O, if only.

I did a small friends cut. No hard feelings, I was just having a really hard time keeping up with my flist.

After my last update I checked in with work - cunningly, after reading weather forecasts yesterday I packed my stuff up to facilitate working from home so I can still do my job. The only thing that would have been more cunning would have been if I hadn't so I couldn't.

After a relatively brief check-in we grabbed an early lunch and stomped off the couple of miles to visit the poines. Turns out that a couple of miles through deep snow that nobody else has walked through is both awesome and exhausting. I maintained dry legs through the medium of binbag gaiters fastened on with gaffa tape. Proper engineering!
( More snowy pictures )
Well, that's me out. It's well past bedtime here but I thought I should share those while they are fresh. Apparently tomorrow we are forecast sunshine, together with subzero temperatures to maintain the snow. Good job I threw away my old skis and boots when we moved house a year or too back. There was no way I was ever going to need those again.

We got up this morning and found 13" of snow in the garden. I don't remember it ever snowing this intensely here. Quite something.
( illustrated version )
As I write this it has finally stopped snowing... oh wait, no, it's started again...

larksdream , you are a crazy person.  Attempted FavsG tonight and it is ridiculous.  Also: awesome.

This is a 5.9 that starts into the arch, so you go up a little, then horizontal to the ground, then up again.  At least in theory.  I wouldn't know about the "up again" bit.  By the end of the night, I was reliably achieving and sustaining the horizontal-to-the-ground bit, and then I'd go to bring a foot higher and grab the handhold that would let me start to go vertical again and then suddenly I'd be dangling with no idea how it happened--vertical, yes, and hands on, but feet nowhere near the wall.

But!  That horizontal bit!  Amazed me that I could get there at all, let alone sustain it for a more than a second or two.  It was very butch, insofar as anything can be very butch that's done while giggling madly, with one's ankle done up in hot pink Vetrap.  I loffed it.

re: the ubiquitous Tipsy Turvy, I fell again at the same place and tried a right foot match instead: left foot joining the right on the bigger foothold, right foot onto the tiny one, step out to the left.  Much better.  I surrender to the inevitable and will try that first on the next attempt.  (But I am not giving up on the hop.)

Also tackled bunch of other stuff, with varying but always interesting and/or amusing results, but I can't remember any of the details other than Crypt Ticket (got lost and made a hash of it, but no falling--just inelegant) and a first assault on Searchin' For Knubbin' (think I'll put that one in the rotation--good fun and hits the challenging-but-attainable sweet spot).

Probably done for the week, now, what with horse and emergency back-up horse tomorrow and Thursday and then we're into the weekend, but maybe will wander up for some bouldering at some point over the weekend.  Clearly I need more oomph for FavsG and pull-ups are boring, so.

(Whee!)

The Met Office have promised us our very own British Snowpocalypse and so far it seems to be delivering- I've only been home an hour or so and my footprints are just the shallowest dimples in the snow.

The ponies were quite chilly but cheerful, Zorro's mane and ears were coated in snow.

Professor snowy-ears.

I doubt there will be much driving going on over the next few days. I'm kind of set to work from home but there may also be limits on that as we'll probably be walking to the ponies' house as well. Being at a high point in the local geography the chances are that we'll have as much snow as anyone.

I have a library card again!

While we were living in McCordsville, we did not have a library anywhere near us and it made me very sad. It also meant I didn't get much reading done in the last six months. But now we are in Hamilton County and I am right between two very nice libraries. I'm in media heaven!

I've already checked out two books, I'm back here for the second time today (yes, doing this from a public computer in the library), and I should be going home with a movie for me and the hubby too. It's amazing how something so simple can make one so happy. :)

In unreleated-to-the-rest-of-this-post tv news, this is your friendly neighborhood heads up that the fourth season of Big Love starts up on January 10th.

Anyway.

...are any of you kids still watching Survivor?

Because I'm not.  I'm not.  I'm not!  For a couple of seasons now.  Seriously.

