I love the new Halloween look!

Three Library Thing users own Purple Homicide, by John Sweeney, an account of Martin Bell’s victory over Neil Hamilton in the Tatton constituency dutring the 1997 election. All three of us also have the following Iain (M) Banks books: A Song Of Stone, The State of the Art, Against a Dark Background, The Bridge, Complicity, Use of Weapons, Feersum Endjinn and Look to Windward. Oh yes, and we also all own Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

I bought the electronic edition from Powell’s online store during the week (easily half the price I would have to pay for a new hardback in a Belgian bookshop). Funnily enough it doesn’t seem to be available any more from that source (check here). Anyway, my PDA’s battery only lasts a couple of hours at a time, so I’m in thr frustrating position of being two-thirds of the way through but can’t get any further today as the charger is at work.

I’ve skimmed enough on-line reviews to know that there is no grand climax coming, but I am really enjoying it so far: in particular, I like the parallelism of Brienne and Jaime’s separate engagements with honour. And we are seeing just enough of the Stark sisters to feel that more is happening there. More on this once I’ve finished it, in what will certainly be a spoiler-laden review behind cut-tags, but here I wanted to flag a couple of linguistic points:

I notice Martin using “one-and-ten”, “two-and-ten”, “three-and-ten” instead of “eleven, twelve, thirteen”. Also “good-daughter” and “good-son” instead of “daughter-in-law” and “son-in-law”. At some point very soon after I have finished A Feast for Crows I will go back and see if he had those usages in the earlier books to, but I don’t think he did – anyone care to set me right on this?

From :

1. What was it like studying at Miskatonic University? You’ll have noticed from my user info that I studied there twenty-five years before I was born, so you’ll forgive me if my memories are a little blurred.

But, gosh, the odd taste of the sherry, the unusual Chapel choral traditions, and the uncanny dwindling of student numbers throughout the years we spent at good old Miskatonic, all left a strong impression. After what happened to the First Eight, the rowing club never really picked up again…

2. Have you ever met a laicized priest? Crumbs, yes. I don’t know any particularly well, but there are a lot of them around. (As I think you know, one of my ex-girlfriends became a nun, and then later came out, both of the order and in the other sense as well.)

3. Who was the last person you lied to? A journalist who asked me for an interview yesterday afternoon, and I replied that I didn’t know enough about the subject and didn’t really have time. If I’d been in the mood I could certainly have made time and talked about the subject, but just didn’t feel like it.

4. What five words do you think are beautiful both in meaning and in sound? This has been a fiendishly difficult question to answer. It’s very difficult to think of individual words – I prefer great sweeping descriptive phrases or sentences. I’ve been very amused by the surveys of “beutiful words” in languages I know, the Dutch opting for the extremely precise if old-fashioned conjunction desalniettemin while German speakers apparently prefer the concept of Habseligkeit (which, I have only just realised, is not really related to Seligkeit). Some words are interesting just because of their oddness – next week, for example, I shall be spending several days in the town of Prčanj, where the “a” is barely pronounced. The town itself is supposedly very beautiful, but few would say the same for the name.

Looking at the famous British Council list of seventy beautiful words, the only one that jumps out at me as having real star quality is tranquillity – not just for its real meaning, but also for its lunar landing associations. Another favourite word of mine that I’m slightly surprised didn’t make it to the list is exotic. I have to admit that after that I am drawing a blank.

If I have to pick five words in total, I’m going to have to reach out beyond English, indeed into languages that I don’t really speak. Next on my list is then the Italian word chiaroscuro, as in the painting style; love the way it sounds, love the way it looks. And after that, the Georgian delicacy khinkali – once tasted, never forgotten. (Georgian is not always a beautiful language – the word for “trainer”, for instance, is  mtsvrtneli, with two syllables.)

I’m getting really desperate now. I think I’ll have to reach into place names as well as ordinary word. Lisdoonvarna is a beautiful word; I’ve never actually been there but it has associations for me of crystal clear days following heavy rain, and a slower pace of life. It seems a good place to finish up this question.

5. Coffee or tea? Coffee – indeed, Nescafé with milk and two sugars. But with the following exceptions:

• Tea with milk – mid-afternoon; all day if I have had very little sleep the night before.
• Tea with milk and sugar – immediately after a long journey.
• Green tea – while eating East Asian food.
• Herbal tea (preferably vervain) – when going to bed.

