Deep Breath
Doctor Who Series 8 Episode 1: ( My ThoughtsCollapse )

The Painted Garden never happened. But I'm happy to report that I've seen the original fresco in an exhibition about Pompeii in Munich a couple of weeks ago. It's not the same exhibition as the one in the British Museum, but it was stunning for several reasons. The beauty of the artwork is sublime, and some of the pieces clearly spoke of different ideas of what's acceptable/fashionable to protray in art. But that would take up a post of its own.

So what I wrote instead last November is my own version of 50 Shades of Grey.

( Well.Collapse )

Last night I thought it's a brilliant episode. On second viewing, I must correct myself.

I think I'm okay with Mary's past. I'm not okay with her shooting Sherlock for a) obvious reasons and 2) because I don't understand how being found in Mil--, sorry, Magnussen's flat uninvited, with a shot wound, does not make him look like a burglar. And John, of course. She and Sherlock could have kept it a secret and come up with an atrocious story to frame CAM himself for hitting Janine. If there is an obvious disregard for real evidence (see below).

The whole mind palace thing was amazing as well as it was ridiculous. So CAM has a photographic memory. Great. But in order to blackmail people you'd have to have hardcopies. Those letters could have been anything, and, having made a copy, he could come back later and up the price for his "discretion". I don't think that "confessions" like Janine's will always work.

Myc (because that's how I'd spell it), deliberately sending Sherlock to his death is OOC, particularly when he says earlier (and it might be the punch talking, "Billy's Special") that it'd break his heart if anything were to happen to him. I don't believe for one minute that he'd send him to his death. Even if he'd still have his eyes on Sherlock 24/7; things do go wrong. Haven't you watched Spooks/MI5 at all, Moffat?

And lastly, Moriarty. Why did they have to bring him back? Please don't tell me series 3 and the ending of TRF was just a dream in the end, or that Rich Brook pulled a stunt with theatre blood and the squash ball...

What I did like was Mycroft being ruled in by Mummy and Lady Smallwood. He's not as omnipotent after all, but still knows how to turn things round to his advantage.


In Mary's case I'd like to have seen more foreshadowing than just her ability to recognise a skip code and her memory. I remember people's room numbers when other's don't, and I wasn't with BND last time I checked. Just one more hint before revealing her in CAM's flat wood have been nice.

I'm slow. I know.

I picked up a library book today about the plaster casts Fiorelli made of the dead in Pompeii in 1863. And then it occurred to me that it's been 150 years since he did that, and that it explains the fantastic BBC documentary on the eruption of AD 79, the exhibition at the British Musuem and an upcoming exhibition in Munich (which I'm totally going to see).

I'd forgotten my school keys and because there are road works in progress I had to make a huge detour to the library to pick up the copy of Eugene Dwyer's Pompeii's Living Statues. Ancient Roman Lives Stolen From Death I'd ordered from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The detour took me past the café and I decided to have a cappuccino. And as I sat and started reading the book I realised the anniversary.

And the idea for a novel popped in my head. Just like that. I'd meant to read the book as further research for last year's NaNo thing, in which a subplot deals with the excavations at Pompeii. But I'd always thought that the chapter in last year's NaNo thing deserves more attention. So that's what it'll get.

Instead of the novel I'd wanted to write this year, a spin on one of my all-time favourite pieces of my fanfic, I decided to go ahead with the Pompeii idea. First of all, I hadn't gotten anywhere with the plans for the other novel. Not really, at any rate, it kept changing too often so it's probably not ripe yet for writing.

But the Pompeii thing totally is. There are going to be four time lines: one in AD 79, one in 1863, on in 2013 and one in 2213 (or 2279?). I'm not sure about the future plotline yet, though. The linking element is going to be art and how it connects the people throughout the millennia.

( The plot as I'm making it up as I'm writing thisCollapse )

Starting last year I've tried planning more instead of pantsing through November; I found that writing with a plan, with the scenes outlined in Index Card (a great app for iPad) and transferred to Scrivener, helped me through the 1,667 words a day. When I sat down to write each night I knew what I was going to write; pantsing, i.e. making it up as I go, can be very stressful when you haven't had time during the day to dream up What's Next. Despite the plan I'm still felxible enough to include changes that might become necessary because I've had an idea that's even better than the original one.

So, off I pop to plan this. :) Suddenly I can't wait for November. I've even got a working title: The Painted Garden.

I'm currently editing and rewriting last November's novel. I'm nearly done and happy with how it's going to turn out.

I have changed one of the subplots to include an incident at a school, and now I need the expertise of my fellow teachers on the flist.

