nineveh_uk

Merry Christmas to all celebrating. May you have the best day possible for you in these times.



One of the genuine pleasures of 2020 for me has been getting back into art. This year's Christmas card was made with last year's Christmas present of lino cutting tools.

(Click to enlarge image.)

This was mean to have two further chapters and be a Yuletide treat. But I didn't get to chapters 2 and 3 and so it doesn't really fit the prompt as I would like and I thought that I would just post it instead. So have some short Christmas Wimsey fluff.

Denver for Christmas? (If anyone has a better title, please let me know!)

I did manage to write a Yuletide treat in a different fandom, but obviously I can't tell you about that!

Merry Christmas!

Cinderella, Scottish Ballet. So it turns out that what I really like in ballet is plot. There were fewer dance pyrotechnics in Scottish Ballet's production than in my recent cinematic Nutcracker, but I know very little about dance technicalities, and all I can say is that the choreography was charming, dancing looked very good to me, the orchestra was excellent, and Cinderella actually has a proper story*. As is the mark of a good ballet, I spent the next couple of days balancing on one leg and pirouetting around the place. The dancer playing the Prince had an extraordinarily young face that looked about 16, though the internet tells me he is about 26, which worked really well in terms of plot and characterisation.

All that plus the fantastic Edinburgh Festival Theatre, which has stalls the price of a London upper balcony containing comfy seats, ample legroom, good sightlines, and in the foyer a large bar and decent lavatories (the latter not actually in the foyer).

Carol, dir. Todd Haynes. I strategically skipped this in Oxford as it was on later in Edinburgh, which meant I got to go with my father and youngest sister (Mum being under the weather stayed at home). It was terrific, beautifully acted, and shot with enormous sympathy for the complex characters. While obviously the main focus of the film and its critical attention is the central love story, it also has quite a lot to say about class and how this relates to Carol and Therese's specific situations and options. I shall definitely be seeing it on DVD and will be going back to look again at Haynes' earlier Far from Heaven, to which it feels something of a companion piece.

Star Wars A good straightforward fun space adventure film, it does what it sets out to do, and it entertains the audience while doing it. Characters aren't deep, but they are deftly sketched by the story and feel plausible, and the plot moves at a good clip while remaining comprehensible, and it was blessedly free from stopping the action for pointless thumping. It looks good, the music is stirring, and it has Harriet Walter flirting with Chewbacca**. In short, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and I look forwards to the next one.

And Then There Were None What with one thing and another we didn't end up watching a lot of Christmas TV, but this was terrific. Gripping throughout, growing more and more tense as it progressed, and though I've not read the book the fairly minor alterations seem to have been neatly done. Performances were strong all round, but Maeve Dermody should be particularly recognised as an utterly convincing Vera. Personally, I like to think that were I trapped on the island with a serial killer I'd consider setting fire to the house, but on the other hand I would not be hampered in my actions by worrying about being exposed as a murderer.

All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride Christmas Eve on BBC4 ventured into Slow TV territory with this delightful two-hour film of a couple of women driving reindeer sleighs through northern Norway. It looks very cold, and very snowy, and there is no soundtrack beyond the ambient noise, and we taped it and it was perfect to watch on Boxing Day morning.

*Though I note the Wikipedia summary "After travelling across the world and meeting princesses with no success, the Prince begins to search his own kingdom, trying the slipper on every maiden who attended the ball. Back at Cinderella's home, love has allowed the Prince to defy the laws of time and space; though it is only the morning after the ball, he has already travelled the world and back again in search of his love."

**I'm wondering how that casting conversation went.

Best wishes in enjoying the presents, the food, the company, and the season in general, and may those of you participating in Yuletide receive excellent fic in exchange for your efforts.

ETA: There is snow on top of the Pentlands for a present, a most unexpected sight from my bedroom window given recent weather!

Work is over for the year, and now all I have to do is some laundry, ironing, paint my nails, pack, wrap presents, alter two pairs of trousers, get to the station, catch the train, write fic on the train, hand over presents for sister's family, meet sister for lunch, wrap the rest of the presents, ice the Christmas cake, do any late supermarket shopping, catch up with The Bridge, and then I can relax.

OK, I might be spending two hours this morning watching skiing, but I shall be ironing/sewing/writing Christmas cards at the same time. Oh, life is hard, weep for me, I have a whole two weeks off work and will be spending most of it in a home containing both my family and a dishwasher. The only real negative is that I have been on a bit of a WIP-writing role, and that will stop completely, because it always does. I might manage something short and separate, though. I shall try.

Anyway, in honour of heading for the relatives in the decidedly non-frozen north on Monday, I bring you Robert Benchley's "A Good Old-fashioned Christmas", a reminder to those of us who don't get to spend this time of year at a marvelous old-fashioned farmhouse somewhere in Vermont that we are not actually missing out. My copy has illustrations in it, but there wasn't a convenient source for them on the internet, and the office has a new photocopier that I have yet to learn to use properly so I couldn't scan it.

Thus without further ado, and courtesyof the people at Canadian Gutenberg, whose attitude to copyright seems rather more relaxed than ordinary Gutenberg:


( A Good Old-fashioned Christmas )

Currently in the garden.

I have given in and accepted that for all their inconveniences I like real Christmas trees, damn it, and I have bought one, taking advantage of a Homebase "sale". Years of picking Christmas trees in childhood have given me ludicrously stringent standards, which assume greater importance the smaller the tree, so this process took some time as I had to ensure that I had absolutely the best tree of the range of perfectly serviceable ones on offer. In any case, I have ended up with one that is 3 1/2ft high and of a good shape with a promise for future growth (and my still being able to lift it for two more years). I think I need a longer string of Christmas lights.

* I do not quite have a cupboard as yet, as though great strides have been made the next bit really does depend on my finding the hammer. Of course, it would help if I looked. In the meantime, I shall arrange to borrow one.

* I considered overcoming ingrained Christmas tree snobbery and buying an artificial one, but couldn't do it however sensible it would be, though I claim that this is in large part because half the point of a Christmas tree is the smell. Which is why a small blue spruce is sitting in a pot on the patio waiting for a reasonable time to be brought in. 3 years of stabbing myself with Norway spruce needles made me think that a change of species might at least be reasonable.

* In the way of things, I found myself yesterday inventing the Christmas Hamster. Why not? They live in the desert in the Middle East so it is at least as topical as Father Christmas, or Iceland's cannibal Yule Lads. The Christmas Hamster run around all night at great speed carrying presents to children in its enormous cheek pouches. Perfect!

* The Killing III is exciting, isn't it? I have heard a criticism of one early episode that it relied a little too much on coincidence. I give you therefore the real reason why Sarah Lund missed the train: