I have been wanting to explore more of Bram Stoker's fiction in order to get a sense of the wider context for Dracula, and chose this book to start with because it is set in Cruden Bay, where I went with the Dracula Society in Bram's footsteps in summer 2018 ( LJ / DW). While we were there, local Stoker researcher Mike Shepherd showed us the places ( Read more... )

OK, so see the icon I am using for this post? I made it probably more than ten years ago now from this image, which I had found while Googling for hoary, pagan-looking Victorian Santas:


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OK, so my Christmas experience this year may have been pretty miserable, but I answered 23 out of 25 questions on this meme before family dramas intervened, and now I am damned well going to finish it.

I've given some indication of my answer to this question in the post for Day 15, where I explained the religious element which Christmas has for me ( Read more... )

Here's wishing a happy St. Valentine's day (or, as I personally prefer to think of it, festival of Venus) to one and all of you.

It's apparently become fashionable these days to be cynical about Valentine's day, and talk about commercialisation, and the packaging of complex emotions, and sexism, and the compartmentalisation of something which ( Read more... )

We totally made it through the night: me and Spiky Neil playing Worms and Puzzle Bobble, and then oxfordgirl joining us for the ritual viewing of The Wicker Man, and by then it was 4am and time to start phoning people like redkitty23 and stompyboots to chivvy them up and out for meeting at the tower ( Read more... )

Yesterday evening, I went with my family to a carol-singing gathering on Bournville Village Green, led by a local church called St. Francis'. (Full write-up of last year's equivalent event here). We met up with Fleur WINOLJ and her mum, and the six of us stood together in the crowd, giggling as we attempted to sing along to the accompaniment of a ( Read more... )