After a lot of dithering, I finally got my Yuletide nominations in, and added them to the nominations coordination spreadsheet and post on yuletide. My approach this year was to nominate things I'd be both happy to write and receive: a mixture of perennial unfilled requests, old favourites to which I love to return, and fandoms I'm looking to request with a slightly changed batch of characters from those I've requested and received in the past.

I've generally had a really excellent time in every year in which I've participated: I've loved pretty much every gift I've received (some remain some of the best pieces of fanfic I've ever read, in any fandom), in general what I write is well received, and it reliably remains the one exchange whose focus tends to play to my strengths (such as they are) and interests as a writer, and result in the type of fic that I most enjoy reading.

So, consider today's open thread post the opportunity to talk about Yuletide. Are you participating this year? How long have you been participating? What is your approach to nominating (a mixture of things you want to write and receive? more emphasis on one or the other?)? What are you hoping to see in the tagset? What do you think will end up being the unexpected 'big for Yuletide' fandom? How has your experience of the exchange been over the years? Or talk about anything else you can think of that's relevant to Yuletide!

I wanted to spend the afternoon lying in bed, reading, as the raindrops splashed against the window, but the weather didn't play ball, and I'd already finished my book before the rain arrived. Nevertheless, it's been a cosy couple of days, aided by a day off on Friday in which I did very little besides go swimming, chat on FaceTime with my sister and then my mum in quick succession, and sit out in the courtyard garden of our favourite cafe/bar with Matthias for a pre-dinner drink.

Yesterday, I was in Cambridge during the morning to get my hair cut, and also took the opportunity to refill all my spice jars at the health food shop that does refills. We do have a zero waste shop in Ely, but it only does refills of oils and vinegars, legumes, grains, nuts and dried fruit, and toiletries and cleaning products.

Matthias and I watched The Ballad of Wallis Island as our Saturday film last night. We'd meant to see this at the community cinema a few weeks ago, but ended up being sick with a cold, and we had to abandon those plans; thankfully it was available to rent on streaming fairly swiftly. It's a film that starts off being hilariously awkward, and awkwardly hilarious — an eccentric fan hires the two halves of his favourite (disbanded) folk duo for a private concert on a remote island, and all the artistic, professional, and romantic tensions that caused the pair to break up a decade ago come bubbling to the surface — and ends up sweet and emotionally affecting, without ever feeling saccharine.

This morning Matthias and I woke unprompted at about 6am, which I actually don't mind on the weekends — there's something nice about being awake at a time most people are asleep, watching the sunlight spread across the garden, lingering over breakfast and coffee, wandering around the cathedral and along the river, looking at smoke curling out of the houseboat chimneys, as the town slowly wakes up. We were back home by midmorning, and I baked an apple cake — an experiment that turned out successfully. I'm not a very good baker, and I'm worried that if I put more effort into it, I'll start treating it as I do cooking. I had to restrain myself from buying a stand mixer there and then (which would definitely do the job better than the whisk attachment on my handheld blender — which sent butter and sugar flying around the room — but which would also only enable me in this insanity).

I was a bit burnt out by reading, and therefore only finished a single book this week — Those Beyond the Wall (Micaiah Jonhson) — which I read essentially in an entire sitting this afternoon. It's a follow up to Johnson's incredible dystopian multiverse extractive capitalism critique, The Space Between Worlds, involving many of the same characters, but focusing not on the privileged elitist tech company town, but rather on the Mad Max-esque community eking out an existence on its periphery, sustained both by an incredibly codified violent honour culture, and an incredibly intense sense of community cohesion (residents may be terrified by the violence of their existence, but they would prefer that at least their own people are the ones inflicting it). As with The Space Between Worlds, it's both a plausible future endpoint of, and an incredibly unsubtle metaphor for, the history and contemporary politics of the United States (in this case colonisation and the genocidal displacement of the land's original inhabitants), but written with such exquisite worldbuilding and interpersonal dynamics between the characters that I can definitely forgive a lack of subtlety. I find the ending a bit too tidy and convenient, but hey, if Johnson wants to indulge the fantasy that it's possible to reveal a society's injustices to its citizens in a way that will inspire them to react en masse, who am I to stop her?

ETA: Updating with a second book — Sunbringer (Hannah Kaner), the second in her epic fantasy Fallen Gods trilogy. As with many second books in epic fantasy trilogies, this one sees our ragtag band of misfit heroes artificially separated for most of the book, so we miss out on the fun character dynamics that come from throwing together a bunch of mismatching individuals and seeing sparks fly, but it's still a lot of fun. My favourite part of this series is the way it conceptualises gods and deities, and how people understand and practice religion in a world where the divine is tangible and present (and terrifying). The double crossing, shocking reveals, and twisty political machinations come thick and fast, setting things up for what should hopefully be a satisfying concluding third book in the series.

The rain has started in earnest, and the sky is a mass of white. The house smells of cooked apples and brown sugar, and things couldn't be more cosy if they tried.

Fruit trees have very much been the theme of this weekend. Someone was giving away pears from a box in their front garden on my return walk from the gym yesterday, and another person was giving away apples when I passed on my way back from the pool this morning. Yesterday afternoon Matthias and I scrambled around on a ladder, and even in the tree itself, picking all the bramley apples from the tree in our back garden. Now two shelves, plus the vegetable crisper in our fridge are entirely filled with apples. Last year they lasted us from August to March!

Everywhere in our house, there are little scattered clusters of fruit — a trio of pears and two large tomatoes ripening on the front windowsill, bowls of apples on the kitchen table, a handful of black cherry tomatoes on the kitchen windowsill in between the indoor plants — like votive offerings to household or harvest gods.

In general, the garden is making me very happy.

If that wasn't enough, after breakfast today, Matthias and I walked out to Little Downham, past hedgerows laden with sloes, rosehips and ripe blackberries, until we got to the community orchard, and filled his backpack with yet more apples and pears. The leaves are yellowing at the edges, and the air has that slightly crackly, woody autumnal scent, although it's still as warm as ever.

Last night, Matthias and I rewatched Casablanca, which I had last seen about twenty-five years ago. It really is that good, and I cried buckets, of course (although about the politics, more than the interpersonal stories). It's extraordinary to me that it was made not post-WWII, but in 1942 — an incredible act of hope and optimism, and faith in human effort turned collaboratively towards an existential struggle. It is of course incredibly emotionally manipulative, but sometimes I just want to see a bunch of traumatised exiles stand up to totalitarian bullies, you know?

( This week I finished three books )

In the time since I started writing this post, the UK government sent me its (scheduled, warned-for) blaring, vibrating phone test emergency alert, and the sky outside has turned from burning blue to cloud-covered grey. The weekend is winding down, and gathering itself in, like a blanket thrown over tired legs.