Saturday 3rd July, warm and clear, tempered by a cool breeze, fair-weather cloud up high.

So, I watched Michael Hastings getting interviewed on Democracy Now, courtesy of Common Dream (who are having a fund-raising drive, by the way) and here's the link: http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/07/01-1

& then I thought I might as well read the whole Runaway General article on Rolling Stone, which I did & I was surprised, though not really, at what a loyal, tactful and patriotic piece it was. Didn't spot the words Blood for Oil anywhere, not a whisper about mineral wealth or any other ulterior motive for the growing death toll. Yes, throwing money at a corrupt government, while at the same time sending death squads to roam around racking up extrajudiciary kills of "insurgents" probably isn't the way to win hearts and minds, but all the corrupt officials were Afghanis, after all. Yes, President Obama instantly fell into the pit he'd been determined to avoid, does anybody think he didn't? Yes, the war is unwinnable and yes the President actually said so, practically literally in the same sentence as his promise to send a shedload more troops, but that's undisputed fact too, isn't it? And yes, McChrystal was actively involved in an unwise attempt to hide a celebrity friendly-fire incident; yes, he may have made the mistake of being in the same room while some torture -I'm-sorry-I meant-enhanced interrogation was going on & that was foolish. But again, this is not doing the dirt, the dirt is old dirt. At the worst, Hastings turned back the carpet. On the tv he gave the impression of being uncomfortable at the fate he'd brought down on those good old boys who'd hung out with him and trusted him a little too much. He claimed he'd been amazed that the general actually got fired & maybe that was even true.

But I don't think he should blame himself too much. Someone's got to take the candy from these ferocious (and vain?) military heroes, at least every now and then.

And all this is perfectly normal. All wars are like this. They go on too long, they become unpopular. The Generals hate the politicians, the politicians hate the Generals, the natural born fearless killers (some of them extremely bright and charismatic) just want to get on with their bloody work, in the fond embrace of the natural born fearless killers on the other side. . . (Afghanistan! What a culture! The Perfect Place to hold a Proper war, no wonder it's been so popular!) And most of the soldiers, most of the time, would rather NOT actually murder people but the culture makes it impossible for them to confess this shameful weakness, & so the game goes on. Nobody knows anything, every battleplan goes awry, the local chiefs are never credible partners, tell all that to Napoleon or Wellington, you'd see them shake their heads and grin. (Well, allowing for temperament). Nothing is wrong with the war in Afghanistan, nothing new in these problems. It's well within normal limits.

What happened in the USA in the sixties was a bit of an innovation, but that proud and positive refusal to fight came from a particular historical situation. It couldn't happen again. Nah. Those songs are over.

Happy Independence Day, cousins.

Tuesday 29th June, unexpectedly much cooler, grey skies.

Making heroic efforts to organise myself, remember to charge phone before setting out for the South Bank this afternoon; still working on my H.G Wells talk for "From Kent To Cosmopolis", which has sucked me in, as essays tend to do; thinking about writing, horrified by how little time I've had for the core activity (ie writing fiction) any time in the last 18months. Or more. Failing to work out how to use Facebook for the benefit of the Oxfam event on 8th July. (This is the downside of having as little as possible to do with social networking. I don't mind if I cease to exist in the C21 sense of extended-personhood, but when I need to use the network for a good cause, it'd be an idea if I knew how. . .) And then a phone call from Charlton, Gabriel's, on the point of leaving for an extensive (well, Switzerland and Germany, I think) Brighton Youth Orchestra tour as piano soloist suddenly engulfed in a housing crisis, changing the plans for this evening: oh, and his clothes are all wet, as he left them out to dry last night and it rained, what to do?

Do not stuff them in a bin bag, says I. Drape them around your room.

My copies of The Time Machine and Dhalgren (Gollancz Masterworks) have arrived. The Time Machine's a solid little hardback volume, and the shades of gold livery suits it. Something a bit odd about Dhalgren, all the italics have come up in Bold, it looks stranger because the normal font is quite thin and spidery.

Last night, in the clear twilight about 9.30: swifts swarming up high, must have been fifteen or twenty of them, and later, what an amazing moon rising above Race Hill, just barely past the full, glowing pale apricot, the mares and brightest craters wonderfully clear through binoculars.

Think I'll go and check on Fred, my latest froglet, again. Called Fred because it is so tiny, arms and legs like thread. Timid too, how can I dump it in the big bad pool.

Sussex University Alumni News: someone wants respondents for a psychology survey. "In most ways my life is close to my ideal" Agree strongly. . . Disagree strongly.

My life is bounded by a walnut shell, and I am queen of infinite space. Except that I have bad dreams, and they are really bad.