...but then there I was innocently reading one of my horse boards and somebody mentioned that the next season is Heroes vs. Villains, which is lame, except then I was an idiot and Googled up some spoilery cast lists and on the one hand:

( Here there be dragons )

I may be willing to allow myself to be sucked back in.  One more time.  For an episode or two.  Anyone with me?  Or will I be suffering alone?

(Of course, now I'm thinking of other people I'd rather see again, so maybe that will save me.)

...I wonder if our television still works.

As above. I saw the New Year in on top of a MOUNTAIN (a really steep hill, anyway) staring in amazement at the multitude of fireworks going off across Stockholm. Still in Sweden with angiescully and splodge04, and the past few days have involved a visit to an actual Swedish IKEA (this was very exciting to me), watching Avatar (AMAZING), a ridiculous amount of sleep, sliding down snow slopes on plastic bags and in general snow. Lots of snow. It's bloody freezing but so gorgeous here.

( An end of year meme for your enjoyment, as I do like to have them to look back on. )

Sherlock Holmes, in brief:

Those boots!

Happy New Year to all of you. We were lucky to have a few fine friends over to visit, for a snacky dinner and Chucklevision Noir influenced tomfoolery. It was good. At midnight we headed out under a full moon that was almost directly overhead ( apparently a blue moon, though I had no idea that those were even something real or what the term actually means ) and walked down to the punchbowl where we could see fireworks going off across the horizon pretty much as far as London.

It was really good to see people again and a really enjoyable night. Also having been around for much of the day our house was actually warm by the evening. The stove is working pretty well now we've got used to it, but it really munches through the logs.

No resolutions as yet, not that I've thought of, but I do have some ideas for things I really want to do this year, so I'll see how I can go about finding ways to make them happen...

So far, so good!

Bareback jump school.  Whee!

'Twas supposed to be an ordinary all-tack school, except some poor unfortunate rolled their car over on 95 and I spent two hours sitting in traffic staring at my exit sign.  Bit of a frustrating exercise, but still, clearly there was someone else on that highway having a worse day than me.  But the first set ran over and L. was just starting up the second--just one kid--when I finally trundled into the barn, so I just threw Tucker's bridle on lickety-quick and we joined that set instead.

...for values of "joined" that include "hung on and giggled while careening madly about."  There were some really, really nice approaches and fences and turns, and then there were some where I gunned for the long spot and Tucker obligingly went zoom! and then we took an extra tour of the ring.

Tucker thought it was great.  I was too busy trying to a) stay in the middle and b) maintain some semblance of control to c) get in his way, so he got to d) basically run the show.  He was a gentleman about considering my input re: which fence we were jumping next and perhaps we should be on the other lead now and how about a little more compression in that canter, Tucker, dear?  But there is no arguing when there is no saddle and I was laughing too hard to tense up, so mostly I just pointed him at the fences and told him how wonderful he was for getting us to the other side, and yeah, he thought it was great.

(Me, too.)

Much smoother ride home, and now to prep for the New Year's Eve festivities.  We're making latkes.  'Tis a long (but hopefully delicious) story.

One last achievement-thingy for the year: it appears that the beastie and I qualified for a USEA silver medal at Novice last season.

So that's cool.

So when the nineties ended all I really knew was nineties music and maybe a bit of necessary music history, everything was bright and new and exciting to me and it was great. I was young and in love with music and the whole deal was amazing.

Now at some point it seemed to me as though music stopped. I hear things now and there is very little that sounds actually new, suddenly it all sounds like tired rehashes of music I have heard before- new to the kids today perhaps but a little bit tired to me and maybe a lot of music isn't really for me now. I think this contributed to me not buying many albums in the middle of the decade, which means there are probably some omissions from this list that happened because I just didn't hear the records in question, but would have liked them otherwise. Others that people have really rated ( Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes etc ) are competent but have failed to blow me away entirely. However, this year I have rediscovered the pleasure of buying good records and listening to them intensively and I plan to do more of this in future.

So, on to the music, starting with one that isn't quite on the list,,.

