the journey

No reference to covid_19 this time. Too scary.

The laptop - Crowley, his name is Crowley - had to go in to the shop because of a nasty habit of going to sleep uninvited. I am finally back on the 10 year old and no, they don't make them like they used to. In some ways this is good. In other ways, not so good. Still, better than trying to keep up with the world via phone. 

Oh, the 10 year old doesn't have an H key, just.a little plastic nub. Makes for interesting typing. Certain other keys seem to be in odd places. And there is no room to download the latest Word so I'm using the 2007 version - also interesting.

But Flamingo chapter 20 has resumed and is off to visit the beta tonight. For a while I thought I may never write again so even a string of 'not there yet' comments are welcome. Maybe post next week ... nonono, not tempting the muses and their evil sense of humour.

It's just after midnight and has finally cooled down to 26°C (from around 38°). No, we do not do air-con here, only the rich and the 5 star hotels. I had plans for this evening that involved writing. Such a joke.

(Thanks for the heads up, Indy):

Yahoo!Groups uploaded content (files, etc.) is vanishing! Starting Oct. 21, nothing new can be uploaded. On December 14, everything uploaded will be deleted. More information can be found here.

Please pass the word.

That's a bunch of 2000s fandom history, right there. What makes me sad is that a years' long record of people commenting to each other, forming friendships, having fun, will all be gone. Just knowing it was there mattered. The fics - most of the Tolkien fics were posted on OEAM or other archives that have gone down.

I have spammed Tumblr into submission - so, so sorry, I know it's rotten manners but I couldn't help myself - and I have read the full spoiler review on Avengers Endgame (Wikipedia came through) and would probably read GoT spoilers too if there were any though for once I'm not sure I want to know in advance. I am content. I flip to the end of a book after the first chapter too. Judge, don't judge.

Happy Monday!

God I miss icons when I'm over on Tumblr!! Not that I actually post there, just reblog....

I am still here. Just got very lazy about posting and slowed down with writing for a bit -- lots of offline stuff was going on including a house move and all the settling in involved (what, there are stil boxes in the corner of the living room that R has to be convinced to get rid of rather than trying to hoard). Also probably more than a touch of depression... I usually am very flat by the end of September when our winter is finally meant to be moving off (it hung around for a long time this year) and I'm only really starting to come out of it now.

Second Last chapter of Flamingo is with beta right now. I tried very hard (and took a long time to admit defeat) to make it the final chapter, but it wasn't having any of that. I need to stop being lazy and stop just posting to Ao3. Never used to like putting everything on one site and the current upset on Tumblr reminds me it's time to spread it around again. Heck, I've been in fandom long enough to remember when many people posted everything to three Yahoo groups, LiveJournal, and maybe two archives. Not planning to do that *shudder* but ja, it's time to start posting on SWG and Faerie again.

And yes, I still crosspost to LJ. It would feel odd not to, there are people I care about who never moved on, they don't post but do look in there now and then. I would hate to finally lose touch -- we were such a good, close community.

Well, I have spammed Tumblr for the past few hours and now I just want to come home and rest a while. And you know, I miss old fandom ways and courtesys so much some days.

And it's the middle of the night and some stupid, useless guinea fowl is making its ghastly squeaky wheel noise. I swear they don't sleep!

She never relinquished the Mandela part of her name, but really she needed no surname. If you say Winnie or Ma Winnie or Mam Winnie here, there's no confusion, we know who you mean - when the news broke on the Monday after Easter I phoned my cousin and said "Winnie's passed" like I was talking about a family member. For 81 years there was only one, flawed but totally unique and human.


She was pretty, vivacious and very, very bright, a social worker at a time when many black girl children had only rudimentary education at best. When she met Nelson Mandela he was totally smitten and they were married when she was 22 -- I think he was about 18 years older and I read somewhere that her father wasn't at all happy. He was arrested four years later and she was left at the age of 26 as the public face of a banned organisation and with two baby girls to raise (not that the public saw pictures of her, of course, unless they could get hold of overseas papers)

In the years that followed she was banned, which meant she was unable to work, threatened, tortured, imprisoned -- she once spent over 400 days in solitary confinement - and even banished to a small town in the middle of nowhere where she knew no one, couldn't speak the local language, and feared for her life (her response to all that was typical, she started a clinic and a soup kitchen). She survived terror so great that in the end it made her immune--- Ma Winnie was a byword for fearlessness. She is the woman who shoved back at white policemen and demanded a table and a chair in her prison cell -- and got them.

There were serious missteps, yes. There will always be unanswered questions over events in the late 80s. and early 90s. And there was certainly enough mess in her personal life for Mandela to finally divorce her despite doing his best to stand by her after his release. But millions more love her than hate her, she was the one person who could literally go anywhere and confront any situation and be respected and listened to. She was the bridge, the person who could talk reason to angry people or bring different factions of the ANC together - she was bulletproof and above political ambition and not afraid to criticise anyone, from the president down.

As a woman, a wife, and a mother I look at her life and cannot sit in judgement on the dark side. I can't imagine what she went through, how it was to be a beacon in the darkness for an entire people but unable to live a normal life with her children or spend time with her husband --- for the first years of his imprisonment she could only see Mandela once every six months. That she was scarred, maybe a bit warped, by what she went through, seems only natural. But she was still one of the role models I gave my daughters when they were growing up - a woman who could be knocked down but would get back up every time, angrier than the last, who would do what had to be done, not back down, and not quit.

Hamba kahle, Ma Winnie. Rest now.


(pictures: on her wedding day and at the ANC conference last year - hope I look half as good at 80!)

Move from hell. Landlord from hell! (arrogant, opinionated, interfering pr**k with no sense of personal space). Finished the move and cleaned up previous living space on the day when the temp was 37C (around 99F). Did not clean up the dead garden, said we'll come do it when there's less chance of sunstroke. I have lived some odd places in my time but the only other one that made me cry was the one where I went in the bathroom at around 9pm to be met by a rolling tide of cockroaches.... we drove around all night and watched the sunrise from the access road to the Table Mountain cable station while discussing our options. Maybe it will get better, maybe we just need to adjust. It's a temporary measure, just remains to be seen how temporary.

Cannot remember when I was last so tired or in bed early so many nights in a row. This downsizing from 3 to 1 bedrooms and full kitchen to kitchenette is way harder than I ever imagined. Still have too much 'stuff'. Need to try writing before I forget who I am --- night owl who writes, not this day person whose life is cleaning up and packing away and complaining.

As the year winds down and the wheel gives another turn, wishing a blessed Samhain to those who celebrate and love and blessings to everyone on my flist. It's Beltane here in the summery South, but my family's roots lie in the North so I light a candle for my Scots and Irish ancestors tonight and well-wish that line of women who stretch back behind me into the mists of time.

Blessed be!