Hahaha! Gotta love what they can do when it ain't part of the 'proper' series. ( Not really that spoilery, but whatever )

Looking forward to it!

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I spent the weekend sleeping, marking, and making Christmas pudding. Since I don't do proper cookery very often, and indeed have never made a Christmas pudding before, I took a few ( pictures of the process )

It was fun to do, and the steaming process in particular transformed the kitchen into a kind of orange-and-cinnamon flavoured sauna which it was very tempting to just stay in all weekend while the marking lay unattended in the lounge. It was also quite a lot easier than I had expected. There are certainly a lot of ingredients, and it takes a long time to measure them all out, but once they are assembled it is really just a question of mixing them up and waiting patiently while they simmer on the stove. Saint Delia had given me to understand that the mixing process in particular was destined to be terribly arduous, but (unless I have done something wrong) it didn't seem that bad really. Anyway, the final result seems to both look and smell like a Christmas pudding. I just have to hope that it tastes like one too.

Since I live in Yorkshire these days, I feel duty-bound to point out that making your own Christmas pudding in the 21st century is very definitely a leisure activity, rather than an economy option. The ingredients alone cost something in the region of £20 - largely, of course, because I kept having to do things like buy a 200g pot of glacé cherries so that I would have 50g worth of them to put in the pudding. And that's before you allow for the fact that I also had to buy two pudding basins and a pudding steamer in order to cook it all. Still, does buying even Waitrose's finest luxury Christmas pudding have the same romance? Do you get to make a wish while you stir it, or wonder excitedly who will find the sixpences concealed in its murky depths, and whether their teeth with survive the experience? Oh no, I think not.

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Hmm, I guess that was OK, but not exceptional. ( But I don't want to spoil you, all the same )

Er, and that's it, really. Nothing much else of substance or depth that I could see. But can't wait for the Christmas / New Year's specials, all the same!

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As planned, my sister and her husband arrived on Friday night to stay in Leeds for the weekend. It was SO lovely to see her, especially after her recent medical adventures, and it cheered me up very much to be able to greet her with a (gentle) hug when she arrived on the doorstep.

We spent Saturday daytime looking around the University and the city centre, mainly in company with Charlotte's friend Duncan, who is here for the year teaching in the Spanish department. Then, in the evening, we put on our dancing shoes, and headed out for Rock 'n' Roll antics.

Our first stop was the Fab cafe, where we were joined by angeoverhere, hieroglyphe and johnnydefective. And that was great in itself, because I haven't seen any of them since they moved down to Norwich. So we got to catch up, share tales of woe about the financial future of academia, and make plans for this year's ex-Winsley Roaders' Christmas dinner. Somehow, I found myself offering to make a Christmas pudding for us all at one point in the conversation - and I am indeed going to try to do so, though I'll need to purchase a couple of pudding basins first.

Some time after 11, the Norwich contingent headed home, while Charlotte, Nicolas, Duncan and I stepped through a fifteen-year timewarp and entered into the strange world of ( Rock of Ages )

Meanwhile, after a long lie-in and lazy morning, la Sorella and fella have headed over to Duncan's bachelor pad for the afternoon prior to heading home, and I am curled up in my favourite place on the sofa - a little tired and achey after last night's antics, but definitely a lot more energised and happy than I have felt for quite some weeks.

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( First Doctor: The Crusade )

( First Doctor: The Space Museum )

Taken together, these two stories do an enormous amount to develop the format of the programme. Later Who has always been very good at the kind of nod-and-a-wink meta-commentary demonstrated here, and it's great to see it becoming established for the first time. But, of course, this is still AS NOTHING compared to what is about to come... ;-)

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I'm settled in to watching the First Doctor era sequentially at the moment, but the next two stories to come up on that basis are ones I've already seen and reviewed: The Rescue and The Romans. That was way back in January 2008, so very much at the beginning of my Who-watching Odyssey, and at a time when I'd only seen three other First Doctor stories (An Unearthly Child, The Daleks and The Edge of Destruction). Nonetheless, looking back over my comments on them at the time, I do seem to have given them both quite a full treatment, and done a fairly good job of understanding how they fitted into the developing direction of the series at the time.

