a handful of Yuletide recs

Dec. 27th, 2025 06:06 pm
isis: (yuletide)
[personal profile] isis
December has been busy-busy for me between Yuletide preparation (as a mod) and Yuletide preparation (as a participant who also took on a pinch hit), but now, ahh, everything is done and I can reap the rewards!

My awesome gift (5-minute fandom: British Airways "May We Haveth One's Attention" Safety Video):

A British Original: Discovering Haddersford House and Its Residents (2248 words, gen)
Summary: A magazine article from the world where characters in costume drama occasionally come to life of their own--and stick around after the cameras stop rolling and the crews have gone home.

I really had no idea what to expect from this request (just that I had to have something about this marvelous video!) and I love how it's played with an absolutely straight face. Also, there's a nod to Planet Vancouver, hee!

Speaking of the ridiculous played straight, this is understandable (and hilarious) with only osmosis knowledge of The Godfather:

An Offer You Can’t Refuse (Unless You’re Lactose Intolerant) (1008 words, Godfather movies, gen)
Summary: On the day of his daughter’s guinea pig’s wedding, Don Vito Corleone received a request he could not immediately refuse.

Absolutely the best Godfather fic ever.

The rest of my recs really do require canon knowledge, but I know many of you know these canons:

Memories Are Made of This (4002 words, Northern Exposure, Ed Chigliak-centered ensemble gen)
Summary: “So this is Cicely,” Ed said, gazing wide-eyed up and down Main Street. “Where’s the rest of it?”

This is wonderful - like an episode of the show, warm and funny and a little bit off-kilter.

Hoar and Hound (2236 words, Cadfael Chronicles, Brother Cadfael-centered gen)
Summary: On a frigidly cold December night, Cadfael follows a trail through the abbey grounds.

A lovely, thoughtful portrait of the abbey and of Cadfael. The way he quietly assesses the needs of the people (and creatures) around him is perfectly in tune with canon.

Dis Manibus (1364 words, Frontier Wolf, Alexios/Cunorix, Alexios/Hilarion, G)
Summary: Alexios goes out to make an offering to the shades of the dead, but he does not go alone.

This is lovely and tender and measured, and has something of Sutcliff in the descriptions. For me Alexios/Hilarion only works if it honors the close friendship between Alexios and Cunorix, before things went bad - and this is perfect.

We Greet the Peoples of the Tower (1717 words but heavily illustrated; Chants of Sennaar, gen)
Summary: There are some oddly regular scratch marks on a wall in the Alchemists' level...

Basically this is a fangame (though the game part is optional; the first set of chapters are illustrations with glyphs as in the game, and the second half holds the translations), a whole new level in which the Monster goes seeking the other peoples to assert he is a human and their brother. It's a moving story that fits with the game themes, and it's just very cool!

Actually, if you've played Chants of Sennaar, I recommend all the Yuletide works for the game as the fandom has clearly brought its A-game, they're all great. (The one above is just extraordinarily so!) And there are two Madness works I haven't even looked at yet!
sovay: (Silver: against blue)
[personal profile] sovay
I spent so much of Boxing Day curled on the couch with my books, I failed to notice it was snowing until well after dark when it glittered down through the streetlight in one of those soundstage tinsel veils. One of my goals for this afternoon was to get out into its Arctic wonderland, whose streets were spidered with ice and drift-blue with chemical salt instead of glacial age. I walked further than I had intended and had to come back across the snow of the imaginatively designated Veterans Memorial Park between the iron freeze of the Mystic River and the less elemental red lights of Route 16.

Look quick, is that something you missed? )

I have been sick for so long, I feel that I have once again come unplugged from any of the places where I live. I don't know that I will be any less sick in the immediately foreseeable future, but I have to try to socket myself back into these streets, this light, the inside of my own head. I remain so tired the latter feels emptier than I would like, but at least I am trying not to punt every idea that crosses it as pointlessly exhausting. In the meantime I am enjoying Eerie East Anglia: Fearful Tales of Field and Fen (ed. Edward Parnell, 2024) and Russell Hoban's The Bat Tattoo (2002).

