Liz Williams's Blog, page 47

Mediaeval Baebes

I was teaching yesterday so went from Bath to Gloucester to have dinner with my family and go to a MB concert at Gloucester Cathedral. It took ages to get through Bath, which is a nightmare to drive in at the best of times...

However, the concert was very good and featured what might be the only song about female genitalia ever sung in the cathedral: it was in old Welsh, though. The cathedral is an ideal place for it, with its huge Norman pillars and creamy stonework. The cloisters (scene of s...

Ditcheat

We ran away today and went to a book signing at lunchtime, at the Manor Inn at Ditcheat. The signing was on behalf of racehorse trainer Paul Nicholls, who is currently training Kauto Star, Denman, and Master Minded. We were slightly overdue as a result of getting stuck behind the yard's late morning string: a dozen beautiful horses, swaying down the lane.

Nicholls always comes across as a pleasant and unpretentious man and this was borne out at the signing. I bought his book (autobiography) a...

Rob Holdstock

From Ansible:

Robert Holdstock (1948-2009) died at 4am in the morning of Sunday 29 November, having been in intensive care since his collapse with E. coli infection on the 18th . He was only 61 and will be much missed. All sympathy to Sarah and the rest of the family.

*

Rob was a good friend of mine. He was very supportive throughout Charles' illness and death (we were with Rob at a convention in Nantes when I first started to suspect that C was seriously ill), and continued to be supportive whe...

Don't mess with the cat...

Lily: SIDNEY! YOU ARE SITTING ON THE BED! ILOVEYOUILOVEYOUILOVEYOU!! *wash wash wash wash wash*

Sid: [tolerates:]

Sid: [reaches up backwards and takes dog's lower lip between teeth:].

Sid: Get outta that!

Lily: [eye rolling:] Er.......ER! MUM!

Eventually he let her go, but not before he'd freaked her out.

Rob Holdstock

If anyone is concerned about Rob H, currently in intensive care, the best place to look for updates is Ansible:

http://news.ansible.co.uk/

It's an e coli infection and he is more stable, but obviously it is extremely worrying. Rob is a good friend and a brilliant writer.

Emergency Tea Response Unit

http://www.emergencytea.co.uk/base.htm

Thank God someone's taking care of this, chaps.

Health update

Trevor and I went down to Taunton this morning - we haven't been to Musgrove Park for over a year, but the local hospital managed to fluff his last appointment and they directed him down to the main hospital instead. Anyway, he saw a very nice specialist, whom we haven't met before, who says that everything looks fine and they are very pleased. They're putting him onto 6 monthly appointments.

After this we went up into the Quantocks and took the dogs for a walk in the beech woods, which despi...

November 11th

I was in Wells today, and had to collect something that would, they said, be an hour. So I went into the cathedral - mainly, I must confess, to look for Xmas presents in the shop. There was an Armistice service on, and so I went to it - quite a number of people from local regiments and their families. It was a short, crisp service featuring the last post etc and ended 20 minutes later. However, from the point of view of an occultist, rather than a Christian (it may well be from a Christian po...

Berlin Wall

I can't remember at all where I was when the Berlin Wall came down but I do recall being somewhat surprised, as I spent a summer in Berlin in 1988. It was at a centre in Wannsee, studying (of all things) cad-cam systems, an area in which I took no further personal interest, and my participation had been organised by the AI department at Sussex - I think it was some spare Euro money and a whole bunch of students were sent over, from the US, and all over Europe. The only other girl on my part ...

November

Over on witchcraft_shop Trevor has posted about this morning's mist, one of the first cold mists of this autumn. We walked the dogs out on the Levels - the Tor was invisible and the water meadows were waterlogged with the run-off from the flooded Brue.

We went over to Burnham last night for the firework display, which was somewhat belated due to a technical hitch - the poor fireworks team had obviously spent a shed load of money on a new computer system and at the last moment it failed to wor...