So I don't think it's actually necessary to re-watch them or re-review them now: although I certainly will need to revisit The Romans before next Easter, as the panel on Classics and Doctor which swisstone is organising has now been accepted, so my paper on Doctor Who and history is go! On the other hand, this did seem like a good opportunity to watch the extras for both stories included on the DVD releases, which did not even exist when I first watched both last year. Under the cuts are a few extra thoughts prompted by doing so.

( First Doctor: The Rescue (DVD extras) )

( First Doctor: The Romans (DVD extras) )

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I keep getting 'Final notices' from Yahoo!, reminding me that their free webpage hosting service, Geocities, will close down on October 26th. This affects me because I have been using it since 2003 to host a webpage recording ten years' worth of annual Christmas dinners with my old friends from my undergraduate days at Bristol: Christmas frolics at the House of Goth.

I don't really mind about the webpage, as it was rather defunct anyway. I put it together in the first place because, after seven years of dinners, we were starting to find it difficult to remember where we'd been and what we'd done for each of the previous years. As the house's resident historian, I didn't like the idea of that, so I drew up records of what we'd done each year, put them together with what pictures I had access to on the webpage, and asked the participants to contribute their personal memories of each year.

In other words, what I was really trying to create was something along the lines of a collaborative blog and picture sharing site – except that at that time, I wasn't yet very familiar with the world of blogging. I did actually create my livejournal around the same time as I first created the webpage – but LJ didn't even have picture hosting at all at that time, and I simply didn't recognise its potential for doing what I wanted to do. So I painstakingly hand-coded the entire site from scratch myself, and updated it each year, carefully inserting all the new links I needed to integrate each new page into the structure of the site.

The internet has moved on since those days, and I now recognise that what I was trying to do with the webpage would have been better done all along with a series of annual LJ entries. Besides, while I'd originally envisioned the page as a collaborative effort, in practice I didn't really get very much in the way of contributions from other people, so the majority of the text and the pictures on the site remained mine (though not all, and I would like to record thanks to angeoverhere, ajntornj and Rob for their contributions).

So, I don't mind about losing the page. But I do want to salvage its contents, and that's what this entry is for. Behind the cuts below are details of the year we spent living together from 1996 to 1997, followed by everything I know about each of the successive Christmas meals: who was there, where we went, and personal memories where I have them. I can't be bothered to upload and host all the photos from every year now, as I have them all on my own computer anyway. So I've simply put up a couple of representative pictures for each year where I have them. If anyone is keen to see more, do let me know – it can always be done.

( The year in the house: June 1996 to June 1997 )

( The original Christmas meal: 1996 )

( Christmas 1997 )

( Christmas 1998 )

( Christmas 1999 )

( Christmas 2000 )

( Christmas 2001 )

( Christmas 2002 )

( Christmas 2003 )

( Christmas 2004 )

( Christmas 2005 )

( Christmas 2006 )

( Christmas 2007 )

( Christmas 2008 )

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Bit of a random one, this - it's an Eighth Doctor audio which I spotted being broadcast on BBC7 a couple of weeks ago, and made the effort to listen to since it clearly involved a hefty element of Classical receptions.

The story is not actually set in the Classical past. Rather, it is an example of what swisstone dubs 'appropriation' - that is, a story about a fictional society which has consciously modelled itself on a real past culture.

( Spoilery plot summary )

It's a short and fairly simple story, whose basic plot elements are recognisable from multiple other SF stories (Doctor Who and otherwise). Arguably, the Classical aspect isn't doing anything very much more here than it is in Underworld or The Horns of Nimon - that is, lending a veneer of intrigue and sophistication to what would otherwise be a fairly unremarkable story. But I think it would unfair to go quite that far.

For one thing, the use of a Greek setting serves the useful purpose of helping the audience to grasp the relationship between the original colonists and their clones. The plot requires a) that the difference between the original colonists and their clones (or descendants) is clear and b) that we understand that the original colonists have succeeded in establishing control over everyone else on the planet by means of cynical deception. The Greek mythological setting achieves both of these things - casting the original colonists as gods does make their elevated status clear, and offer a plausible explanation for why nobody is questioning or challenging them.

