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just one thing

Just One Thing (05 November 2025)

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Entry tags:

weekly update

Me-and-media update

I haven't done a media update in weeks! Here's what I've been watching and reading.

Reading
( It didn't feel like a lot when I started, but cutting for length anyway. )

Kdramas
( This always felt like a lot. )

Other TV
( There's quite a lot here, too. )

Guardian/Fandom
Wishliiiiiiist! It went so well. Belated hooray for everyone and all the treats! :D

Perusing the Yuletide tagset was an object lesson in "other people's character preferences are not my character preferences, and that's okay." Still, I have a bunch of things to potentially treat if I can get into gear.

Films
Grace: a prayer for peace, a film about Aotearoa / New Zealand artist Robin White. Beautiful and arty, and I had trouble staying awake. (I'm not great at maintaining attention when there's no dialogue.)

Audio stuff
A handful of eps of Tech Won't Save Us, mostly AI-related. Some Guilty Feminist (UK), which is a bit hit-and-miss for me, but at least is tuned in to *gestures at the dumpster fire that is politics in a lot of places*

/o\ /o\ /o\

(They have a new series of live shows called "The Road to Gilead", and are particularly loud about Farage's links to US right-wing anti-abortion group ADF.)

Writing Excuses. Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson.

Writing/making things
I currently have a thing at beta, and I'm gearing myself up to work on my Yuletide assignment fic.

I broke my

fan_flashworks streak during Guardian Wishlist. That's okay; I actually find streaks a bit burdensome when they get too long. I'm not in a pushing-myself headspace. Instead of writing anything for the Amnesty round, I posted some of the art I've been trying out via Youtube instructional videos for kids. (I'm so happy with how the eyes came out on the kitten-dragon.) (Youtube art videos for kids are excellent, btw! I've drawn a fox, a llama, an owl, a lemur, another dragon, a unicorn mer-red-panda, and a few other things, and they always turn out pleasingly, despite my zero skill level. I'm thinking of investing in a set of coloured pencils for grown-ups, but for now I'm enjoying the tin of miniature ones

cyphomandra sent me before my hysterectomy and a few others left over from when I was five. :-)

Life/health/mental state things
Over the last few months, I've noticed more and more long silver hairs in my house. Hmph.

Good things
The Guardian Slo-Mo Rewatch on

sid_guardian. Guardian fandom generally. Yuletide. Podfic and audiobooks and Kdramas and libraries. The forecast for tomorrow is good. Kdramas. We went to an art exhibition opening yesterday evening, and it was great and made me want to make more things. Writers' Hour.

Poll #33799 Time is

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 26

View Respondents

Time is

View Answers

an arrow
2 (7.7%)

a fruit fly
7 (26.9%)

a banana
3 (11.5%)

melting
6 (23.1%)

relentless
11 (42.3%)

elusive
6 (23.1%)

other
4 (15.4%)

ticky-box full of hippity-hoppity frogs
9 (34.6%)

ticky-box full of blue-haired punk red pandas being, on average, purple
14 (53.8%)

ticky-box full of weird clock karma
10 (38.5%)

ticky-box full of colouring in
15 (57.7%)

ticky-box full of hugs
19 (73.1%)

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Some thoughts on The Beauty's Blade (美人剑) by Feng Ren Zuo Shu (封刃作书)

The Beauty's Blade by Feng Ren Zuo Shu, translated by Yu:

(The print version's out next week, but the ebook was released today.)

( some mostly unspoilerly thoughts )

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October TV shows

Somewhat belatedly, let me catch up on TV logging. I watched five shows this month (although I'm cheating a bit as I only finished the fifth this evening), which were the usual mishmash of genres and tones. The shows in question were:

Season 3 of Blue Lights, a BBC police procedural miniseries set in Belfast. Although the characters are a familiar mix of well-worn stereotypes (the idealistic rookie, the maternal type who cares too much, the one who's joined the police in spite of a backlash from her community, the world-weary old hand, the maverick), they're written with heart and humanity. The true pleasure in this series, however, lies its sense of place — it's deeply grounded in its Belfast setting, and does a great job of showing the various political and social currents buffetting the city, and the wider region. The real villain, though, is austerity, in a way that I don't think I've seen explored so bluntly on UK TV in contemporary times.

