Pen's Nest

Being British [what it means to you, how to do it, things you love/loathe about it- whatever hits you!] frommsktrnanny

Hmm.

I've been pondering this one and haven't really come up with a good answer. I suppose I don't really think about being British, particularly. It's a fundamental part of who I am, but it doesn't need attention. I'm proud of it, but not in a way that needs to be expressed. I wouldn't want to be anything else and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else (although, I dunno, sometimes I get so *cross* with my government).

I like my country's shape. Temperate climate, compassable size. (I like, in particular, this little bit where I live, that's not too hilly and not too flat and not too windy or rainy or snowy... Goldilocks land.)

I like my country's history—not, I should add, that I like all the details. We've plenty to be ashamed of as well as plenty to be proud of. But there's a lot of it, and pre-history, too, and it is interesting. I like that there's a lot of it left lying about the place, in the shape of tumbled castles and monuments and cobbled streets and stately homes and ruins and round blue signs and horses carved into hillsides and peculiar traditions. I like the way all this history everywhere makes me feel rooted.

I like my country's language, and the millions and millions of wonderful words written in it by incredible people. Though I also like the way it has mugged other languages and rifled through their pockets for more exact ways to express concepts it didn't have its own words for. I like the way the language has spread across the world and mutated in all kinds of ways, and that the English spoken here has reabsorbed the mutations. It's a bit of a giant sucking monster, but it's mostly a good one.

I like our traditions of theatre, professional and amateur. I like the idea of pantomime (interactive theatre!) even if I don't like panto very much...

I like... hats at weddings. Talking about the weather. Doctor Who. Radio 4, which is a national treasure. The Proms. Red double-decker buses. I like sub-post offices in shops. I liked the volunteers at the Olympics. God, that's a middle-class list. I'm not sure that I like the infinite fine gradations and signifiers of class, but they're interesting, and I do like the way they're quite a lot irrelevant nowadays for practical and everyday purposes.

I don't like the newspapers. I don't like the way our educational system works. I don't, I really don't like politicians who keep trying to pick the NHS (another national treasure, albeit somewhat tarnished) to pieces while pretending to be trying to improve it. (I don't consider "making it more like what the Americans do" to be an improvement.) I don't like our national tendency to xenophobia or the whining fools who don't want to be a part of Europe.

I do like the general tolerance I perceive in the society around me. It's not a perfect place, but it is improving, it really is. I like the understatedness of the British character, and the self-deprecating humour, and even the way we're embarrassed to be thanked. I like the way most of us are slightly puzzled by overt patriotism—because that sort of thing just doesn't need to be said.



To pick one of the remaining days, go here.

Today's request: Your favourite holiday cookies/biscuits to bake (and why! Especially tasty? Family history?) from fleurrochard

I think this might be a very short response. Okay, knowing me, that seems unlikely, but, well, I don't bake cookies, or biscuits, for holidays or any other days.

I do, it is true, have a yen to do so. I actually bought suitable food colourings with the intention of making Unicorn Poop Cookies. It is possible I shall be the only person who will *eat* Unicorn Poop Cookies, though, that said, Bun is pretty open-minded and Beast will eat anything. And yet...

I like the American custom of producing delicious cookies for Christmas. I remember with great pleasure the charming little box of delicious treats that quiet000001 gave me several years ago. But I never actually seem to have time to get it done. Possibly this year I shall set Bun to the task, as she and Boy are planning (I think) to be home on the Saturday before Christmas, and they will need to be kept occupied. Not that Boy will undertake such domestic usefulness without prodding, I fear, and obviously I shall have to intervene at some point during the Unicorn Poop Cookie construction process, but still.

The thing is, it's never been cookies, here. It's mince pies. I think I have probably made mince pies, in the dim and distant past. I have vague memories of customising mincemeat from a purchased jar (not that it tasted particularly better, or indeed, different). I have very fond memories of eating the mince pies my Grandma made—as I've certainly rhapsodised before, her pastry was *awesome*. My father in law had a tendency to make his pastry with brown flour (after his diabetes diagnosis, anyway), and it was not, actually, very nice, so his mince pies just weren't much of a pleasure to eat. Anyway, Grandma's gone and Grandpa is in Australia, so any mince pies eaten in this house are likely to have been bought from Sainsburys or the local baker (though apparently we have a new Aldi supermarket in town, which I must certainly try). With sufficient brandy-infused cream, mince pies are pretty reasonable eating.

Yeah, I thought that'd be short. Sorry, Fleur!

as requested by solariana


When I was a child, my Dad used to record the Top 30 from the radio, and every so often we—I don't know quite who 'we' is in this context, probably my mother and I—would listen to the them. We had more early-sixties than late-sixties stuff, and no fresh pop music on tape at all after mid-1969 until I started taping it myself when I was at boarding school. *pause* Okay, I was at boarding school from April 1970, but I don't think I taped stuff for a few years, not until my Dad also gave me his old record player.