If you want questions, leave a comment.

From :

1) Your job seems to straddle the line between diplomacy, politics, thinktankery and NGO-ness. Where in those areas would you like to end up? That’s a pretty good description of my job as it is right now! Though while it is somewhere between all four of those categories, is closer to the think-tank/NGO side of the line. Some would question whether there is a clear division between think-tanks and NGOs, but I am not one of them.

At some point I would like to be on the inside, though. I would very much enjoy being an elected politician, but on the other hand am not yet geared up to the process of getting elected after my 1990 and 1996 experiences. If I could have some formal diplomatic role for a few years, perhaps then ending up in electoral politics, I would be pretty pleased.

2) Your kids are growing up going to Belgian schools (I think?). Will they be Belgian? They do indeed go to Belgian schools, and I suspect they will eventually be entitled to Belgian citizenship. Whether they choose to exercise that right is a different matter. I am inclined to feel we’ll keep them on UK or Irish passports, unless and until there is a compelling reason (such as the child’s clearly expressed wish) to get a Belgian one.

3) What positives have you gained from being in fandom? Good question. I almost wonder to what extent I am “in” fandom, though I suppose that participating in half-a-dozen panels at a WorldCon makes any argument that I’m not really that involved look pretty threadbare…

Of course, there’s the excitement that you get from any shared community; but more particularly, the feeling that others share my motivations for reading sf, that it is a literature of ideas, probing beyond the boundaries of this world (whose more sordid aspects occupy my working hours) and looking for new insights into the human condition and our relations with the universe. When I’m properly awake, I find discussing sf with like-mided people an extraordinarily stimulating experience. If I’m tired, I just enjoy reading it and reading about it as an escapist activity.

4) Have you found your faith has helped with accepting your daughters’ disabilities? (is that the right word? illness doesn’t sound right to me.) Your post about B’s first communion has stuck with me as a real and good change from the church as I tend to think of it. Well, thanks. disability is indeed a better word than illness, in that one usually either recovers from or dies from an illness.

I like to think that my faith helps me generally, and am a bit reluctant to single out the family situation in this regard. I have a happy marriage, three beautiful children, and a successful career; much to be thankful for.

I certainly wouldn’t want to go down the line of the worshippers of Our Lady of the Stone in Tienen, near here, who believe that mental disorders can be cured if the correct rituals are performed while wearing the sacred headgear.

5) Will you ever move back to NI? Dunno. A few months back I answered this question (when asked by ) by saying “only if I can afford it”. I should really add that the availability of adequate help with my children would be a big issue as well. Having said that, if all else were equal and I could do my work from in front of a computer screeen anywhere in the world, I think I’d rather do it there than here.

From Bookslut:

75 questions for the budding fantasy writer.

There’s a general strike today, and I have a 9 am breakfast meeting, so I left home at 0700 expecting the traffic to be worse than ususal – yesterday I had to drive to Antwerp, and the heavy traffic meant it took me over an hour to get from my office to the Antwerp turning from the Antwerp ring road, which would normally take about twelve minutes.

But in fact the traffic today was unusually light, and I was in the office before 0800. A better driving experience than some others I’ve had recently…

There are precisely three Library Thing users who have logged copies of Enemies of the System, by Brian Aldiss. All three of us are also the only Library Thing Users to have logged Aldiss’ short story collection, Space, Time and Nathaniel and his novel Earthworks, and also – this one really did surprise me – we are the only Library Thing users to have logged Keith Brooke’s novel Keepers of the Peace.

(We also, all three of us, own Timescape by Gregory Benford, Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge and Excession by Iain M. Banks, but lots of other people have them as well.)

With added me.

Locked post because of copyright:

Will full juice be back for all by . . . Easter?

Q. When am I going to get my electricity back?

A. The latest statement from Florida Power & Light is that “we expect to have all power in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties fully restored by, at the very latest, Easter.”

Q. Why is it taking so long to restore power?

A. Wilma’s unexpectedly strong winds caused major damage to three of FP&L’s five longest extension cords.

Q. Is my water safe to drink?

A. Your water is perfectly safe, although the South Florida Water Authority does recommend that before drinking any water or touching it with your bare hands, you should boil it “until the worms stop moving.”

