Dame · Boudicca

Heat is not my thing.

Really not.

But it's supposed to go away now so I might be able to return to my life now...

Nothing like a migraine to keep you from your computer. And typical of me to have one of those which drags on for days and days and days... I am marginally better (well, that's why I'm here), but I'm not to hang around. That little margin I have to stare at a computer screen before going slightly mental again is to be spent on writing - because I have yearnings for that.

Anyhow, just to let you know I am alive (though not well), but also to say I will be going to the countryside for a couple of days - with really no internet whatsoever, so I will catch up after that.

I said something about posting images, didn't I? Well, anyway, here goes. I will stick to one day at a time (for both your sake and mine). These are from the third of June, the day of arrival. We walked past Victoria and Albert museum, so needless to say, the pictures are from there.

(I had before some pictures from the costumes, but now I got better ones, and examples can be seen here.)
( Photos )

I had had some initial intention of posting more than once when in London, but the connection kept me from wanting to do it. I could be on line for a few minutes, and then it decided to die on me - and I had no longing for that if I was writing something long and epic and worth remembering for the rest of your lives. Plus I was rather beat at night.

Eventually photos will appear, I might tell you more about it and so on... But not now. I slept 12 hours last night and I will do something along those lines tonight too, so you can guess the state I'm in right now...

Anyway, it will be impossible for me to catch up on all your posts (though I will from now on) - so if there is anything you think I should read please let me know (be it fun or sad, I will be happy to oblige!).

So I am back in London for a week of fun and games, culture and entertainment. Same hotel, different season and different company. I loved it then, everything is pointing at me loving it just as much this time. And the room is better this time around too (not that it was bad in any way before - but a bathtub is always a bathtub, you know...

This far we have taken it rather easy, and it has been terribly nice - and not killing in any way. We stumbled into Victoria & Albert so that I could point out some nice samurai armours, and take a bunch of pictures of clothing (better camera this time than last), and visited the Freemasons to have a look around - and my boyfriend bought a cute teddy-bear complete with apron! We resisted the Masonic gift-wrapping paper though.

Of course we have gone shopping, no surprise there, and it is already time for me to start wondering about how I will get everything back with me. And we have eaten very well indeed. There are a bunch of nice restaurants just around the bend from where we are staying (Earl's court, South Kensington, btw), and today we tried out an extremely genuine Chinese... sorry Taiwanese, restaurant. We were just about the only guests in the vicinity not talking Chinese in some shape or form. And the food was great - a far cry from what you get at home (I had gigantic meat-ball with salted egg yolk).

And now, while my loved one is struggling with the last touches of the comments of a book-manuscript, I will try to get some writing done too!

And aren't you happy to see me?

A bit tired from all the travelling, but otherwise quite all right. London next week... Hope it will be as rewarding as this trip!

And no, I won't catch up with all old entries, I simply do not have the time for it. But if you have written something important, or extraordinary, or something you think should interest me, please let me know! =)

They say you learn as long as you live (though, I want to know who "they" are - "they" seem to know an awful lot, to say the least). Here are a few examples from the last few days here in Normandy:

¤ Farmers demonstrating can make you get lost in a big city. At least if they are French (I have yet to see a Swedish farmer do that). Their aim was higher pay for their milk, and the method was (apart from going on the free-way with their gigantic tractors which are fast compared to what I'm used to, but not THAT fast) to build road-blocks of manure and old tires. Preferably in the middle of the city - we had a horrible time in Cherbourgh, trying to find the way around, which was impossible when you couldn't go to the city centre. And now and then they put their road-blocks on fire. The smoke was fascinating. The smell somewhat less so...

¤ You can find the most amazing salmon at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere, in the only restaurant the village had to offer (which says quite a lot, when French villages tend to have a restaurant at every corner).

¤ Frenchmen have a thing for baguettes.

¤ You can't enter Bayeux cathedral without interrupting some kind of service. At least this time it wasn't a funeral but a baptism. It is after all a more cheerful event, and the other plus is that it was quite all right to walk around the church while they were at it. (The kid did not seem to appreciate the drama all that much though, even though the priest did his best to sound cheerful and fun!)

¤ My understanding of French when written is about ten times better than I thought it would be. And you can actually have some use for a French-Swedish dictionary from 1915 (what can I say - it was cheap, and it is small enough to fit my handbag, even though it contains three times as much as a usual tourist-dictionary, thanks to its small print).

¤ Entering a real, small Romanesque church in the French countryside can actually make me feel all warm and happy inside.

