Here goes my roughly biannual attempt at being on LJ more than it takes to skim the flist and wish I had time to do more. I have plans for being more sociable this year, both offline and on, and this is step one.

My holidays have been crazy hectic. Too many people and not nearly enough time for chocolate and naps.

What lazy time I have found in amongst the rush has mostly been spend reading the pile of books Santa brought me and indulging in the TV comfort blanket of indiscriminate British crime drama viewing - 50% less comfort than British period drama, but 90% more chance of random currently famous people popping up as crazed killers or red herrings, which is apparently a plus for me.

Sherlock continues to be delightful but there is nowhere near enough of it.

I am in danger of running out of everything but Midsomer Murders, whose one redeeming feature - as far as I can tell - is blink-and-you'll-miss-it unclothed Orlando Bloom, which is apparently not enough for me anymore, so I'm not sure how indiscriminate my viewing really is. Watch this space and I will make vague attempts at continuing to fill it. I almost entirely promise it won't be with reviews of old episodes of Inspector Morse.

Things that are not improving my day

- Anti-abortion protestors holding prayer vigils outside Marie Stopes clinics. There is a list in my head of things I think the US does better and that we should learn/steal. This is pretty much the opposite of that.

Things that are improving my day:

- The Harry Potter cast summing up their movie making experience in one word.

This is heartwarming and funny and makes me a little bit sad, and every actor's response is pretty much exactly what you would expect from them. It does exactly what it's supposed to.

My absolute favourite thing about it, though, is Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom), whose understated response could not be more quintessentially Yorkshire if he tried. So much love.

*

The second thing is not quite awesome enough to make up for the first and the larger trend of which it is a part, but I also had a lovely lazy long weekend, dinner with my entire family yesterday (11 people, awesome food and so much noise - kind of like if The Waltons went in for wine and snarkiness rather than all-American wholesomeness and annoying voiceovers), and there is sunshine. As Matthew Lewis would say, 's aright.

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I am being stalked. Three times yesterday, I looked up to find a pigeon (the second time there were two pigeons) looking in my window.

In all the time I have had this room, I have never seen a bird land on my windowsill. Having three birds (or maybe one bird three times, although once it brought a friend) in one day feels seriously Hitchcockian.

Of course it was a gorgeous day and the window was wide open so as well as my perfectly natural concern about stalker-pigeons, I also got to worry about one flying in and having to try and remove it.

My fear loathing of pigeons is pretty well documented, but I don't think flying rats are much into reading online journals.* Perhaps one saw the The Birds original cinema billboard poster hanging on my wall and mistook it as evidence of friendliness rather than a sign that I love films that creep the hell out of me. Either way, weirdness.

I have Doctor Who thoughts but they will wait until later, possibly even until I have seen the second part. Happy Monday, flist. Watch out for evil birds.

*And it has been such a long time that I no longer have my pigeon icon. The apocalypse will have to do instead.




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Hee. Following on from my post on Monday, and because surely everyone needs to know what happens to delicious Easter confectionery in a vacuum:

Scientists at the University of Nottingham investigate the biomechanics & chemistry of Cadbury's Creme Eggs.

Incidentally, Nottingham is my alma mater. I am so proud. Or possibly very glad that I did not have to pay £9,000 per year for my degree!

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Wow, it's been a while. Every year, September and October are this insane black hole of being ridiculously busy and then not being able to figure out why afterwards. It used to make sense, but it's a while since I actually worked to an academic schedule. I think too many years of school and uni and stuff left it so ingrained that now I forget that autumn does not equal a new year and I don't need to mark it by taking on way more than I can manage.

Things have mostly balanced out and I have some free time that does not involve entertaining the Naughtiest Niece and celebrating other people's birthdays and generally being more sociable than I really find relaxing. And so here I am. Please tell me the US autumn TV schedule has thrown up something worth watching. Or rec me some lengthy and awesome fic - the last couple of things I read were Inception & Generation Kill, but I am open to just about anything - and help me spend a weekend being completely lazy and self-indulgent and pretending I am too busy to babysit.

Alternatively, tell me something that is going on with you while I stop being all selfish and demanding and find something for myself. That might work better! I have missed you muchly, flist.

...okay, so two thirds of the way through September is possibly a little late for that, but the part of my summer that was most like a holiday (and in terms of weather, the most like summer since early June), was the period at the end of August/beginning of September that I spent housesitting for friends whose house has a delightfully large garden and a raised balcony overlooking it. It has been long enough since I had an actual holiday that two weeks of that was a genuine luxury.

Anyway, MiddleLittle!Sis and Little!Bro (who at 6'3" is about 7 inches taller than BigLittle!Bro!) have deserted Bradford and headed off to uni and the world has gone back at school and the heating has had to be turned on a few times so it is officially no longer summer.

The parts of my summer that were about fannish activity rather than work, or trying to make the most of every tiny scrap of sunshine, or spending more time entertaining The Naughtiest Niece than anyone not a parent ought to have to, had a recurring bad-guys-as-good-guys theme.

