a vintage year for scoundrels

1.) Happy birthday, ecossefilmmaker!

2.) agapi42 and I went on the Reclaim the Night march on Friday. It was great: there was drumming and dancing and chanting (and, ok, a fair bit of raining), and the turnout was really good. I was pleased to see that there was someone there from my union, waving a big purple Unison flag.

3.) London at the weekend! V. exciting. I met the_smut_fairy for lunch when I got there on Saturday (after some time spent wandering around looking for her in completely the wrong place, WHOOPS), we went to a very nice Turkish place near Victoria station and had mezze, yum. Then I met up with Izzy, Phil and James and we went to see Wicked. SQUEE. I really loved it (apart from the rather too neat ending), especially "Defying Gravity", of course! Then we went back to Izzy's and watched Hot Fuzz (on the grounds that if you have four people from Gloucestershire in the same room you practically have a legal requirement so to do), which I love, and 300, which I... did not love. Anyway. On Sunday we went and queued in the rain for the Natural History Museum. We'd booked to go round the new Cocoon section, which was quite interesting but hampered somewhat by the touchscreens, most of which we couldn't get to work properly, so there was a lot of irritated stabbing at them as we tried to persuade them to tell us stuff. But then we found to display of Things In Bottles, which cheered us up tremendously. Semi-digested squid fished out of a whale's stomach and put inna jar! Yay. After that, we had a quick mooch around the Science Museum (and I spotted rj_anderson's Rebel in the bookshop, which I didn't realise was out, or even imminent, and would have carried off if my rucksack hadn't already been pretty heavy). And then I went home and discovered that my shoulders hurt, my legs were on strike and my brain wouldn't brain. This is what happens if you go to London, everyone! You should all move to Bristol instead, it is much better here. (Cheltenham or Bath are also acceptable.)

4.) Am trying to decide what to bake this afternoon: bittersweet chocolate and pear cake or chocolate yoghurt snack cakes. Opinions? (If you are tigerpixie or amicu I am particularly interested in your opinions as the said baking is for tonight's Stitch 'n' Witch.) Usually the correct answer would be "both" but I am not sure I have time, woe.

Hurray, it is December the first! I can open the first door in my advent calendar when I get home. Also when I get home I shall be getting my heater out and switching it on, because it is getting ridiculous: I spent yesterday evening curled up on the sofa, wrapped up in three layers, a blanket and my spare duvet, wearing fingerless gloves and feeling a bit like a Victorian miser.

Tonight the BBC will be giving me a program in which Delia teaches us how to do Christmas cooking. YAY! I have a bit of a soft spot for cooking programmes, especially ones involving a) Christmas and b) Delia. (I also like Nigella and the Hairy Bikers (this is what I am calling my band, I have just decided), in case you were wondering. My parents like Rick Stein but I saw the one where he grates his finger on a mandolin (the slicey kind, not the musical kind), swears a bit and teaches us all about why cooks should wear brightly coloured plasters (so if they fall into the food, they'll be easy to spot) at an impressionable age, which put me off a little. Though now that I have typed all this I am not entirely sure that that was him. It is possible that I am talking even more nonsense than usual.)

On a similar festive note, I was looking up the last posting dates today to put them into my Google calendar (*is a nerd*) and it seems that the overseas ones are soonish. So if you are on my flist, would like a card from me and would also like it to arrive in time for Christmas, I recommend leaving your address on this post asap. :)

I'm not going to be this obnoxiously Christmassy all December, honest...

- Halloween! I went to Croydon at the weekend for Izzy's halloween party; many school people were there, hurrah! I made black fairy cakes, Girid made some incredibly lifelike finger biscuits, we watched Little Shop of Horrors (which I'd never seen before) and much fun was had. The next day, Izzy, Jess, Vanky and I went to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs. And then I missed my train. Whoops!

- I'd got a little out of the habit of watching Doctor Who over the last few weeks, but I made up for it on Wednesday by watching the last two episodes of Invasion of the Dinosaurs (wee rubber dinosaurs! Benton's "bracing myself to be knocked out" expression! ♥) and all of Death to the Daleks (playing spot the things that will reappear, slightly modified, in Blake's 7: I spotted the insignias, a character called Jill Tarrant, and SPACE ARCHERY). ( spoilers ) Last night I started The Monster of Peladon, which I'm enjoying, but then I always love stories with lots of different aliens in them.

- Whilst watching all that, plus Spooks, True Blood and 45 minutes of Adulthood (at which point the disc gave up, grr), I've been working on the top I'm knitting for The Sister. I finished the body (which I think would work on its own quite nicely, too) on Tuesday, and I've nearly finished the collar - assuming that I don't rip it all out and start again. Which would not exactly be uncharacteristic of my knitting style.

