sticks and carrots

my mom and i have always said that we want to annotate our pratchetts and mark or highlight our favourite quotes. perhaps even have an index or something. he has such a way with words and comes up with the most delightful turns of phrase.

and sometimes simply says the funniest things.

today, at lunch, i was busy reading “making money” and there was one bit that had me laughing so much i couldn’t stop chuckling. it was that delicious, warm chuckle, where your body shakes.

moist, the main character, has just heard a proposition that comes with two different incentives, a threat and an enticement.  this puts him in mind of the tactics of the city’s paternal tyrant, lord vetinari:

moist was impressed. stick and carrot. vetinari just used stick, or hit you over the head with the carrot.

once upon about time

theres been some progress on the internet front - as of friday we finally have a phone line.

all that has to happen now is for the phone line to be live for 5 working days, for me to ring SKY again to ask to be “booked on”, for them to send out our new modem, for them to test the line, for me to find five stones with blue speckles on them, for a little old lady to hop on one toe, for me to spin in a circle saying my name backwards, to put a glass of lightly salted water outside when the moon is three quarters, and to catch rumplestiltskin, and then we’ll have the internet again!

in and around these (and many other once-you’ve-moved-into-a-new-house) arrangements i’ve also started (and am well into) my books for once upon a time.

side note:

bugger. i realise i already started this post last month. its probably in one of my drafts somewhere…

just found it. yes, its a lot more flamboyant and all - heralding the challenge and thanking carl on his amazing work with launching and hosting it again.

those comments are rather superfluous now… but the fact that carl has again done an amazing job with this challenge bears repeating! so…

as usual carl has done an amazing job presenting the challenge and setting it up, and also laying it out beautifully! thank you, carl. (belatedly) i know it must’ve taken you ages and i can tell you that it really is greatly appreciated. like last year, you’ve again captured the wonder and the excitement of reading books in this genre and inspired me to dive into the realm of fantasy!

if there is anyone who still hasn’t taken a look at the challenge on carl’s page i strongly urge you to head over there - if you know challenges then you’ll immediately see that this is one of the best and if you’ve never partaken in one before (or don’t even know what one is) then this is the perfect introduction.

the rage

i forgot about this aspect of driving. how really little things can irritate you…

 

 

so this morning i park at the top of beaumont street, opposite the randolph hotel, to drop charlotte off. i’m sitting there waiting to get back into the traffic. then this bloke does this weird u-turn move in the middle of traffic and squeezes his nose in the small bit of loading-zone space in front of me.

 

 

i’m expecting him to carry on his weird 6-point turn manoeuvre, as he can’t possibly be wanting to park there.

 

 

can he?

 

 

no.

 

 

the bastard. he is indeed trying to park there. so i look at him incredulously. and then i think, well lets help the guy out, i’ll reverse a little and then he can manoeuvre himself into there.

 

welcome to chez de rosnay!

there’s my new house! isn’t it pretty?

we’ve really loved being there so far and are settling in nicely. its taking some time to get used to country life with so many little things being different, like the heating, the water, the no internet, the bad tv signal, the no shops nearby and did i say the no internet!!!!?

but there are many other wonderful things about living there. its very beautiful and very quiet. we really like the house and i especially like the high ceilings and the space. 

the village is also very cute and has a lot of character!

we have car!

since i’ve come back from south africa and found out that we had to move out of our flat things have been rather hectic at home. we’ve been searching frantically for a new place and the whole thing has been made more difficult by the fact that we have the cats.

in all our searching we literally only found 3 places in oxford that allowed cats! as it is we were quite lucky that one of them was suitable - the only complication was that it was just out of reach of public transport, which meant that we had to get a car. cue more frantic searching and hence my sporadic blogging and presence on your blogs of late.

i’m batman

its funny how thats a line. i mean, its such a general statement. really, it probably could apply to all of the different batman incarnations - it could and should just be a nothing statement. but it isn’t, is it? its a line. its michael keaton’s line.

oh dear

i bought books.