I have been working my way through both Leverage and White Collar, and rewatching old episodes of Hustle, which I have to admit I still love more than either of the others, and then I saw Inception and my brain exploded.

If you ever want to take a measure of your grasp on reality, try watching Inception twice in a week and then walking into a room where your parents are watching La Vie En Rose. I am not quite as grounded as I thought I was!

This post is mostly for the purpose of making my calendar flip over from August to September finally, but I really am going to try and be here more.

There is fic I want to rec and pictures I want to post and I've spent so much of my life in education that September always seems like the best time to start things anew, with far more chance of sticking than New Year's resolutions ever have. Or is that just me?

- I forget sometimes that I am not a teenager any more. Then I go out on Saturday night and have dinner and a few drinks over the course of several hours and lose the entire next day to the need to sleep and nap and sleep some more. It probably did not help that I spent most of Saturday day babysitting the naughtiest niece, who was at her very naughtiest. Wine and exhaustion and a very late night do not make for a particularly productive morning after the night before.

Skimming my flist just now, booze seems to have been a recurring theme for the weekend. Maybe it's a summer thing, although given the lack of anything resembling a real summer here, maybe not.

- I need sunshine so badly it hurts.

- I spent my recovery time flaked out with DVDs and tea. I watched Fish Tank, In The Loop and some of Pride and Prejudice (the BBC miniseries, not the film. It's my favourite comfort TV). All of which I recommend, although they are good in very different ways and Fish Tank was probably a bit heavy for watching with a not-quite-hangover.

The British theme (and the recurring Tom Hollander) was entirely unintentional.

This week month I have mostly been...

...watching TV. This is my favourite part of the TV year. Wimbledon, Glastonbury, World Cup. There's probably an argument to be made for going and seeing these things in person instead of enjoying them via the screen, but I am very fond of my sofa. And indoor plumbing. It has been lovely.

Granted, the World Cup has been a little disappointing for England, but on balance I have decided that this is a Good Thing. The dream of success was fun, but the thought of the ConDems dining out for the next four years on pictures of David Cameron shaking hands with Steven Gerrard is the stuff of nightmares.

- I watched the Star Trek movie and enjoyed it quite a lot, supporting my theory that my aversion to the series is Shatner-related.

- other than spending more of my leisure time with TV than computer for the first time in a long time, I have been enjoying the fairly consistent sunshine and wrangling babysitting my niece, who is awesome but exhausting.

- I aten't dead. I have the cold from hell, but that has very little to do with my ongoing LJ absence. And probably isn't fatal.

- I went to see Cirque du Soleil on Saturday afternoon. It was awesome. I then watched some football that was slightly less awesome.

- I have not yet caught up on Saturday's Doctor Who. I will be sad if that is not awesome.

- Mostly, life the last few weeks has been a lot of work, eat, sleep, niece-sit, sleep, sleep, sleep. I can't believe I haven't been posting more with all that going on! What's new with you, flist?

Stuff what happened:

- My sister got engaged. Fortunately it was Biggest!Little!Sis. The younger ones reaching that point would be too scary for words.

- Doctor Who continues to be awesome. Amy Pond continues to be awesomer.

- Middle!Little!Sis came back from uni (in Northern Ireland) for the weekend and for B!L!S's engagement party, and now can't fly home due to volcanic ash.

- It's gone all-general-election-all-the-time around here. I am torn between the part of me that is a great big politics nerd and loves the whole thing, and the part of me that finds it very hard to give any credence to the idea that the Conservatives have changed at all and dreads the prospect of a Tory-led government. It really doesn't help that in my constituency (the only currently Tory-held one in the county) neither UKIP (xenophobic) nor the BNP (racist) feel the need to field a candidate. Apparently the sitting MP does their work here adequately anyway.

( for example )

Add to that this article: Rising Tory star Philippa Stroud ran prayer sessions to 'cure' gay people, and Labour would have to fail a whole lot harder than some people think they have before this would become an acceptable alternative for me.

The reality is, Philip Davies will probably get back in. He had a tiny majority (0.97%) at the last election, but it's traditionally a Tory seat, which Labour took in 1997 and held until 2005. It doesn't help that there's been a boundary change so no one is really sure what the voting will be, or that it's been totally ignored by both major parties even though it's a marginal seat.

For the rest of the country:

- the Daily Mirror (yes, really) has a guide to tactical voting: [General election tactical voting guide: How you can save Britain from a Tory nightmare ].

- Stephen Fry talks about voting: [How I will vote].

- Gordon Brown makes an actually quite rousing speech to Citizens UK. In which he finally remembers that Labour actually does some pretty important stuff in between illegal wars and banking crises (minimum wage, health, education): [Battered Gordon Brown finds his voice].

- Find out what the incumbent MP in your constituency does/thinks/votes: [TheyWorkForYou].