The specific choice of ancient Greek culture to help convey all this makes sense, since it serves dual purpose as a society which did accord great reverence to a multiplicity of gods, but is also associated with great scientific thinking, so that it doesn't seem too weird to find mind-transfer technology incorporated into it. It also adds a valuable extra layer to the relationship between 'Zeus' and 'Hera', the most powerful of the original colonists. They are amusingly snippy with one another, and Zeus has a keen eye for the pretty girls. But for all that, they have been together for centuries, through a succession of cloned bodies. I felt that the Classical veneer really helped to flesh out that idea out by reference to the similar relationship between their mythological namesakes.

So, as an example of Classical receptions it worked for me. Along the way, it constituted my first introduction to Lucie Miller, whom I hadn't met before. She seemed quite good fun - a modern, no-nonsense woman rather along the lines of Donna Noble, who is very ready to question and challenge what other people are doing. Paul McGann seems as good as ever as the Eighth Doctor - and I've used the opportunity to make a new icon in his honour. I look forward to another opportunity to use it once I get my hands on his upcoming story, An Earthly Child - especially having seen The Dalek Invasion of Earth so recently.

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Because its vice-chancellor thinks it is OK to publish an article like this one (scroll down to the 'LUST' section) about sexual relationships between (female) students and (male) staff at Universities, which includes such choice phrases as these:

"Equally, the universities are where the male scholars and the female acolytes are."

So, no female scholars, then? All the women at University are there purely to enable men, and possibly drink admiringly from the founts of male knowledge?

"The fault lies with the females"

Like everything, of course!

And, worst of all in my view:

"Normal girls - more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos - will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers"

I think I would like to go and vomit now. What a wanker!

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Seen at the Cottage Road cinema with ms_siobhan

I must admit that I went to see this with a kind of train-wreck mentality. From what I'd seen on trailers and posters, it looked destined to be pretty awful - a CGI-heavy Gothic horror fest with little subtlety and no resemblance to the book beyond the title. I was braced for something which was to Wilde's Dorian Gray as the film Van Helsing was to Stoker's Dracula. But I went all the same, because somehow I just couldn't resist seeing for myself how bad it was going to be.

And in that I was sorely disappointed. It isn't perfect by any means - ms_siobhan and I agreed on the way home that there were points at which they had gone slightly overboard with the CGI, especially in the final scenes. But it was a lot better than I had been expecting. It had subtlety and structure and clever thematic allusions, and succeeded in bringing out the essential character of Wilde's book while at the same time bringing its own contributions to the table. In short, I think it has been mis-marketed, and actually if you like Wilde's novel and like dark and grungy modern visions of Victorian depravity (think Sweeney Todd), you will probably like this.

( OK, the rest is going to be spoilerific )

There's a lot there, then - more, in fact, than I'd intended to write when I sat down to do this review! It's just a pity that Parker occasionally let himself get just a little carried away with the CGI effects - particularly when 95% of the way the always-tricky issue of whether or how to show the picture itself was actually handled quite cleverly and subtly, and it was only that rogue 5% that over-egged the pudding. With only a very little editing to trim out the worst excesses, it would be a really brilliant film - and as it is, I'm glad I saw it.

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I have found my first grey hair. Well, white of course actually. It's not anything anyone else would notice just glancing at my hair as a whole yet, but it is definitely there.

Actually, a few weeks ago a found I couple of hairs which were white for about the bottom 8 inches or so, but then my normal brown colour above that up to the root. That quite confused me, because I had assumed that if you were going to have a hair that was half-white and half-brown, it would be white on the upper part, where it is attached to the head, and not the lower part. So I guessed that maybe it was down to dye damage, since the bottom 8-10 inches of my hair are still a slightly different colour from the rest due to years of hair-dyeing.

But now I've found one which is 100% definitely white, right from root to tip. Damn.

I wouldn't actually mind if my entire head of hair just turned completely white overnight - that would be cool, in fact (see icon for details). And I have been mentally preparing for this for some years, primarily by making sure that I would have grown out all my old hair-dye before it began to happen, because I really don't ever want to be the person with bad grey roots. But I had rather hoped that I would at least have finished the growing-out process before the greys began to appear, and would be able to enjoy just a couple of years of flowing, healthy-looking naturally coloured hair before it started changing. Guess not, huh.