Deep Horizon,
Blood for Oil in Afghanistan,
Starvation and desperation mounting in the wake of climate change;
already, and we've barely started,
The death of the living world, the casualty list growing longer and more grievous
Fresh Faced Public schoolboys governing to keep The Markets happy. . .
My family's gothic novel; but that's minor except it eats my time.

(just a random sample)

So how should I answer?

Wednesday 23rd June, light breeze, clear and very warm. In the evening, having set aside my various struggles, I sit out on the patio re-reading "Life" so I'll know what I said about the "disappearence of the Y chromosome", should anyone ask me at the Seeing Further Cafe Scientifique next week. Balmy air. Swifts hawking and shrieking in the clear sky, those Nordic tiger moths, who seem to have settled down and colonised the gardens, batting about up in the treetops, a big white three quarter moon on the rise. It's midsummer, soon be July and time to pack up and go away. The squirrels have taken all our strawberries, it's nearly the end of another working year.

Friday 18th June, grey skies clearing to blue, it's going to be a warm calm day, a break from that chill breeze. Good swift-watching over the Crescent Gardens, am.

I'm trying to see both sides of the US Government's scrap with BP, and I'm failing. I keep seeing only one side, a falling-out among thieves. I keep seeing Hayward as the latest Saddam Hussein, Congress have their disgraced tool in the dock, they're pounding on him, all self-righteous. The Black Gold Saddam's stonewalling because he just doesn't get it, he's saying to himself, but they told me it would be okay, they ALLOWED me to break the rules, they told me all the crimes against humanity would be over-looked, as long as I made myself useful. They may not like me but they NEED me. . But now they're playing the old We never met you, game, and Hayward is thinking it's just a show trial, I just have to sit tight and say as little as possible, it'll be over and business as usual again

Sucker. I have no sympathy, and none with your Secret Masters, either.

Frog Nursery catastrophe. I moved the bowl to clean the tabletop, and the froglets' rock fell on Red Snail. I heard an awful little gasp, rescued the trapped casualty and put it in a water glass, where it slowly seemed to recover. I'm hoping it's okay, it is walking around again. But the rock crushed half the rim of the ramshorn, and I don't know what all else. Poor red snail, so sorry.

Tuesday 14th June, blustery breeze, cloudy skies, cool. None of the promised thunderstorms for us as yet.

When you get your four legs, you are taken away. Nobody knows where, nobody knows why, nobody comes back. It's a kind of death.

Hello, a result. Incredibly, there may be five varieties of the Higgs Boson.
I never doubted it!

Sunday 13th June, cool and cloudy. The frog nursery is emptying fast, and the tads in the plasterer's tub are getting legs. I'm hoping I'll have them all safely transferred to the wild by the end of the month.

Safely, mm, lot of cats out there, and little frogs like to get out of the water and roam. . . Well, my part will be done.

How do you feel about racist 80s invasion film Red Dawn being remade with America being occupied by China instead of the USSR? Perhaps they'll take a leaf out of Rainbow Bridge and accept it… or perhaps not.

In answer to your query, dear plashing, I haven't really thought about it. I don't suppose I'll be tempted to go and see Red Dawn II if I even get the chance* However, now that you've poked me into looking up Red Dawn I, I may have to add it to my Love Film list.

I don't remember paying any attention to Red Dawn I in 1984, but I do remember watching the first V that summer, and finding it great fun. Despite the slightly disquieting notion of a great big country like the USA indulging in a not-fair-we-never-got-occupied-by-the-Nazis wish-fulfillment fest.

A nice little piece of news for me this morning. A couple of months ago I was searching "Universe" images, to get ideas for the cover of my next US short story collection, and fell in love with a quirky poster that turned out to belong to CERN (it's from Microcosm, their educational wing). Kath Wilham of Aqueduct Press wrote to them, nothing daunted, and asked what their terms for use might be. Our terms would be that we'd need to read some of the stories first, came the reply.

Ah, well, I thought. That's torn it.
But no, we have permission!
Excellent, and thank you Microcosm

*(Oh dear, it's just occured to me, maybe the mysterious delays dogging the release of this highly undiplomatic Homeland war movie are caused by a cunning decision to change the alliance. Now it's going to be the despicable Brits helping the Chinese out!).

Friday 11th June, at noon a lightening and clearing sky.

Rain. Real rain at last, drenching rain all night, brimming the pools. This morning everything in the garden beaten down, and looking fresher for it tho' in places precarious. The yellow flags in the fishpool, threatening to go splat, may need some remedial help to get back on their feet.