So I got to be very familiar with the most popular songs that were just a little bit out of date, and familiarity, of course, tends to mean that those are the songs a person loves.

Among other things, this meant that I loved the early Beatles stuff, when they were pure and joyful pop. And increasing consciousness came as the Beatles got more experimental, or, as I probably put it, weird.

All this changed gradually, of course. For quite some years I owned Abbey Road and the red album and the blue album (but not the White Album) on vinyl, only getting them out of the house a couple of years after the record player had gone… eh, I procrastinate, it's a thing.

But nobody who grew up then, even if a little too young to be really 'into' popular music (my coming-into-awareness decade was the '70s), could fail to notice the Beatles. I, as a good girl, very much preferred them to the Rolling Stones (still do). I had a mild crush on Paul, and subsequently George. If I'd been a little older, I could well have become a Fan, but by the time I was old enough to be buying records and sticking posters on my wall, the Beatles weren't together any more. And Wings never lived up, never. I kinda liked George's solo stuff, though.

By and large I prefer the songs which John sang lead on, which I *think* (somebody will know) were the ones he mostly wrote, as he was a much more interesting lyricist than Paul. (I have a suspicion Paul was more musically interesting—certainly an accomplished pianist of my acquaintance admires McCartney harmonies.) Although I have always loved 'The Long and Winding Road', which would seem to be a Paul song, and of course Yesterday. I still have great fondness for Love Me Do, and Please Please Me, and And I Love Her, and I adore the bass line on Can't Buy Me Love, which is so adventurous, it goes off on a little journey all on its own which miraculously works with the song everyone's actually singing. Brilliant. Also very fond of The Fool on the Hill and—unexpectedly—Back in the USSR. But I can probably make a good go at singing along to any of their songs. I toy with the idea of having All You Need Is Love played at my funeral. It kinda depends on me dying soon enough that there'll be people attending who actually know how to sing along!

I was too young to be much interested in their breakup (I do so envy the people who were in the right place at the right time to hear that rooftop concert!), and wasn't quite the right age to be devastated by Lennon's murder, but I was pretty horrified. I was pleased to see Paul McCartney at the Olympics, although… not sure he should still be singing. Sometimes you need to retire.


To fill in the last few days, go here.

turlough asked for Colours.


It's been quite a challenge to even figure out where to start with this post, because… colours!

I love colours. I love soft, subtle combinations, and rich, bold ones. I love deep purples and blues, bright oranges and reds, light greens and yellows. Anyone who has seen me knitting anything will know that I can't resist… colours. Okay, that's a bit silly, as it would be a challenge to knit without any colours at all, but still. There are so many gloriously coloured yarns, I only wish I had time to knit them all!

I've been trying to figure out honestly what my favourite colour might be, but I don't think I can. However, I wandered into one of the art shops in St Albans not long ago, and fell in love with another picture, at which point I realised that all the pictures I've ever fallen in love with are in the red/brown/orange/gold spectrum. This particular one is brown and gold dandelion heads on a textured bronze background. It's gorgeous. Of course, it's not just about the colours, there is interesting textural contrast too, and the thing is only slightly representational. I like the mostly-abstract.

So, red-brown-orange-gold it is. Probably not surprisingly, these are the colours of our living room, and the two Kerry Darlington pictures fit in there very nicely. Its not that I don't love blues, greens, purples, or even pinks and yellows, but I suppose the reds are more Me. My lounge, as turlough knows, has soft orange walls (not quite terracotta, but tending that way), a dark brown sofa, a dark red sofa, red blinds and fabulously embroidered orange saris hung at the windows (as decoration, not curtains). It is unfortunately marred by the jarring green of the DVD boxes and the really-needs-replacing off-white of the ancient carpet. Oh well.

Oddly, I have not knitted very much in these colours. I did do browns for Beast's sweater and later for his Dad's, and black-and-reds for Boy's sweater, and a shades of red and orange which… I don't even know what happened to that one. But for myself I've mostly created blue, purple or pale things. I wonder why? And these days, somehow the most tempting yarns seem to be blues and purples, or pale colours. I do have quite the collection of interesting scarves and shawlettes now, in purple-and-black, different blues, yellow-and-pink, hmm. I should remedy the lack of hand-knitted reds at once some point by knitting a symphony of scarlet, gold and brown. However, it'll have to wait. I do have a lot of stash to go through, and have created a few 'stash buster' shawls which are quite successful: what I do is decide on a basic palette, then put all the balls of yarn together on the floor in the sunlight and put the ones that don't fit back into the drawers. I'm quite good at this.

I'm not so good at figuring out which colours I should wear. Bun and I had a Go at my wardrobe a few years back, and draped me in all the garments to see whether the colours worked on me or not. We should probably do that again this Christmas, as I've forgotten a lot of the rules we established. I have a tendency to fall for garments not because they suit me but because they are exciting, which as often as not means, they're fabulous colours. I wish I had the self-discipline to figure out the right palette and stick to it, but I suspect I will always succumb to the wrong things…

And, really, is something 'wrong' if it's a gorgeous colour that just makes you feel happy?