A Thousand Blows, a fabulous historical miniseries by Steven Knight (the creator of Peaky Blinders), set in the East End of London in Victorian times. Here we encounter a variety of deprived, traumatised, down-on-their luck characters, who converge both in a series of boxing matches (initially bare-knuckled affairs in the local pub, later more genteel competitions organised by the aristocracy in the West End), and in a heist plot. The characters are fantastic, the writing is as lurid and melodramatic as a penny dreadful, and in essence it's a great retread of two concepts that Knight explored well in Peaky Blinders: certain people who were made to feel vulnerable and afraid become singlemindedly relentless in pursuing an existence where they will never feel fear or vulnerability again, even if they have to burn down the world and destroy all their meaningful relationships in the process, and communities battered by poverty, exploitation and lack of opportunity who accept a certain degree of violence and exploitation done to them (e.g. by gangs offering their 'protection') as long as it's people they perceive as being from their own community doing the violence. This is familiar ground for Steven Knight, and he explores it to great effect here — and hopefully in subsequent seasons!

Film Club, a sweet little six-part BBC miniseries about two rather lost twentysomethings who started a rather intense film club (no phones during the viewing, full thematic fancy dress, elaborate snacks, etc) during their university years and are desperately trying to keep its magic going some years after their graduation, when the realities of professional adult life have begun to wear them down. One character has had some form of psychological breakdown and moved back into the family home with her mother and sister, and remains trapped there by agoraphobia, and the other character is on the verge of leaving for a new job in a new city, and worrying how it will affect their friendship. It's a sweet-natured love story, with teeth, and in spite of a somewhat cinematic sense of heightened reality, the depiction of quarter life crisis existential angst is grounded in a truth that resonates a bit too much.

The latest season of Only Murders in the Building, which I thought was a massive return to form. This time, our trio of true crime podcast sleuths investigate the death of their apartment complex's doorman, which inevitably uncovers sometime much bigger, managing to skewer local New York politics (prior to today's election), oligarchy, housing pressures, and more. My patience with this series had been wearing thin two seasons ago, and I felt it was fast approaching over-milked cash cow territory, so I'm delighted to have been proved wrong. Your patience for this latest outing will probably hinge on your tolerance for New York (and New Yorker fiction about New York) nonsense, which it continues to lampoon with affection.

Riot Women, Sally Wainwright's latest love letter to the north of England and the strong, complex women who live there — this time, our cast of characters are a multigenerational group of misfits who start an all-woman punk band, with songs about menopause, feeling invisible and underappreciated, and so on. All of them are dealing with struggles at once soap operatic and banal: family tensions, empty-nested loss of sense of purpose, sandwiched pressure between troubled adult children and elderly parents in nursing homes, or showing early signs of dementia. Women's invisible labour is front and centre, but also women's anger, turned inwards and outwards. As always with Wainwright, the characters feel painfully real, and she does an incredible job of capturing the stories of the types of older women working ceaselessly (and often without much acknowledgement) upholding messy, multigenerational family households, doing all the work that no one ever notices, but whose absence would certainly be noticed. It's an absolute masterpiece — with an incredible soundtrack. (And, since this is not always a given with ostensibly feminist British cultural figures, it was fantastic to have unambiguous confirmation that Sally Wainwright's feminism is most definitely trans-inclusive.)

I don't think there was a single dud in this collection of shows!

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!slo-mo rewatch

Guardian Slo-Mo Rewatch: Round Two sign-ups!

Zhao Yunlan sprawled on a couch, grinning at his phone. The background shows a purply sky with stars. Text reads "Slo-Mo Rewatch. Guardian - half an episode per week @ sid-guardian.dreamwidth.org."

Hello, Guardian Rewatchers! Thanks to everyone who's been part of the discussion, or has been reading along. ♥

Come join us for round 2 of the Guardian Slo-Mo Rewatch! We're watching half an episode a week (about twenty minutes) so we can talk and squee about our beloved 镇魂 | Guardian drama. With the second batch of episodes, be ready for mirrors, web novels, book scams, Zhao Yunlan's disaster flat and the start of the Hanga arc!

(For those who remember our last rewatch, this time we're aiming for a lighter touch. Posts are on the minimalist side - a brief summary, one quote, one screencap, maybe one noteworthy detail and some discussion-starter questions.)

We're looking forward to some more fun discussions as we revisit Haixing, Dixing, and the SID – and of course you can always drop in on any of the previous discussions at any time.

Fans of the novel, the drama, or both are very welcome! You don't have to keep up with the rewatch – it's absolutely fine to dip in at any time. We want to hear what you think! Those of us who participated in the Novel Readalong or are otherwise familiar with the novel are likely to compare and contrast the two canons, but it's 100% okay to focus purely on the drama.

Please consider hosting a post or two, if you're willing and able to! Comment with a date from the schedule below. Posts should ideally be made sometime on the Friday or Saturday, in any time zone.

