I can cook (reasonably) complicated things if I want to. But if I choose to cook complicated things, I expect them to be worth the effort. My Home Ec teacher was quite right back in the late 80s that frozen puff pastry is as good as something you'll make at home. And I speak as someone who is good at pastry.

It was as I scraped out the hairy choke bit of a globe artichoke bought on a whim in the market that I remembered (a) that the artichoke is a member of the thistle family, and (b) the evening on a French campsite, on my first holiday abroad, on which my parents cooked their first globe artichoke and came to the conclusion that it was an almost totally pointless activity. I have now eaten my artichoke, and it was very nice, but not sufficiently nicer than the ones in jars to justify the effort on a regular basis. A novelty it shall remain.

Delia Smith's fast-roast chicken, on the other hand - cooked in only 5 minutes longer than an artichoke takes - remains delicious, easy, and reliable.

Is there a giant archive of Vorkosigan fic (in English) out there that I don’t know about? There are a bare sixteen Ekaterin/Miles stories on AO3. Anyway, what I want is long fic detailing what happens when Ekaterin and Miles separate or divorce after some years of marriage. Since it isn’t there, I have had to write a very short one myself.

You might have been sorry for him—or bewitched by him—or even badgered to death by him

They had said practically everything that two people who still loved one another could say. The relief that some things were un-sayable, that Miles had not once even raised the possibility that he could keep her children from her, was almost enough to make her change her mind. But not quite.

Now even Miles was running out of arguments.

‘There hasn’t been an amicable separation in the Council of Counts since Lord Vorhallen and his wife, and that was only because his wife discovered she was also his sister. Actually,’ he continued, briefly distracted from his own distress, ‘I’m not certain they really did separate more than was necessary for appearances. She lived in the dower house and the second Lady Vorhallen just happened to die in childbirth only three years later.’

‘Then we’ll just have to make history again.’

* Given how cold it is, I suppose it is not entirely surprising that the Cairngorm ski resort is still open. But it is the 20th May. I'll believe the forecast temperatures of 20 degrees this week when I feel them.

* Having applied my bum to my chair this afternoon and forced it to stay there, I have 600 words of fic. It isn't a lot, but it is a start. This was grind-it-out stuff necessary for the continuing movement from A to Z, but it is OK even if the couple of important plot points do go "da, da, daahhhh" a bit loudly. The fic has now reached 30,000 words, which is nice.

* It is only economical to make a cake to use up some running out of date eggs if you do not have to buy the rest of the ingredients specially. Still, the cake is nice.

* Where is the shoe cleaner I bought on Friday? Perhaps I bought it on Thursday and it is in my desk drawer because I forgot to take it out of my handbag on Thursday evening. Hope so - it was expensive, and my shoes need cleaning. ETA: It was definitely Friday. So where is it?

* Half my television channels appear to have vanished. This happens every so often in, I assume, an evil combination of the transmitter and the weather, but it is very annoying.

The Sino-Nasal Outcome Test, otherwise known as the SNOT test.

I am supposed to be writing:

- the giant crossover mpreg fic;

- the Bunter/Saint-George fic;

- the Peter in Paris sequel ficlet;

- the Botanic Gardens fic I refuse to let defeat me.

All of these require actual thought.

So I thought it was time to revise this meme. You give me a word, I give you a line of fic.

Taking the usual missed connection at Birmingham New Street as read, we can move swiftly on to the good bits of the weekend, and specifically the reason I was in Leeds for the first place, Opera North's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. Which was brilliant. We were disappointed on arrival to learn that John Woodvine* would not be performing, assumed a lurgy, and then discovered on Sunday from the paper that in fact he had collapsed during the performance (though fortunately in the wings) on Friday night, cue "Is there a doctor in the house?", and the performance was called off. He's now in a stable condition it hospital. But my Dad recovered from the disappointment, especially as we were sitting in the stalls for once. Leg-room!

There's probably an argument that the difference between operetta and musical is that the former is written either before 1900 or not in English. Certainly the music of Carousel at least matches Lehar, and the whole experience is a great deal more enjoyable, and indeed profound, than The Magic Flute**. I've never heard a full recording, nor seen the film, but there were only two numbers I didn't recognise and I've been singing all of them for the past two days. The performances were uniformally excellent, the Opera North chorus and the Northern Philharmonia did their usual sterling stuff, and the dancers - let's just say I usually see the words "ballet" in an opera/musical and yawn, but the Louise's ballet section was enormously theatrical, helped I think by the young dancer's looking a realistic mid-teens. Though I'm glad that we didn't get the original hour and a half version, which - obviously - never made it to performance, even in 1945. It's on in Leeds for the rest of the week, then going to Salford, then the Barbican in London. Strongly recommended.

*I want to call him John Woodville, which is quite a different mental image.

**Admittedly Muppet Babies is probably more profound than The Magic Flute.

I am fed up of the rain. I am fed up of the cold between the rain. I am also fed up of the warmth during lighter rain that makes a mockery of the fact that one is dressed for the cold and the rain.

I am likewise fed up of my winter work clothes, which with the exception of the deep winter thick wools, I am still wearing. I am fed up of black boots, black shoes, black skirts, black jackets, black socks, you name it. For light relief, I also have navy blue trousers.

I know we need the rain, but couldn’t it have fallen in February? February is a lost cause in the UK however relatively good the weather, so we might as well get the rain over with then.

I know it's a good thing really to realise that the way to move on from the scene you've been struggling to write for the past three weeks is in fact to cut the scene, and thus the 500 words that are all you've managed to write in those three weeks.

But it would have been nicer to realise this three weeks ago.

Harriet Vane was born in 1900 or 1903, depending on novel. She could well have still been alive in 1994-98 and thus able to appear on Caroline Aherne's Mrs Merton Show. Thus is engendered one of the world's shortest crossover fics.

Interview

"What first, Harriet, attracted you to the millionaire Lord Peter Wimsey?"

***

For the uninitiated, the reference can be seen here.

Apparently the Olympic torch for 2012 has won the UK Design of the Year award. I can't honestly see what is that exciting about it. Apparently it "features 8,000 small cut-out circles, representing the 8,000 inspirational people who will carry it on its journey around the UK". That's nonsense for a start. One of those 8000 people is my brother-in-law. Now I like my brother-in-law a lot. He's a very nice man, and I wouldn't ask for a better brother-in-law, but his "inspirational story" involves his employer saying "We've been give a torch spot, who wants it?" I'm glad he's got it; he and my sister did enter the ticket lottery and won - quite aside from those tickets he got through work - and he is a keen sportsman who is no longer able to play his chosen sport due to injury. But an inspirational story? I suppose it is, in the sense of "make sure you get a job that gives you nice perks". To be fair to him, he also thinks it's ridiculous, but the firm had the spot and that wasn't changing, so he wasn't going to let it go to someone else.

So the torch: an award-winner, but pretty boring. The question remains as to how the big torch will be lit. We remember the ski jumper of Lillehammer (who brought it into the arena. The Crown Prince lit it, please don't let that happen in London), the flaming arrow of Barcelona (damn, we could have done that one), the flaming doves of Seoul...

Which leads, of course to a poll.


Poll #1836483
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

How with the 2012 Olympics torch be lit?