the river of the world
Feb. 2nd, 2011 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbFebruary. The weather is caught between winter and spring. Sunlight and rain and the peculiar thin quality of light I associate with winter falling on spring-greening fields, brown furrows sprouting viridian, turning grey estuary-water to brown depths that ripple and go still.
The towns along the railway line are ugly as ever, without the silvery patina of frost or the golden warmth of summer to elide their flaws. They crawl like fungus up overlooking hills, sprawl out across the landscape, and the city itself looks damp and tawdry and grey.
The lampposts are bearing fruit. The same men's faces stare down from election posters, the same tired and desperate sloganeering married to features it would take a mother to love. Women candidates and the occasional man who lacks a ferrety smirk - who actually photographs well, or can at least manage not to look smug or embarrassed or both at once - stand out for their astonishing rarity.
As usual, I'll be voting for the Socialists and the Greens. And possibly the non-incumbant Labour candidate in my constituency - the incumbant having somehow managed to keep his seat through at least the last two elections without ever having done anything good or useful to bring himself to my notice, and having made himself noticeable this election by the possession of a particularly unpleasant smirk. (I should not judge men by their faces, but really? He looks like he's leering.)
I know the Greens are implicated in the shoddy state of the nation, but I've met their candidate. He's as sensible as politicians hereabouts ever get.
Tonight, I attended a German jujutsu class. It was intense, and radically different to the hit people and run away ethos of Shotokan karate, which is what I'm used to. (If Shotokan is good for anything, it's for teaching you to hit people so they really know they've been hit. On the other hand, in real life, if you don't hit someone hard enough to kill them, you mostly just make them angry. So it will be good to train in a different style - one that includes grappling.)
Fun, but exhausting. We'll see how long my enthusiasm for getting myself beaten up lasts.
The towns along the railway line are ugly as ever, without the silvery patina of frost or the golden warmth of summer to elide their flaws. They crawl like fungus up overlooking hills, sprawl out across the landscape, and the city itself looks damp and tawdry and grey.
The lampposts are bearing fruit. The same men's faces stare down from election posters, the same tired and desperate sloganeering married to features it would take a mother to love. Women candidates and the occasional man who lacks a ferrety smirk - who actually photographs well, or can at least manage not to look smug or embarrassed or both at once - stand out for their astonishing rarity.
As usual, I'll be voting for the Socialists and the Greens. And possibly the non-incumbant Labour candidate in my constituency - the incumbant having somehow managed to keep his seat through at least the last two elections without ever having done anything good or useful to bring himself to my notice, and having made himself noticeable this election by the possession of a particularly unpleasant smirk. (I should not judge men by their faces, but really? He looks like he's leering.)
I know the Greens are implicated in the shoddy state of the nation, but I've met their candidate. He's as sensible as politicians hereabouts ever get.
Tonight, I attended a German jujutsu class. It was intense, and radically different to the hit people and run away ethos of Shotokan karate, which is what I'm used to. (If Shotokan is good for anything, it's for teaching you to hit people so they really know they've been hit. On the other hand, in real life, if you don't hit someone hard enough to kill them, you mostly just make them angry. So it will be good to train in a different style - one that includes grappling.)
Fun, but exhausting. We'll see how long my enthusiasm for getting myself beaten up lasts.