Schedule for round 2
Weekend of 14 November - episode 6 up to 22:44:
Weekend of 21 November - episode 6 from 22:44:
Weekend of 28 November - episode 7 up to 24:30:
Weekend of 5 December - episode 7 from 24:30:
Weekend of 12 December - episode 8 up to 22:19:
Weekend of 19 December - episode 8 from 22:19:
Weekend of 26 December - no new post; catch-up time!
Weekend of 2 January - no new post; catch-up time!
Weekend of 9 January - - episode 9 up to 22:52:
Weekend of 16 January - episode 9 from 22:52:
Weekend of 23 January - episode 10 up to 22:09:
Weekend of 30 January - episode 10 from 22:09:

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Brainstorming for Topics: Discussions & Picspams

Hello everybody!

I'm trying to come up with new topics for future discussions and picspams, but I'm afraid my brain is going a bit in circles, so I'm hoping you could help me out a bit with brainstorming and suggestions.

What topics would you like to discuss? What kind of picspams would you like to see? Would you be interested in revisiting previous topics, and if yes, which ones?

( Previous topics with links under the cut: )

Btw, all of the picspam posts are indefinitely open for people who want to add more pretty pictures! *g*

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just one thing

Just one thing: 04 November 2025

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Entry tags:

My latest Guardian fanworks

1 dramaverse fic, 2 novelverse fics, 1 RPF drawing. :)

I Will Miss Him Too (325 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Da Qing & Shen Wei (Guardian), Da Qing & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Background Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Da Qing (Guardian)
Additional Tags: Ye Olde Haixing Era, The Pendant of Pining, or the Wrapper of Pining at this point
Summary: Da Qing picks up Shen Wei's most prized possession and lifts it up, mouth open in curious delight. The golden wrapper glints in a ray of sunlight at the entrance of the tent.

Everywhere (811 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kunlun/Shen Wei (Guardian)
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Kunlun (Guardian)
Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Sounding, Anal Play, Tentacle Sex, vine sex, Vines, Consentacles, use of powers during sex, Invisibility, Outdoor Sex, Tenderness, Soft, Aged-Up Character, Adult Wei, POV Shen Wei (Guardian), no nut kinkvember 2025, Kinktober 2025
Summary: Wei loves to look at Kunlun — the soft fire in his eyes, and the unruly curtain of hair falling around them, and the way his robes slip off his shoulders and he smiles, bare and shameless. But Wei loves this too — the yellow-green glow behind his eyelids as Kunlun gives and gives until Wei can't take anymore, unseen, everywhere.

It's Kunlun's turn to look at him.

Good Kid (693 words) by facethestrange
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng
Characters: Guo Changcheng, Chu Shuzhi, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Set During Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Missing Scene, POV Guo Changcheng
Summary: "He— He should be home, but I haven't knocked yet," Guo Changcheng replies and winces. She's really sweet and she wouldn't roll her eyes at him, but he doesn't want to look at her in case she does.

"What do you want from him anyway that got you so terrified?" She raises an eyebrow. "Trying to ask him out?"

———
A slight canon divergence/missing scene of the moment where the auntie from the neighborhood committee leaves Guo Changcheng in front of Chu Shuzhi's door (volume 2, chapter 16).

Long Day on Set by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, Chinese Actor RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Characters: Bai Yu (Actor), Zhu Yilong
Additional Tags: Cuddling & Snuggling, Sleepy Cuddles, Literal Sleeping Together, Fanart, Drawing
Summary: They are ~~eepy~~ tired.

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The Immortality Thief by Taran Hunt

The Immortality Thief

3/5. Scifi about a refugee linguist who is forced into a dangerous mission to retrieve ancient data off a starship mere weeks from destruction from a dying star.

This is a space survival story with horror undertones, and a strong commitment to enemies-to-friends as our narrator travels the ship in the company of two people who are intimately connected to the massacre of his family and community. I’m into that as a project, and did enjoy it, though I think the book does not entirely do the legwork on how this relationship develops. That’s a hard thing to pull off, to be clear.

The other thing to know about this book is that it is first person narrated by someone with absolutely galloping ADHD and close to zero impulse control. He is a lot. And the book flows with his thinking – somewhat erratically, with lots of interruptions and a million tiny chapters. I think part of that is by design, and part of it is first book messiness. And also being about 20,000 words too long. But my point is, whether you enjoy this book or not will probably turn on whether you can vibe with the narrator. I sometimes could and often couldn’t, so here I am.

Content notes: Recollection of massacre, violence, body horror.

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type: meme

Alphabet Fic Game II: Vids

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

This is part II: Vids.

A:

B: Begin Again (Star Wars) – despite stiff competition, this represents a breakthrough in Technique (TM) and I had to share. Perhaps the letter with the highest average quality imo.

