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ashlymeSo, Eustace my netbook died hard last weekend, taking all my files with him. Those are utterly gone, but luckily 90% of them have either been published or got e-mailed out to beta-readers. It still stings though.Who am I kidding - it caused me a couple of bad panic attacks. Resurrecting him took about a week. (You are the best, cybermule <3) I had to sit through a whopping 162 updates today. For now (typing with crossed fingers is an arse) he's working. Borrowed time? I've been filching time for this machine a couple of years now at least.
I spent the last few days in the West Country and Wales withcybermule and her son. We walked a three-mile loop near Tortworth Lake; swifts skimmed the meniscus of the fields as if the grass were water. We saw the berries of cuckoo-pint burning in tree-shade and munched a handful of sloes. Later we found a pub where they really did turn from the bar to watch us come in. Luckily H is a local woman. The beer and Camembert was great but the homophobic insults the young farmer types were giving each other wouldn't make us go back. We watched Prospero's Books which is sumptuous; you want to eat this film, even if it doesn't hold you the way it did in your twenties. I still covet his books. We also saw Grant Gee's 2012 documentary Patience (After Sebald) which follows in the footsteps of W. G. Sebald's Suffolk travelogue The Rings of Saturn. It's a perfect companion to the book: monochrome, understated, laconically funny. There was sea: the beach at Barry Island, where I found pink and pale green whelks nestling in the otherwise bleak rocks. I wanted to go further out into the water than I managed but that's not the place to relearn to swim. H told me the black flecks in the sand were coaldust washed out from the Welsh valleys.
Our last night we joined H's friends to camp out a few miles out from Chepstow. We pitched the tent (I need more practice!) near a lovely beech tree just starting to gild over. There was a little metal seat behind it; you could sit and watch the motley of sun and shadow on the hills. More swifts here. And (in the morning) a buzzard circling over the campsite, low enough for a few moments to glimpse the pale bars under her wings. I woke about 2 am and listened to tawny owls hooting; getting up a couple hours later, I saw the horns of the thin moon holding earthshine.
cybermule <3) I had to sit through a whopping 162 updates today. For now (typing with crossed fingers is an arse) he's working. Borrowed time? I've been filching time for this machine a couple of years now at least.I spent the last few days in the West Country and Wales with
cybermule and her son. We walked a three-mile loop near Tortworth Lake; swifts skimmed the meniscus of the fields as if the grass were water. We saw the berries of cuckoo-pint burning in tree-shade and munched a handful of sloes. Later we found a pub where they really did turn from the bar to watch us come in. Luckily H is a local woman. The beer and Camembert was great but the homophobic insults the young farmer types were giving each other wouldn't make us go back. We watched Prospero's Books which is sumptuous; you want to eat this film, even if it doesn't hold you the way it did in your twenties. I still covet his books. We also saw Grant Gee's 2012 documentary Patience (After Sebald) which follows in the footsteps of W. G. Sebald's Suffolk travelogue The Rings of Saturn. It's a perfect companion to the book: monochrome, understated, laconically funny. There was sea: the beach at Barry Island, where I found pink and pale green whelks nestling in the otherwise bleak rocks. I wanted to go further out into the water than I managed but that's not the place to relearn to swim. H told me the black flecks in the sand were coaldust washed out from the Welsh valleys.Our last night we joined H's friends to camp out a few miles out from Chepstow. We pitched the tent (I need more practice!) near a lovely beech tree just starting to gild over. There was a little metal seat behind it; you could sit and watch the motley of sun and shadow on the hills. More swifts here. And (in the morning) a buzzard circling over the campsite, low enough for a few moments to glimpse the pale bars under her wings. I woke about 2 am and listened to tawny owls hooting; getting up a couple hours later, I saw the horns of the thin moon holding earthshine.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 11:24 am (UTC)Glad your laptop is temporarily resurrected.
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Date: 2017-08-22 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 05:45 pm (UTC)Oh, no! That's really rotten.
I'm glad you at least had a nice holiday. You're making me feel all vaguely homesick for the West Country and Wales. (I'm in the NE now and like it v much, but was born in the West Country, in Somerset, and went to uni at Aberystwyth for three years.)
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Date: 2017-08-22 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 09:59 pm (UTC)Of course! Losing information is bad! Losing stories is the kind of thing that drives writers to despair. I'm glad Eustace has been semi-resurrected, but I hope you have an option on something less prone to digital suicide. Please let me know if there is any writing you would like me to bounce back to you, even fragments or drafts.
swifts skimmed the meniscus of the fields as if the grass were water. We saw the berries of cuckoo-pint burning in tree-shade and munched a handful of sloes.
You write about the natural world so well.
There was sea: the beach at Barry Island, where I found pink and pale green whelks nestling in the otherwise bleak rocks.
Those sound beautiful.
I saw the horns of the thin moon holding earthshine.
And that line I loved best of all.
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Date: 2017-08-22 04:44 pm (UTC)Thank you so much - I'll get back to you on that.
*Those sound beautiful.*
They were about the size of my little fingernail! Those delicate colours were what made me spot them.
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Date: 2017-08-23 12:01 am (UTC)The sea decorates itself.