2025 Movie Round-Up

Dec. 27th, 2025 04:24 pm
osprey_archer: (Default)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
I’ve barely posted about movies this year, so I decided to do a quick movie round-up - very quick, as I’ve watched barely any movies this year! Some years are just not movie years, I guess…

The Balloonatic: a remix of a Buster Keaton movie set to the music of… okay I should have taken notes, I can’t remember the band, suffice it to say that it was a recentish band to which you would perhaps not expect Buster Keaton to be set. Smashing Pumpkins maybe? Lots of interesting cutting of the film which I don’t really have the technical vocabulary to describe, but just like - cutting what was clearly once one long shot into multiple shots? Kind of synced to the music?

I dragged the Brunch Bunch along to this showing, and we agreed that we’d see another if another came to town. But as we were just about the only people in the theater it is perhaps unsurprising that the theater has not booked another. Even an arthouse cinema has to have an audience.

Interview with a Vampire: I posted a bit of comparison to the book, but did not take time to note that this movie is an A++ example of complete commitment to an aesthetic, the aesthetic in this case being “decadent opulence spattered in blood.” This is an occasional aesthetic for me rather than one I would like to live in, but I admire the commitment.

The Shape of Water: This was a big disappointment, to be honest. Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is one of my all-time favorites, so I went into this movie with high hopes, but honestly it just draaaaaaagged for me. Also highly doubt the ability of the fish-man from the Amazon to survive in the icy coastal waters of the Atlantic.

Kiki’s Delivery Service. A rewatch! Still one of my favorite movies, probably my top two Studio Ghibli with My Neighbor Totoro (but now I feel bad leaving out Spirited Away...) Love Kiki, love Jiji, love the richly detailed setting (which we dubbed “Francemany,” as it is clearly a mash-up of various European localities), love Miyazaki’s love of flying machines. This is an aesthetic I WOULD like to live in.

Also a couple of documentaries. Take Joy! The Magical World of Tasha Tudor is about Tudor’s life at Corgi Cottage, built and largely run in the style of a 19th century farmhouse, where Tudor lives with her goats, her doves, her corgyn (Tudor’s plural of corgi), her one-eyed cat Minou, and seven looms. (These are not all Tudor’s looms. Sometimes she gives house-space to a friend’s loom, if the friend doesn’t have loom room, a loom being a large contraption.) An inspiring example of building your own little world and living in it.

This theme is further developed in Take Peace: A Corgi Cottage Christmas with Tasha Tudor, an enchanting documentary perfect for anyone who has ever enjoyed Tasha Tudor’s Christmas illustrations, as the illustrations apparently draw extensively on Tasha Tudor’s own Christmas traditions or possibly vice versa, in a virtuous cycle of candlelit charm.

If you can’t find the documentary, the photo book Forever Christmas appears to have been made in conjunction, and includes some material not included in the film. Can’t believe they left out the sleigh ride!

Yuletide Recs!

Dec. 27th, 2025 11:51 am
rachelmanija: (Autumn: small leaves)
[personal profile] rachelmanija
Here are some Yuletide recs, sorted for your reading pleasure by whether or not you need to know the canon.

Do Not Need to Know Canon

Chalion/World of the Five Gods - Lois McMaster Bujold

a knock at your front door. I think all you need to know to read this story is that there are five Gods - the Mother, the Father, the Son, the Daughter, and the Bastard - who are definitely real but rarely interfere in human affairs. They can, however, make people saints - able to do limited miracles - if they need to. This story deals with the Father, the God least-explored in canon, and is set in modern-day Chalion. It's got a clever look at what modern Chalion might be like, a very likable main character, and some beautiful writing.

FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns

If you've never read the canon, I've linked it above. It's extremely short and you will be glad you did. There are other "Snake Fight" stories and they're all fun.

Snake Logistics for Spring Defenses. Some students are just begging for a black mamba.


Need to Know Canon

Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey

find the true. Mirrim and F'lar have a chat at a Gather. I enjoyed this conversation between two characters who I don't think ever exchange words in canon. Good characterization, good atmosphere.

Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

to be useful, if not free. My gift! A backstory/canon diverge AU for Serret, the enchantress in A Wizard of Earthsea. Beautifully written, beautifully structured.

The Long Walk - Stephen King

There's No Discharge in the War. Stebbins in a time loop. Long, intense, often horrifying, sometimes very moving, and cleverly constructed story about Stebbins and the other Walkers.