C: Children of the Sun (Guardian) – again, stiff competition, but my first event/exchange vid!

D: Die Like a God (Star Wars)

E:

F:

G:

H: Hope Never Dies (Guardian)

I: Is There Anybody Out There? – this one is full length, rather than a vexercise, and more recent

J:

K:

L: Leave This Place Alive

M: My Nemesis/My Only Friend – for all fans of Shen Wei and Ye Zun's relationship

N: Northwest Passage

O: Open up the Gates – yes, this is not actually the work title, simply the title of one of the vidlets, but tbh I really want to extend it into a full length one. I should get on that at some point this decade actually...

P: The Past Clings Tight

Q:

R: Reincarnation – again, some choice, but this vid is my magnum opus and I will be linking it until the heat death of the universe, sorry not sorry

S: Shadows Crawling – my very first full-length vid, so I gotta choose this one, despite, again, heavy competition

T: A Turn of the Wheel

U: Until Eternity

V:

W: Whips & Chains – I chose this one over the other Ws because let's face it, everyone likes Shen Wei suffering, and here it is eroticized!

X:

Y: You Know My Name

Z:

Total: 16/26, with 32 vids, not including the one multividder collab! (I'm also sitting on a few unpublished ones. One of the ones not for any event should knock out one of the unused letters once I, uh, figure out what to put in like the last missing 5 seconds.) A bit surprising that it's basically the same as my fanart, but I guess I just love the letter C for vids or something.

Looking at my music library, J is going to be hard (only 3 songs). Q expectedly only has one song, same for Z, and nothing for X save for one pinyin title which technically starts with 小, rather than a letter of the Latin alphabet. Plenty of stuff for AEFGKV, though!

Most popular letters: C (6), W (4), BRST (3 each). OVER ONE SIXTH of my vids have a title beginning with C! Does anyone else have such a skewed distribution of beginning letters of titles?

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FIC: forgetting any other tie but this (Word of Honor: Liu Qianqiao/Luo Fumeng) [M]

forgetting any other tie but this (5410 words)
Fandom: 山河令 | Word of Honor (TV 2021)
Rating: Mature
Relationship: Liu Qianqiao/Luo Fumeng
Content Tags: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Getting Together, Ghost Valley, Ghost Valley Politics, Department of the Unfaithful, Worldbuilding, cameos by Wen Kexing and Gu Xiang, and several original Ghost characters

Summary: Something was wrong with Xi Sang Gui, and Liu Qianqiao couldn't simply sit and wait.

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Book Review: Interview with the Vampire

Last week, I expressed some disappointment about Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, as I had hoped to be catapulted into a new obsession, but once I accepted that the obsession wasn’t to be, I actually did enjoy the book a lot. And it was super interesting comparing it to the 1994 movie, which Anne Rice wrote the screenplay for and apparently LOVED - like, “she took out a full page ad for the movie in the NYT” level of love.

Many of the changes are just streamlining. For instance, in the book both Louis and Lestat start out with living family members, who no longer exist in the movie (also movie Lestat is IIRC supposedly much too old to have living family members at all), and there’s also a section where Louis and Claudia go to eastern Europe searching for vampires but find only mindless undead bloodsucking revenants, which is cut in the movie to send them straight to Paris and Armand.

But there was one significant change I found fascinating: ( spoilers )

Many people have told me they liked The Vampire Lestat more than Interview with the Vampire, so I plan to read that next Halloween. Then possibly Queen of the Damned the Halloween after? Although let me know if you think I should either stop after The Vampire Lestat or else extend my purview to include any of the later books.

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13 icons for seasons_of_fandom

The challenge at

seasons_of_fandom was to randomly draw a tarot card and make up to ten icons (or other stuff - but I always choose icons) of the theme that card represents. I got The Star, which stands for "hope, bright prospects, and spiritual guidance." So here are some icons of people seeking spiritual guidance or generally being hopeful - and I used a star texture for all of them, too.

Teasers:

( 11+2 icons - all Wu-Lei-related )

Concrit welcome! Comments adored! Credit appreciated! Take and use as many icons as you like. If you want to know whose textures and brushes I use, take a look at my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

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FIC: Time Neither Friend Nor Foe - Time Engraver/Zhao Yunlan, L'Oreal Time Engraver/Guardian (TV)

Title: Time Neither Friend Nor Foe
Author: Tarlan (

tarlanx)
Fandom: L'Oreal "Time Engraver" Commercials/Guardian (TV)
Pairing/Characters: Time Engraver/Zhao Yunlan
Rating/Category: PG SLASH
Word Count: 1697
Summary: He loved all his subjects but one was more special than all the others.

