Jules Jones

 So this morning's accidental experiment demonstrated that a) I can get almost as far as the bus stop without noticing that I've forgotten my walking stick, b) I really don't want to go back to fetch it without then having a little rest before venturing out again and would rather just get on the bus for a nice sit-down, especially when I'll be late for work if I don't. (Boss would understand, but it would still be embarrassing.)

I don't need it for walking for less half an hour, and haven't for at least a year now. What I *do* need it for is support if I have to stand in one spot for too long, where "too long" is a couple of minutes. Standing hurts in a way that walking doesn't. I also need it to stand or for balance when there is a reason to suddenly stop walking, such as my weak ankle suddenly deciding that walking without rolling is too much like hard work, a sudden stab of pain from the various places that did need a stick for so many years, and migraine dizzy spells. The walk from the bus station to the office and then back in the evening reminded me of just how often that happens when I'm walking on a cobbled pedestrianised area.

At least the bus was sufficiently quiet going home that I didn't have to explain to anyone that I did really need the mobility impaired seat, could they please move their shopping, but I did feel bad this morning when someone else who could probably also have done with one got on when both seats were already occupied.

I should really go to the gym now I'm fully vaccinated, but my area is seeing cases spike again, and vaccination isn't 100%, it just makes your risk a lot, lot lower.

From https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2460445.html - contact Rachel through the details in that post.

I lost my Kobo Touch last month, probably by leaving it on a bus. Granted it was 7 years old, but it was still working perfectly well even if complaining about the number of books I'd stuffed into it. Getting a new one would involve a) money, b) actual thinking about what I wanted as a replacement. I took to eBay to see if I could find a cheap old one, and found WH Smith's outlet shop with a pile of refurbished Kobos they'd obviously found down the back of the sofa. So I bought a Touch *and* a Mini for £20 each, plus a couple of silicon sleeves for the Touch, because of course my original fancy leather book-style cover had gone along with the actual device.

The Touch is a bit temperamental but functioning well enough that I wasn't going to send it back. The Mini... was not. It couldn't connect to the Kobo servers, and it has to do this at least once to complete setup, even if you never connect it to Kobo again.

There was a Thing in 2019, with a new software update for most models but only as one last update push to the Mini, and after that if you hadn't already synched a Mini to get the update you would have to go to the website and install it manually before being able to synch with the servers again. Fair enough. I went to the website, and the Mini just sat looking pitifully at the server saying that it couldn't download, please synch again. I went and pulled out my previous Mini, which I hadn't used for some years other than to do the synch to get the update, and it was perfectly happy chatting to the servers. So the shiny new refurbished one has gone back to Smith's. :-( I'm not sure it was even a refurbished one, as it was in a sealed original box, and may have just been surplus stock left over when they stopped selling them, so presumably it never got the update.

As for the Touch, I prefer having ereaders in a rigid cover to protect the screen when tossed in a backpack. Back to eBay - and there was someone flogging a batch of the original branded covers! Brand new, and in original packaging. One arrived this morning, and it really is either the real thing or a good enough counterfeit that I'm happy to have it. The only thing not working is the sleep function when I close the cover.

I'll have to buy a new one sooner or later, but if this one manages to keep me going for another year I'll be very happy.

Had my second dose on Wednesday, and once again had migraine aura, although this time it improved enough after getting to the observation room that it was clear that it was just aura. The vaccination centre has fluorescent lights and lots of people talking, even if not loudly, so not a surprise I was feeling a bit bleaurgh.

I was fine for the rest of the day, and got a good night's sleep, but started feeling feverish and achy yesterday afternoon. I could have dragged myself into work yesterday and this morning, but am glad I didn't have to.

I think there are one or two of my friends who knew Pol who read my DreamWidth but not the ones where the news has already been posted. Paul Brown, also known in fandom as Pol and Dapol, died suddenly on Monday. A memorial page has been set up - details are on his wife's Dreamwidth at https://supermouse.dreamwidth.org/81836.html.

He was 46.

I'm still having trouble taking it in. I first met Pol online in alt.fan.pratchett over twenty years ago. We met up occasionally in meatspace over the time since, mostly at cons but also in other places. He was enormously kind to me when I first moved back from California by providing transport to several fan events. He was one of the people I always looked forward to seeing at cons. Nobody got to go to Eastercon last year because of lockdown, so I hadn't seen him for a couple of years. Last week I was thinking that with any luck next year's Eastercon would be in a hotel and not just online, and I'd get to see him again. And now he's gone, and he was only 46.

Rest peacefully, Pol. You are much loved and will be much missed.

This is a serialized novel about a gay man in Sydney not dealing well with hitting thirty. The novel is structured so that you can read each part is an individual story, with its own closure rather than a cliffhanger.

Stephen Spear is an actor currently out of work, but having done well enough out of a stint on a soap opera to have bought a house in a good suburb, live off his savings, and avoid his thirtieth birthday with a round the world holiday with his boyfriend. Stephen’s an antihero --he’s self-absorbed, selfish, and oblivious to other people’s reactions to his behaviour. One of the joys of this book is the way Aitken’s first person narration shows the reader what’s going on around Stephen, while Stephen himself remains utterly unaware. He does eventually learn to become a better person. It just takes life hitting him over the head many times to get there.

I've reviewed each book separately.

 

Graeme Aitken - The Indignities: Time to Upsize

( Read more... )

 

Graeme Aitken - The Indignities: Private Party

( Read more... )

 Graeme Aitken - The Indignities: Me, Myself, and Someone Else

( Read more... )

Well, that was a bit of a year, wasn't it?