"The Lottery" - Shirley Jackson; New Yorker RPF

Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death. Isaac Chotiner interviews the guy who runs the lottery in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." If you've never heard of him, he's a journalist who's very good at letting people hang themselves with their own words. The story is dead-on, hilarious, and chilling.

Lyra series/Caught in Crystal - Patricia Wrede

Three Things That Might Have Happened to Kayl Larrinar. My treat! A very satisfyingly bittersweet canon divergence AU for Kayl's Star Cluster, full of camaraderie and atmosphere.

Mushishi

I want to taste the shadows, too. A lovely little casefic/character study about Adashino, the guy who collects mushi-related stuff. It really feels like an episode of the anime, especially the final portion.

Some Like It Hot

Anchors Away. A short and very sweet post-movie coda.

Watership Down - Richard Adams

There is no bargain. Five encounters with The Black Rabbit of Inlé. An exploration of how the Black Rabbit is different things to different rabbits in different circumstances, very well-done, sometimes moving, sometimes chilling. The Black Rabbit is Death, so warning for rabbit death.

What have you enjoyed in the collection?

I Leap Over the Wall - Monica Baldwin

Dec. 27th, 2025 11:30 am
troisoiseaux: (reading 1)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Finished I Leap Over the Wall: Contrasts and Impressions After Twenty-Eight Years in a Convent by Monica Baldwin, a 1949 memoir that is what it says on the tin and a fascinating read. It's a mix of explaining convent life to a secular audience (which was pretty much the same as in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, although I feel like Baldwin made more of an effort to explain why this or that aspect of life as a nun made sense in the context of Catholic doctrine), Baldwin's sense of culture shock from having entered the cloister in 1914 and left it in 1941, and her misadventures in adjusting to the modern world circa WWII— she worked various jobs in an effort to Do Her Bit for Britain, including as an unofficial Land Girl, dormitory matron at a munitions factory, hostess at an army canteen, assistant librarian at the Royal Academy of Science, and something for the War Office that she isn't allowed to talk about. (She was also the niece of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, which probably helped.) It's also a thoughtful, insightful memoir about a woman figuring out who she is as a person after nearly three decades of suppressing every instinct towards individualism; in a way, it reads a lot like the narrative of someone recovering from a long-term abusive relationship— there was one particularly aching line about the first time she "had actually dared to open a window, in a place containing several other people, and the universe had NOT rocked to its foundations and then come toppling down about my ears"— although, as it's all written in such a bright tone and Baldwin's view was clearly that she personally was unsuited for religious life, rather than religious life in itself being The Problem, I imagine that she would have been surprised by the comparison.
oursin: Books stacked on shelves, piled up on floor, rocking chair in foreground (books)
[personal profile] oursin

This came via [personal profile] calimac: The 14 children's classics every adult should read

Oh yeah?

I read Ballet Shoes but as I recall, the first Streatfeild that actually crossed my reading eyes was Party Frock, okay, not so iconic a work.

I have to confess that I was recommended The Hobbit in my first year at uni in that unprepossessing circumstance of 'bloke I was not terribly impressed with' pressing it upon me.

I was well past childhood when Watership Down became a lapine phenomenon, but have read it.

As far as I can recall, I read Treasure Island when I was 7 or 8 and have never returned to it, perhaps I should.

Have no memory of The Enchanted Wood as such, but am pretty sure Miss S in primary school read us The Magic Faraway Tree one afternoon.

My first contact with Anne of Green Gables was retold in pictures in either Girl or Princess but we subsequently acquired copies of this and ?one or two of the sequels, or were these in the school library?

Little Women: now that one I did read at a very early age.

Ditto the Alice books.

My Family and Other Animals was one of offerings of my parents' book club - how has it become a children's classic?

The Secret Garden and The Wind in the Willows (also the Pooh books which are shamefully missing from this list) were Christmastime special offers from aforementioned book club.

I have never read The Little Prince, though I've osmosed a certain amount about it.

I don't think I read The Railway Children until I was of maturer years: my first Nesbit was The House of Arden, borrowed from Our Friends Along the Street, and I think maybe The Treasure Seekers and The Wouldbegoods on primary school library shelf?

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a Christmas present (Penguin edition) when I was 10 or 11, and I went on to read the rest via the good offices of the local public library.

These all seem a bit somehow obvious? Without disputing their classic status, it's still a somewhat banal line-up.