And at last I have the official letter, confirming that the long, troubled marriage between Gollancz and Gwyneth Jones is over. I'd been planning to leave since the firm treated Rainbow Bridge rather shabbily, and then they did the same with Spirit (a publication date of "29th December", plus "muddled" failure to submit her current novel for the Clarke award, sends a pretty clear message to an author). I was being shown the door & I was glad to get the hint. Fair enough, best for both sides. This situation made the Clarke award shortlist & event a little embarrassing, but never mind, it passed.

It's taken me ages to disentangle because I wanted to secure custody of the kids. Arguably I should have quit them long ago, for there was never, ever a good time, I'm a feminist, for heaven's sake: but I am so lazy, plus, fatally, I don't write for money. I write what I d**n well please: to an extent that makes me indifferent to status, signals, sexism, all the office politics side of publishing. Anyway, no recriminations, so long, thanks for a modicum of fish, I'm glad it's over.

Wednesday 9th June, warm and overcast.

I beat the Cave of Ordeals! Last night, about ten minutes past midnight, I finished off the last Darknut, Level 49. I am so proud. It only took me about ten tries.

(This is my only tip. Don't save until you've beat it, there's no point.)

You may laugh, but how many other 58yrold female klutzes, whose FIRST KINETIC COMPUTER GAME was Pong, who remembers being in a cave full of twisty passages all the same...who have tackled Zelda TP's most absurdly extended and plot-token-free slaughterfest sidequest, and come out the other end triumphant do you know?

Tell me that!

Tuesday 8th June, soft grey sky, a dropping rain.

Saturday, warm and clear, a great day for swift-watching. To And's for a bbq in the afternoon, where I got into an argument with Lulu, and I think Suzy also, about the seal of the confessional of all things. When you come up against these long-ex Catholics, totally unbelieving Catholics, who once kept the rules by rote when they were children, and find them still defending the wicked ways of the organisation, while not meaning anything by it at all: well, it's an eye-opener. . . They really knew what they were doing, the great minds of the Mediterranean World, when they put that mighty machine together, circa 17 hundred years ago (when the Mediterranean World stretched from Britain to the Sahel).

I shouldn't be allowed out in public. I have opinions. Returned home in the June twilight, chastened by my inability to mingle, and we sat out on the patio for a long time, watching the swifts. Perfection in the evening garden, the young green plums, the clustered spires of aquilegia, foxglove towers, rising from drifts of forgetmenots, all the pale colours, instead of fading, coming out clearer as the twilight deepened.

Sunday I destroyed the moment, by ripping out the forgetmenot tangles, shaking them for seeds & planting in the Mediterranean Mix I've been nuturing in home grown plugs in the greenhouse, a haven of safety. Then it rained, at last, & the slugs came out. This morning I've lost the lot, except for a few refugees I dug up again and carried off to the concrete corridor. It's awful what slugs can do, to gardens where pesticides are forbidden. & if you tell me, like those coy Organic Gardening Articles, about garlic, sharp sand, beer traps, I will BITE you. Just because I believe in the impossible doesn't mean I'm stupid, or naturally subservient, or that I never think about it.

We go on trying, and find the plants that will survive.

Friday 4th June, cloudless blue a clear warm day, how quickly roses open, from buds to fullblown, the moment there is actually heat in the air.

This is from the comments box on a Common Dream link to the Guardian story of eyewitness activist accounts. I've heard of Israeli dual citizenship high ups in the US government, eg that Home Security fellow, before now, but I never knew it was like this!


http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/01-3



From Common Dream:



READY? DUAL CITIZENSHIP :


"AMERICAN / ISREALI >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dual Citizens
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> in the American Government


Attorney General - Michael Mukasey
Head of Homeland Security - Michael Chertoff
Chairman Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - Richard Perle
Deputy Defense Secretary (Former) - Paul Wolfowitz
Under Secretary of Defense - Douglas Feith
National Security Council Advisor - Elliott Abrams
Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff (Former) - “Scooter” Libby
White House Deputy Chief of Staff - Joshua Bolten
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs - Marc Grossman
Director of Policy Planning at the State Department - Richard Haass
U.S.
Trade Representative (Cabinet-level Position) - Robert Zoellick
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - James Schlesinger
UN Representative (Former) - John Bolton
Under Secretary for Arms Control - David Wurmser
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - Eliot Cohen
Senior Advisor to the President - Steve Goldsmith
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary - Christopher Gersten
Assistant Secretary of State - Lincoln Bloomfield
Deputy Assistant to the President - Jay Lefkowitz
White House Political Director - Ken Melman
National Security Study Group - Edward Luttwak
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - Kenneth Adelman
Defense Intelligence Agency Analyst (Former) - Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
National Security Council Advisor - Robert Satloff
President Export-Import Bank U.S.
- Mel Sembler
Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families - Christopher Gersten
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Public Affairs
- Mark Weinberger
White House Speechwriter - David Frum
White House Spokesman (Former) - Ari Fleischer
Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board - Henry Kissinger
Deputy Secretary of Commerce - Samuel Bodman
Under Secretary of State for Management - Bonnie Cohen
Director of Foreign Service Institute - Ruth Davis "

Tuesday 1st June, cool and overcast, three swifts shrilling over my head at 7.30, haven't seen the newts for days as toads have muddied up the pool.

