"Put down that wrench!"

There was me, that is Alex, and my three bencoves, Julian, Sandy and Bim, Bim being a naff bimbo, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our moyekhs what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a bijou milk-plus logo, and you may, O my sisters, have forgotten what these logos were like, things changing so rapido these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither.

Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but these was no law yet against prodding some of the new cosas which they used to put into the old gin, so you could bevvy it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other cosas which would give you a nice quiet fantabulosa fifteen minutes admiring Gloria and All Her Fantabulosa Fairies and Santos in your left slingback with lights bursting all over your eke. Or you could bevvy gin with efinks in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of a palaver, and that was what we were bevvying this evening I'm starting off the story with.

(this has been threatening to be written for the past few weeks; luckily, exam marking has prevented it until now)

Various people on my friends list have greeted with dismay the news that Connie Willis has won this year's best novel Nebula for All Clear (step forward nwhyte and bookzombie).

I have enjoyed a few works by Willis in the past, but they've almost all been her shorts. For me, Fire Watch and Blued Moon are the stand-out shorts.

Her novels have mostly left me underwhelmed, partly because poor research and lazy plotting seem to be her bywords. For example, the farcical bits of To say nothing of the dog work well enough, but I lived in Coventry for long enough to find her descriptions of the city and the cathedrals to be jarringly wrong, with errors that could have been avoided had Willis read any tourist guides. Similarly, Doomsday Book didn't work for me because the plot around the future epidemic would collapse as soon as someone used a phone or sent an email. I haven't dared to give it to ias to read, mainly because I suspect that she will have Issues with the medieval bits.

The reviews I've read so far for Blackout and All Clear have not encouraged me to read either of them (there was a particularly memorable discussion of elementary gaffes in Blackout on drplokta's LJ back here)

The agriculturalist and not the prog rock band, that is.

We have an allotment, the one in the NW corner of this map.

Many things about it are good, principally the price (£3.58 per annum) and the location (our house is four houses away due west). What's less good was the state when we assumed the lease: thigh-deep in brambles. We've been gradually clearing them - currently about 20% done - but what's clear is that the previous leaseholders didn't bother clearing the brambles by hand, preferring to chop them up with a rotorvator. I'm pulling out about a dozen large roots the thickness of my thumb per square metre, mostly rooted about 50cm down, and many small fragments around 15cm long.

This could be a long struggle. Suggestions welcome.

The Gatiss version. Our intrepid heros, Bedford and Prof. Cavor, are about to land on the moon. Suddenly, a klaxon sounds...

Compare with this. Gatiss is *such* a geek (as am I, for getting the joke).

From gnommi, on Facebook:

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what albums my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note-- upper righthand side.) AMENDMENT TO THE RULES - DON'T SELF CENSOR, BE HONEST - WRITE ONE SENTENCE TO EXPLAIN WHY IT'S IN THERE - LOOK BACK OVER YOUR WHOLE LIFE TO KEY INSPIRATIONS (in no particular order..):

1. Blowzabella - A Richer Dust
I'm a bit of a folky at heart, and I think that I picked this up second hand at a record stall when I was an undergraduate. Blowzabella have a sound that could best be described as 'challenging', if you dislike hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes. Fortunately, I like them.

2. Les Troubadours Du Roi Baudouin - Missa Luba
I have Simon to thank for introducing me to this, via the Lindsay Anderson film if.... I then waited for the best part of twenty years for it to be released on CD (even to the extent of buying scratchy second-hand vinyl and getting Steve Harris to rip it).

3. The Pentangle - Basket of Light
Another schoolboy introduction, I have Jon Baldwin to thank for giving me a C90 that he'd taped from his parents' LP. Jazz-influenced British folk rock.