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This is, of course, the novel on which the two-part Tenth Doctor story, Human Nature / The Family of Blood is based. I read it online courtesy of the BBC, but did so increeeediiiibblllyy sllooooooooooowly over a series of short sessions while eating lunch-time sandwiches at my desk. Since I don't have that sort of lunch-break every day, and indeed often do not do so for a week or more at a time, it has taken me since last December (when I finished The Well-Mannered War) to complete the book. That wasn't too much of a problem for understanding the plot, since it is similar enough to the TV version for my memories of that to have helped me keep track of it between gaps in reading. But it probably did mean I maintained less of a grip on all the various minor characters than I might otherwise have done.

The novel features the Seventh Doctor rather than the Tenth - although, spookily, someone claiming to be the Tenth incarnation of the Doctor does pop up at one point. The premise is also slightly different from the TV version. In the novel, the Doctor comes to the Aubertides wanting to be human, and the technology to enact that transformation comes from them, not the Time Lords. The only problem is that they have offered that technology as a bait, in order to get a Time Lord into a vulnerable enough position for them to be able to steal his technology and ability to regenerate from him. Hence their pursuit of the unsuspecting school-teacher, John Smith - protected in this instance by Bernice Summerfield, a companion of Cornell's own creation.

I think I actually prefer this set-up to the TV adaptation. One obvious difficulty with the TV version is that it requires us to accept that the Doctor has known how to transform himself into a human all along, without ever having mentioned it before. That's one of the problems you run into after forty years of continuity, and I wouldn't want it getting in the way of good stories. But having the technology come from a previously-unencountered source instead does feel more convincing. The setting for the novel also changes the Doctor's motivation for becoming human in the first place. Whereas in the TV episode, he does it in order to save the Family of Blood from their own desire to hunt him down and devour his life force, in the novel he knows nothing about that at the point when he makes the decision. Instead, it is implied (though never explicitly spelt out) that he does it because he wants to understand humans better, and perhaps also take a break from himself - something that is certainly an outcome of his actions in the TV series, but not his actual reason for doing it. That said, perhaps his motivations in the TV version are more in keeping with the established character of the Doctor - certainly of the Tenth Doctor, anyway.

Either way, the idea of making the Doctor experience life as a human is real genius, and even with my rather limited experience of Doctor Who novels, I think I can fairly safely say that this is as good a Who novel as the TV adaptation is a Who episode (or two). The writing is markedly better that the other Who novels I've read so far, and there are lots of great little scenes set into the narrative. I especially enjoyed one early on in the novel, where the Doctor / John Smith finds himself teaching the boys about the rebellion of Boudicca / Boadicea. Cornell uses it as an opportunity to set their early-twentieth century understanding of war and rebellion against the Doctor's 'out-of-time' (but obviously late-twentieth century) perspective. It works nicely in its own right as a case-study of the way that history shifts and changes entirely according to the needs and interests of its interpreters, and it also serves an important narrative purpose in bringing out some of the main themes of the novel - aggression, resistance, and the acts of individuals caught up in wars beyond their control. But in the context of a story which in itself also constitutes a particular interpretation of early-twentieth century Britain, it also draws attention to the fact that we too are viewing the past through the filter of the present as we read. We end up with multiple different histories all bouncing off one another, and I thought it was fantastic.

That's not to say the novel is entirely flawless. There are occasional sentences which haven't been proof-read carefully enough, and contain awkward repetitions: for example, "The blast knocked Smith's party off their feet, blasting the wooden pub tables into the field beyond the garden." There is also a rather long and boring back-story all about Aubertide society in chapter 7. I personally felt that it would have been better to leave this out, and just concentrate on the one renegade family which actually features in the book - and RTD clearly felt exactly the same way, since that's what happens in the TV version. It also seems rather implausible that this long and ponderous Social and Political History of Aubis is narrated to Bernice while she is tied up as their prisoner, despite a few knowing jokes at the beginning of the process about how they're not going to be tricked into revealing all their plans just because they have captured her - which is precisely what they then go on to do. On the whole, though, this is a jolly good read, and I quite often found myself actively looking forward to reading another little chunk of it on my way in to work.

