Igenlode Wordsmith

I really do need to empty out my trunks of winter clothing now, especially the thermal underwear and warm dressing-gown (currently wearing my silk one as the warmest of the available summer options!)
The heating came on last night for the first time this year, and I have been having a hot-water-bottle for the last couple of days, which is an unforeseen pleasure that I always forget about; it really is very nice to slip down into a blissfully warm bed in a cold room :-)

I have just been going round resetting all the clocks and watches, including the central heating timer (not supposed to need resetting, but it had accumulated ten minutes' gradual error since I last changed the battery) and my cycle computer -- I hope that is all of them! Of course it helps from that point of view that two of my clocks are still stopped...

Current elapsed cycle mileage: 414 miles, namely 151 miles in the eight weeks since the end of August, or my normal average of eighteen miles a week.

After spending so much time referring to YouTube's auto-generated transcripts to try to decipher Russian (they are basically a timestamped listing of all the auto-generated subtitle text, I think, so they enable you to look back at the context of an entire phrase as opposed to just the handful of words visible on the screen at any one time), it dawned on me a couple of days ago that it is of course possible to read the transcripts of *English* text as well. Which is particularly useful in the case of videos which are basically a voiceover with marginally-related images screened for visual appeal, because it is possible simply to read the transcript and not bother to actually listen to the speaker at all, especially if the title appears to be clickbait :-p

It's the equivalent of playing the sound back at 6x speed, without the high-pitched gabbling effect :-) Of course the text isn't formatted into neat sentences and proper names are often weirdly mangled, but it makes it possible to skim through to the actual relevant content, if any, and/or go even faster in order to ascertain that there isn't any...

In Russian, ironically, reading the transcript is actually considerably *slower* than simply listening to the entire video. ( Read more... )

It doesn't work to have Aramis responsible for pushing Athos into this (and I'm not sure it works to have a Raoul who is *not* Athos's own son as being the start of it all; if he is going to take in an unprecedented foundling at Aramis' insistence then it would need a whole lot more detailed backstory to explain how Aramis argues him into it). So having written this section I then deleted it and replaced it with an alternative version that is less heavily based on the canon scenario where dealing with Raoul basically pulls Athos out of depression ;-) In the current version, the 'school' is implicitly something he goes into by his own choice, with Raoul then being added to the collection subsequently, which makes more sense of Aramis teasing him about his 'menagerie'... and requires less explanation at a point where it ruins the pacing of the chapter!
( Read more... )

Since I now have another batch of real quinces (after making japonica jelly last week) I made a recipe from my Russian cookery book -- technically speaking now a Soviet cookery book, I suppose, since it takes it for granted that you will be interested in recipes from all the now independent parts of the Soviet Union!

Azerbaijani bozbash bears a probably not coincidental resemblance to Persian cookery and to lamb plov, ( Read more... )
(Similar recipe online: https://bestrecipes24.com/recipe/azerbaijani-style-lamb-bozbash-soup-with-chickpeas )

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"Little Gentlemen" is coming along quite nicely, although the style is in danger of becoming stilted and verbose -- not very Dumas!
I have now successfully introduced my young OC Venya (playing the 'Nat Blake' role, with Raoul taking on the role -- and vocabulary -- of the cheerful Tommy Bangs who introduces him to everyone and everything) into Athos's house, which is at least fifty per cent of the material envisaged, and am attempting to finish the scene in which Athos reads the accompanying letter (also establishing AU material). ( Read more... )

I have been given half a dozen tulips ("Plant from August onwards") which need to go into the ground as soon as possible and be planted 4 inches deep, which rules out most of my available pots, especially since I still have tomatoes in seven of the biggest of them. So I decided to empty out the wildflower trough as previously planned, even though the feathery thing there was still green and growing despite having been taken indoors last week to dry out -- it was definitely the right decision to start all over again with this, since after I had cut down all the top growth the remainder came out of the pot as a single tightly-packed ball of roots with almost no earth left between them! I ended up putting the whole mass into an empty compost bag to dry out and ideally break down a bit over the next few months, and then emptying all sorts of other pots as a result in order to put their earth (and the accompanying wildly jerking worms) into the now-empty trough around the tulip bulbs.

( Swan River daisies, rudbeckias and evening primrose )

( Rocket )

( Kale and basil retained )

Another Big Name Content Creator (naming no names) has published a novel tying in to his channel content, and again, while I enjoy the source material, going by the preview the actual writing just isn't that good. ( Read more... )

And yet these books are selling just based on the author's existing following; it just goes to prove that publicity and name recognition is everything. If people know you and like you then they will buy your book, and probably like it.

(On the other hand the non-knitting lady came back, and actually appeared to have improved since last week; I had her knitting garter stitch on her own by the end of lunch...)

I have been watching the excellent (and moving; it starts off as romantic comedy and acquires considerable thought and depth) 2020 film "Elsa's Land", probably Veniamin Smekhov's final screen role -- unless someone else comes up with a project sufficiently compelling to entice him away from his own preferred pursuits -- and so far as I can see very probably, at the age of 79, his debut as romantic lead ;-)
I think I originally learned of the film's existence when YouTube started showing me its (subtitled) trailer:

( Read more... )

I have (finally!) just started upon my crackfic "Little Gentlemen" story (as with my usual crackfic, I envisage a total lack of humour :-p) And while checking on the description of the chateau at Bragelonne, I have just noticed that Athos appears to be in possession of some very unusual trees ;-)

In Chapter 15, we are told that as d'Artagnan approaches the house, he perceives it sur le fond d’un massif d’arbres épais que le printemps poudrait d’une neige de fleurs. Very picturesque, except that, constrained by history, Dumas proceeds to inform us some fifty-five chapters later that, after the passage of a relatively short period of time, the date at that point is January :-p

(But as we already know, consistency in dates is not the author's strong point...)

Edit: I have just noticed that there was likewise a magnificent display of flowers visible from the windows of Athos' dining-room, so at the time of writing Dumas evidently envisaged the scene as taking place later in the year! I don't *think* it can have been the previous autumn, as all the events of the novel (from Athos' arrival in Paris immediately following d'Artagnan's visit and Raoul's departure for Flanders and encounter with Mordaunt along the way, followed by Mordaunt's interview with Mazarin and departure from Boulogne ten days later, followed by King Charles' capture within a week of Athos and Aramis' arrival) seem to have taken place within a remarkable brief timespan...

"Mesdames, Messieurs, bonsoir— good evening ladiss and dzhentlemens" :-D

(It's an interesting error to make, because it suggests that he does actually know the word 'gentlemen' rather than just reciting it phonetically, and realises that it is *supposed* to be plural, but not quite how!)

I also appreciate the appropriately stiff and restrained body language, as versus the flamboyant hand-kiss for the French ;-)

Well, I thought I'd finished, but... I discovered that I'd misinterpreted a word in my translation (сложный means 'difficult' in the sense of complex or intricate, rather than in the sense of exhausting or hard work), and since that was unfortunately the word I'd used to rhyme with, I need to rewrite not only that line but also the one that dovetails with it, and possibly amend the entire quatrain.

As it happens that particular pair of line-endings were 'extra' in the first place, in that they were made up of excess syllables caused by English for once being more concise, so changing the other end of the rhyme is not necessarily a major problem. I remember that I struggled massively with it in the first place and was not all that sold on the result, so a rewrite might be no bad thing, depending on how it comes out...