My God, the amount of water around! It's like holidaying in Scotland in September. But the sun has finally come out this evening, even if the air is like breathing warm flannel, so I may yet get to do something other than visit indoor/underground historic sites.

I am mostly posting, however, to say to aella_irene that I am reading "Magic Flutes" and they're dining in a chambre séparée in Hotel Sacher. It's as if Ibbotson's purpose as a novelist were to slip me fanfic research material whilst I'm reading.

I am packing. I cannot pack. I think that there must be a gene and I haven't got it.

I am beginning to panic slightly. I have time, but I also want sleep. It isn't that I'm taking anything especially complicated, just that I don't know how to put it all together.

ohdearohdearohdearohdearohdear

Ed. 11:45, done, and off to bed, with nothing left to do in the morning. Have even dug out some original fiction notes just in case the muse strikes one rainy evening. I am not counting on this, but I felt I might as well.

I am suffering from suitcase dysmorphia. The suitcase in the shop looked thoroughly "medium". The suitcase under my bed is ginormous. The meter rule tells me that they are in fact the same size.

The small suitcase in the shop looks tiny. I buy it anyway because I don't need a third ginormous "medium" suitcase.

I wonder how big it will look when I get home? And will my clothes fit?

I want some Birkenstocks. They are terribly practical. Alas, they look completely ridiculous on my feet.

[Borrowed from library]

A Let's Go Travel Guide, Austria and Switzerland (including Munich)

Austria section, p. 72 Culture, Customs and Etiquette

In general, following good manners from your own country will take you far in German-speaking ones. The rules aren't too different in Austria, although there are a few ways you can disguise your status as a tourist and impress the locals. For instance, most Germans and Austrians hold their fork in left hand and knife in the right, but don't switch them after cutting. While forking left-handed is hard, it can impress the locals (unless your schnitzel lands in your lap).

On the subject of cultural norms, Austrian residents or visitors, what is the sauna/spa (un)dress code?

tree_and_leaf linked to this Wimsey/Doctor Who crossover, constructed around an alternative explanation for the Sayers short story The Image in the Mirror. As the best bit about the original is the depiction of contemporary solutions for excess babies, this is a story crying out to be improved with aliens (I usually prefer to improve with dragons, but they take up a lot of room. I think Nine Tailors is probably the one for dragons). Unfortunately the flashes of pretty convincin’ dialogue are interspersed with rather less convincing dialogue, a rather dim Peter, and very annoying Rose (OK, I find Rose in fic annoying a lot of the time). The story omits whatever it is that Rose must have put in Peter’s drink to get him to tell her all about Harriet over lunch at the Ritz. Her suggestions that he “snog [Harriet] senseless” and that she’s just playing hard to get do offer some explanation of how he managed to get things so disastrously wrong over the next year or so, however. I'm presently re-reading Have His Carcase. Page by page I am astonished at how impressively Peter makes a hash of his relationship with Harriet. There are practically Miles Vorkosigan levels of idiocy involved.

Anyway, I thought that Peter and the Doctor (and Rose) were left, one dead alien later, with a bit of unfinished business.

( Once again, the inevitable ensued. )

It occurs to me that I ought to mention (i.e. shamelessly promote) my first ever Wimseyfic, which was also a Doctor Who crossover starring Nine and Captain Jack in that familiar fanfic setting (well, I was writing a lot about Slytherins at the time) the slightly dull Society party: 1927.

To eat cream, even double cream, from the carton with a fork. But I'm glad it is.

Tonight's experimental cocktail: 2 parts white rum, 1 part Cointreau, 1 passion fruit, juice of half an orange, about half-a-teaspoon sugar. Shaken with ice, strained with difficulty. Surprisingly successful.

For the past few days, my eyes have been very painful, and by the end of the day I've been walking around with the half shut and finding it hard to look at the computer screen. This evening I worked out why.

NINEVEH: is eating dinner.

NINEVEH: sniffs.

NINEVEH: sniffs again.

NINEVEH: reaches for omnipresent hankie and realises that this isn't the sniff of the termninally knackered nose. This is a far more ominous sniff.

This is the sniff of an approaching cold. Guess what other symptom has heralded my last few colds. That's right: painful eyes.

Bugger.

In better news, I have finished the top I have been sewing, and can tidy away the paraphenalia scattered all over the flat. I am pleased with the top. It has a Liberty waterlily print on it (artnouveau_ho the one I bought when with you), and is a nice step between T-shirts and silk blouses.

If I were Guy, I’d hate Robin, too. Little creep. Meanwhile, week by week Richard Armitage's cheekbones gain in prominence.

I find it rather endearing that the makers of a mainstream programme for relatively young children can assume the little tykes will have sufficient knowledge of the symptoms and progress of leprosy to base the narrative around it. I look forward to the final episode in which everyone gets wiped out by the Black Death.

