1) Trial by computer.
2) There was a solitary little flying thing hovering around me
when I was leaning on the farm gate this evening. With swallows and house
martins still active, and bats about to become so, I wondered whether it would
make it through the night. I wished it good luck, although that was verging on
the hypocritical since I also want my bat buddies to get fed, fit and fat
before the winter arrives.
3) I was reminded that I’m really an elf, and I was further
reminded that elves have a problem. Their quiet and refined ways impose
themselves not one jot on the day-to-day lives and sensibilities of orcs and
others of the lower orders, but such lower orders can have a devastating effect
in the opposite direction. I first became aware of this phenomenon when I lived
in a remote spot on the Northumbrian coast (by remote, I mean there was nothing
there except sand dunes, a few cottages and lots of birds. There was a power
station visible a few miles to the south, but that doesn’t count. The visitors
were the problem.) The real elves, however, have the benefit of magic to keep
the rowdy college kids off of their goddam lawn, whereas pretend elves like me
have no such resource.
4) Having become used to getting an average of about one
e-mail every three weeks, I had two in the space of three minutes today. The
first was from a very sensible person offering help with a practical problem;
the second was from the priestess. It seems she’s settling among the Saxon
hordes and I can go hang myself. That’s just like a priestess, isn’t it? Honest
to a fault, and all the more lovable for it. I don’t think I fancy hanging
myself, though; it seems a most distressing experience. I’d rather go for
poisoning myself with laudanum like the hero of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. And that had me ruminating on all the
examples of creative works which juxtapose waltz music with macabre themes. It’s
the only time I like waltz music.
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