Learn something new every day cetra, part n

So today I've learnt that in the old legend of love, Tristan and Isolde, at one point King Mark (furious with jealousy and so on) decides to have the illicit lovers burnt at the stake, but when Tristan manages to escape, decides to give his wife to the lepers instead, as their sex toy. No, really. It was in my paper, and I had to go rooting around the internette for more information, and lo, I found it. Unfortunately, only rewordings of the tale, not the original ballads, but *man*. Talk about revenge. The mediaeval folks really knew how to juice up a story.

I feel someone clever who knows more about this should point me in the right direction.

One tries

Further on the muted hues and haze

The top two from my balcony this morning...





The other two from the immediate vicinity of my house (taken on ground level, yes). Excuse the bottom one - it has been amateurishly doctored (by yours truly, yes) to be more dramatic. No, really.

In the eye of the beholder

If muted hues of grey, brown, ochre and green do it for you, November is your month, in spite of the bad publicity it tends to get (and here I am as guilty, or more so, as the next person). The main trouble with November is that you're never, ever out in daylight, for there is so precious little of it - at least if you're here, on these latitudes (and I am). Pretty much dark when you stumble around allowing your dog to do her morning business (and the look in her eye, when you get up in the nighttime darkness and start acting like it's morning, is one of severe chiding), pretty much dark when you trundle through the drizzle to the bus stop to make it home again.

It's dark, and it's only getting more so. However.

I have conjunctivitis, so I noticed this morning (this is "pink eye" for you American folks). So I needed to see a doctor for some eye drops, and so the health centre is pretty much chocker with the pig-flu people - both those who are ill and those who are being vaccinated. Currently children under six. Health care professionals have already been done, as have risk groups such as pregnant women and diabetics and other suchlike losers. Healthy robust adults (such as I) are due to get their vaccination sometime in February, by which time we will all have either died of it or developed natural immunity by living through it. Incidentally, I've been thinking, wouldn't it be just great if pig flu would manifest as a cute little snout forming on your face, a curly wee tail sprouting from the base of your spine, and your speech coming in grunts and oinks? Way better than the current thing. Man, if I were to redesign the world, I'd make it so much more interesting. But I digress. Yes, conjunctivitis, pink eye, unattractive as it is, has (combined with the pig flu of others, and the health centre being unable to see me until eleven-twenty) given me a chance to view November in daytime - daylight through hazy fog, the aforementioned muted earth colours. And lo, it is actually quite lovely.

So that is good. And it's made me think about how when I have my luutamummon mökki, Ms Dogot and I will just really enjoy November, rather than moan and groan through it, about its inherent hopeless ugliness and what have you. We'll sleep as late as we like and potter around in the haze admiring the muted colours when we're up. It might help you understand if I explain about luutamummon mökki a little, though.

In July, Ms Dogot and I had four spectacularly perfect days over at the summer cottage, during which we saw practically no-one, the idyll only ruined by a few words exchanged with the neighbour ("I'm heating the sauna tonight. I'll give you a call when I'm out, so you can go, too. Could I borrow your tick tongs? Ms Dogot's got a tick on her leg, and ours are in town. Ta."). When my parents came to collect us (for we were there carless and carefree), I told them how flawlessly beautiful a time we had had, and how we'd firmly decided this was how we'd spend our lives - in a little cottage in the woods in the middle of nowhere, together, rarely seeing anyone else. My mother (the pragmatist) asked whether we'd considered how we'd earn our keep. No, we hadn't considered that yet, actually. She suggested we (well, I, I suppose, technically) could become a luutamummo - literally, a broom granny. A(n old) lady who collects twigs and makes brooms of them, the weirdo living on the outskirts of human habitation, muttering to herself, the society of civilised people feeling a pity and a shunning and a "wonder how on earth she makes ends meet, nobody ever buys her twigs on a stick". This future plan sounded truly fine to me, but my mother added, after some consideration, that I could probably also get a pension of some sort, if I'd just show enough signs of pensionable instability.

This plan sounds mighty fine, too. And as someone, quite recently, authoritatively claimed that outspoken dreams tend to become reality, I have now started serious work on reaching this goal, as you can see. I'll let you know when it all comes to fruition. In the meantime, to give you an idea of the future of Ms Dogot and myself, we'll be looking out of a window not unlike this one.

Rumours of murder in the global village

Oh dear. Oh dear.

I'm strangely upset and quite a bit weirded. Out.

Those of you who have been with me here in Blogoslavia for A Very Long Time, may remember that two years ago (almost exactly, in fact) I wrote a post on a character in the neighbourhood I once lived in, in London. Over time, I've had rather a lot of visits based on this post (yes, I do look at my stats and my "recent keyword activity". It's interesting, k? Even when one is sometimes totally unable to even come to one's own blog, let alone say anything there). I thought, at first, that this was because of some morbid reality-TV type enjoyment people were getting from laughing at this poor character *. Then, two days ago, my stats suddenly went quite wild. Instead of the handful of faithfuls (and I love you all - seriously. And your every footprint on my stats is appreciated), I was getting literally hundreds of people, and not just Londoners - people from elsewhere in Britain, too (Glasgow, Maidstone, Manchester) as well as from all over the place (Dublin, Pennsylvania, Perth, Andalucia, Abu Dhabi - I kid you not), searching for the name of this poor hapless simpleton and landing on my above-mentioned post.

So I had to investigate.

Using my extra-special search techniques (secret, MI5 issue), I followed the tracks of one of these (silent, unknown) visitors, and landed on a Facebook Appreciation Society (I'm sorry but I don't understand these things - I'm middle-aged) for this very person. That such a thing should exist is peculiar in itself, and while it feels a little bit like mockery, the introduction to the page assures the reader that it is, in fact, *not* mockery, it is appreciation. But. But but.

The top of the chat thread on this site suggested there was a rumour that this person, whom I did not know personally but whose life, clearly, had been marred in some way, by someone (even though he was known as someone almost always happy and polite), had been cornered by a gang of youths and stabbed to death.

It is, obviously, a hideous thing. A hideous, hideous, tell-tale sign of our times, perhaps, or of human nature, its inherent cruelty, something or another (if it's true, obviously).

And, whilst not meaning to take away from the impact of the hideousness of this rumour, on a completely different level I find the fact that these people (and there have been 129 of them today, k? From all over the place) who, in all likelihood, do not "know" each other - and certainly not me, or indeed, the poor innocent in question, perhaps - are online, looking for facts of his alleged demise - I find it. Something. Strange. Compelling. Almost moving, yet horrible (is this the road traffic accidents on motorways syndrome, only an inch or so away from the "let's laugh at people when they are humiliated on television" syndrome?).

I don't know. I really don't.

But anyway, hence the global village. And I just didn't feel like I could keep quiet about this.

* and I'm avoiding mentioning his name, because I don't want to cash in on the interest and trawl for traffic, under these - or indeed, any - circumstances.