Q. How are the levees holding up?

A. We spoke to a spokesperson for the South Florida Levee Authority (SFLA), who assured us that South Florida does not have any levees, but if we did, they would definitely be in bad shape.

Q. I keep hearing that, since the traffic lights are out, I should treat a stoplight intersection as if it were a “four-way stop.” What does this mean?

A. It means that, when you reach the intersection, you should do what you normally do at a stop sign here in South Florida.

Q. You mean, ignore it?

A. That is the South Florida way.

Q. Where can I buy gasoline?

A. Vermont.

Q. How will the hurricanes affect the schools?

A. The school year started earlier than ever this year, smack dab in the middle of hurricane season. Incredibly, the school schedule has been severely disrupted by — you are going to be very surprised — hurricanes! Who could have predicted such a thing? In any event, our kids have missed a LOT of school. Many 10th-graders no longer remember the alphabet. This could really hurt our standardized-test scores. So the Broward and Miami-Dade school boards have decided to lengthen the school year by adding a new month, to be inserted between November and December. It will be called “FCATember.”

Q. You’re kidding, right?

A. I don’t know any more.

Q. Why are we getting so many hurricanes lately?

A. Climate experts, after studying changes in ocean-water temperatures over the past 50 years, now believe that the recent increase in hurricane activity is being caused by a cracked mirror in the kitchen of my mother-in-law, Celia Kaufman. It cracked a few weeks ago, and since then not only have we been nailed by roughly a dozen hurricanes, but also Celia had a car accident, my brother in-law Steve hurt his back, the Dolphins offensive line has been penalized for 4,752 false starts, and President Bush, apparently without even realizing it, nominated a former Texas State Lotto executive to the U.S. Supreme Court. “This can’t all be coincidence,” state the climate experts. “Somebody needs to FIX THAT WOMAN’S MIRROR.”

Q. So is the mirror being fixed?

A. FEMA is working on it.

Q. So we are doomed.

A. Correct.

I’m sure many of you saw this when it was broadcast two weeks ago, but apparently Conan O’Brien looks just like President Halonen of Finland (25 MB, avi).

Just yelled at a journalist and put the phone down on her because she was asking stupid questions. Questions like, “Won’t the Kosovo negotiations have great difficulty, given that the two sides have opposite points of view?” To which I answered, “Well, if they had the same point of view, there wouldn’t be a need for negotiations, would there?” But her question, “What about the fact that the Russians have called for a delay in talks starting?” was really the last straw; I said, “No they’re not, they approved the decision to start talks at the UN Security Council on Monday. Next time you call me, do some research first. I find your questions really unprofessional and I have better things to do with my time.”

Normally I can find it in myself to interpret even the most stupid question in such a way as to cover the subject I really want to talk about – and normally journalists don’t mind, as it makes for a more interesting interview. But somehow I couldn’t rise to the occasion this time; still suffering from aftershock I suppose. I hope I haven’t ruined this poor woman’s afternoon. (Though I hope she does do a bit more research before her next interview; and I doubt if she will ever call me again.)

In Slate:

the source of America’s obesity epidemic wasn’t portion size, or lack of exercise, or the decline in smoking. It was the invention of the automatic transmission. Here I was, the typical, atrophied American, barely able to press the clutch without my slack muscles begging for relief. Automatic transmissions became widely available in the 1940s. Over the decades, as Americans have increasingly embraced them, they’ve increasingly increased. Since you need both hands to drive a stick shift, there’s no way you can also be sucking down Slurpees and shoving in Big Macs. It’s because of automatic transmissions that we’re becoming blob people who will soon have to be hoisted into our behemoth vehicles.

Well, it’s a point of view.

Despite yesterday’s drama, I had to get up at 0600 this morning to get into town by train for a breakfast meeting with a foreign minister. One of these things where he was addressing a group of about 100 people over breakfast; except that I was one of the select ten people at the top table with the minister. Who doesn’t actually speak English. But his French is good. Oh well, one more for my list. No need to get up so early tomorrow.

Found it very difficult to concentrate on work thereafter. Had a very pleasant lunch with an ex-intern, which took the sting out of things a little. (Oddly enough, am seeing another ex-intern for lunch tomorrow.) But a lot of the day seemed to be dealing with post-crash paperwork; getting a new copy of the green card faxed from the insurers (somehow I mislaid the original yesterday) and then faxing it in turn to the bloke I crashed into as for some reason my handwriting at the time was not legible.