It gets bonus points for a Hitch-Hiker's reference: Bernice grabs some Aldebaran brandy at one point in chapter 4, which I rather think she must have acquired from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I was also intrigued to note that the phone in the front panel of the TARDIS rings in chapter 12 as a means of communicating with Timothy, the boy who has found the pod with the Doctor's bio-data inside it (what would become the fob-watch in the TV version, but here looks more like a cricket-ball). Obviously, this crops up in The Empty Child as a means for the child to communicate with Rose - but I'd be very interested to hear from more knowledgeable Whovians than me about this device as a story element. Had it ever happened before this novel was written, or is this the first instance? More props to Cornell for creative use of the TARDIS's police box disguise if it was.

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I came across this film c. 12 years ago, while channel-hopping on what was quite probably a Bank Holiday weekend. I'd missed the first twenty or thirty minutes, but got hooked into the perilous-trek-across-the-Sahara storyline, and the tensions between the three main characters. Although the desert setting is physically expansive, its extreme character and the isolation of the three people trekking across it make it essentially an example of the cabin-fever genre - my liking for which I have documented previously.

And as a cabin fever story, it's ( decent enough )

( But its real appeal is the location footage )

( Roman cities in North Africa )

It's great to be able to see this film again after so long, and three cheers for this modern world of IMDb and Lovefilm, which allowed me to identify and then watch it without having initially remembered what it was even called. I do think, though, that it is about time I made more of an effort to see at least some of the North African cities in real life rather than just on film. I've wanted to ever since my final year at Bristol, and now at last I seem to be living in a time when there are a) companies like this who will take people there and b) enough pounds in my bank account to pay them. It'll take some careful research to make sure I'm getting a decent deal - but I can't think of anywhere else I would rather go on holiday.

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I've had a couple of visitors to my lovely Art Deco palace lately.

First, rosamicula came to stay for the middle part of last week, during an extended tour of Northern Climes. We went out for tasty Thai goodness on the Tuesday evening with big_daz and ms_siobhan (who was, of course, her usual naughty self!), and drank rather a lot of wine between the four of us. I was relatively restrained, as I knew the next day would be a bit of a stinker for me work-wise. I spent two hours serving on a job interview panel in the morning, followed by two and a half solid hours of plagiarism hearings in the afternoon, and then another hour in a Learning and Teaching meeting after that. But it all melted away when I got home to find that rosamicula had cooked a wonderful three-course meal for me! This is what she made:

• Duck and mandarin salad with watercress and cranberry and mandarin sauce
• Salmon fillet on a bed of deliciously juicy mushrooms, onions and peppers
• A cherry compote (which she had made herself from scratch) covered by a layer of chocolate mousse (which she had made herself from scratch) and topped by six whole chocolate-covered cherries (WSHMHFS)

It was a truly novel experience, as I think the only person who has ever had a cooked dinner waiting for me when I came home from work in my life before is my mother. Indeed, it seems friends don't do this for one another very often either, as when I mentioned it on Facebook, three completely separate people all seemed to conclude that it must mean we were dating! No, dear readers - it merely means that rosamicula is a particularly exceptional friend.

More visitors followed shortly afterwards, as my parents arrived in time for the weekend. This was really nice - Mum is well enough now that not only can she manage the journey up, but she can handle day-trips perfectly adequately as long as there are plenty of tea-breaks and we don't stay out too long. So we all went together to Hebden Bridge on the Saturday, where we enjoyed stunning scenery on the way, and then charming local stone and ice-creams when we got there. Then on the Sunday, we went down to the Royal Armouries to see the falconry show (hat-tip to ms_siobhan for alerting me to this very parent-friendly event), and in the afternoon to York Gate garden in Adel (and another hat-tip for that one, too). Mum seemed to really enjoy all of them, which was great. Meanwhile, at home Dad sorted out a few small DIY jobs for me, with the result that I shall soon be able to Actually Put Things in my downstairs cupboard without them going mouldy at last - hoorah!