- Halloween! I went to Croydon at the weekend for Izzy's halloween party; many school people were there, hurrah! I made black fairy cakes, Girid made some incredibly lifelike finger biscuits, we watched Little Shop of Horrors (which I'd never seen before) and much fun was had. The next day, Izzy, Jess, Vanky and I went to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs. And then I missed my train. Whoops!

- I'd got a little out of the habit of watching Doctor Who over the last few weeks, but I made up for it on Wednesday by watching the last two episodes of Invasion of the Dinosaurs (wee rubber dinosaurs! Benton's "bracing myself to be knocked out" expression! ♥) and all of Death to the Daleks (playing spot the things that will reappear, slightly modified, in Blake's 7: I spotted the insignias, a character called Jill Tarrant, and SPACE ARCHERY). ( spoilers ) Last night I started The Monster of Peladon, which I'm enjoying, but then I always love stories with lots of different aliens in them.

- Whilst watching all that, plus Spooks (ETA that there may be spoilers in the comments!), True Blood and 45 minutes of Adulthood (at which point the disc gave up, grr), I've been working on the top I'm knitting for The Sister. I finished the body (which I think would work on its own quite nicely, too) on Tuesday, and I've nearly finished the collar - assuming that I don't rip it all out and start again. Which would not exactly be uncharacteristic of my knitting style.

- The Mother and I are off to Edinburgh tomorrow, huzzah! Back on Sunday evening and shall have no internets whilst I am away. (I will have phone signal though, which is a nice change: usually we go to Abroad, where my cheapo Tesco value sim card doesn't work.)

- Stitch and Witch was at mine last night, there was tea, there was knitting and there was this cake, which did not look a bit like it does in the picture but did at least taste ok, so there we go.

- At the weekend I watched the first four episodes of Avatar and absolutely loved it. I was incredibly charmed by all the characters and am looking forward to seeing more of them and their adventures. Zuko's uncle cracked me up in every scene he was in, Katara is fab, Aang is adorable and I am very fond of Sokka - he feels very real and has had some great character development. And I am now angry once again about how the film version is going to be so racefaily. Gah.

I had been comforting myself about the messiness of my garden by peeking over the wall at how much worse next door's garden is, but apparently someone has been round there with a strimmer and now I'm the messiest one again. Curses. I did some more chopping back and digging up of weeds at the weekend, quite a bit on Saturday and a little on Monday (would've been more, but my arms told me quite firmly that they weren't having any more of that nonsense, and also, OW), but there's still loads to do - if anyone fancies doing some garden clearing in return for cake, I'm sure we could come to some arrangement. Speaking of cake, here's one I made earlier:

( cakey goodness )

The weather here was glorious on Sunday. Rhiannon and Simon had a joint birthday picnic in Victoria Park, we ate lovely food and played cricket and it was awesome. I did get a little sunburned though, on the bit of my back that I couldn't reach with the sun cream. Curse my lack of flexibility.

Read the latest but one Falco novel, Saturnalia, over the weekend: very good, as ever, laugh out loud funny in a few places, and the Author's note at the end was genius. Radio 4 is airing a dramatisation of Poseidon's Gold at the moment, which is also great, but it seems I've been pronouncing Helena Justina's name wrong for about a decade - apparently it's HeLAYna, not HELLena. Oops!

I had been comforting myself about the messiness of my garden by peeking over the wall at how much worse next door's garden is, but apparently someone has been round there with a strimmer and now I'm the messiest one again. Curses. I did some more chopping back and digging up of weeds at the weekend, quite a bit on Saturday and a little on Monday (would've been more, but my arms told me quite firmly that they weren't having any more of that nonsense, and also, OW), but there's still loads to do - if anyone fancies doing some garden clearing in return for cake, I'm sure we could come to some arrangement. Speaking of cake, here's one I made earlier:

( cakey goodness )

The weather here was glorious on Sunday. Rhiannon and Simon had a joint birthday picnic in Victoria Park, we ate lovely food and played cricket and it was awesome. I did get a little sunburned though, on the bit of my back that I couldn't reach with the sun cream. Curse my lack of flexibility.

Read the latest but one Falco novel, Saturnalia, over the weekend: very good, as ever, laugh out loud funny in a few places, and the Author's note at the end was genius. Radio 4 is airing a dramatisation of Poseidon's Gold at the moment, which is also great, but it seems I've been pronouncing Helena Justina's name wrong for about a decade - apparently it's HeLAYna, not HELLena. Oops!