Mopping Up a Few Books from November

Dec. 26th, 2025 02:04 pm
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
At the end of November, I was racing to the end of a few books to finish them before All Christmas Advent. I finished reading them in time, but ran out of time to post about them, so I’m posting about them now.

First, I finished The Spring of Butterflies and Other Folktales of China’s Minority Peoples, translated by He Liyi and edited by Neil Philip. This is one of those books where the story behind the book is as interesting as the stories themselves. He Liyi started studying English in the 1940s, but during the Cultural Revolution he lost all access to his English language study materials. However, after the Cultural Revolution, he took it up again, and in the 1980s he got in touch with the BBC, which eventually arranged for this collection of translated folktales to be published.

They also held a contest in China to find an illustrator, and eventually narrowed it down to either Zhao Li or Aiqing Pan… at which point they discovered that these two illustrators were actually a married couple! So they ended up illustrating the book together.

I also finished Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil. What a ride! What a riot! Our heroine Rae is dying of cancer when she gets the chance to go into the world of her favorite fantasy series and steal the Flower of Life and Death. Of course she jumps at it… only to discover herself in the body of the villainess on the eve of her execution! Aided only by her wits and her somewhat vague memories of the series’ plot (cancer did a number on her memory), Rae sets herself up as a prophetess in an escalating series of schemes that keep steering the story more and more off course.

And then it ends on a cliffhanger! This is the first book in a duology. Not deep but good fun. I usually steer well clear of cancer books (well, any kind of illness books), as they tend to set off my hypochondria so I decide I’m probably dying of whatever the main character has, but in this case the cancer is a fairly light presence after the first chapter so I didn’t feel that. Much. Except maybe a little bit in the days after, whenever I forgot something. Who knew memory loss could mean cancer?

Finally, because I was concerned I would run out of reading material before December, I got Peter Beagle’s Tamsin, and then December and my all-Christmas-all-the-time resolution were barreling down on me and I still have two-thirds of the book to go. But Bramble politely lay on my legs until two pages from the end to ensure I finished, which was suitable, as Tamsin features one of the great cats in literature: Mister Cat, our heroine Jenny’s Siamese cat, who falls in love with a ghost cat and therefore leads Jenny to meet and fall in love with the ghost girl Tamsin.

[personal profile] skygiants recommended this book to me with a comment on Jenny’s massive crush on Tamsin, which I expected to be subtextual. But no! Two paragraphs after they meet, Jenny muses, “I think that was when I fell in love with her.” She’s a BEAUTIFUL SAD GHOST, what more could you want?
oursin: Photograph of Queen Victoria, overwritten with Not Amused (queen victoria is not amused)
[personal profile] oursin

Charles Dickens exhibition to shine light on powerful women in author’s life: 'Novels only ‘reinforced Victorian stereotypes’ of meek women to give readers what they wanted, says curator'.

Oh, come on.

Query, did readers (as opposed to various gate-keepers in publishing houses, Mudie's and other circulating libraries. etc) want meek women?

(Do I need to cite Victorian novelists who did quite well out of women who were not meek.)

I would also contend that any input from women in Mr D's life was going to filtered through a lot of his Own Stuff, and the article actually points out some of the things like His Mummy Issues.

There is no-one in the novels at all like Angela Burdett-Coutts, whom one suspects very unlike saintly Agnes Wickfield (and married a much younger man at an advanced age), in fact as I think I have complained heretofore, he was happy to work with this renowned philanthropist while the women philanthropists in his novels are mean and merciless caricatures.

One can make a case that he did worse than 'dilute' the women he knew when portraying them on his pages.

Also I am not sure what the 'debate' is over his relationship with Ellen Ternan!

(no subject)

Dec. 26th, 2025 12:00 pm
oursin: hedgehog in santa hat saying bah humbug (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] theodosia!
sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey: passion)
[personal profile] sovay
In the afternoon there was eggnog, in the evening there was roast beef, and after dinner with my parents and my husbands and [personal profile] nineweaving, there was plum pudding with an extremely suitable amount of brandy on fire.



