A Bug's Life

Whas' hapnin'? I'm supposed to be at a barbecue but instead I'm at home with stomach ache. It's all gone very quiet...

EDIT: Doh! Forgot to add any content! Right. The rest of this week has been quite interesting. I've been busy writing an index to the SF Foundation's book on Christopher Priest which will be out for Worldcon. Very hard work and lots of false starts as I discovered the many ways to not write a useable index... but fascinating stuff which ties into the Bridget's love of auditing and cross-referencing. I feel terribly meta after pondering the ways in which the act of authorship defines reality.

On Monday I took a break and went to visit hawkida. I taught her how to play Swingball, and she taught me how to ride a bicycle! I rode one once circa 1983, and have been terrified ever since what with my wobbly starts and how it would be a Really Bad Thing if I ever fell off. Max was a great teacher with an uncanny knack for picking just the right time to push me to do something more advanced without scaring me off. After twenty minutes we were on a shared cyclepath/footpath by Peterborough's River Nene - managing to ride past pedestrians with a high bank of stinging nettles either side! She even got me to ride on the road for the last stretch home. After the first five minutes I said "It's okay but I need to concentrate a lot - I don't know if I'll ever find it fun." After half an hour, whooshing along a country lane in the sunshine, I thought it was brilliant! Will definitely consider getting a bike of my own (but not till I've finished all manner of Worldcon/Eastercon/LFF/SFF etc stuff).

On Friday smallphoenix came round to pick up my large bag of prematurely purchased and now unneeded hamster sawdust for her bantams (!), and we walked into town to look at Kettle's Yard, a local art gallery whose modernist exhibitions had often appealed. As it turned out the gallery was closed on the day we went - they were tearing down/setting up a new exhibit - but Jim Ede's house is also open to the public, so we looked round that. He was an art curator, and the house has his art collection along with interesting stones (such as those one always hopes to find on a beach) displayed with equal emphasis in a very harmonious way. It is a lovely light house, four tiny cottages were connected and remodelled in the 1930s and it is now painted chalk-white with plenty of windows and cunningly-positioned skylights. There is a large open-plan living room with grand piano, and the floor above has a gallery looking down into this wonderful space. Everywhere you look is something that pleases the eye. The most inspirational thing was the way that despite the art everywhere this was still obviously a place where people could live - there were beds and bathrooms, chairs you can sit in, ample bookcases tucked here and there and glorious nooks for sitting and reading. Not a terribly high-tech place, but I think a few items could be sympathetically integrated without spoiling the feel. Maybe I will yet live a modern life in a place of beauty.

Do look at the web site: St. Edmund is just great.

Gosh! I feel much better for writing this, but when I test myself by imagining roasting meat I notice my stomach squeeing up again. BBQ would have been a Not Good Plan (but I do hope major_clanger is enjoying himself there). Apologies, mkillingworth and timill.