Content Notes: Written for Trobadora for

rarepairexchange 2025

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70723506

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October books

The Second Confession - Rex Stout
Wild Dark Shore - Charlotte McConaghy
The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy - Sam J. Miller
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
James - Percival Everett
A Man Lay Dead - Ngaio Marsh
Boyfriend Material - Alexis Hall
Signal to Noise - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Batman: A Death in the Family - Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies - Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines
Fence 5, 6 and 7- C. S. Pacat, Johanna the Mad, Joana Lafuente

( books and comics )

Entry tags:

just one thing

Just one thing: 03 November 2025

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: final talley

As always, it was a pleasure to host. Thanks for being such delightful guests!

Here's the final tally for Write Every Day, 16-31 October 2025.

( Tally )

Please let me know if I’ve missed you, and feel free to check in belatedly. :-)

Entry tags:

ai,
politics

Postcards from the AI-pocalypse

I read this last week, and it's been haunting me ever since.

A new kind of bias: AI choosing itself over humans
Adding another wrinkle, researchers publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) recently discovered a startling trend they call “AI–AI bias.” Large language models like GPT-4 and Meta’s Llama 3.1 consistently favored content created by other AIs over human-written material across product ads, academic abstracts, and even movie reviews.

Study coauthor Jan Kulveit warned that such bias could reshape economic opportunities, with humans at risk of being systematically sidelined. “Being human in an economy populated by AI agents would suck,” he said on X, advising people to run their work through AI tools before submitting it if they suspect another AI will be evaluating it.

This creates a troubling picture: not only are AI systems struggling to deliver promised productivity gains, but they may also be reinforcing their own dominance at the expense of human contributions.

From this article in The Economic Times (India), which also covers an MIT study into AI business application ("95 percent of business attempts to integrate generative AI are failing"), the AI bubble, and AI psychosis.

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emotional support fiber

I slightly less half-assedly fixed the warp on the Clover Sakiori loom (Japanese).

weaving WIP close-up

I didn't bring a comb for the weft and was using a tapestry needle, but catten remains unlikely to mind imperfect weaving.

Also, further adventures in dyeing wool yarn. I'd like to test on dyeing combed top for cotton, ramie, and silk (mulberry/bombyx, eri, tussah, and maybe a small sample of my treasured stash of muga); and then try some on alpaca or mohair after I've processed some more.

dyed yarn

Later in the season, in natural dyes, I might experiment with the traditional hoary old standby of onion skins; rose hips (several of my roses shrubs produce them); and find out if windfall figs from the no-longer-quite-so-baby fig tree do anything interested as dyes. Osage orange, common madder, true and false indigo, hibiscus, and elderberry grow in Louisiana so making a dye plant plot might be entertaining. That or I sacrifice e.g. a bunch of beets lol. For personal use, I don't care about consistency (I prefer chaos ball colors) and I'm not that fussed about reliable fastness. "Throw it in a pot and also an ~appropriate mordant" for personal experiment promises to be very entertaining.

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vital functions

vital functions

Observing. All Souls'. Candle lit; Seelkuchen eaten.

Reading. ( Rucka, Waitrose Cookery School, Stocks, Duncan, Ravindran )

Playing. Merrily pootling along with I Love Hue. Hatched my first dragon with Primal eyes in The Dragons Game.

Cooking. Two variations on a recipe: smitten kitchen's winter squash and spinach pasta bake and the recipe that inspired it, Ottolenghi's pasta and butternut squash cake. On the first day I definitely preferred the smitten kitchen version; on subsequent days I became increasingly convinced by the Ottolenghi. (You see, I had about twice as much of all of the ingredients as I needed, and the spinach definitely needed eating Imminently, and so I thought I'd make them simultaneously so we could do the side-by-side comparison and then freeze some...)

And then this evening I made another round of the wahaca autumn stew with pipián, this time with even wronger chillis but a sensible amount of herbs, and was delighted that it met with my mother's approval.

Eating. SCHWARZBROT with Lizard honey. Curries various courtesy of my father. Salads and lunches various courtesy of my mother. The dark chocolate & raspberry stars that are a Special Seasonal Treat. National Trust lemon drizzle cake. A RASPBERRY.

Exploring. THE NEW SITE FOR ADMIN: THE LRP. And this afternoon we went on an adventure to Anglesey Abbey, where the dahlias were alas gone but we found many many more cyclamen than we knew were there, and several things in the winter garden were at a different stage than I think I'd ever seen them before and were extremely pretty with it.

Creating. Carved a pumpkin for the toddler!