News from the frog nursery: my second little frog also died, and when I changed the water I found a tattered corpse in the silt, so the cats were innocent. Some frogs must disintegrate, or maybe I wasn't feeding them right. Now I have a new four legged froglet and two more coming up fast. Feeding them on pond larvae (for when they can eat live food) and tropical fish flakes. Heartening sight at the end of our walk on the High Weald on Sunday, through woodland drenched in birdsong and buttercup and sorrel dry pasture. . . the mill lodge at Bateman's Mill (where Rudyard Kipling got his electricity from) teeming with big fat black tadpoles. Putting my puny pets to shame.

Anyone reading this who reads Swedish and wd like an Ann Halam book? It's riktigt spännande, and I know that's good (the rest of the review nb may not be so rosy). I have a spare, and I will send it to you if you contact me.

There was a time, long ago, when I only valued, personally (I mean, as opposed to appreciating books on reading lists, unavoidable classics, books on my parents' shelves) books I believed were entirely singular. I found my treasure, by chance, in second hand bookshops, on stalls, at Jumble Sales.You couldn't buy books like these from a shiny branch of Waterstones, you would never see them reviewed. Arthur Machen's stories came into this category (every singular one of them). I was thrilled when I found a collection of his works, some with uncut pages, lurking on the P stacks in Sussex University library.

Now the dusty backstreet bookshops where lost treasure could be found are rare, lost treasures themselves, and even The Golden Centipede has a web presence. (I love the fact that the cutting I've linked is from NZ. I once found A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire in a charity shop in Auckland, when all I knew of the Campfire Girls came from intriguing references in the Abbey Girls series), & I recognise a different kind of singularity. Genre is serial, genre readers know the plot, they read to find out exactly how things are going to turn out this time. Proper highbrow mainstream writers write singular books, each one a new start.

Still, occasionally I find a book, such as The End Of Mr Y. I'd never heard of Scarlett Thomas, I just saw this book in the library, picked it up every now and then, and put it down a few times. I assumed it was to do with sex chromosomes, and confused it with the comic book series Y: The Last Man. In the end, I took it home with me, & discovered, terrific, wonderful, it's not the Y chromosome at all. It's Mr Y as in Mystery, or maybe Mr Why?, if you want to preserve the motif of a Virgilian guide to the Underworld. A young woman living the life of an Arthur Machen character, starving scholar, obsessed with strange semi-occult C19 mysticism. She finds a weird book she has longed to find, in a dusty backstreet shop, and. . . and I was absolutely sold until about p.206, when the seedy, desolate half-world reverie (Arthur Machen is back, decor updated for the C21 and he's a girl!) suddenly gave way to a paranormal thriller plot with holy water homeopathy & renegade men-who-stare-at-goats and my attention wavered. I looked up the mysterious Ms Thomas, something I'd promised myself I would not do until the end, & found she's teaching creative writing at Kent, & has a "classy oddball" sheet a mile long.

What'll I do now? The trouble with singular writers is that each is a genre in his or herself, as unmistakable and specific as Westerns, SF, Thrillers etc. As you may know, Gravity's Rainbow is one of my major touchstones, but I don't value anything else by Pynchon. No, it's no use, it's like reading the same book over and over again & noticing everything that jars. What if the "girls' boarding school" bit is the true Thomas? I don't like fiction about the mean thoughts of mean girls, so I'll be repelled. . .

I'll give her the benefit of the doubt of course, no matter how the end of mystery turns out. Classy genre writing gets called oddball, and she seems to have a detective series going. Excellent.

Saturday 22nd May, warm and clear, a fine day for taking Australians to see Lewes, with a proper castle, cream tea, cucumber sandwiches & everything but the beach. Beach at Newhaven, the only actual sand for miles around, has been cancelled, due to a dispute between Lewes Council and Natural Heritage or some such who run the carpark. Ah, well. Time to get in some birdwatching.







You had to be there, but this was such fun.
What d'you think? Do I have a career in conceptual art? Be honest, don't be afraid of hurting my feelings. . .