Honourable Mention: Sequoia - Ebb & Flow

I don't have enough distance from this to say where it belongs relative to the list. It's a damn good album, no question, but after four years of living that record- the recording, the artwork ( that's my handwriting on the front cover ) playing the songs at gigs up and down the country, the whole deal, I can't really compare it with anything because I can't create the requisite distance.

Also, because I have heard it at every stage of it's creation, I know it so well that it is - to a degree - a record I don't really feel the need to hear again. Sometimes I'll listen to parts of it and be surprised and pleased with how good it sounds, but I rarely put it on to relax.








10. Damien Rice - O

A very fine album- intriguing, modern songs about love, doubt, porn and eskimos with heartfelt vocals and the brilliant interplay between the two voices it is one of the definitive singer-songwriter albums of the decade and very influential.

One of the very few records where the string arrangements ( particularly on Aimee ) come close to those on Five Leaves Left - although of course that is kind of the aim, I'm sure that the conversation was approximately "Make this song sound a bit like Nick Drake" but the outcome really was as close as anyone has got to that wonderful, autumnal, melancholic sound.







9. Tori Amos - The Beekeeper

Tori Amos is quite unusual in that she reliably creates albums that average out as good, with some truly brilliant songs and, a few somewhat weak filler trakcs. Nothing from this decade quite matches up to the brilliance of To Venus And Back, Boys For Pele or Little Earthquakes but this is still a very strong record, certainly next to some of the other dire nonsense she has produced lately - Strange Little Girls and American Doll Posse were both disappointingly terrible.

Here we have songs about pirates, a duet with Damien Rice and the astounding Toast which stands equal to her finest moments and there are more good songs than average ones here by a broad margin, which counts as a good Tori album. And because when she is good she is very good, a good Tori album is better than most albums by most artists.






8. Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump

"Bring it back 2000 man..." I was really surprised to realise this came out this century, but it certainly deserves a place on this list. A genuine, beautiful, classic record full of the charm and warmth that Grandaddy always did so well. The subsequent album Sumday is also excellent but this one I prefer slightly.

The melancholy beauty of He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot with it's tremulous electronics and long slow build is worth the price of entry alone, even if it is somewhat connected in my mind with giant squirrels assaulting cyclists in slow motion.







7. Richard Thompson - The Old Kit Bag

This, for me, stands equal to anything Richard Thompson, the guitarist's guitarist and the songwriters' songwriter has released. Even the relatively filler tracks are solid and enjoyable, the menacing songs are properly menacing and towering over everything else A Love You Can't Survive is a searing moment of glorious lyrical storytelling.

The guitar playing is as stunning as ever, although I think probably best appreciated live when you become entirely conscious that yes, he is actually playing all of that on one guitar at the same time.







6. Mercury Rev - All Is Dream

If you listen to the opening bars of The Dark Is Rising you'll be entirely clear on why this appears here on this list. What a stunning song. I know that many fans prefer Deserters' Songs but for me that record was ruined by the saxophone ( oh how much do I hate that instrument ) whereas this one is a glorious success in its absence.

I do definitely prefer the tracks that have the more complete orchestration, but as an album this hangs together beautifully with it's soft, spacious sound.

It's also one fo the records I bought when I first met sleepsy_mouse and it reminds me of the first few times I went to visit her, which are certainly a treasured corner of the decade.





5. The Arcade Fire - Funeral

I got this one quite late- in winter 2007 - because people had been going on about it for so long. In fairness they were right, it is a blazing, beautiful record. The way that musical figures carry through from song to song, the feeling of loss and time's relentless encroachment on life and the way that in spite of that it raises itself to glory and celebrates the joy alongside the sadness.

And then I was in Canada and my horse had just died three thousand miles away and it was one of the worst weeks of my life and this was the only record I could listen to at that point. It soaked up a lot of pain, but now every time I hear it some of that is released again and I don't listen to it these days, although I wish I could.






4. Midlake The Trials Of Van Occupanther

I was surprised to find this one had wound it's way so high in the list, but then I listen back to it and it really is an excellent record. Every song is strong enough to stand alone and they knit together beautifully to create a whole that is greater than the sum of it's parts. The desire to be part of a less complex, more rustic, time - to be waylaid by bandits and lose everything and start again, that talks to my rustic side. Sat by the fire and dreaming of horses, I'd say that side is pretty strong these days...

