly? Would the operator have sufficient local knowledge to put him through to Miss Vane, newly living in a Bloomsbury flat at an unknown address? Has he phoned the host of the literary party, or got Sally Hardy to do so? Has he phoned Harriet's agent with an excuse, or is that too embarrassing? As Parker lives round the corner, has he got him to make an official enquiry?

I am assuming that he didn’t in fact see her at Ascot, have her trailed home, and only waited for the paper to give him an excuse for knowing she was back, or got whatever border agency there was at the time to report...

*As Bunter’s duties including reading the paper and picking out notable articles, one can only imagine what he was thinking as he marked that particular column in black ink.

**Assuming that to be an option at the time.

This is perhaps not so much a fic as a thought-experiment: how would Bunter have resolved the Dead Turk Incident at Downton Abbey? This also explains why it has been languishing on my hard-drive with no idea as to what to do with it; there isn’t really anything to do with it, because I’m not interesting in writing more of a story around it. I have tidied it up a bit so that it sort of concludes, but I think the real story is probably the next bit that I’m not going to write, which I’ve just decided is told from Thomas’s POV and is the story of two decades of seething envy of Bunter for getting the posh footman job now, a better job in the war, and then being valet to a London bachelor with ample opportunity to blackmail people as well as live the high life a bit himself.

For proper fic on the DTI I once again recommend executrix’s Maiden Overs.

( Nobody’s Business but the Turk’s )

Following on from my last post and the revelation that Roger Allam was once in Les Mis. I couldn't help it. On the plus side, it isn't songfic, and I don't think the characters have had personality transplants, so as Cabin Pressure fic goes, that puts it considerably ahead of the game already.

( You know your place in the sky )

Inspired by the student on the path in front of me this morning, whose collection of garments were individually interesting, but could in no age under the sun be called an outfit. Change only a couple of words and it fits surprisingly well...

***

He signed to one of his guards, and he came forward bearing a bundle wrapped in black cloths.

The Messenger put these aside, and there to the wonder and dismay of all the Captains, he held up first the short sword that Sam had carried, and next a grey cloak with an elven-brooch, and last the coat of mithril-mail that Frodo had worn wrapped in his tattered garments. A blackness came before their eyes, and it seemed to them in a moment of silence that their world stood still, but their hearts were dead and their last hope gone.

'Dwarf-coat, elf-cloak, blade of the downfallen West, here are the marks of a fashion victim.'

No-one answered him; but he saw their faces grey with fear and the horror in their eyes.

Brought to you by my inability to take the coach from Oxford to London without thinking at a key point of the journey, "I have seen the White City".

(1) White City

(i) In which our noble hero, long exiled in Salford, returns to claim his kingdom.

(ii) As above, the Peter Jackson version. The hero is Lord Attenborough, son of Attenborough. Many years ago, he fled the offer of the post of Director-General and instead became a Ranger, travelling far across the world from his base in Bristol, learning the secrets of many lands and strange creatures. Now, in the BBC's darkest hour, his destiny can no longer be evaded and he must make his way to London.

(2) Lady of Twilight

When the elves called Elrond 'Half-elven' they avoided specifying the nature of his other half...

When 20 year old Ranger Estel returns to Rivendell after accomplishing great deeds, the great elf-lord Elrond tells him of his true name and heritage. Proud of his new-found lineage and destiny, when Aragorn meets the pale, dark-haired elf-lady Arwen he is captivated by her beauty. When Arwen and her father Elrond respond coldly to his hopes, Aragorn assumes that they scorn him as a mortal, and vows to prove himself worthy. Little does he dream that the woman the elves call the Lady of Twilight has good reason for her coldness - for the vampire blood of Luthien runs strong in Arwen Undomiel.