reading plans for 2008 part II: what i’ve read, what i’m reading, and what i plan to read

yes, thats it. thats the pile as it stands. 12 books - that is such a relief! as little as that sounds, those 12 will take some reading, with most of them being in the 500 pages region. but still… 12

the books i have read so far are:

1. erasure - percival everett
2. god emperor of dune - frank herbert
3. next - michael chrichton
4. life, the universe and everything - douglas adams
5. english passengers - matthew kneale
6. so long, and thanks for all the fish - douglas adams

well, jakes missed those busses…

yup, unfortunately jacques kallis couldn’t quite capitalize on playing bangladesh and missed out on getting some nice scores - in fact, he scored quite poorly. it was a bit of a conspiracy of circumstances…

in the first innings of the first test bangladesh played really well and bowled us out for 170, with kallis getting 17. i didn’t mind this too much ’cause in the process of getting us out for so little bangladesh got a 20 run lead and showed some mettle, and gave me hope that they’d improved enough to have become real competition.

reading plans for 2008 part I, in which your blogger states his ambitions for the year 2008, divulges the tale of how he created a monster and his subsequent plans to slay it, his success in said plans, and the sufferings he has experienced whilst on this most dangerous of quests

TBR pile on 1 january 2008

okay! 2008!

“jean pierre” you may say “you do know that its already late february.” to which i’d say, “yes, i know, its taken me ages to write this post. i would’ve liked to have published it sooner but i’ve been so busy.”

to this you may point out the oddnes of posting a reading plan for 2008 when we’re already well into the year in question, and to which i would say… hmm… well, i’d say you have a point there, but there’s still lots of 2008 left. and, while i hadn’t posted these plans up until now, they have indeed been in implementation since the beginning of the year.

so, what are my plans then? well, this will be year 4 in Project TBR Pile.

fill your boots jakes

jacques kallis batting in the warm-up match in fatullah 

tomorrow is the start of south africa’s 2 match test series against bangladesh. because bangladesh are the second poorest test cricket nation it means that jacques kallis has a chance to score some big runs!

papier is geduldig

my mom wrote me an email yesterday and in it she was doing her usual stream-of-consciousness thing, just spilling her thoughts on the page.

after a while she commented on how nice it is just to ramble on and quoted a beautiful old afrikaans saying: “papier is geduldig”, which translates as “paper is patient”.

paper is patient … i really like that.

a douglas adams double

on my recent trip to south africa i took three books with me, the 3rd and 4th hitchhiker books and matthew kneale’s “english passengers”. the first hitchiker book i read on the plane and the other i read while i was in south africa on one my way back to england.

it was just as well that i took so many with me as both journeys were looong flights, with 2 connecting flights (at munich and johannesburg) and some pre-historic form of in-flight entertainment (instead of that screen thingie in the chair in front of me there was this tiny screen hanging from the roof that looked like it had seen a lot of turbulance ’cause the colours were all funny). all-in-all it was a 23 hour journey (both ways) but it wasn’t so bad ’cause i had my books, so i was well-prepared

meet little liam

 

i’m back. and what a special time i had - i got to meet little liam!

back in south africa

 

… again.

its funny how its worked out - in april i hadn’t been here for 2 and a half years and then since april this is my 3rd visit in 9 months! january is also a glorious time to be here as its in the middle of summer!

i arrived last week and have had a good time seeing my friends and family. i also finally met little liam (my friend quintin’s son)! i say, finally, but he is still only 8 weeks old or something… but still, i was so looking forward to meeting the little guy from the moment he was there! and, as you can see from above, he is the cutest thing!

i took some more photos which i’ll hopefully be posting soon! i don’t know what my blogging will be like over the next week, but i’ll try at the very least to put up pictures and i’ll do my best to give you guys a visit!

the rest of the time my mom and i have been hanging out, which has been really nice. we mostly watch “buck rogers”. some of you already know that one of the main ways in which my mom and i connect is through science fiction, particularly science fiction tv shows. so its always really nice to watch that kind of thing with her.

buck rogers is particularly special. before i start getting lyrical about that now (’cause i hope to write a proper post about it!) i’ll just say that it was one of the first shows we used to watch and i was really tiny when we started watching it. i think we may have caught it when there was a re-run a few years later, but other than then we haven’t seen it for, oh, about a good 20 years!

then last year i found it on amazon and started working out when i might be able to afford. it turns out i didn’t have to, ’cause when i visited my mom in october we just happened to stumble upon it in a dvd shop and she immediately snapped it up (along with a jacques brel dvd for me as well - she really is good to me!).

and so, i brought the dvd set back with me and we’ve been watching it all holiday now…!

you gotta love buck rogers!

