Like waves on the sea, I was just where I should be

[sovay]

I had a quiet birthday with my parents and my husbands and autumn. Just before sunset, rushthatspeaks and spatch and I walked a meandering loop of the Great Meadows that took us past the low-tussocked marsh that was dry hollows in last summer's drought, a soft-winged owl taking flight after prey, and an office chair sitting empty in a stand of pines, exactly like an invitation to avoid.



Evening in the water. Everything smelled like cold earth, leaf-fall, ground-fall, moss. It smelled wild. The birds were calling through the twig-tangled trees in a way that Angela Carter would have recognized. There was lichen on the dry stone walls.



Me in the evening. Taken by Rob, with Rush standing behind him.

choco_frosh had gotten me Peter Davison's Is There Life Outside The Box?: An Actor Despairs (2016). nineweaving sent the 25th anniversary edition of John Crowley's Little, Big (1981) exquisitely wrapped in the Great Wave off Kanagawa. The short stack of books also contained Eckart Frahm's Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire (2023), R.B. Lemberg's Everything Thaws (2023), and Sarah Monette's A Theory of Haunting (2023). My niece made a tele-appearance in her pneumatically eared unicorn hat. The cake was marmalade, decorated with whipped cream like the candle-whiskered face of a cat. I am not sure anyone got a picture of the smoldering rose of the sunset glimpsed between houses as we walked back for dinner, but it was spectacular. It felt like October.

Comments

[hawkwing_lb]

Happy birthday. I am glad to know you even through the medium of the internet.

[sovay]

Happy birthday. I am glad to know you even through the medium of the internet.

Thank you. I don't just mean it as reciprocal courtesy to say I'm glad to know you, too.

[cmcmck]

You have a poem starting at 'I walked a meandering loop' in your first paragraph! :o)

[sovay]

You have a poem starting at 'I walked a meandering loop' in your first paragraph!

Thank you!

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, I'm glad there were some nice things - I hope you enjoy the books!

[sovay]

Aw, I'm glad there were some nice things - I hope you enjoy the books!

Thank you! I had to be pried out of some of them already.

(Nicely chosen icon.)

[sartorias]

What lovely images, both the camera-taken ones and the word-evoked ones.

[a_reasonable_man]

I'm glad you could be with so many loved ones on your birthday, that they could give you thoughtful gifts, and that you could enjoy the autumnal Great Meadows with them. I love the pictures and the words. Happy birthday!

[asakiyume]

That's a lovely way to spend a birthday, and the books promise some lovely hours in the months to come.

[chanter1944]

The happiest of birthdays. :) Many more to follow!

[sovay]

What lovely images, both the camera-taken ones and the word-evoked ones.

Thank you.

[sovay]

Happy birthday!

Thank you! And thank you again for calling. I know I have been out of touch with everyone and everything this summer, but it was good to hear your voice.

[sovay]

That's a lovely way to spend a birthday, and the books promise some lovely hours in the months to come.

. . . they might be lucky if they last weeks.

(Thank you.)

[sovay]

The happiest of birthdays. :) Many more to follow!

Thank you!

[pameladean]

Happy October birthday! *hug* P.

[umadoshi]

Belated happy birthday! I'm glad the day held lovely things, and I hope this trip around the sun is infinitely better than the last. *hugs*

[davidgillon]

Happy birthday!

and an office chair sitting empty in a stand of pines

I'm picturing Sweeney Todd meets pitcher plant.

[thisbluespirit]

It would be even better if I still had the one where Five was reading a pile of books! I don't think I'd quite realised Peter had written his autobio, but I'm not really surprised - he can write, he always has plenty of opinions and is generally interesting and critical about things as well as funny, so hopefully the book will be worth it.

[gwynnega]

I'm glad you had such a lovely birthday and such excellent gifts!

[sovay]

Happy birthday!

Thank you!

I'm picturing Sweeney Todd meets pitcher plant.

spatch dubbed it "the office chair of the Fae" and was only surprised it wasn't ringed by a mysterious border of Post-It notes.

[sovay]

Happy October birthday!

Thank you!

*hugs*

[sovay]

Belated happy birthday! I'm glad the day held lovely things, and I hope this trip around the sun is infinitely better than the last.

*hugs*

Thank you!

[sovay]

I'm glad you had such a lovely birthday and such excellent gifts!

Thank you! It was a good kind of day to have in the middle of everything.

[tollers_and_jack]

This sounds like a gorgeous birthday! Damp autumn decay is simply The Thing. And I love your outfit.

[sovay]

This sounds like a gorgeous birthday! Damp autumn decay is simply The Thing. And I love your outfit.

Thank you so much! I love the sea, but I also love trees and stone, especially in autumn.

[teenybuffalo]

Happy birthday! I like that we both have this season of the year.

[konstantya]

Happy belated birthday! I like your sweater and...necklace? (If I'm seeing a cord there and reading things properly?)

[sovay]

Happy birthday! I like that we both have this season of the year.

Thank you! Happy birthday to you! I hope it was lovely.

[sovay]

Happy belated birthday! I like your sweater and...necklace? (If I'm seeing a cord there and reading things properly?)

Thank you! It is a necklace: it is an onyx cowrie with a compass inset into it, reverse-engineered with my father in 2020 because I could not heist this artifact. (We would have used a money cowrie as in the original, but the quarantine interfered with international orders and we had similar trouble locating a reliable compass of suitably minute size.) The sweater is sleeveless and was knitted by moon_custafer.

[konstantya]

OHHHHH, that's even cooler, re: the necklace! I wouldn't mind seeing a closer or more detailed photograph of yours, if you ever have the time/inclination.

Also, handmade sweaters (whether sleeveless or not) are the best, and those are some lovely colors in the one you're wearing. <3

[sovay]

I don't think I'd quite realised Peter had written his autobio, but I'm not really surprised - he can write, he always has plenty of opinions and is generally interesting and critical about things as well as funny, so hopefully the book will be worth it.

I am enjoying it very much, despite having to hold it at literal arm's length because of the size of the print; it's informative and delightful and he writes about his younger self with a thoughtfulness which I appreciate as a reader and which does not interfere in the slightest with him telling very funny stories about things he did or which happened to him including in the course of writing the book. He has a very good style and reads like a genuinely interesting person, which is different from a person who has interesting stories. Recommended, and I imagine the audiobook is fantastic.

[edit] Mentioned in passing, but I thought I should pass it on to you:

"I was keen to make The Last Detective; it reminded me of a show I'd watched as a teenager called Public Eye that starred Alfred Burke. With its easy pace and gentle humour and world-weary central character, it had been a success for many years."

[thisbluespirit]

"I was keen to make The Last Detective; it reminded me of a show I'd watched as a teenager called Public Eye that starred Alfred Burke. With its easy pace and gentle humour and world-weary central character, it had been a success for many years."

Aw, thanks! I felt sure that on one of the commentaries he'd talked about watching something, and then got the DVDs and it had started with spending ages watching the detective make a cup of tea, and he was commenting on the slowness of that (but then it got going and was great still), and it's been niggling at the back of my mind that it must surely have been PUblic Eye, but I couldn't remember which commentary. So thank youoo! <3

ETA: Last Detective isn't as good as PE, though, lol. (But I can see that with the character indeed.)