At the end of a battering year, it was a small and a nice Christmas. There was thin frozen snow on the ground. In addition to the traditional and necessary socks and a joint gift with [personal profile] spatch of wooden kitchen utensils to replace our archaically cracked spoons, I seem to have ended up with a considerable stack of books including Robert Macfarlane's Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places (2020), Monique Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch (2020), and the third edition of Oakes Plimpton's Robbins Farm Park, Arlington, Massachusetts: A Local History from the Revolutionary War to the Present (1995/2007) with addenda as late as 2014 pasted into the endpapers by hand, a partly oral history I'd had no idea anyone had ever conducted of a place I have known for sledding and star-watching and the setting off of model rockets since childhood. The moon was a ice-white crescent at 18 °F. After everything, as we were driving home, I saw the unmistakable flare of a shooting star to the northwest, a stray shot of the Ursids perhaps after all.

(no subject)

Dec. 25th, 2025 12:15 pm
oursin: hedgehog in santa hat saying bah humbug (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] m31andy!
sovay: (Sydney Carton)
[personal profile] sovay
How did it get to be Christmas Eve? Are we sure? This year has been hard to believe in. I fell asleep in front of the decorated tree. Merry Erev Christmas.

Happy Yuletide!

Dec. 24th, 2025 01:03 pm
rachelmanija: (Autumn: small leaves)
[personal profile] rachelmanija
The Yuletide collection is live!

Enjoy browsing the collection! Leave kudos and/or comments if you enjoy a story! Comment here to recommend stories, and/or recommend them at the [community profile] yuletide comm!

I have three stories in the collection. Can you find them?

I shall now spend the rest of the day cuddling with my cats and reading Yuletide stories.

Wednesday Reading Meme

Dec. 24th, 2025 12:07 pm
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Christmas books! So many Christmas books. Look, the problem is that so many Christmas books are short, all right? Like Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal, a slim novella that I definitely should have read last year when The Appeal was still fresh in my mind, as I spent about half of The Christmas Appeal remembering who was who. But it was still a fun fast read and there was a cameo by my girl Issy, who remains just as Issy as ever, bless her little heart.

Continuing this murder kick, I read J. Jefferson Farjeon’s Mystery in White, a fascinating example of the genre in that the closest thing the book has to a detective is a guy from the society of psychic research who keeps murmuring about how it’s like the crime WANTS to be solved… well, that’s one way to explain why the heroes keep literally stumbling upon the evidence. Enjoyed the snowy atmosphere and the character portraits, especially the chorus girl Jessie, who should have gotten David in the end IMO. Not sure they were really that well-suited, but I was annoyed that a more class-appropriate girl appeared three-quarters of the way through the book.

And also Agatha Christie’s Murder for Christmas, known in the UK has Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, but presumably American publishers were afraid that without the word murder in the title American readers might assume that Poirot is having a holly jolly Christmas eating plum pudding without any murder at all. Quite enjoyed this one. Always nice to see a horrible family dynamic play out in a murder mystery.

Also Ruth Sawyer’s The Long Christmas, a collection of Christmas legends from around the world and a reminder that the Christmas Spirit, for all its current holly jolly picture-perfect Hallmark movie reputation, can in fact be pretty metal. The Christmas spirit is not about giving a bit of spare change to a photogenic waif before retreating to your mansion with the gingerbread on the eves perfectly outlined in Christmas lights. The Christmas Spirit says, “Oh, none of you are going to share your fireside and your last crust of bread with this weary footsore traveler on Christmas Eve? Well, then, I am going to raise the floods and drown your entire selfish town.”

Although Sawyer’s This Way to Christmas did not repeat this particular story, some of the other stories overlap with The Long Christmas. Published in 1915, the story centers on a little boy facing a lonely Christmas on a snowy mountain where none of the neighbors speak to each other, for they are of all different nationalities and races: German-American, American Black, Brazilian Portuguese, and small Ruritanian country that just got invaded by Germany.

However, our hero (inspired by a visit from a fairy wearing a squirrel suit) visits each cottage, hears a Christmas story from each person, and in the end inspires his foster parents to invite them all to Christmas, invitations in the form of signposts saying THIS WAY TO CHRISTMAS, hence the title.

And in the archives, I read Lee Kingman’s The Magic Christmas Tree, illustrated by Bettina. Little Joanna is lonely because she’s the youngest of ten and always in the way, until she finds her own special secret place: clearing in the woods with a pine tree just her size. Little Julie is lonely at home because she’s the only child in a vast mansion, but finds solace when she finds a little pine tree in the woods perfect for a hideaway. And then at Christmastime, Joanna hides a beloved doll by the tree… and Julie, thrilled by this magical appearance, brings the mystery doll a little doll bed and fur coverlet… and when Joanna returns with a baby doll so her doll won’t be lonely, she in turn is astonished…

OMG. So cute. I do wish it were longer so there was more time for the girls’ friendship to develop after they finally meet.

