The Fancy Reader

Poor Will and both mites came down with a cold. They are huddling under a duvet on a sofa in the TV room, watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I find this heart-warming because I remember watching that when I was a kid with my aunt.

Here is my favourite scene from the film:

Anthology Girls Who Bite: Lesbian Vampire Erotica

Last night, I read Christine d’Abo’s Bound Love to Will and he kept prodding my head because I frequently slowed down the narrating to read the story in silence. The story was pretty good. I expected the usual vampire fetish worshipping (common in vampire erotica), but no. I did find the heroine’s name disconcerting at first (I even giggled), but d’Abo totally made it the heroine’s. I think that’s a sure sign of good writing.

I’ve also discovered that all stories in Girls Who Bite: Lesbian Vampire Erotica have the HEA, which came as a surprise. I think I got so used to open endings – from reading Virgin Publishing’s Black Lace, Sapphire and Idol books and short fiction in Erotic Review – that I don’t associate HEA with erotica.

I think I’ll make time to read all stories in this anthology this week.

My Mouth Doesn’t Exist Any More. Neither Does My Stomach, I Think.

Will made this West Indian meal last night that basically set my mouth on fire. He knew I couldn’t tolerate the high spiciness and heat in my meals well, so he usually made an effort to keep it subtle. This time though, he forgot.

Since he seemed run down yet made this effort to cook, I ate the entire meal without a whine. I drank gallons of milk to see me through, which was a mistake as I tend to have bad stomach cramps from drinking milk.

So yeah, not only I couldn’t feel my tongue and my lips for hours afterwards, my stomach made its displeasure thoroughly felt.

“You bastard! *cramp* Why did you give me milk when you know I don’t like milk? *cramp* Eh? *cramp* Eh?! *cramp cramp cramp* You shall suffer, finch! *cramp cramp cramp* I’ll punish you as long as I can, wrench! *cramp cramp cramp*”

Dreaming in Gaelic 

I had a very peculiar dream early this morning.

Yesterday, I had an email chat with Keishon (@avidmysteryfan) about an array of ‘thank you’ in Gaelic (poor Keishon struggled through nine ways of saying thank you, along with when and why), then a chat on Twitter with Isobel Carr (@IsobelCarr) and Evangeline Holland (@edwardian_era) about the differences between Irish and Gaelic names.

And I somehow ended up dreaming about people I used to know. Elderly people who passed away in these years before my tenth birthday. Why tenth, I have no idea. The bizarre thing is that they all spoke a dialect of Gaelic I hadn’t heard since I was this knee high. A mixture of old Gaelic and local Gaelic. Nothing modern. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but I understood anyway.

Two of them suddenly turned round and started telling me how to explain the differences between Irish and Gaelic names.  It was so complex that I tried to run away, but one grabbed my t-shirt collar and roughly sat me down on this horribly hard wooden chair.

With their hand resting on my shoulder firmly, the person stood behind me, seemingly as a guard, while the rest continued explaining. I  felt I was in a nightmare. I hate Gaelic, I hate hearing Gaelic, I hate being among them, I hate their way of life, I hate everything about Scotland. Yet I couldn’t get away. It was a nightmare with no exit.

Sensing my not-so-keen willingness to listen, their voices became louder and insistent, repeating the same phrases over and over, while their faces grew in size. As if they were looming closer and closer to my face. I snapped, “Shut up! I get it, all right? I get it! I’ll try my best!”

One of them suddenly said, roughly, “Magniloquence is our tongue.” Huh? What? What do you mean? This was never explained as they had moved on to talk about people they used to know. One name stood out the most: Gordon Lilley. He died long before my mum was born, but he was a local legend. He was mad about winter sports, ranging from ice skating to ski-ing, and mountineering during a snow storm (this I think proves he was not all there in the head).

He constantly tried to invent a snow sport, like snow surfing (stand on a surfboard and ‘surf’ down a snow-banked slope; this of course became snowboarding) and human curling (a person curls up as a ball and a team pushes him hard enough to slide across the ice).  He was 88 when he broke his neck while ice-skating. Like some say, he died doing what he loved the most. Apparently, his passion started when he was only ten years old.

I completely forgot about him until the dream last night. But yeah, anyway, this Gordon joined them – rather heavy-set and in his famous outfit: tweed jacket, waistcoat and knee-length tweed trousers, black thick knee socks, heavy nob boots and a tweed cap, with a short wooden surfing board under his left arm – and boomed: “Magniloquence?” Others nodded and murmured an affirmation.

He turned round and faced me straight on. With his board still under his arm, he said loudly, “Magniloquence, yes! You mustn’t forget, greenear.” After a long hard stare at me, he raised his right fist in the air and shouted: “Magniloquence!”

At that point, my eyes snapped open. “What was that?” was all I had in mind.

Still groggy, I looked up magniloquence in a dictionary I got from my beside table drawer. After reading the dictionary entry, I thought, “There’s a such word in Gaelic? Who knew?” I hadn’t heard ‘greenear’ for years. It has the same meaning of ‘wet behind ears’.

Such an odd and silly dream, isn’t it?

I know my imagining of Lilley was from seeing numerous photos of him – always in that outfit – standing next to whatever interested him. He was an experienced ski-ier. He never competed because he was committed to working to feed his huge family. He was one of 13 children, too.

A quarter of them died – due to scarlet fever or whooping cough? – during one year, but the rest were adventurers. While he never left the region, he was an adventurer in his own right and totally addicted to thrill and speed. I think he was the first in the region to buy a car. I can’t remember what it’s called. Morgan? Let me check.

Yes! Morgan 3 Wheeler. This is the one I saw in his photos.

I’m wondering how the hell he managed to manoeuvre that through our area back then?  Probably did it in a town like this one back then:

There is a legend that Lilley once tried to ride his friend’s motorcycle mounted on a wooden ski on a small snow slope. His motorcycle and the ski were smashed against a tree, but he jumped clear before his fate had a chance to meet the tree, to the village’s cheers and the motorcycle owner’s despairing wail.

“Good old Gordie!” one would say after telling that oft-told story from their childhood days.

They all said that he may be from a poor family, but he was made of legends. In fact, many had said that if it wasn’t for his family’s financial issue, he would have gone on to become a professional car racer or a competitor in winter sports, but as the youngest son, he stayed and looked after his family until his death on the ice stream. Heh. He really did die doing what he liked the best.