Punishment for crossing the line or doing something wrong at school is entirely different in Germany from those in the UK. If you're willing to help me out with your insight, read ( onCollapse )

I'm going to make the novel available on my ON LJ, like I did with Three Weeks in October, as soon as it's in a presentable shape, i.e. I've made all the changes I've come up with and worked in xebgoc's corrections.

Thank you for your support!

I'm back! It was a great trip, possibly the best of the three trips to Vienna I've been on with pupils. They behaved very well, there were no incidents or accidents and I had the pleasure to travel in the great company of a colleague who's a lot like me in many regards: we shared and swapped meals when we weren't able to choose. Marillenknödel vs. Kaiserschmarrn and Topfenstrudel vs. Apfelstrudel is a dilemma, particularly when faced with the versions of Demel's and Café Leopold Hawelka respectively.

Marillenknödel: potato dumplings with apricots at their heart
Kaiserschmarrn: pancakes torn apart in the pan, with raisins added, served with either apple sauce or, even better, prune compote (with rum!)
Topfenstrudel: strudel with a quark filling
Apfelstrudel: do I even need to explain?

I realised that I either need an additional zoom for my camera or a camera with a powerful zoom. I bought the latter just a couple of minutes ago... it'll fit into a jacket pocket, which I think is very important.

Vienna 2013

So here are photos from last night. I took them with my mobile and was in sort of a rush so the quality is not the best.

( Put your wellies on...Collapse )

I'd been wondering, what with the decline of LJ and my recent silence, when best to make my next post, and what about. It's not that my life's been uneventful. So why not take last night's flood of a lifetime. Tweeps know about it in bits and pieces, when I've had time to leave a quick message, but maybe it's a good idea to give you the full picture.

It's been raining for about ten days, with one sunny day to tease us and show us what the weather ought to be like this time of year. My house is close to a river, at a T-junction. If you turn the T so the long arm points right, my house is just about at the beginning of the top branch, and the river at the very bottom of the lower branch (best make a diagram). There's been terrible flooding in the area before, most notably in 1994, a time when I didn't live here. When my house was built three years ago, the construction manager reassured all of us (there are seven flats in my building) that in case of a flood we'd be safe. Cue each of us: "Fine, but that won't happen while we live here."

( Or so we thought.Collapse )

The bottom line is that last night's flood was worse than the infamous 1994 one and that we were extremely lucky (touches wood). All our neighbours' basements were flooded. Where ever you go you can see hoses coming out of basement windows, spewing water into the street.

I'm cold, tired, but I've had a shower, some food and sleep. I might nap again later on, to be ready for the next round that hopefully will never come.

Thank you, tweeps on my flist, for sending good vibes.

As a tradition, I have my parents and my brother and his wife over for Good Friday fish dinner. We made it lunch this year because of my little niece's sleep pattern. It's all the same if we have lunch or dinner; Good Friday is a public holiday.

I decided to go for Asian food this year. So we had pepper prawns, a Kerala recipe, Hyderabadi sesame and peanut fish and Szechuan scallops. The poppadums were a disappointment, but since they were store-bought I'll avoid them in the future. As other sides we had rice and steamed veggies -- the sauces from the fish dishes were the perfect seasoning.

All three recipes are now in my little black book of dishes I'll make again. They were simple to make and easy to prepare. When my brother and his family arrived the Hyderabadi dish was done and I made the prawns and then the scallops so by the time we sat down, everything was ready.

Dad brought a great white wine, Lugana. It was strong enough to go with the strong aromas of the dishes.

Mum made an impromptu apple pie with the leftover puff pastry (what I didn't need for the dessert, Portuguese muffins, a Jamie Oliver thing) and apples.

Recipes taken from:
Ken Hom's Foolproof Chinese Cookery
Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible
Pushpesh Pant: India Cookbook
Jamie's 30 Minute Meals

So Mum made the turkey last Sunday. It was sublime. We'd expected the meat itself to be stringy and dry, but boy were we wrong. I've never had such tender and juicy turkey before (and I think I've learned to cook it to the point, just like pasta), but xebgoc tells me that's the way American turkeys are. We've never had an imported bird before.

So of course Mum made a fest of it, and instead of settling for the advice you gave so generously (all of which she took when she found a scrumptious recipe in an American cookbook) and making it simple she cooked up a storm. She made corn bread and cherry stuffing, and since corn bread is not available hereabouts she made that herself. But since you need creamed corn to make corn bread and - you've guessed it - that's not available either, she made that too. We had carrots and mangetout as sides.

While we all loved it and are looking forward to the next time my parents bring one home from the golf club (Dad will for sure, since he's Seniors' Captain9, my brother said it's not good enough to replace our traditional roast goose. I agree, but what I loved about the turkey was that it wasn't as rich a meal as roast goose if you went easy on the stuffing.