A year ago I was sitting traumatized by the images of Australia burning, with no idea that two days earlier a doctor called Li Wenliang had tried to raise the alarm about a new type of SARS coronavirus that seemed to be spreading. A few weeks later I was looking at flights for a year later, i.e. round about now, in the belief that I might finally have my medical issues under control enough that I'd be able to get on a long haul flight. That was about two weeks before the images started coming out of Lombardy...

When it became clear the thing had arrived in the UK and nucleated in several sites, I said to kalypso that it might not be a good idea to go to Eastercon, as it would be the con crud to end all con crud. This proved to be a wise decision, even if the concom were unable to cancel the hotel conference venue booking until the announcement by the Prime Minister that all such gatherings were not happening for the foreseeable future.

kalypso lives less than half an hour's walk from me, and we have dinner together on most Saturdays. We have seen each other in person a handful of times in the last eight months. I have not seen any other people I know other than Other Half and my colleagues. I see my colleagues because I'm a key worker who can't work from home, so I've been going into the office all year. I don't much enjoy being on public transport, but I think it's better for my mental health than working from home would have been. All work that can possibly done at home with workarounds is being reserved for the clinically vulnerable people who are shielding so they can spend at least part of the day doing something useful, and even so one of them eventually came back into the office, because as he said, you can only paint the garden fence so many times.

Other Half is working from home, because his employer has shut the physical site and the staff are now living on Zoom. I could do without this on the days I'm on leave or come home early...

On the personal plus side, I only went to A&E once this year, and for reasons that were neither Covid nor my existing medical problems and/or medication for same. As for the latter, they have stabilised well enough that one outpatients department has said they don't need to see me any more and the other doesn't need to talk to me other than by telephone.

The remainder of the year was basically dealing with the Covid fallout at work, involving backlogs, trying to keep staff and customers safe, and everyone setting up and learning the new video links that were just being piloted for rollout over an extended period of time when all of sudden they were needed *right* *now*. Oh, and the elderly database that I keep muttering about on Twitter about the jam tomorrow replacement? Don't even ask.

As for how terrifying this is - quite a lot. But for some of us there is also this, slightly lengthened from my Twitter post on Christmas Eve:

A strange and unpleasant chain of thought this evening. The now traditional Christmas Eve TV offering of The Snowman often reminds me of another Raymond Briggs book. I'm old enough to remember the decommissioning of most of the UK's civil defence siren network after the end of the Cold War.

Part of the justification was that by then private telephones were so ubiquitous that in most areas any warning needed could be sent by automated telephone calls to the entire country. A telephone message could be customised to the particular warning needed. The spread of home internet and mobile phones made this an even better option.

I'm a child of the Cold War. I still sometimes have That Nightmare when woken by a thunderstorm.

I never dreamed that the first time I would see the civil defence warning system in operation would be for a pandemic.

On the whole, I think I prefer the pandemic. Or at least *this* pandemic, horrific though it is.

Thank you, Stanislav Petrov, that I am still here to be able to make such a comparison.

My Kobo is whining at me to remove some books so it has room to update its operating system. This means that there may be book logging activity. "Review" is possibly a little optimistic, as that implies thoughtful consideration rather than "I read this book and this is what it is about". First up:


Heather Boyd - Engaging the enemy

This one's part historical romance and part mystery, doing a good job of weaving them together. Leopold Randall was forced by his uncle, a very wicked duke indeed, to do his bidding with the whereabouts of Leopold's kidnapped siblings as ransom for his obedience. Now Leopold is back to look for clues after the death of his uncle. It's all he wants, but he finds his cousin's widow in need of help to protect her young son, the current Duke of Romsey - and Leopold holds no grudge against a young child.

Mercy has no good reason to have liked her father-in-law, but after his death she's at her wit's end trying to keep the estate running without help, and that's without the anonymous threats she's been receiving. Her late husband's cousin might be the help she needs. She readily gives him permission to look through the old man's papers in exchange for help sorting those papers out.

I liked this a lot, particularly the way that Leopold and Mercy have both been manipulated and used by the old duke, giving them a shared interest in working together to solve past and present mysteries. I'm not entirely convinced by Mercy chasing after Leopold quite so brazenly in a setting with serious consequences for her if she's caught, but I can certainly see why she wants him after even a short acquaintance, and why he wants her. It's a pity that the book had a very bad case of greengrocer's apostrophe - "whoops, there's an s coming up!". It was so distracting that I very nearly gave up reading a few chapters in, and it would have been a shame if I had.

The book's the first in a series, but can be read as a standlone.

Purchase links (including some affiliate links): https://books2read.com/u/bQdxgD

Two posts within seven days. Gosh. Anyway, the news is that there is no news. The database continues to fall over, the office continues to be horribly short-staffed as Covid self-isolation hits different groups (another evacuation for deep clean after someone tested positive, yay!), and I have continued to spend so much time staring at a monitor at work that I have no remaining capacity to do so when I get home.

I did manage to get a parcel of masks off to one friend and a parcel of books off to another last Saturday in spite of having arrived at the post office with only fifteen minutes left to closing time. Missed the last collection, but Monday rather than Saturday collection is fairly irrelevant, and I know at least one parcel arrived.

I've just "read" my reading page, and here "read" means "very briefly skimmed plus read a long discussion in the comments on one of james_davis_nicoll's posts". I'm simply not physically capable of reading lots of stuff on a monitor by week's end. This is actually side-effects of my migraine meds (slight double vision when tired) on top of migraine effects, so upping the dose to suppress the migraine effects is not really going to work.

I hate Ravelry's new interface, for the reasons above...

It occurs to me that I should post here just to reassure those who do not follow my wittering on Twitter that I am in fact still here.

Actual content is probably not going to appear for a while, even though I have books wot I have read that I want to tell you about. Work is taking up all available clock cycles.