I am in Bayeux now, working on going to sleep... Finally I managed to have an Internet-connection. It works as long as my dad isn't on-line. The connections seems to compete and my laptop is loosing. I woke up this morning in Xanten - a small German town, which is interesting to anyone interested in Roman stuff.

Anyone who knows me could tell that is quite the right place for me. I took tons of pictures, loved the newly opened museum, and bought a book on the subject of the Roman colonia (big enough to kill someone with). Now I am looking forward to a few days of second world war memorials. At least that way it will be less pictures per day for me to sort, name and edit. But there are enough medieval stuff here too to keep me satsfied. And we are staying at the edge of town, with just a short walk to the countryside, with cows and flowering trees and all. That is very nice indeed.

(There will undoubtedly come pictures later on - but not now. I have to leave some things for when I get home too, you know!)

I'll be going away tomorrow and I won't be back until 28 May. I might be able to post some when away, but I very much doubt I will be able to read much of your posts. You have to know your limits.

See you around!

Last night I finished my off spin short story to my short story. It doesn't sound good, does it? The expression, I mean - nothing wrong with the story. Now I could return to John and his crush on David (who is kind of occupied with his girlfriend and has no clue what so ever). But I can blame leaving the country on Monday as having an excuse not to write on that.

I enjoy writing, I do it all of the time, but sometimes even I can do with a break. A small break. A tiny break. That kind of break that needs a magnifying-glass to spot.

And my mp3-player died on me. Now it acts as if someone is constantly pushing on the buttons - so far it has changed back-ground colour, language (did it have to go for Spanish? I don't know any...), rearranging my folders, refusing to play anything at all, and turning off at any given moment. It annoys me. I need my player.

Or at least the first time in about 2 years, I actually did some changes to my layout. I am not very good at it (I can do pictures, but this is different) and though it still leaves some things to wish for I like it - and it feels like me. So I will keep it at least for a while.

(Yes, I want Final Fantasy versus XIII like now - if you can't tell from my entry!)

Can you really write a spin-off to a short story?

Whatever the answer might be, I am.

(Well, it's more fun than cleaning the bathroom, what else can I say?)

Well, at least for a few days. I need to fix quite a lot before going away again.

All in all it probably means I will be a bad friend here not just for the weekend that was but for the weeks to come too. But I can post pictures later on!

To Stockholm this time, for some loose living with a dear friend of mine. But just for the weekend...

But that is just the soft start for the coming four weeks which will include some serious travels. Again. I guess it's that season again. More on that later.

I just earned myself 2000 grown-up points. Not only did I clean and sort my pantry (and there's an additional 500 points in having a pantry to begin with), for no other reason than I felt like it - I actually liked it too.

But the again, I've always enjoyed sorting stuff.

My writing for the moment is rather slow. It is kind of annoying, because I have some great ideas - but for once there seems to be a problem to get them from head to paper. It could have something to do with my aching fingers, but it is still annoying. I am working on a rather big project at the moment, 25 short stories, set in a school-class. Each short story follows one of the students for a week, and sometimes they pop up later on in other stories, and so far I have finished four.

The fifth I am working on is the story of Charlotte, who spends her afternoons writing in a small café - and eyeing up a man who always comes there on Mondays. So far, so good, but the writing still goes slow, I know what I want to happen, and I can kind of get it to move in the general direction of that, but that is about it. It's like wading through mud.

Usually when things like that happens I know it means I have to delete some of the text and rewrite it - but I actually don't think that's the problem now. I just need to keep on pulling. It might end up in something worth while, after all!

Thanks to tree_and_leaf  I was able to jump on the band-wagon and get myself an account over there. Thanks! =)

I have the same name there as here (why change a winning concept?). Anybody else a member? Anybody else want to play? (I know some of you have written earlier that you had accounts, but I have to admit not following exactly who that was... *insert blush here*)

At the moment I'm busy trying to make it look acceptable - and trying to get over the... pinkness of the place. I think it will work out nicely!

Iam
SOOOO
tired

It's silly really. I think it's because it's so hot. Me and sun don't match - and when I say we don't match, I really mean it. Even though I avoid direct sun-light it really is too much. And I spent time with friends both yesterday and today - and that is also really nice. But (there is always a but isn't it?) I'm always exhausted afterwards. Even when it's close friends that I really like, that I really can relax with...

Sometimes the way I perceive the world is annoying. But most of the time there is so much good that comes with it, I wouldn't want to change it for the world. It's only at this particular moment.

But (and sometimes a 'but' is a positive word, you know) I did manage to send in my article on language change on tombstones in 17th century southern Sweden. I do know some strange stuff! And my photos over at flickr are quite popular. That is always nice to see when you wonder what's the point of it all.