azdak

I haven't updated for ages, for no very good reason that I can think of, except that I didn't have anything interesting to say (actually, that's a pretty good reason for not posting, now I come to think of it...). At the risk of now getting fifty comments saying "This wasn't interesting either," I shall now proceed to update with a random mix of fannish and RL stuff.

1. My mobile phone has broken. Two months after I acquired it. And I didn't even drop it in the loo this time. I'm rather enjoying being essentially unreachable, but as the car is approaching the end of its natural life, it does make driving anywhere rather more nerve-tickling than normal.

2. I got the DVD of The Remains of the Day for Christmas and cried buckets. It's a wonderful adaptation, and has the advantage that, while in the book Stevens strikes me at times as positively autistic, the film lets you see him from the outside, and he's gorgeous. I want an unshakeable, friendly, omnicompetent butler like that. You can totally see why Miss Kenton falls for him, and it makes it all the more heart-breaking that he can't throw off the mask, can't allow himself to be anything more than the unshakeable, friendly, omnicompetent butler. Of course, he also reminded me a bit of Bunter, but that's fans for you.

3. I spent New Year's Eve in Vienna with nineveh_uk and Wolfgang, drinking too much bubbly and dancing with random strangers. nineveh_uk acquitted herself very well, apart from going home too soon, before we had satisfactorily illuminated every significant moment in the biography of every single Wimsey descendant. I do hope that one day there will be fic in which Bunter reassures Master Paul that it's perfectly normal, why, his father once had a friend who bred canaries, and yes, it was only the males who sang.

4. The thing that I was squeeing about so mysteriously a few weeks back was a vid - or, to be precise, two vids - that dreamybluemeany made to accompany the story I wrote for the muncle Christmas fic exchange. To put this into perspective, you have to understand that dreamybluemeany makes the best UNCLE vids in existence (she also makes stunning Dr Who vids, for those who find MfU less than enthralling), and that the ones she made for the exchange were well up to her usual dizzyingly high standard. They are, frankly, much better than the fic, and the buzz of seeing the story ideas taken up to a higher plane of existence was terrific. They can be seen in context here (and thanks to executrix, shayheyred and st_crispins for their indispensable input).

5. I think I have lost interest in fandom. This is not to say that I won't write the occasional Wimsey ficlet, but the wellsprings of inspiration have essentially run dry. My last two stories for MfU were an enormous struggle, and while both turned out all right in the end, I went through a slough of despair in both instances thinking that I was never going to manage to finish them. On the bright side, I have 72,000 words of original fiction written(72,000! Count 'em!) and while it will take more work than I can properly imagine to get the thing finished, I have every hope that it will be done by this time next year. And I'm really enjoying writing that. Plus I have an idea for another story when that's finished, so I don't think I'm going to stop scribbling any time soon.

6. I went skiing with the family straight after New Year. One of the many nice things about living near Vienna is that you don't have to travel too far to get to the Alps. In spite of this, we haven't been skiing for years, and being English, I am a dreadful skier. At least, I always thought I was, but this time around I had a proper private lesson, with an ace ski instructor, who is a friend of a friend, and it turned out that Wolfgang (who taught me) had done a really impressive job and that I was basically doing it right all along (so actually, the real problem is that I'm a total coward who doesn't are go fast enough, but we will draw a veil over this).

7. I got Mama Mia for Christmas. It was love at first viewing for the entire family (including Wolfgang's mother), and I keep buying copies to give away as presents. Everybody loves it. Yay for Abba! I only wish they'd found some way to include Fernando. The film would definitely have been improved by having one of her lovers be a mature gentleman who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, but sent a letter aplogising that he couldn't come to the wedding because he was confined to a nursing home, thus enabling a dramatic flashback to the Rio Grand. There was something in the air that night! The stars were bright!

8. Tomorrow I have to do some work. Chiz, chiz!