The record was very much a grower- I enjoyed it immediately but it took a year or two to appreciate it's depths. When Gideon Coe finished his morning show on 6 Music - the best radio show around at that time, no question - Branches was the track he chose as his definitive one of the period.

I'm not so sure about the many wannabe bands that have followed in these tracks, but this record is one I can go back to time and again and keep finding wonderful things.



3. Tom McRae - Tom McRae

Seriously, what a stunning songwriter. Every track on this album is a winner in terms of lyrics, tune, arrangement the lot. There are song highlights such as End Of The World News and Bloodless and there are highlight moments- when the cellos first come in on You Cut Her Hair the beat rolling in to A And B Song but there is nothing on this album that is not exceptionally strong.

There are no bad Tom McRae albums - All Maps Welcome might be less amazing than the others but an average album from this guy is better than most of what any other singer-songwriter could produce. When he is good - this album was very close with Just Like Blood and King Of Cards could easily be on this list - he is truly stunning.






2. Emmy The Great - First Love

I first heard something from Emmy The Great a couple of years ago and it caught my ears and made me think this might be a songwriter to be reckoned with. When this album finally came right I was absolutely vindicated. She is a brilliant lyricist. Probably the best songwriter in the world right now. As good as Dar Williams was before she got happy and lost her muse. I really can't overstate the quality of the lyrics here but I don't want to suggest that she is a one-trick pony. The tunes are strong and the arrangements are brilliant, particularly the counterpoint backing vocals on a couple of tracks that just offset everything amazingly.

There is no question at all in my mind that if I do get around to doing a "Songs Of The Decade" list Easter Parade would be right there at the top. So good that when I heard it I felt inspired to give up writing lyrics because really there's no need for me to even try when Emmy The Great is doing it so much better.



1. British Sea Power - The Decline Of British Sea Power

Half way through the song Lately it dissolves into squalling screaming feedback and a general wall of sound for very slightly too long. That is the only flaw in the entire album.

I don't even know how to talk about this one- I bought it, was somewhat unimpressed, put it on one side after a few listens and then came back to it a year later to discover that it was the greatest album ever recorded. Even thinking about it sends shivers down my spine.

Although it was released in this decade it is really about the twentieth century and not just the end of it, the whole thing. Favours In The Beetroot Fields with it's Dostoevsky references, Carrion's chorus referring to brilliantine mortality, it is a very complete picture, musically intense, beautifully performed and strikingly original. Although it is made up of familliar post-punk shapes they have never been arranged in quite this order and they have never sounded quite so rural. There is nothing rustic about it, but it is an album that lives by the sea, that celebrates all of England, not just the cities, even as they threaten to swim from these favourite island shores.

They have recorded some other very fine albums in the last few years, but nothing has come close to this amazing, intense achievement.

I'm working on a new theory about what's up with Tuck.  My new theory is, illiteracy is exactly the opposite metaphor from what's actually going on.  That is, I think the problem is not that he has no idea what it means when I apply a given aid.  I think the problem is that he has too many ideas.  And, more to the point, that I've been insufficiently clear about how I've been using and combining them and when that goes on for a sustained period of time, he starts to go, "La-la-la, that isn't meaningful," and tunes me out.  Which is fair, if all I'm giving him is static.

It's just a theory, and it may be totally off-base.  But it would fit with the way he gets snarky and grouchy about the dressage in the winter but is generally double-plus thrilled to be jumping and/or hacking out, where I tend to be a lot more get-the-job-done and a lot less now-I-will-entangle-myself-in-nuances.

So we'll see.  If nothing else, it's really easy for me to sympathize with someone feeling overwhelmed, so even if it's not the cure for everything that ails us, maybe it will help me keep my head in a more productive place about things.

( What we did today and how it worked )

I've also been doing some thinking about ( priorities while riding )

And here we are again at dynamic balance, literally and figuratively, and at the need to develop one's feel and to be creative in one's horsemanship.

In other news, water?  Still wet.