May 20th, early morning mist swiftly burned off, a clear blue sky, a truly warm day shaping up.
Went to see Four Lions last night. The Duke's was stuffed, which was not the case for AGORA! I laughed, or snorted, occasionally, but I find I agree with the Observer review, and I'm not surprised at the the Muslim community's reaction to this kind of treatment. It was funnier, better acted, altogether a better product but at bottom as trivial and crass as Nathan Barley. The man's a fool. I won't take another punt on this director. But the punters around me who were roaring with laughter all the way through seemed to disagree. It's amazing what people will laugh at, esp the English. They get primed, they've been told something's funny, so they laugh and they just go on heartlessly laughing, without ever engaging brain.

Six swift hawking in the gulf of blue evening air last night. It's not enough, but better news of this year's migration on the Swiftwatch page.

Finally did that housekeeping on Gwynethann, the Wild Hearts correction, and updated the Books page to reflect current stocks.

That Volcano: The fallout has reached me! All the cheap advance fares to Manchester, in commuter hours, have been booked, through to August. Auggh. Oh well, I suffer but I'm compensated, domestic air travel has been judged not worth counting on.

Thursday 13th May, brilliant blue morning sky, a little warmer today.

Cold and grey, cold and grey. Just before six, yesterday evening, I shut up shop and went down to the garden; knelt on the cold wet grass at the margin of the fish pool to see what I could see. Three brown and gold mottled frogs, in different spots, crouched on the bottom and among the roots of the yellow flag, looking as if they'd been gently flattened. Not doing much. The two newts, walking around at a leisurely pace, the male's crest clearly visible. Peter says they might have been coming here for years, and we just never spotted them. The flag roots make a wonderful tangled underwater cavern, now I can see them, and until last year there was the water lily (which we got rid of in the end, it was taking up too much space, tho' I liked bringing the lilies indoors). He could be right. Far overhead, one swift came tossing and fluttering out from above the houses, and then vanished again. I said the swifts are here, they're not really. I saw a tiny band of them arrive, at the end of April; since then only fleeting glimpses. I'm afraid the population, in my neighbourhood at least, has diminished beyond the point of no return. They will be gone, like the sparrows.

Did you know, newts can live for 20 or 30 years. The smooth newt's family name is Triturus vulgaris / Lissotriton vulgaris. I have two Tritons staying in my garden. Did you know, male newts lay eggs, (spermatopheres, hope that's spelled right) which the female newt fertilises in her cloaca? Now there's a neat model for reproductive sex role reversal, wonder if anyone has used it?

In the garden at Number 10, two fresh-faced public schoolboys stand behind lecterns. They already have their act worked out, but it's a bit crude as yet. Cameron speaks. Clegg turns toward him, adopting a faintly Byronic pose, and gazes soulfully for a count of eight, nine, ten seconds, then glances modestly away; then gazes again. The blushing bride. When Clegg speaks, Cameron does exactly the same thing: adopts the pose, gazes soulfully (he doesn't have to look up, however), glances aside, resumes his shy adoring gaze. The bashful swain.

Clegg has to do a lot more of the gazing and glancing part: which I suppose is fair.

I wonder if Cameron really will cancel the third runway at Heathrow. I think the Lib Dems are going to be eaten alive, they'll help the Tories to be better people the way gut bacteria aid digestion.

No, I think the Lib Dems are going to be like Hove, actually. More respectable, but just, well, not Brighton. The bit tagged on the end.

Monday 10th May, brilliant blue sky at 7am, swiftly shrouded: heavy cloud now with sun breaking through. Cold, dry, grey-skies Maytime weather pattern persists, same as it has for a decade. Except a bit colder.

Tragedy has struck. Overnight, between Saturday and Sunday, one of my froglets mysteriously disappeared. There's a faint chance it disappeared under its own steam, and we'll find a tiny shrivelled corpse under the furniture one day, but they don't usually climb out of the water until their tails have practically vanished. I'm afraid a simpler explanation comes to mind. I spent a couple of hours yelling at both the cats, whenever I saw them.

GO AWAY! YOU KILLED MY FROG!

YOU BRUTES! YOU ATE MY BABY!

I'm sure that did a lot of good. Bowl now has a swiftly improvised cat-proof perspex cover.



On the plus side, a pair of newts have turned up in the fish pool, which is beautifully clear now. (And this possibly explains why there are zip, nada, not a single frog tadpole left alive in there) I hoped they might be Great Crested, which I have never seen in the wild, because one of them does seem to have a crest, but internet id swiftly proved them to be Smooth Newts. I wonder are they just passing through (newts get about a lot) or will they stay!

Many thanks to Matthew Johnson for a correction to my essay "Wild Hearts In Uniform". The correct derivation of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin's nickname will be added on Gwynethann real soon now. I meant to work on that site on Sunday, but I am a wastrel and made another attempt at the Cave Of Ordeals instead. (My last attempt was in March; then our big Wire fest, and other less pleasant things intervened, so RPG playing was put on hold). I have lost my edge, one loses an edge swiftly at my age, but I'll get it back.

