bunn

Well, this is interesting.  Cornwall, for its low levels of plague, has been awarded Plague Tier 1 (Medium Alert) from 2nd Dec: pubs, cafes, cinemas and shops will re-open, people can meet indoors.

Devon, just across the river from us, is Tier 2 (High Alert). There is no Low Alert.  So far as I can see, Tier 2 and Tier 1 are more or less the same, except that people aren't allowed to meet indoors in  groups of up to six in Tier 2.  I think.

I have now officially lost my ability to remember the changing rules and regulations of the Plague year.  I had more or less kept up, till now, but now?  Nope.  It's gone.

Today we went for a paddle between Devon & Cornwall, so I'm not sure whether we were in Tier 1 or 2 at that point, or would be, if the tier thing was happening yet which it is not.  This was because Western Power had told us we'd have no electricity today, so we planned to go out and walk / paddle about briskly rather than sit in the unelectric house. Then they came and told us this morning that they'd worked out a way to do their works without cutting off the power after all, but by that time we had carefully arranged things so we had a day off, and it seemed a pity to waste it.

I can report that we saw a kingfisher, some frigates, a destroyer and a very nice and friendly police boat which came scooting over to warn us that we were about to be in the way of the destroyer leaving on manoevers, and suggest we might like to move.  Which we did. :-D

Getting back to the shore, we shared a slipway with three people who were extracting a relatively large and recalcitrant motorboat from the water. Two of them were stout middle-aged men, who were frowning earnestly at Equipment, and one was a cheerful woman in late middle-age who had cheerily stripped her bottom half down to her black lacy thong in order to shepherd the boat onto its trailer.  Her legs went the most interesting colour when exposed to late-November seawater.  BRRRR. 

... Yes, we stayed in the same county that we live in, and went canoeing.  But on a new river!  A river we'd never explored before!
We went to stay by the River Fal, which flows south from Truro to the port of Falmouth.
This is where we stayed.  It looked out over the creek, and the coast path was just to the left. 


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A peacock!
I am rather pleased with this because I think it's the first thing I've ever made with coloured pencils that actually has a decent depth of colour and doesn't look too stiff.  Background is brusho again, and then the detail is all Inktense pencils, overpainted with a waterbrush to bring out the colours. 


And here are three dwarves fighting an acrylic dragon!
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I made a card for my Mum for mother's day too, and took it over to her today, but I forgot to photograph it. Hey ho.

On Saturday I found some pheasant tailfeathers while walking along the River Walkham, and brought them home thinking the kitties would like them. This was apparently the best decision ever: Gothmog keeps bringing me tailfeathers to throw for her (they aren't the easiest things to throw, but if you throw them like a dart, with the hard bit first, they will travel several feet.)

More wind than we thought on the river today,  so we were only out an hour and then quickly headed back with the aid of the breeze behind us for an icecream (or in my case, a sorbet : one scoop of kiwi and one of gooseberry fool).  Now my shoulders are aching so I'm quite glad we called it a day early.  

The bluebells are fading now, but this weekend I caught these just still scented in the sunlight at Grenofen on the edge of Dartmoor, on a short walk with my mother.  It was rather warm, and we retired to the cafe at the top of the lane for smoothies and ice cream.  The cafe used to be a pub, but there's more market now for selling tea and cakes to walkers than beer.


And on Monday we took the canoe out from Saltash and explored Tamerton Lake, which we have never been to before!
Up into the Hamoaze, carefully avoiding the speedboats, and under the railway bridge.
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What else has happened?  Oh, I finished writing my Sutcliff Swap fic, so that's all ready to go when the collection opens.  It has a terrible lack of historical notes, and I somehow feel something is missing, but I can't think of anything very historical to add.  It's a Sword at Sunset story and didn't seem to need as much research as I sometimes do.  Or perhaps writing Tolkien fic has spoiled me for things that can be quickly researched via Google.

I drew three new things, but they are all for Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang, so I'm not supposed to post them yet. 

Oh, and I wrote some Silmarillion things!:

Spirits, Names, and Why It’s Important to be Specific 1,465words but not all mine.

This was a collabfic: two people wrote the first two chapters and I wrote the last one.  I feel it actually works surprisingly well, given that it was written by three people who didn't know each other.  But it was a very fun idea (sadly, not mine!)

The Passing of the King 966 words.
which is a short thing about Elros, Elrond's brother, and his death.  I decided I'd like a version of him that was more weird and Elven than people often write.

Lingering in the Hither Lands 13575 words.
Thangorodrim is broken, and the Elves believe that Evil has ended forever. There's a certain amount of tidying-up to be done.

I feel this one is very self-indulgent really, and I almost didn't post it because... well, I already wrote Return to Aman, which is LONG and all about Maglor and Elrond, because when I wrote Quenta Narquelion, I had to work out how 'love grew between them as little might be thought' and ended up convincing myself so thoroughly that it made me sad.  ONLY, Return to Aman can't be a fix for Quenta Narquelion, because I wrote them at the same time, and ended up dealing with a lot of things differently.

So, Lingering in the Hither lands was my very self-indulgent attempt to at least partially fix things for Maglor and Elrond in the Second Age in a way consistent with both Quenta Narquelion, and also with the 1937 version of the Silmarillion where Maglor doesn't wander off singing sadly into the sunset. But I somehow feel I really should make more effort to write things that don't have Maglor in them. Or Elrond, possibly, though given that all of Tolkien's works DO have Elrond, I feel that's somehow less of a problem.

You would have thought it would be cold, but in fact it was a clear calm day today, and the sun was warm and the tide just at half past one, so we sloped off down to the River Lynher and went out from Wacker Quay. 

( with a scattering of waterfowl... )

We meant to go out on the river on Friday evening, but misread the tide times.
We meant to go out on the river on Saturday, but the skies were black, the rain fell, the wind blew and the storm warnings warned dolefully.
We meant to go out on the river today, and made it!
Halton Quay is a very convenient quay in some ways: it's easy to get to, has plenty of parking and is used almost entirely by fishermen and canoeists, so it's not too busy.  Unfortunately the other thing is has in generous quantities is MUD.

Not too bad on the way out, because we arrived not long before high tide.   The tide and the wind together helpfully wafted us up the river, listening to the sound of the wind in the reeds.  I love that noise.  It reminds me of childhood holidays in the Norfolk Broads.

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It's getting a bit cold, and the weather a bit erratic for canoeing. We tried to go out on Thursday but got rained off.  But on Friday the sun shone!  I wanted to have a go at fiddling around using different camera lenses, so we kidnapped my sister who is temporarily in the UK,  and made her paddle.


See how we charged out into the river, leaving a wake behind us!
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We really should have stayed home today, cleaned the house, sorted the garden and other similar chores sadly overdue.  But the weather forecast was hopeful, and the tides were right, so we abandoned our dusty house and overgrown garden and ran away in the canoe instead.

Still haven't quite got this tide thing down.  We set off up the Tamar on a rising tide, but it turned before we would ideally have liked, and we ended up paddling very slowly upriver,  against the current, the wind and the tide starting to go out again.  

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