Heat, Hallsfoot and a touch of poetry

Typical. The ruddy boiler waits till the coldest day of the ruddy year and then decides it's not working. Dammit. Ruddy cold in these parts therefore, Carruthers. Though it would, I think, be better if the boiler didn't on occasions decide that it could light up and give us a little lukewarm heat and water as we rush to make the most of its generosity. Which unfortunately doesn't last long, I am typing this in fingerless gloves and a scarf. Alongside my other customary fashion items, naturally.

Anyway, it meant that this morning's bath was courtesy of two large pans of boiling water from the stove plus the trusty kettle. Takes me right back to my childhood holidays oop north with Grandma, you know. Except at least our toilet here is inside. Though, to be fair, Grandma also had an inside toilet (she was the first person on the street to have one, don't you know!) - but that was just used for special guests. Which didn't include family. At night, we had potties ... Thank goodness we mainly only visited in the summer is what I say. They make 'em tough oop north.

So, all this does add urgency to our growing desire for a new boiler - though I fear we will have to resort to battling with the gas man in order to get him to mend this one first. I foresee a week of basin washes ahead. And lots of deodorant use ...

In the midst of all that, I've managed to add 1000 words to Hallsfoot's Battle. Which brings me to just over 59,000 words in total. It's winter in Gathandria too, funnily enough. My descriptions of the cold weather Annyeke has to endure will be all the more heartfelt now - so at least there's a silver lining somewhere, I suppose.

I've finished Michele Giuttari's crime novel, A Florentine Death. Hmm, well. It's okay, but I feel he should have stuck to the police work. I suspect he's better at detection than he is at writing. Don't get me wrong - it's not that it's bad, though the start is hugely clunky and he wins the Most Boring Detective's Wife Award (does that wretched woman have no faults??? Really, someone should strangle her in the next in the series ...) hands down. It's just that it's all very obvious and faintly wearisome and just like a hundred other crime novels on the market right now. It adds nothing at all to the literary crime world. The ending was also tied up way too neatly and riddled with coincidences that hadn't been thought through very well, to my mind. That said, all those victims deserved to die and I didn't feel badly about any one of them. The murderer was perfectly justified really. Read it if nothing's on TV or you've got nothing better in the house, but I won't be looking for his next one.

Today's bible poem:

Meditation 7

This ancestral breastplate
deadens my skin.
I am trapped

by chains of gold
and the names of men
I do not know.

When you free me
from the mountain
of my past

give me a task
more suited to my flesh
this time.


And we mustn't forget this week's haiku either:

I flex my shoulders
to carry the day's burden.
The dark sky bears down.

Today's nice things:

1. Kettle water
2. Doing more of Hallsfoot
3. Poetry.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website - wrapping up warm for winter ...