I like it when people pay attention. & I like it very much when people who don't necessarily share my opinions find my criticism thoughtful and interesting. Not so happy about being found to be "angry", as in Farah Mendlesohn's review on Strange Horizons. You'd think, wouldn't you, that it would be a bigoted sf-misogynist, who would review work like mine and announce "Oooh, lookit that angry feminist! She's so angry". But I'm sure these female reviewers don't mean to be destructive. On the contrary, I feel I'm somewhat being used as a human shield. Gwyneth is "angry" because Farah can't afford to be; Gwyneth is "angry" because Cheryl can't afford to be (that was for Life in 2004). At least Cheryl's not so sure she's a feminist herself, these days (cf her review of Spirit,where we learn that "the feminists" are down on transexuals). . . And good for her on that. I don't think I'll ever convince Farah that her kind of feminism, a feminism that offends nobody in the boys' club, does no good to anyone. It doesn't even work as appeasement, because nowadays, the whole world having taken such a lurching swing to the right, at the dawn of this century, the hardline sf misogynists cannot be appeased.

It's not easy but it is possible to be out as a feminist, in UKSF. My long survival proves that. It'll be uncomfortable at times, and your books will catch a few mean, unscrupulous reviews: but whose books do not, no matter what their politics?). And on the plus side, the respect you gain, for yourself and for feminism, from men and women of goodwill who may or may not share your opinions, will be the real thin

Saturday May 8th, cold and cloudy, random bursts of fine chilly rain. Real Festival weather, as we say in our city. . . And how about those trainspotters! You won't see me say this very often, but down here in my sea of blue, and though I was very glad I had a different choice, I was proud of them. NB, if they fail to set the mainland adrift this time, that feeling will be withdrawn.

Friday 7th May, cloudy skies clearing to blue, a little late sunshine. Fairly cool.

Greetings from a small green dot in the midst of a sea of blue. . .

(my email heading for the day) I spent yesterday travelling up to Manchester and back, voting on the way to the station of course, and this felt a little strange, because twice in the Bold As Love series there's a crucial parliamentary vote, and both times, the perspective is given by one of the characters travelling, on trains, on the London Underground, and it's Springtime both times, too. Well, it would be, wouldn't it. I don't know if I looked at people and wondered how they'd vote, however: I had other things on my mind. Got back fairly late, stayed up until half past one, but then ran out of steam & went to bed, thinking on all those media people, the media-faces of the UK, and I don't usually really like any of them, but what fun they were having, staying up all night, all excited & I blessed them unaware, like the Ancient Mariner, for no reason except I liked to see them having fun. . .

Still feeling strange. I like coalition government, I think it is the future, and the fact that politicians do not like the idea is a very good reason to suspect it's a good thing. But here we are about to be ruled by not one but two fresh-faced Public Schoolboys, oh goodie, & not that I'm any sort of fan of Gordon Brown, not at all, but was it for this that my mother worked her little socks off in that long ago campaign in 1945? & yet Tim Farron got through, with a very handy-sized swing too, Caroline Lucas got the first Green seat, so we're sorted, me & mine (can't count Streatham, since the incumbents there are in Sao Paulo). and Gabriel rang me up to tell me he voted, first time (he's one of those bright-eyed hordes) & he had worked at it and taken an online questionaire (sp?) which showed the Party opinions with the labels torn off. and it turns out he is Green! (what a surprise, you may say).

Enough of this frivolity. I have legs! As of today, I have two froglets with four legs apiece.

Now that is definitely something to celebrate.

PS, the swifts are here.

Wednesday 5th May, cloudy but warmer, few spots of rain around noon.

Here's the tadpole news: it's mixed. I had a big die-back in the yellow bucket, last week when the weather was very warm, and this week a moderate die-back in the plasterer's tub, no obvious reason why, except maybe that I had stopped covering the tub at night, and we've had a couple of very cold ones. On the plus side, my pets (the tadpoles reared indoors) are doing well. Two of them have well-developed back legs, a body shape that gets more defined by the hour and evil, glittering little eyes. . . (I've noticed this before, but it's purely an adolescent thing, never met a grown frog that didn't have perfectly mild-mannered gaze). I'm feeding them on the white of hardboiled egg, Peter having rejected the idea of stomped slug suspended on a thread as too disgusting & the other tadpole-rearing site suggestion, organic chicken breast, raw or cooked, as too ridiculous. (It doesn't have to be organic of course. One of the respondents gives a charming insight into her domestic habits: take a chunk of chicken tikka rinse it and "suspend on a thread".