This begs a question. If the average six-year old can recognise leprosy and buboes, why can’t Gregory House?

I have booked myself a week on my own in a foreign hotel in a lakeside resort (Wolfgangsee). I am not sure whether I feel grown-up, middle-aged, or old-fashioned. The flight ended up being a £99 charter affair (Thompson Lakes and Mountains, so I am informed). Not only is it £99, and thus half the price of BA but the times are much better - no night in London with 6:45am check-in. I even find myself considering spending some of the difference on taxi transfer to my hotel on the journey out. To these depths I have sunk.

It is going to be exactly what I need. I'm not unsmug about bringing it in at £500 (plus bike hire) less than Headwater, either. I don't need a rep - I've got their webnotes.

Has anyone flown with Easy Jet recently? They seem to do a set charge for hold baggage, which is OK, but do they sneak in anything for check-in etc. a la RyanAir?

Ultimately, however, I think it will come down to how early I am prepared to get up in the morning...

ETA: Or I can get a charter flight at really civilised times for £99...

Or the Book of Ruth, as it is usually known. After the long slog through the Pentateuch - and Joshua, which turned out to be about fighting the battle of Jericho and then dividing lots of land - I have finally reached the good bits of the Bible. I am presently on I Samuel, and the David soap opera (or "The King's Son's Musical Shepherd") is going nicely. I don't know how that US fundamentalist (for a value of fundamentalist that means "haven't read the text" gets on with Judges. That naughty Jael! Not asking her husband before she invited a man to stay in the tent.

I have also decided on a summer holiday. I really need a break, and for once not one on which I spend every day looking round cities, visiting friends, or hiking up and down mountains. I heard myself uttering such words as "I'm tempted just to go to a spa for a week". I want to look at some attractive scenery, have someone else cook my meals and wash up after them, see some interesting things, and to relax. So after considerable Googling, and frustration that anywhere cheap is either very hot at this time of year or I don't speak (i.e. read) the language at all, and I really want an easy holiday, I think I've narrowed it down to the Austrian lakes, south of Salzburg. Lakes! Cycling! Thermal baths! Interesting towns! The Sound of Music! Of course, I may yet end up somewhere else entirely, but I'm definitely narrowing it down.

What could I do, I wondered, to spend some time outside, give myself something to think about, and reduce my stress levels? What might be relatively close via Tube from Paddington station?

I could go to the zoo!

So I am putting on my new skirt, eating breakfast, popping into Borders to buy a book about life in the FLDS, and going for a proper day out, to somewhere I have never been before, but that I know I'll like.

I hope they have red pandas.

Does anyone have any experience with memory foam pillows? I've been sleeping badly and suffering upper back pain, and I think I need a new pillow. I want it to be softish, but supportive, and above all to bounce back and wonder if space age is the answer. I sleep on my back, my front, and my side, which may be part of the problem.

Saw the consultant dermatologist this morning. The department was horribly busy, and my appointment was an hour late, which then ran me into the pharmacy begin horribly busy and I had to wait another 45 minutes. But you get what you pay for, and (not including tax, and time off work tho' I get the latter free) this has cost me less than £22. I was a bit worried that having done the minimum course that would be it, but happily the consultant favours the "Let's knock this on the head once and for all" option, so I have a final 8 weeks to finish things off, but won't need to see her again. I shall miss the bacon sandwiches in the canteen. Then on my way back to the office I found Ngaio Marsh's "A Clutch of Constables" in the Oxfam Bookshop for £1.99, another Troy book. All in all, a good morning.

The damn bad/crack!fic is mutating into serious fic. This is very annoying, as it was only meant to be about 200 words long.

Can anyone recommend a link giving a brief run-down of the grounds for divorce and nullity (?) in England in about 1941-44? I know there was an Act in 1937, but Google seems to be oddly failing me in what precisely it allowed.

It is possible that inspired by a rather elderly comment, I am embarking upon the baddest of all bad!fic. It is also possible that I should be put away for the good of the community.

What to say? Good old Eurovision. It’s better than a global war, but not by much. The UK entry (currently jostling round a very respectable 3 - 5 – this is what happens when you take it seriously, and Andrew Lloyd Webber didn’t get to be a multi-millionaire by not having an idea of how to compose a popular tune, even if we don't have a cabal*) sounds like Peter Kay’s Winner’s Song. Ah, the voting is so much more fun than the songs, even with Graham Norton standing in for Terry Wogan, though so far he has a long way to go to equal "Dr Death and the tooth fairy".

The sensible money is definitely on Norway, who are storming away by dint of the cunning plan of not only being vaguely Irish, but employing breakdancing Cossacks and a quality jawbone.

*Ah. Apparently we have a mixed televote/jury system this year. This explains things.

