No guidebook to the world of dreams
Jul. 14th, 2018 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashlymeI aten't dead! Circumstances I can't really go into here mean I'm not much in Birmingham in these days, so my internet access is mostly restricted to local library hours during the week. Still no excuse to let this journal lapse.
My dad was ill with breathing problems a couple of weeks back and had to go into hospital for a few days. He's out now. He had an aneurysm fifteen years ago and they found flour on his lungs then (he was a baker for five decades). We haven't heard back about the tests yet, except there was a build-up of CO2 in his system. Fingers crossed. He came out fairly cheerful and missing the hospital food, so not all bad.
Around the same time I wrote a new ghost story called Belbyne's Lane for an anthology of flower-themed weird tales. It's not one I'm sure I like - it turned out rather darker than I meant - but I was glad to get the thing of my system. It deals with a hit-and-run on a fictionalised version of the road where my family lives, back in the early eighties. That part of the story almost came true the other night. :/ I was walking back from the Boat; there's no pavement for much of the lane. I saw headlights coming my way and pressed back into the hedge to make sure I was out of harm's way. The car's wing mirror clipped my coat (thank God I was wearing my bike jacket that night) at the same time I realised they were driving way too close to the verge. How close I'd come only sank in when I got back home, though I'd shouted a few choice obscenties at the car. Please, please someone suggest a storyline for next time that might not repeat on me?
Had a lovely midweek date withcybermule though. We had lunch then drove out to Warwickshire to the art gallery at Compton Verney. The grounds are lovely: pools and reeds and willow tunnels. I met my first gingko tree! There were two exhibitions of automata on; the first one was of circus-themed wooden toys by a guy called Rodney Peppe: very Monty Python at times. H got very fond of a jester with bells on head, hands and feet: you could work a little keyboard to make him jingle. The other exhibition harked back quite a bit to eighteenth-century/Victorian/carnivalesque ideas of automata: one giant one that looked like the cover for Pink Floyd's Relics. Most of them were contemporary, like the taxidermied crow packed with animatronics that nodded and cocked his head and shrugged; some of them could be operated by hand, like the carousel of human uncles ridden by rabbits that operated a sausage machine below (I don't know if these came from the uncles, or...). One of my favourites were these little glass cases filled with preserved insect wings, little bits of brass machinery, and pages cut from Observer's books. You couldn't touch them, so I'm not sure if they were actually "functional" - they were the ones that appealed to me most on an aesthetic level. The one that got to me on a more disturbing level was a hydraulic (I think) installation where pistons prodded white rounded objects in time to a string-drone soundtrack. I saw them as the ghosts or prototypes of internal organs, and then I couldn't take the thought back. We didn't get to see all the things there, so expect another report soon.
Super-excited to find that Pram have a new album out next week! They're a local band I assumed had just stopped going when their frontwoman/keyboardist left: wonky bargain basement organs and synths, woozy brass and reeds, eerie child-like songs about isolation and relationships going quietly wrong. The launch-party/gig is on Friday; takingcybermule with me. In the meantime I'm playing as much as I can of the back catalogue.
Currently reading: the Earthsea books, Zoran Zivkovic's The Five Wonders of the Danube.
My dad was ill with breathing problems a couple of weeks back and had to go into hospital for a few days. He's out now. He had an aneurysm fifteen years ago and they found flour on his lungs then (he was a baker for five decades). We haven't heard back about the tests yet, except there was a build-up of CO2 in his system. Fingers crossed. He came out fairly cheerful and missing the hospital food, so not all bad.
Around the same time I wrote a new ghost story called Belbyne's Lane for an anthology of flower-themed weird tales. It's not one I'm sure I like - it turned out rather darker than I meant - but I was glad to get the thing of my system. It deals with a hit-and-run on a fictionalised version of the road where my family lives, back in the early eighties. That part of the story almost came true the other night. :/ I was walking back from the Boat; there's no pavement for much of the lane. I saw headlights coming my way and pressed back into the hedge to make sure I was out of harm's way. The car's wing mirror clipped my coat (thank God I was wearing my bike jacket that night) at the same time I realised they were driving way too close to the verge. How close I'd come only sank in when I got back home, though I'd shouted a few choice obscenties at the car. Please, please someone suggest a storyline for next time that might not repeat on me?
Had a lovely midweek date with
cybermule though. We had lunch then drove out to Warwickshire to the art gallery at Compton Verney. The grounds are lovely: pools and reeds and willow tunnels. I met my first gingko tree! There were two exhibitions of automata on; the first one was of circus-themed wooden toys by a guy called Rodney Peppe: very Monty Python at times. H got very fond of a jester with bells on head, hands and feet: you could work a little keyboard to make him jingle. The other exhibition harked back quite a bit to eighteenth-century/Victorian/carnivalesque ideas of automata: one giant one that looked like the cover for Pink Floyd's Relics. Most of them were contemporary, like the taxidermied crow packed with animatronics that nodded and cocked his head and shrugged; some of them could be operated by hand, like the carousel of human uncles ridden by rabbits that operated a sausage machine below (I don't know if these came from the uncles, or...). One of my favourites were these little glass cases filled with preserved insect wings, little bits of brass machinery, and pages cut from Observer's books. You couldn't touch them, so I'm not sure if they were actually "functional" - they were the ones that appealed to me most on an aesthetic level. The one that got to me on a more disturbing level was a hydraulic (I think) installation where pistons prodded white rounded objects in time to a string-drone soundtrack. I saw them as the ghosts or prototypes of internal organs, and then I couldn't take the thought back. We didn't get to see all the things there, so expect another report soon.Super-excited to find that Pram have a new album out next week! They're a local band I assumed had just stopped going when their frontwoman/keyboardist left: wonky bargain basement organs and synths, woozy brass and reeds, eerie child-like songs about isolation and relationships going quietly wrong. The launch-party/gig is on Friday; taking
cybermule with me. In the meantime I'm playing as much as I can of the back catalogue.Currently reading: the Earthsea books, Zoran Zivkovic's The Five Wonders of the Danube.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-15 08:13 am (UTC)Glad to hear your dad is at least out of hospital okay! (Missing the food? :lol:)
Please, please someone suggest a storyline for next time that might not repeat on me?
If the curse is strong, though, all I can actually suggest is happier things, just to be on the safe side! I suppose it's something to have in common with Diana Wynne Jones, though. :-/
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Date: 2018-07-17 12:01 pm (UTC)And he's the main cook of the household!
I think I'll do some research until I can find something strange but not fatal....
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Date: 2018-07-16 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-17 12:01 pm (UTC)