The suspend on a thread thing is supposed to create an entertaining feeding frenzy, as the tads struggle to rear up and grab the tasty morsel, but I haven't tried it yet.

Many thanks to Ben Lund and Richard Palmer for their book orders, that's £25 so far to Amnesty and another £22 on the way.

Remember I said I'd enjoyed the Royal Society's 350th anniversary celebration essays, Seeing Further? I've now been invited, due to Sarah LeFanu, to speak at one of the celebratory events at the end of June. It's called Who Needs Men Anyway, and is all about the fragility of the Y chromosome. I'm to tell the people about the feminist science fiction angle. Thanks very much Sarah. I'll give it a go, how could I resist. More on this later.

Reading, Georgina Ferry's biography of Dorothy Hodgkin and enjoying it very much. In the past I've marked Dorothy Hodgkin down because, as you may know, our only female Nobel Laureate Chemist always maintained that being a woman had been no obstacle to her career. Easy enough for you to say, princess, was my verdict. Possibly you never noticed that you were rich and privileged. . . practically born with that proverbial £500 a year in your pocket.
But there's a lot more to it than that.

Watching: Saw The Ghost, thought it was okay. Watched the first episode of "Luther" Idris Elba's post-Stringer Bell debut on the tv last night. Won't be trying that again. Oh dear, oh dear. Crude, shallow, silly. We're back to that old favourite, lots and lots of running around meant to simulate urgency, the maverick cop with psychotic behaviour problems, and I do believe a Salander-copy-cat, the kooky, violent young female genius sidekick, but this time, hey, how cool, she's gone over to the Dark Side. Ridiculous.


And now, at last, back to work? I'm trying.

Monday 26th April, weather same as it was five minutes ago:

Shell-Shock Chic

Anyway, besides finishing Seeing Further over the weekend (definitely worth getting out of the library, if not buying), I finally watched The Hurt Locker, which had been the top of my high priority list on Love Film for about a year. Do they take any notice?, do they h**l. If you ever show the slightest preference for unorthodox titles, that's what you get until they have run out of other takers for the current hits. Or at least that's my impression. My verdict, it's certainly intense, every shot intense, and that's the director's art, and that's its Wow factor. But if anyone found out anything they didn't know about how "war brutalises young men and makes them psychotic" I am sorry for that person. Plus, for an anti-war movie, this is an awful lot like playing Counterstrike (which I cite because i happen to know, from years ago, substitute Call of Duty or whatever war-porn game you like best).

I was puzzled as to how a really great, hard-hitting Iraq war movie was an Oscar movie too, in this day & age. Now I get it. The fact is, if you want to make an anti-war movie, you have to ask the audience to admire the people would rather be doing something else. Whereas if you want to make an intense, rich, passionate portrait of men at war, and what heroically awful consequences their heroic exploits have for the psyche, that is not what you will choose to do.

Hm. To be fair, I have no idea if Bigelow was even intending an anti-war message. Being "against the Iraq War" doesn't necessarily mean being "against" the absolutely gorgeously strong images War affords, and you can't have the images without the real life version.

Things finished with. As of last Friday, that's the script of the US version of my career-spanning short story collection (interestingly different choice of stories from Grazing The Long Acre: and I had nothing to do with the line-up) done and dusted, cover image chosen and everything. Could be out in October from Aqueduct.

There's bread and cheese upon the shelf
If you want anymore you can sing it yourself

Monday 26th April, a change in the weather at last, a grey soft sky; feels cool

Something that didn't fit into the Masterworks intro I was writing: I'm not a fan of the multiverse* or "many worlds" proposal, because I must be missing something: I don't see that it gets us anywhere. Supposing it's true that every possible (ie not self-contradictory/ self-destructive) variant on the State of all States exists, and ours is one version in a stunningly huge sea of the possibilities, that still leaves us with the problem that "many worlds" was supposed to solve: ie the fact that we cannot make the laws of physics add up. Quantum mechanics won't reconcile with Newtonian mechanics here, and there's that 90% of "missing mass" issue, here, which nobody can resolve, though not for want of trying. Plus, saying we live here because this is the Goldilocks Universe where everything is just right, is just crypto-Intelligent Design by stealth.

I like Joanna Russ's version, the braided possibilities of The Female Man, because it offers what seems to me a really satisfying insight. 1. There is only one other "universe" or "cosmos" we can compare, for complexity, indefiniteness (is that a word?), multiplicity, with the one we perceive "out there" & that is the human self. Every time you lay down a memory, every time you recall a memory, a new neuronal self springs into being; each of us is a multiverse. And yet, unless clinically insane, each of these multiverses can resolve, a trick we manage all the time (like the four Js at the end of the story) into a coherent single whole.