Am ever more grateful to all you guys for moral support, but particularly to M. from the Dutch Inter-Church Peace Council who looked after me yesterday afternoon. We knew each other quite well back in Bosnia in 1997, but this was the first time I’d seen her in three years – we had been meant to meet up at a meeting she organised last year, but she fell ill at the last moment. (Though she did drop me a friendly email earlier this year.) I hope that if ever I have an old acquaintance pitch up on my doorstep with a similar tale of woe I will be able to rise to the occasion equally well.

No marks at all to the research institute where I was making my presentation, the reason I drove up to the Hague in the first place. The lecturer in charge smelt suspiciously of booze for so early in the day, and did not endear himself to me by trying to lecture me about the politics of Northern Ireland as a substitute for making small talk, let alone reassuring noises about the crash. The students clearly had no idea who I was, and the promised map of the Balkans to illustrate my talk was in German and dated from the Cold War, so included parts of three countries which have ceaased to exist in the meantime. There will be a modest speaker’s fee, plus travel expenses at the standard rate, but all in all it was not worth it.

1) ALWAYS WEAR A SEATBELT. (I got this one right, at least.)
2) If the tyres are a bit low, PUT SOME MORE AIR INTO THEM.
3) If the road is wet, remember that IT TAKES LONGER TO BRAKE.

and most of all

4) Next time, get up twenty minutes earlier and TAKE THE TRAIN INSTEAD.

Thanks, everyone, for your support. Temporary replacement car will arrive this afternoon.

Early start; pouring rain; wet road; running late; tyres slightly under-pressurised; me a little over-pressurised; traffic jam in the outskirts of the Hague; sudden braking not quite effectively sudden enough; big bang, airbags out, smell of gunpowder (or whatever it is they use), car in front swerves across the road and hits the central barrier.

All a bit of shock really, but nobody hurt, and both cars were drivable afterwards if dented. But I’m now sitting at someone else’s desk awaiting instructions on what to do next. I don’t fancy driving back to Brussels from the Hague with the airbag hanging out over the steering wheel.

Answers here.

(Hat-tip )

9) A Personal Matter, by Kenzaburō Ōe (surname also spelt Oë).

After the Nobel laureates discussion, I did a bit of research on those writers who were recommended to me; in most cases I simply put one of their books on my Amazon list, but I was interested enough in what said about this one to go out and get it straight away from the bookshop near work.

It’s an intensely written novel about a man whose wife gives birth to a baby with a damaged brain; and he slips back into alcohol and the arms of a former girlfriend while deciding if he will let the child live or die. The prose is very direct, so much so that I found the sex scenes spell-binding but not particularly erotic or arousing.

I found the geography of the book particularly intriguing; the landscape of the city is described in detail, yet nothing seemed particularly Japanese about it – perhaps showing how well Ōe manages to grasp the essentials of the human condition. At the same time there is a sub-plot with a small Balkan diplomatic crisis (probably Bulgarian, though the author is vague) and with Africa portrayed as a place of escape and refuges – an interesting contrast to the colonial approach of the last novel I read!

Tough reading for me, for a number of reasons, but worth it in the end.

8) Ten Years to Oblivion, by “Clem Macartney”

Older readers who grew up in Northern Ireland (ie , , , and perhaps ) may remember the BBC’s veteran political correspondent, W.D. “Billy” Flackes, who would pop up on “Scene Around Six” every evening to explain to us what was going on in the twisted world of Ulster politics. It is not generally known that Flackes wrote three science fiction books in the early 1950s, one (Duel in Nightmare Worlds) under his own name and two (Dark Side of Venus and Ten Years to Oblivion) as by “Clem Macartney”.

Ten Years to Oblivion was published as issue 12 of the magazine “Science Fiction Monthly” which ran for almost seven years in the 1950s, and sold for the princely sum of one shilling and sixpence. (It cost me a bit more.) The plot is as follows: we are in the year 3094 ADNungis explained, “It is a self-contained community, for the Jungas are forbidden by law to mix socially with Zugs, and, of course, the two races are not allowed to intermarry.”