To add a prompt, go here.

Today's entry: Star Trek, including your favourite episode if you have one. From turps.


Star Trek. Ah, yes. My gateway drug, back in the early 1990s.

I was aware of the original series, of course. I expect I must have watched some episodes, though I was probably a bit young when they first came out. But it was Star Trek: The Next Generation that captured my heart. Yes, I watched most of Deep Space Nine (except the last couple of seasons, probably, as I have no memory of them) and enough of Voyager to know that I didn't like it, but ST:TNG, that was *my* Trek.
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One of my teeth broke! A piece has come off. Very peculiar. Beast says there is a crack from the gap to the root, too, which does not bode well. Dentist appointment booked for Thursday.

My meme subject for today, suggested by solariana, is Horses.

I've never had a lot to do with horses. Which is a shame, because like every other girl, I had horse phase, although in my case it mostly came down to reading 'The Green Grass of Wyoming' books (and then, the 'Thunderhead' series, and further backwards to 'My Friend Flicka', which is a thing that happens when you and your dad cannot walk past a second-hand bookshop and your mother is a librarian by profession). And 'Black Beauty', of course. *sniff* (I guess this was supplemented in my adult years by an addiction to Dick Francis books, before Dick Francis started writing them, at any rate.)

I have ridden, but not often. I have dim memories of attempting a rising trot at some point during my childhood, but I've no context for it. I remember that at one point my little sister and my stepbrother had riding lessons—why I did not share the experience, I have no idea—and my sister was thrown from her pony when it was stung by a bee, in consequence of which she had the most enormous bruise and a strong disinclination to mount up again. I never encouraged my daughter to be interested in riding lessons, because although our current situation is pretty handy for such things, being as how we are surrounded by farms/riding schools, riding lessons are quite expensive. And ponies may be stung by bees.

However, Bun and I did go for a 'pony trek' on our first visit to DisneyWorld back in 1998. I was quite excited about this, but it turned out to be incredibly dull. I think Disney were so wary of lawsuits that the ponies were practically sedated. We certainly went at a very sedate pace. Unlike every other Disney experience, this one did not have Totally Unnecessary Excitement injected into it*, and there weren't even cute things to see en route, which I must admit I had sorta expected. We meandered through the woods in a long, slow line, and that was it. The most exciting thing about it was barely being able to stand up after a couple of hours (?) astride something not unlike a barrel.

I like the look of horses, and the romance of horses, but I know very little about them. If you read the second part (and the third part) of the Chronicles of Lancyn and Ser Chrisfer, you will see that I fudge a *lot* on that subject. Although I do have a fondness for ephemera's post about which boybanders are like which horses, which sadly I cannot find or I should link it for you!


* I was so unimpressed by 'chasing poachers' in the Animal Kingdom's Safari ride, and really disappointed in the missed opportunities of Body Wars, where the chance for a fascinating experience was squandered in a dizzying and disorienting dash for the exit BEFORE TIME RAN OUT. Bah.



If you'd like to pick a subject for any available day in the rest of December, the post is here. Please do!

Well. My day started exceptionally happily today, as frausorge sent me a link which filled me with joy.



Lance! Lance, looking so pretty! A single, perfect tear...

I'm still not gonna eat that stuff tho'

Also, Lance was hanging out with Alan Cumming recently. This can never be bad, although I could have wished for a better photo than this.

Heh. Like, this.

Does anyone else think Lance's nose is growing back?

And now, time for a meme:

1. Reply to this post with "LAVA LAMPS ARE COOL" and I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

turlough picked these icons:



Alan Cumming is my kinky crush, as per this post. As for this particular picture, I just liked it - the sexual ambiguity in it is so brilliant. Sadly, I don't know what play (or other production) it's from, or why he's dressed as a woman.

The Crown Frog, made by amethystia, just happened to crop up when for some reason it was a brilliant icon to use for a story I was posting, or possibly commenting on, at the time, and I like it enough to have kept it. It's surprisingly useful!

made by celticfire, who did a great job. I only acquired it fairly recently, but how could I resist? One of those icons that's appropriate for almost anything.

This was made by rrr_nightingale, and I'm not surprised if it baffles you a bit. It's my Vorkosigan icon, for commenting on Bujold-centric posts. In one of the stories, we learn that Gregor (the Emperor) once gave away an elephant, something of a bribe to a visiting ambassador. Just goes to show, if you figure out what motivates people, you can get ever so much out of them.

Ah, Lance. There was a photoshoot not all that long ago in which Lance was made up all scruffy and collared and spike-haired and, well, all kinds of things that I don't think of as particularly appealing most of the time, but, well. Lance! I made a whole bunch of them (interspersed with similarly unlikely photos of Lance as a boxer). Woof.

This was something I made for one of the severalplums Hallowe'en challenges. I made the texture, and liked the result. But it doesn't get a lot of use.