between the rock and the cold, cold sea

February. 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.

I used to dislike it.

But this afternoon, I'm drinking a lovely plain black tea from Sri Lanka, contemplating the mist outside the window, and almost happily staring at my notes.

Strange how things change. Before I found my way into Palais des Thés on Wicklow St. (or is it Georges St? Who ever remembers these things?) I would never have imagined finding tea pleasurable.

Now, it helps me work through the afternoon.

The plan for tomorrow is:

1. Make sponges for pear sponge cake.

2. Make (highly experimental) treacle gingerbread for the care and feeding of friends.

3. Hope like hell the treacle gingerbread is edible. Successfully not blackened mess!

4. Translate two more pages of the French Article From Hell.

5. Finish one of the two non-fic pieces I have ongoing.

6. Turn one of the two drafts I already have into a finished piece.

7. Stack piles of books-to-research more neatly. (Followed, most likely, by 7a: explain to other residents of this house that yes, this is as good as it gets unless I get a Tardis or a magic wardrobe.)

8. Wrap the things-to-be-wrapped.

9. Try not to freeze.

---

This is enough to be going on with, right?

Snow is really quite baffling.

Hopefully there will be sufficiently little of it tomorrow that I can pop into town and collect a last couple of books from the library before the Christmas closure. (I tried yesterday. Spent 2.5 hours not getting anywhere, due to SNOW which had COMPLETELY SCREWED our public transport system. The bus turned around and went back, eventually.)

If I can get that done, and this sneezy schnoz/icky cold clears up soonish, I'll have clear decks for making a productive go of the season of joy and good cheer. It seems to be a good way to spend the darkest part of the year: settle in with a stack of academic books and try to produce a workable Chapter 1 by mid February.

I also have a bunch of Greek to do, a couple of articles that hopefully someone will pay me for (money situation: not getting better, but I am not panicking yet, because something will turn up (it damn well better)) and some fiction to write so I can pretend I still think of myself as a writer. Which I do, damnit.

And the gym reopens over the holiday period, so just as soon as I get this cold gone, I can start reclaiming the (very large) stretch of ground I've lost.

We're supposed to get a thaw for Christmas. I'm looking forward to not shivering my socks off. I do not have the clothing for constant sub-zero temperatures. (And can't afford to buy new clothes till the end of February. So not yay.)

Anyway.

For the record, I should like to note that one thing I am not now nor ever shall be poor in (barring disaster) is books.

I catalogue the ones that come into my possession, and resist their leaving. As of tonight, my fiction catalogue stands at some 1400 items; my nonfiction catalogue (which is as yet incomplete: there are some two or three - perhaps four - shelves to go) stands at some 200 items.

Books are necessary for life.

---

This weekend, I must:

1. Write a review.

2. Write an essay - or a draft of one.

3. Write two more short pieces.

4. Begin reading for and drafting the first chapter of my thesis - I sent an abstract of part of this for a paper to a PG research conference, so even if they turn me down, I will have had a Spur to Progress. (I figure if I aim for 5K word chapters, this will give me better odds of turning them into articles/conference papers, which seem to be, aside from the obvious thesis and vivas, how Academic Achievement is measured.)

5. Bake cinnamon and ginger and possibly walnut shortbread.

6. Exercise, if the snow doesn't turn to nasty ice.

The persistent loneliness of being. Everybody dies alone, right?

Bugger, I'm morbid this morning. Time to go out into the bright November sunlight and pretend to be a real human being. I assume this will be easier after lunch.

Then to Greek translation, and the making of notes, and to the yelling back at my constant evil mutter of self-doubt that this is worth doing, dammit.

Left. Right. Left. Right. You don't climb hills to get to the top, do you? You do it to see if you can.

Yesterday, I discovered the existence of the Hakluyt Society, dedicated to the promotion of studies in travel and exploration and the history thereof.

I said to myself, "Self, this is cool," and immediately resolved to share it with the rest of the internets.

(Their journal is available for free on their website. They fail to mention that Cambridge University Press is also reprinting the HS's First Series of books on travel and exploration as paperbacks. They are cool. I covet them. But we speak not of this.)

Anyway. I did not achieve anything of significant note today, except for a walk, and much-needed family time. I also caught up on Criminal Minds (which is too much in love with sexy death this year), and then found the day advanced to this point, where there is not much of today left of today.

How did this happen, that I should have so little time, and find it all so swift to disappear? I cannot possibly consider it fair.

1. I have started writing proposals for nonfiction articles. I have no idea how to do this for commercial or genre markets, and with my (lack of) track record this might be as fruitful as tilting at windmills, but I've started.

If any of you guys have helpful tips, please don't be shy about sharing them, because -

- point two:


2. This country is, er, doomed. Not the exciting kind of BOOM VOLCANO RIOTS APOCALYPSE doom, which is at least over quickly, but the grim kind of grey projected record emigration/joblessness doom. So it would be nice if I could start earning something towards stockpiling tinned beans and paying for my over-the-counter painkillers.

It's an apocalysp. Because we can't even pronounce our apocalypses right.


3. Small bit of happy news: by this time tomorrow, I will actually have the piece of parchment proving I am, indeed, B.A. (Hons). (I took a first! This is a tiny thing to be proud of, since god knows a first in ancient history is not going to do me that much good in the medium-term.)

Expect ridiculous engowned pictures.


4. Writing up anthropology notes is enough to make me suspect it might be possible to die of boredom.


5. There is no fifth thing. Except for doooom.

In the interests of accountability, my list of Things To Do before Monday morning:

1. Revise CV in line with recommendations. (eta NB. Fix last citation issue ASAP.)

2. Write up response to Lloyd, In the Grip of Disease.

3. Greek homework and flashcards for assessment test.

4. Modern Greek homework and flashcards. Sort of. Mostly. Almost.

5. Read and take notes on the whole of Timaeus.

6. Laundry.

7. No, really. Do the damn laundry.

8. Read and review Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven, since the shop found my copy. Well. Not quite reviewed yet. But I have notes!

9. Send the emails to friend in Oxford you've been meaning to write for a while.

10. Other work as needed.

...Damn. I have more to do than I thought.

I've been sat working at the kitchen table since I got up today. Vladimir, the household's feline overlord, normally takes his ease in the living room.

But since I've been here, he's been sitting in the chair beside me. Occasionally on top of me, and - more regularly for him, since he's a windowledge sort of cat - sitting on the windowsill watching me.

The constant purring is equal parts reassuring and disturbing.