wealhtheow

- Readalong Wednesday's ancient mar-reminder stoppeth one of three, "Until the thrilling tale is told, this link within me burns..." :D
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus

- Happy dyed potato day to everyone who celebrates! And for all my neighbours voting in the next couple of weeks, for all our sakes please choose a ticky box as unlike Badenoch / Sunak / Truss / Johnson as possible, thank you. P.S. remember that the potatoes who dyed for our sins are edible unless fertilized when they become treyf. Dark chocolate eggs are safer as they're always both unfertilised and unleavened! ;-)

- Birb log: when I put food out this week I only got half the numbers of birbs feeding at any moment because half of each pair is now on the nest until shift change, so even those birbs who are paired for the rest of the year are temporarily eating alone.

- Potentially improving everybody's habitat: honestly don't know where this last week went.... 13-19. Biologging. Deleting spree on mobile to clear storage. (And keeping up with regular household tasks but not improvements, lol.)

- Writing: I did commit a few prompt acts of versification.

( Lakes, bananas, laboured rhymes, and lock keys. )

- This Is Just To Say I have read the account that was in the ice book, of the ascent of Mount Erebus, and which you were probably saving for next week. Forgive me, it was a ripping yarn, so adventurous and so cold:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus

- Friday's Five is loving and giving.

I. Who was your first crush?

I don't think I've ever had a "crush" in the conventional sense, not even on a fictional character, so my first crushing love was probably London Underground, lol. I've never had to commute by tube and have therefore preserved my first love, which I encountered before crushes at gigs. I love the cooperative behaviours of regular tube travellers, and the architecture + art of the stations (and Poems on the Underground), and the well-planned convenience of routes and ticketing, and THAT map, and so much more. Of course, it helps that my first love was a 20th century phenomenon - I might not be so enamoured after decades of intentional Conservative dismantling of public transport. And, let's be honest, wooden escalators were a mind-bending trip into past history even in when I was young. Mornington Crescent!

II. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Yes, both, and neither. I have more love for people than energy for companionable behaviours, but I also enjoy my own company.

III. What is your favourite non-sexual thing you like to do with the love of your life?

Eat, with everyone I love or even like. Almost all human relationships benefit from shared preparation and consumption of sustenance ime (which is an additional reason why health problems impacting on that can be socially and personally devastating).

IV. What is one quirky habit your partner does that either annoys you or makes you grin?

"your partner" o_O

V. Do you believe in monogamous relationships?

I mean, I believe some people choose to make them exist although even then serial monogamy seems to be more common than actual monogamy. I also believe polyandrous relationships exist &c. The whole idea of confining oneself to one all-important relationship at the expense of all others is not a psychologically healthy development imo and smacks of isolation from community to me. I think it's a good idea to raise children in stable environments but it takes a village to raise a child.

VI. So, are y'all crushed introverts/extroverts who like non-sexual things with quirks and believe in only one wife?

- Readalong reminder: Aurora Australis, this week The Ascent of Mount Erubus:
Text: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus
Readalong intro: https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

- I got a printed "Loans summary" from a library, with a concerning final item, lol....

"Outstanding charges: 0.00 GBP
Overdue: 0
Reservation(s) to collect: 0
Total item(s) on loan: 3
Name: Bad influence"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- Reading: 45 books to 16 April 2025.

43. 2024 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing winner Late Light, The Secret Wonders of a Disappearing World, by Michael Malay, which is mostly four extended essays about four species of animal found in the UK (eel, moth, mussel, cricket) with more general top and tail chapters at each end. The writing is meditative and expansive but also melancholy and inevitably downbeat as it's tracking declining populations in reducing habitats. It deserved the award wins for both the prose and the content imo.

44. Between Britain by Alastair Moffat, which is a book of popular historical and cultural anecdotes strung on the thread of walks along the Scottish / English border from coast to coast. The author's easy going attitude and readable prose seems to have overcome my reading ennui, which is funny because I only chose this as it needs to return to the library. I've ordered another book by Moffat, of Arthuriana, and put a third on my library list for maybe later, about the Roman Walls in what is now Scotland.

pg175: "[...] on the Scottish side the Duke of Roxburgh showed how powerful and influential he could be. The area of Wark Common he claimed lay on the English side of the border. So he had the border moved. And the deep ditch was dug for the avoidance of any doubt."

pg185: "I could find no visible trace of St Ethelreda's Chapel, not one stone left standing upon another. All that remained was a change in vegetation in one place, a large patch of nettles and other weeds instead of grass. Perhaps that was all there was, the ghost of a church of an ancient, half-forgotten saint, lost in the windswept hills."