I also seem to have scored a big hit by presenting Mum with a digital photo frame to mark the occasion of her 62nd birthday (which is actually today). She complains quite frequently that she never gets to see digital photos - unlike anyone reading this, she is not a member of the online generation which has become used to seeing a thousand new photos springing up on LJ or Facebook every week, so she gets frustrated that nobody ever prints out their digital photos and puts them in an album where they can be looked at. Obviously, Charlotte's wedding reminded her of this, so on hearing her complaints I decided it was high time to at least provide her with a nice way of getting to see her own photos, and sharing them with people who come to visit. She'd never heard of a digital photo frame, but said straight away that it was, in fact, just what she needed, even though she didn't know it. And apparently they have got it all set up and working now, so I think that will be really nice for her when the wedding photos start coming through.

Talking of which, I have been sent precisely ONE so far, taken by my aunt. It's nice, but godsdammit, there were at least fifty people busily taking photographs on the day! Where are their online photo galleries, I'd like to know? Nowhere, I suspect, because most of the photographers were just like my Mum, and not really in the habit of sharing their pictures via social networking sites. Or if they are, no-one is forwarding the links to me :-( Eventually there will be the official album + CD, from which I am hoping I'll get permission to repost a few choice images here. But it is pretty frustrating in the meantime. I NEED you guys to know how breathtakingly gorgeous my sister is!

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This is an experiment with my G1. I am timing 1 minute with my watch and seeing how many words I can type out in that time on its little keyboard. Not many more I think!

ETA: The answer would appear to be 35. There are 36 words in the paragraph above, but the 'think' was added after the minute was up, because I couldn't stand to leave an incomplete sentence. Not bad, though, and I'm pretty sure it's rather faster than I could ever manage on a phone keypad, with or without predictive text.

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At about 3 o'clock on Friday August 14th, my sister Charlotte got married to her partner of just over twelve years – a kind, sweet, supportive and good-humoured French gentleman by the name of Nicolas Trémouilhe, whom she met when she was just shy of her sixteenth birthday. It was an absolutely perfect day which I was so pleased and proud to be able to share with her. As I predicted, I don't have any photographs – my bridesmaidly duties would have made that too difficult, and I knew that there would be hundreds of photos, both official and unofficial, being taken by other people anyway. But an account of the day is under the cut.

( The planning )

( The setting )

( The ceremony )

( The aftermath )

( The reception )

There is all sorts of stuff which a written account of a day like this can never capture, but I hope the happiness of everyone involved will be apparent in the photographs when they come. I know that I have never felt so fiercely proud of my beautiful little sister as I did on this fantastically important day in her life, and that I couldn't possibly feel any more certain that she has married the right man. It was an emotional day for all of us, especially because Mum's illness has made us all so very aware of how precious life is, and how easily we can lose the people who matter to us. But although we all had our tearful little moments during the day, they were happy tears. Charlotte had all the people she most wanted around her to celebrate her first step into married life, and I am so, so happy for her that she did.

I'll post or link whatever photographs I can of the day here eventually. For the moment, though, I leave you with a couple of pictures of trophies which I saved from the big day:

Invitation, Order of Service, place name card and bag of heart-shaped favours	My bridesmaid's bouquet, made by the mother of the other bridesmaid

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I'm posting this from a sunny bench in a walled garden in Warwick, listening to church bells, the rustle of leaves and the occasional distant swish of cars going by, and I'm here because tomorrow my sister will be getting married here. (Well, not in this actual garden, but in Warwick, anyway).

Just at the moment, the two sets of parents are meeting one another for the first time - quite an undertaking, since one set are French and don't speak very good English, and the other (ours) are precisely the opposite! But I'm pretty sure their bilingual offspring are smoothing over the language barrier. Meanwhile, I've been sent off into town to run a couple of minor errands, and generally allow space for parental bonding.

Charlotte (my sister) is remarkably calm and composed about everything, though we have told her it's traditional for brides to throw at least one major wobbly before the big moment. This afternoon, we have hair trials and a rehearsal at the church, and then this evening a meal out together for both of the families.

Naturally, there will be pictures tomorrow, but I doubt that I'll be taking many, as I shall be busy being a bridesmaid! But I should think at least some will make it onto this LJ in one way or another. Me, I'll probably pop back up again on Saturday when it's all over.

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