As a consequence of carefully avoiding Star Trek spoilers until I had seen the film, I don't seem to have any links to look at now that I have seen it.

In particular, would the person on my Flist who posted about the amusement to be had in watching the new fans think they were the first discoverers of Kirk/Spock please stand up and refer me to (a) their post and (b) where one can stand and watch the entertainment?

I enjoyed the film. It was utter tosh - more than I felt it needed to be - and the first 30 minutes were a bit iffy, but the rest was thoroughly entertaining. It does bring a particular pleasure to a film to see it in an auditorium full of people who are really enjoying it (even if this particular screen was a bit small).

Still feeling exquisitely grim, and want to go home to bed. I think I missed a trick in not applying for that job at the University of the South Pacific. On the other hand, I am cheered by not having a single spot on my face at any stage of activity bar fading red marks, for the first time in well over four years.

In happier news, as I was on the bus last night Harriet Vane phoned up Peter Wimsey from a Wilvercombe hotel room. Given that the last time he saw her she was fleeing his bed, he is understandably pleased, though I'm not sure what he is going to say yet. Nor, more challengingly, have I worked out exactly what sequence of events got them there in the first place, though I know that Bunter was visiting his mother. I must consider how much Bunter himself has guessed.

Finally, I HAVE FINISHED THE PENTATEUCH! Joshua next, which should be a lot more fun. What can I say? Of enormous historical/social/cultural importance, obviously, and Genesis and bits of the others have some cracking myths and folktales, and I am enjoying the Shakespeare element of coming across quotes that I know out of context. Nonetheless, a large proportion of it has consisted of wading through Laws being repeated for the third time, how to make a sacrifice, and interior decoration. I'd rather have the LORD as a friend than an enemy, but not by much. I don't think that he and the Israelites are very well suited. They keep disappointing one another. The Oxford Bible Commentary points out that the eye for an eye business is actually radical for the time, because it doesn't let the rich get away with crime (how like Finland, and its system of fines as a proportion of income), but the next time I read anything about how we can't have morality without religion the author is going to be asked if they stoned their son to death because he got drunk.

I was amused by Deuteronomy 28 which seems to have elements in common with the post-apocalyptic children’s literature I suffered through in the children’s libraries.

54 So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave:
55 So that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat: because he hath nothing left him in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates.
56 The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter,
57 And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.

Or in short, “Things will be so bad that you’ll cannibalise your own children and you won’t even share”.

If one were punting for about an hour from Magdalen Bridge, what would be a good route round the various bits of river? The Cherwell Boathouse is not the required answer ;-)

Spent this morning making a muslin of a top that I know I have to alter. It was the only simple non-button-front, non empire line, non stretch top I could find in 6 pattern companies*, and would be perfect did it not date to an era of rather loser fitting clothes and can be pulled on over the head. Somehow, therefore, I have to alter it. Firstly, however, I have to work out what size I should be altering. I am normally a 12, but there was so much ease I made a 10. Now I can’t work out whether the basic fit would be better in an 8 or a 12. Happily I have lots of old sheeting so I can make both, but I think I’m going to end up over at Pattern Review begging for help. I suppose I shall learn from it. I really need to make a Vogue fitting shell. Also, the much-lauded Fit for Real People (honestly, you can tell from the title) is completely useless.

I saw Chéri at the pictures this afternoon. It looks gorgeous, but is unfortunately not a very good film. The script is a mixed bag, the pace all over the place, it’s wholly unsexy despite the subject matter, and Michelle Pfeiffer, though she acts reasonably well (though nothing like as well as the critical plaudits she’s been getting would suggest), is miscast. My impression of Léa in the novel was of a sensual, practical, fairly intelligent woman with a degree of self-knowledge. Pfeiffer just isn’t interesting – one doesn’t wonder about her background, what she finds amusing, what she likes to eat (indeed she doesn’t eat onscreen at all - ‘maigre’ indeed). Rupert Friend, on the other hand, is rather good as the young man who isn’t vacuous enough to be happy, but doesn’t know what to do with himself in the circumstances. He’s trivial, often spiteful, charmless and monumentally selfish and self-absorbed, but retains, though largely oblivious to the fact, genuine feelings.

There is a 1950s French version I’m curious to see, but I can’t help thinking that what it really needs is a stage adaptation by Ibsen. A central heroine, a closed community of shuttered lives, desires suppressed and unknown. It’s right up his street. Although I’m not sure whether in the Ibsen version Edmée would end up making a respectable but dull marriage, announcing she intends to set up a business, or running off to seduce the King of the Belgians.

*It is very tedious that despite producing fashionable (or at least modern) skirts, suits, dresses and trousers, pattern companies only seem to manage the dullest shirts, empire line tunics for 15 year olds, and other tops that the FLDS would consider desperately out-of-date.