Liz Williams: journal

..has been varied but productive. I took my lodger to the airport this morning, as she is off to a birthday party in Hamburg. Apart from this, I've been writing - finished a short story and did a lot of work on a new project, which is in development hell, as they say. I've been taking a necessary break from Winterstrike, after Hebden Bridge, but have now returned to it and need to get its plot back on track.

Otherwise mowing, cooking (I went into the fishmonger in Wedmore this morning and got some sea trout and some samphire, which always makes me think of the 'dreadful trade' mentioned in KING LEAR), and other bits and pieces. Sid's ear is healing nicely but there have been many determined incursions onto my lap: Sid needs company today.

And the big deal of the day: we are going to Wells tonight to pick up a nucleus. Of bees. T has been spending the day making up frames and now the whole house smells of honeycomb. So in about an hour, my car will be full of bees. Ulp. Hope they stay put.

Thanks to a friend, who had free tickets, we spent yesterday at the Chelsea Flower Show.

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1. It's pouring with rain. This is good if you have a garden which cracked in last month's unseasonally sunny weather.

Besides which, it's far more British and gives us something to grumble about.

2. Last Tuesday, my friend M came to dinner and we went for a walk in the orchard. Passing around the central tree - the oldest and hollowest - we observed that an agitated wheepling was coming from within. M and I are not tall enough to look down the hollow, but T is, just about, and says: he thinks it's owls. Probably tawny owls and I hope he's right.

3. Bloodroot, in Bridgeport CT, have sent me their 'Best of Bloodroot' cookbooks. I ordered these last week and they sent them at once. These are great cookbooks - vegetarian recipes, combined with essays - and not for the non-feminist-hearted, I might add. They're also very well produced.

T and I are not vegetarians (and thankfully free from most of the major food allergies and intolerances although brazil nuts will do their best to kill me), but we like vegetarian cooking. We seem to eat vegan about 3 nights a week these days and I like cooking it - we have a lot of friends with various food preferences and although dinner parties can get tricky, I actually enjoy the challenge.

I got home last night to find our maypole celebration in full swing and about 40 people occupying the back field. Had the novel sensation of entering your own house to find a large party that you haven't actually had to organise or contribute to. I can live with this.

(The people who did organise it are here, BTW: http://www.wesociety.com/WEbSite2006/html/index.shtml)

I arrived too late for the maypole, but in time to jump over bonfires etc (a custom which originally seems to have nothing to do with fertility whatsoever - however, our cattle are now protected). There's nothing like watching several dozen assorted strangers leaping over a fire pit on your property to make you suddenly wonder about the exact status of your public liability insurance. Nothing went amiss, however. Whew.

On chatting to people, this turned out to be an international gathering: several people from Brazil, several Americans, and the Lama Kenpo Rinpoche, who did indeed show up and proved to be a pretty cool dude, relatively young, and wearing shades and a gaucho hat as well as his dark crimson Buddhist robes.

"You have horse!" said the lama.
Yes!
"Very big horse!"
Er, yes, he is.
"HUGE! I have two horses in Himalayas," said the lama, looking thoughtfully at our shire. "Very small horses! But I could ride that one, no problem," he added, with the absolute confidence of one who knows that another life awaits if the current one is abruptly curtailed in, say, an English riding accident.

Started wondering about the liability insurance again, also the possibility of being sued by the Tibetan government in exile. Explained to the lama that I had ridden Jasper, but been thrown off, with painful consequences.

"When you fall off in Himalaya," the lama said, rather dryly, "You fall VERY LONG WAY!"

He apparently enjoyed himself at this quaint old English rite, anyway, and left me with a string of prayer flags. All of which feature, I now realise, a very large horse. I suspect the Tibetans and Nepalese are like the Kazakhs with regard to horses: the whole of Central Asia is equine-obsessed.

After everyone had left, which they did like lambs at 8 p.m., T and I went to the Ashcott Inn for a late dinner and on coming back saw two little fox cubs scurrying along the verge.

This afternoon, I was writing in the orchard (the upside of having one) and saw a little procession wend its way across the grass: mother duck and about 8 babies. Aw, I thought. They went into the ditch, which normally has water in it. But then, about 20 minutes later, I caught sight of something flapping and flopping across the grass: mother duck, with our Rottweiler in close attendance. I thought dog had gone for duck, but in fact, mother duck was doing the 'I'm terribly injured, concentrate on me!' act while the babies escaped. Tara was just looking, but Duck was not to know this. I removed Tara quickly, and Duck staged a remarkable recovery, but by this time the ducklings had made their way through the hedge and onto the main road.