*I like strings, because strings remind me that "Electrons are not things" (I think it was David Bohm said that, but might be remembering wrong). I don't like those extra dimensions. I think they are a joke. This is because I am old enough to have been taught c17th century history of ideas as an undergraduate at Sussex University. I remember the mad cat's cradle that was the pre-Copernican system, just before it went bust. Just the loops people were jumping through, trying to explain the retrograde motion of Mars, if Mars was orbiting the Earth, was a sight to behold. So I look at the struggle to make the appearences conform to our present ideas, I think epicycles, and I'm just convinced something's going to give, there's a gestalt flip hovering in the wings, that will blow all this scrabbing away


Seeing Further ed. Bill Bryson

Why so cosmological all of a sudden. Partly Russ, and partly Peter gave me this essay collection published for the Royal Society's 350th birthday, for my birthday this year. Just finished it. Inevitably I found it patchy, liked some essays, bounced off others, but it was very nostalgic, given my distant past. I liked Neal Stephenson's piece on Monads, because I thought Leibnitz was wonderful when I first met his work. I liked the chapter on bridges by Henry Petroski, because it was so concrete, and the great beasts in the pictures so brilliant. & I really liked Oliver Morton's Art/Science piece on Land Art (eg Andy Goldsworthy) & unravelling those weaselly expressions "saving the Planet", "saving the Environment". Cogent and unexpectedly poetic. Georgina Ferry was inspiring, and about the only entry (no, I checked, it WAS the only entry) that featured women doing science. And special mention to Gregory Benford, for the "Darwin-Wallace Theory". About time somebody started a movement in that direction

Wednesday 21st April, weather unchanged, still the same dry, brilliant, somewhat pitiless, high pressure blue skies, scool breezes and clear nights.

Last night we ate my last two little Gold Bunnies & that's the end of the holidays.

The tadpoles are thriving, having been left in Gabriel's tender care: some of the garden not so good, boy has mind like machine: he will do what you ask, faithfully, despite his huge committment to Ravel and Ligoti (sp?), but you have to give him specific instructions, he's never going to say to himself, hm, a drying breeze, no rain for days, bet the camellias and the pot chrysanths need a drench. . .

I gather the planes are back online today. Shame, says I, having been untouched by Icelandic Volcano Travel Chaos, because as you know, I don't fly. Nice to see the online muttering do we really need those d**n things, why don't we just save them for urgent need and special occasions?. C'mon, Gaia, please keep it on this benign scale, but do it again! Do it again!

My particular pet tadpoles, still being reared indoors, are so big and fat they're close to having back legs.

And as for Maytime, here's hoping for better suits, but I live in Brighton, Pavilion, so I'm sorted.

Friday 9th April, clear and bright, powder blue sky, sun like honey

You don't often see that heading on a Gwyneth Jones blogpost, do you? However, yesterday the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill became UK law, and that's worth celebrating.

Plus, the infamous Clause 43 has been deleted from the Digital Economy Bill, and whether you're a photographer, a writer, or any kind of artist, you should be very, very grateful to the people, eg Gill Spraggs at author's rights who would not let that Clause get by them.

Tuesday 6th April, chilly sunshine, clear blue skies

Why am I not outdoors? Because I'm drafting the intro for The Female Man, Gollancz masterworks, (Nov 2010) and because I'm waiting for the pianotuner to finish!

(there's something weird about the synopsis etc of same on wikipedia. Can't quite put my finger on it, but the tone is odd)

In my break, something completely different: I got a letter from Catriona McColl of Ayrshire, reminding me that we'd met once, years ago (at school, when I was visiting as Ann Halam). She's doing fine, she's been working as a Carer, going to college and is buying her own house, but she's still writing sometimes and included this poem with her letter:

No Care

It was dark with only the flickering light from candles
It was quiet with only the sound from a ticking clock
As I sat, a sense of complete relaxation came across me
Like a soul leaving its body
No thoughts, no feelings, no noise

As I sat, calmness in my head and heart, a sly smile slithered across my face. . .
Happiness had found a confused and lonely heart, and pierced it like a dagger

As I sat, realisation hit me like a brick, this feeling was real. . .
this life had just begun

Catriona McColl

Mostly, when you meet kids in Creative Writing workshops, they do what they're supposed to do, well or badly. Or else they give you aggravation (because they're not volunteers). Or they just wait politely for the session to be over. Very, very occasionally, you meet someone with an unforced, original voice, & you may even hear from them again. I realised that what Cat needed was a forum, and more feedback than I could provide, so (I never write poetry myself) I checked out a few sites and settled on allpoetry.com No contraindications on robtex, this place seems to be the business.