What I’m Reading Now

Unable to face another Christmas book, I broke down and started Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s In the First Circle... which turns out to start on Christmas Eve! The German POWs are having a Christmas tree. One of the other zeks is making a Christmas present. I can’t even. I’ll never escape.

What I Plan to Read Next

Non-Christmas books! Anything but Christmas! In particular, I’ve got Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary and Mai Ishizawa’s The Place of Shells checked out, while Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin and Elizabeth Enright’s Then There Were Five are on hold.
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Well, the Katherine Addison Cemeteries of Amalo re-read continued: I managed to access Lora Selezh and on to The Witness for the Dead, The Grief of Stones and The Tomb of Dragons (the latter was the one where I first began experiencing weird lagging effects on the ereader).

On the go

Seem to have several things currently on the go.

Still dipping in to Diary at the Centre of the Earth, which is becoming compelling, especially as so much of it is set not quite in my neighbourhood but very close and has allusions to things like busroutes familiar to me.

Started Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971), which have been meaning to do since discovering the movie is online available and wishing to refresh my memory. Do have a copy but it is a) somewhere inaccessible and b) 1970s paperback probably in disintegrating condition so shelled out for (v reasonable) ebook. Not very far in yet - wow it's a bit generic c. 1970 nearish future dystopia! - do we need so much futtock-shroudery from Haber about his dream-machine? (feel that this may have been editor thinking this was Necessary Exposition?).

Also have started Dorothy Richardson, Pointed Roofs (Pilgrimage #1) (1915), for online reading group, which after various struggles have given in and am reading via Kindle app on tablet because stutter mode is NOT what one wants with Richardson's prose. Do have 1970sish Virago edition somewhere in the book maelstrom but disinclined to the turmoil of trying to locate.

Up next

That seems like enough to be going on with but I am in expectation of Christmas books.

sovay: (Viktor & Mordecai)
[personal profile] sovay
It is still sleeting more than snowing here, but it sticks in the occasional patch of shadow. Farther from the water, it's frosting up like winter. The Ursids were washed out by this year's weather, but somewhere beyond the clouds they are still streaking light.

I spent a remarkable portion of this day having conversations related to employment, but one of them was a thorough delight. I hadn't known about the practical, ritual links of the Jewish Association for Death Education.

We lit the candle for my grandfather's yahrzeit, our ghost story for Christmas Eve.

In the bleak midwinter - parakeets!

Dec. 23rd, 2025 03:57 pm
oursin: hedgehog in santa hat saying bah humbug (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Had not been seeing these lately, but over the past few days have been spotting several out of the back windows.

Which is one cheering thing among various niggles and peeves -

Yesterday I was informed that my order from Boots was being delivered, and then got two texts saying they had tried to deliver it but no-one answered. WOT. There was somebody here all the time.

Also a text that my other package (fresh yeast via eBay) had been delivered (this comes through the letterbox) - no sign of this so presume it has gone to the wrong door, and so far nobody has come round to pop it through ours.*

However, at least the Boots parcel turned up today: address label had street number blurred so reasons for mistaking, usual postperson recognised name, possibly yesterday was a seasonal worker?

Other annoyance: Kobo ereader running very sluggish - though this does not seem to apply across all books, which is weird?? Anyway, I connected to wifi in order to update the software, as possibly bearing on the matter, and dash it, it synced a whole load of things I had already downloaded and I have been obliged to clean up the duplicates.

I am, though, grateful that Christmas grocery orders have been nothing missing and no substitutions except for 1 thing which was not at all critical. Also oops, the pudding I ordered was rather smaller than I anticipated, but I feel one can have too much Xmas pud, and there are mince pies, brandy butter, etc.

In further happy news, the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty has been saved from oil drilling.

^ETA: somebody from 2 doors down brought it round this evening. The address on the package was perfectly clear.

(no subject)

Dec. 23rd, 2025 09:56 am
oursin: hedgehog in santa hat saying bah humbug (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] cassandre!