between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Attempted lead-climbing tonight.

Oof, says I. Oof.

I'm comforted by the fact that it wiped M. nearly as badly as me, even if he managed to finish a route. I'm out of practice at dangling in mid-air on nothing but will and fingertips: the roof turned out to be a killer. It shouldn't be that hard. I figured out that one must wedge one's foot behind a banana-shaped hold and be dynamic in one's movement up from an underpull. But then one is clinging horizontal to the ground and must reach around the corner.

I didn't have the strength, and now I ache in a lovely band across the shoulders. Ah, well, such is life.

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Invigilating exams means getting to dress like an extra from a costume drama. I like academic gowns, which is, I'm told, rather unusual. (I want one of my very own.)

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I've nearly finished my Giant Ongoing Book Cataloguing Project, for now. There are only twenty-two more to add to the lists, unless I turn up something lurking in the depths. Which will make on the order of 1800 of my books in the house, with maybe another couple of dozen of the parent's, and another couple dozen lurking dictionaries and teach-yourself-languages books.

I have a library. Pity I don't really have the space for it.

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Too many things to do, not enough muscle, not enough brain, not enough time.

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Painting might happen yet. Cross your fingers. Perhaps by the end of the month, there will no longer be white walls!

At approximately 0830 this morning, I jumped into the Irish Sea for the first time this year. About an hour and a half after high tide, sky grey and sea heaving, the beach deserted and a stiff breeze cutting from the north east.

Verdict? It's still too bloody cold for actual swimming. Jumping in and getting wet, though, that I can do. For maybe twenty seconds.

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Books 2011: 50-52


50. Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho.

Sequel to Rivers of London. I ought to be reviewing both of these in the summer issue of Ideomancer, so all I'll say right here is READ THEM. Moon is really quite brilliant.


51. Richelle Mead, Thorn Queen.

Fluff. Entertaining fluff, but still.


non-fiction


52. Adrian Tinniswood, Pirates of Barbary. Vintage, London, 2011.

This is a vastly entertaining, clear, and informative history of the Barbary Coast pirates in their sixteenth and seventeenth century heydey. It's less narrative history than a series of illuminating vignettes, at times brushing up against imaginative recreation, as with his chapter on the raid at Baltimore. At times I really wanted more detail about one thing or another.

But Tinniswood does his best to treat his subject fairly, and extends empathy to the corsairs of Barbary as much as to their victims. He's very clear about the part that privateering played in the economy of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, and how this influenced both the governance of these cities and their relations with the wider world.

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Over the last few days, I've watched a few films. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is entertaining, though probably entirely opaque to anyone who hasn't read the book. Confucius is a leisurely biopic, with very little to recommend it apart from Chow Yun Fat.

The Way Back is a kind of brilliant film about a bunch of people who break out of a Soviet gulag in 1941 and walk south for thousands of kilometres to get out of Soviet country and any possibility of ever ending up in a gulag again. It's based on the book The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, and although the ending is a little bit more full stop than conclusion, I found it on the whole enjoyable.

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I'm presently reading Juvenal's Satires and not enjoying them. Bitter, bitter old man.