SmartWool in all its forms.

I just spent all night playing with Crayola crayons. Favorite artistic medium. I drew, I wrote, I played Sudoku. Eventually I dug out a pencil because too many thoughts were fleeting and I didn't want them etched in Crayola permanence. My black crayon is nearly gobbled up. There is far too much black in my drawings, it's not a bad sign, I just really fucking love the night sky and there is no blue dark enough to satisfy me. Jamie will be glad to know there wasn't a single UFO in sight.

Ha!  Made it up Tipsy Turvy with only one fall.

At the usual place (I usually fall three or four times on this'un, but this spot is always one of them): the bit where you're in a good situation for standing still but getting to the next foothold is a touch precarious and there's no left hand.  But I can get my fingertips onto the left wall, now, and that's good enough to get the step up.  I think I understand the move; a start-to-finish successful climb may not be too far off, and that would be great; I think this route is the bee's knees and I'd love to get it done cleanly.  And aside from the fall, the rest was much less sticky--not quite smooth yet, but much less sticky--than it's been--this is the route where I tend to do a move...and then hang out for a while...and then move...and then hang out--and some of the footwork may have begun to approach clever, if I do say so myself.

So that was cool.

Also climbed a new-to-me 5.7 for warm-up.  Got three-quarters of the way up, started thinking, Hey, kinda nice to climb something that doesn't feel hard! and promptly, having lost focus, fell.  That'll learn me.  (Probably not.)  Finished it off with a touch more respect.

And my ice-cream route--Be A Love, it's called, and turns out it was an 8-, not a 9-, but the - has since been removed to leave it a straight-up 8: the routesetters giveth and the routesetters taketh away?--which I was a little worried about because I wasn't sure I had much strength left after climbing yesterday, but that climb is a joy and everything was just fine.

Took my first crack at The Palmer Method, a 9+ with some stemming--left wall on--and with a lot of the handholds apparently set backwards.  That turned into a masterclass in using one of the very first handholds: I could get onto the wall, with a little practice, but eventually was just like, "I'm just going to try to move this one foot and stand up on it and then I'll call it a day."  This one is definitely above my paygrade; I'm going to have to up my handhold technique significantly.

Finished up with an almost-climb of Blackout and discovered the foot/hand match, which is yet another of those things that was blindingly obvious as soon as I realized it was an option.  Got the top half of my body over the overhang and promptly ran clean out of strength; gave it one more go but nothin' doing, so that was it for me.

Good day.  Tipsy Turvy!  Only one fall!  Awesome.

Today was a day of goodbyes - this morning the little pony belonging to our yard owner, who was a little older than me and had taught generations of kids to ride, fell hard on the ice outside his stable and landed on his hip. When we arrived he was on three legs and the vet had already been called. Barnaby was a great character, a really good teacher and a classic pony, although he was pretty sure he was seven and 17.2hh rather than thirty four and about 12hh. The other evening he stopped on his way to his stable and stole a bunch of Small's dinner as he was passing, yesterday he took the little girl he was teaching for a ride and was a proper well behaved riding horse and today we said goodbye to him. He'll be sadly missed, but he had done well in a long life and been loved by many small children as he showed them what a good friend a pony could be.

This afternoon we took Donk off to a new home- he's been with us for six months or so now and the last month or two have been a lot of work in terms of mucking out and - naturally enough - he eats like a horse. A big horse at that, so it's been expensive to keep weight on him and now Small is coming back into work and daylight hours are few and valuable there hasn't been a lot of benefit for us in having Donk around and really not a lot for Donk either. He's gone over to a dealer friend of his owner to be sold on in spring and I think the full time work will really help him and he'll make for an excellent schoolmaster for somebody. That would be really great- he's such a sweet horse and he really deserves a person of his own to love on him and to appreciate his safe, good natured, schoolmasterly skills. He got quite sweaty in the lorry, but as soon as he arrived and had a haynet, he seemed settled and content and didn't really want to talk to us again, which was good in a way. He was a nice horse but I think part of what we've learned is that we like a bit more spark and a bit more intelligence to work with.