2007 reading in review

 

in 2007 i read quite a bit and there were a number of books that i enjoyed. a few of the best ones were classics that i was discovering for the first time and one or two of them were by modern authors.

2007 also saw my continued exploration into old-school science fiction and once more i uncovered some real gems. it was also the first year that my reading was dictated by a reading challenge, as i read fantasy books in the summer and horror books in the autumn for carl’s once upon a time and rip challenges. i really enjoyed these challenges, not least of all because of the spirit in which the other participants took part in it. i don’t know if its the people that carl attracts or the spirit he instils in them with his inspirational posts about the genre in question, but the atmosphere and camaraderie amongst the participants is always wonderfully warm and fun and makes me feel all happy!

the new years test in cape town

 

in south africa there is a cricketing tradition of every year playing test matches on boxing day and on the 2nd of january. the one on boxing day is played in port elizabeth and the one on the 2nd of january is played in cape town, my old home town.

i love the tradition of these test matches and always look forward to them. there’s something quite special about sporting traditions and i love the feeling of partaking in it every year.

the cape town test is particularly special for me - partly because its played in my home town and partly because the ground where it is played - newlands - is one of the most beautiful cricket grounds in the world.

dear me, the Christmas Busyness has descended

what a busy week its been! and the next week will be equally as busy.

as such i haven’t had any time to spend on the internet, never mind my blog or the blogs on my blogroll. i hope you’re all having a wonderful christmas season and that all your preparations are running smoothly.

have you done all your shopping? i’ve done most of mine, but i’ve got to get charlotte’s today. i ran out of money and so had to wait till my pay day before i could get charlotte’s pressies!

so whats happening? well: tomorrow we’re going to charlotte’s mom for the day, monday we’re getting the food ready and doing all our last minute preparations (and cleaning the house, charlotte has just informed me) for christmas day. then its christmas, of course, which we’ll be spending at home with our friend ilse. poor old ilse doesn’t have anyone else to spend christmas with, as her family are all in south africa. and then its boxing day. i reckon we’ll all just lie around like lazy pythons.

and today? well today, apart from food shopping and charlotte’s christmas presents, today is mine and charlotte’s one year anniversary! one year. we’re going to “the old parsonage” for dinner to celebrate.

this illustrates how busy and jolly our christmas preparations are: charlotte just said that she’s worrying about the fish. the fish? whats to worry about? i don’t know why she’s worrying about fish? and how is worrying about it going to help matters? will it make it better? but its fish thats on her mind.

for now. and then its something else on her mind. like… i don’t know, the fact that the rug needs to be vacuumed… hmmm… how long the meat needs to be cooked… uh… what she’ll wear!! how could i forget about that! oh, my little charlotte… such a worry wort.

so i’ll be a little elf for the next few days (have been for a few days already) running up and down, being in all places at once and carrying an elephant in one hand and the cat food in the other… and being told over and over about how women can amazingly do 20 things at once!

but thats christmas at chez de rosnay… at least after christmas lunch we’ll be able to relax. we’ll both eat so much that i don’t think we’ll be able to do anything but relax afterward!

and because i don’t know whether or not i’ll have time to post a new blog or visit your blogs before christmas i just wanted to say that i hope all your christmasses turn out as you hope, that your turkeys are all cooked to perfection, that all your shopping gets done in time and that you get to spend it with all the people that you love.

ooh, its getting frosty in the mornings!

this is what i saw when i woke up the other day.

guess what arrived today?

 

my secret santa present!!