4. The Grateful Dead - Aoxomoxoa
I got into the Dead in a big way when in sixth form and an undergraduate. I prefer their earlier stuff - fresher, more vital - and this is no exception. For me, the high points are Mountains of the Moon and live favourite St. Stephen (although I prefer the recording of the latter on Live/Dead)

5. Various - London is the Place for Me
I've acquired many of my favourite albums by chance; this was picked up in the stock clearance at the Andy's Records in Boston (2003ish? whenever the company folded). This is a collection of Trinidadian calypsos from London in the early 1950s that record the experiences of West Indian immigrants in Age of Austerity Britain (two of the musicians - Lord Beginner and Lord Kitchener - arrived at Tilbury on the Empire Windrush in 1948). Touching and acidic by turns.

6. Various - A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings
This was a recommendation by Phin Head, back when he worked in Southampton (2002ish?). A collection of American folk recordings from the 1930s and 1940s, mostly collected by Alan and John Lomax - think of the soundtrack to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, but authentic and better.

7. Outback - Baka
Heard by chance busking in Covent Garden in 1990 or thereabouts. Mandolin and didgeridoo two-piece.

8. Carter USM - 101 Damnations
Matt Gibson was responsible for this in my first year as an undergrad. I'd heard Sheriff Fatman (who hadn't), but he raved about Midnight on the Murder Mile so much that I (eventually) bought the album.

9. Moby Grape - Moby Grape
Cheery, late 60s San Francisco band. If they'd had the luck that the Dead had, you'd probably have heard of them. I listened to this a great deal as an undergrad.

10. Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues
Obligatory appearance by His Bobness, included mainly on the strength of Love Minus Zero (which I once, while in a sleep-deprived and hungover stupor, accused Dave Warry of snoring in tune to). Again, I listened to this a lot as an undergrad.

11. The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
The second Velvets studio album - still with John Cale, but significantly harsher than VU and Nico. Plus, it has Sister Ray. I got into the Velvets while I was in Edinburgh,

12. Philip Glass/Kronos Quartet - Dracula
Glass's re-scoring of the 1931 film with Bela Lugosi. Really, really rather good. I'm not a goth, btw.

13. Pulp - We Love Life
Somewhat of a return to form for Pulp after the bleakness of This is Hardcore. I've never understood why Bob Lind and The Night That Minnie Timperley Died didn't get singles releases - I think that they're the strongest tracks on the album. I always associate this album with Issy's time as an SRT in Bath.

14. Ludwig Van Beethoven - Symphony No.9
But which recording? I'm torn between the Furtwängler recording from the 1951 Bayreuth Festival, and von Karajan's 1962 recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker. And it's the 9th - what's not to like?

15. Ozric Tentacles - Strangeitude
Emmeline introduced me to the Ozrics in 1992, and I still have a well-worn C90 of Pungent Effulgent with a track listing written in her fair hand. Their inclusion on this list probably means that I'm some kind of crusty hippy, but you'd probably worked that out yourselves.

Tagging: andrewducker, atommickbrane, burkesworks, drdoug, hsw, ladymoonray, makyo, marypcb, mr_tom, purplestuart, ruthj, sbisson, steer, titanic_days, zotz

So, Top Gear's man of mystery, the Stig, has unmasked himself in order to sell his book. The BBC is objecting to the publication of the book on the grounds that it breaches contractual and confidentiality agreements.

HarperCollins, the would-be publishers of the book, have issued a press release in which they say that they "are disappointed that the BBC has chosen to spend licence fee payers' money to suppress this book".

Remind me again who owns HarperCollins, and why they might want to make political capital at the BBC's expense in the run-up to the renegotiation of the BBC charter, and possible abolition of the license fee.

...cats, bears, wolves and monkeys playing Uno.

(Wolfie has just played a blue 1, and play is passing clockwise; Brown Bear is therefore just about to win. Cat has managed to stitch Monk up something rotten with a few well-placed +4s, and has left him with a hand worth upwards of 120)

The garklet keeps asking what Cat and Monk get up to while he's at nursery, and we've started to stage vignettes to indulge him and amuse ourselves.