I ran out of the front door and found two ducklings running up the side of the road, desperate and squeaking. Lots of traffic was coming, and we are on a straight stretch before a bend. People routinely drive at 60 and 70 mph. By some miracle, the ducklings were not hit and I shooed them into the hedge, then turned to see the other 6 running about in the middle of the road. Somewhat suicidally, I halted the oncoming traffic and chased them into the hedge - the benefit of wearing long skirts, I might add. By this time, most of the drivers had realised that the demented woman in the slippers had an actual purpose and they all filed past with great care. Mother Duck raced through the front garden, into the vegetable patch, jumped onto the wall like Superheroine Duck and had the sense to fly, not run, across the road to round up her brood in the hedge. I think - I hope - they are now in the field and safe. The intensity of traffic is slowing down now that the 5 pm rush is over. None of them were hit, although I did tread on one slightly.

Vibes that they make it, eh?

T had a hospital check up this morning very early, but when we got there, we found that it was actually last week. Oh dear. They've re-scheduled him, and in the meantime we ran away into the woods up on the Quantock Hills, then had coffee in a pub where a particularly gruesome 18th century murder was committed by a charcoal burner, and thence to Watchet.

Watchet has a small harbour and a large statue of the Ancient Mariner, with his albatross. Coleridge apparently got the idea for his epic poem at Watchet (one shudders to think how). We were inspired only to make a possibly ill-advised (but rather cheap) purchase of an enormous, ornate Victorian sideboard in a junkshop. It will be delivered at some point over the next few days.

We also visited the musuem, which was interesting but which featured a ship's figurehead carved in a manner best described as 'rustic', with one eye much higher than the other, like an early Picasso. She originally had a long pointing arm, but this got knocked off in a collision with another vessel. Reading this, combined with the mutant eyeball, made me disgrace myself rather and I had to go outside.

Then we came home, via the farm shop to buy chainsaw oil, and have planted lots of onions. A varied day. I am about to do some writing, better late than never etc.

I had to pay for something in the salon at the top of the High St this morning with my debit card. By the time I'd reached the bottom of the High Street, where the bank is, a small but crucial neuron had fallen out of my ear and rolled down a drain. This was the neuron that contained my debit card pin number.

The bank have blocked it, did not smirk too much, and are issuing me with another one. Meanwhile, in the butcher's, the neuron grew back, too late to re-use my card.

Sigh. It's called age.

Back on board the good ship Home, I discovered that Capt Jones had failed to batten the hatches with sufficient efficiency and the crew had broken into the galley, dismantling crucial rations (some beans and an eggplant - but inexplicably ignoring the pancetta).

Floggings have been issued with a rolled-up copy of Vogue, and the crew confined to their quarters, apart from Cabin Boy Sidney, who as he is a cat, can't remember what happened 5 minutes ago, and does not respond to punishment.

A lovely day - the hottest weather we've had this year. I met maeve_the_red and la_marquise_de and their respective other halves in town, went in search of scrumpy and a cream tea, with partial success, and then walked round the Chalice Well. It's looking beautiful at this time of year, full of fiery tulips.

After this, we came back to the ranch, cooked, admired Sid up a tree (photos may follow), ate dinner outside and then watched DR WHO. Spoilers ahoy.

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Big thank you to maeve_the_red for last week's ep. I shall probably watch this today.

Insanely busy. We have Eastercon coming up, both in the writer and the dealer capacity, and I am trying to organise Milford, the shop, the accounts and a whole lot else, all at once. It's getting done, though.

At the moment I am in the shop. Someone has just delivered some new Books of Shadows - leather bound, embossed, with marbled end papers and rough-edged parchment pages. They'll retail for over £100 but they're worth it.

The radio show last night was not a glitch-free zone due to the new streamers and the old PC, but it wasn't too bad. Sid contributed by wailing loudly in the middle, something he does not normally do. Clearly, the cat likes an audience! There's a shock.

We did the talk on Ostara, which was well received - I'll summarise some main points later and post them under a cut.

After this, we grabbed some dinner with friends and then went to the launch, and the concert by Gordon Giltrap. This was excellent. I'm not a huge fan of acoustic guitar (and nothing else) but Giltrap played a very varied set, including something inspired by John Dowland (though I'm not sure about the alleged quote that Dowland had spent 60 years playing the lute, 40 of which consisted of tuning it).

GG was also very funny ('Right, the interval lasts for 20 minutes. I'll be in the dressing room taking drugs. [pause] Some Vick's expectorant, and a Fisherman's Friend.')

In the interval, T said to Gordon 'I'm never going to pick up the guitar again.'

'Yeah, they all say that,' Gordon replied. 'But they never mean it.'

I am not a guitar geek, as stated, but there were an awful lot of 50+ men after the concert muttering 'Bastard! How does he do it?'

If anyone is interested, the concert was recorded, and you can hear it here: (NOT work safe as it will play music when you click on the site!)

http://glastonburyradio.co.uk/modules/news2/