pedanther

One of the reasons why, until this month, I hadn't been to town since 2019 was a lingering fear that if I went into the crowded city I would come back with something interesting and respiratory. In a typically human display of logical thinking, however, having made up my mind to go I didn't take any serious precautions against that outcome, and went cheerfully unmasked among crowds on trains and in buses and in rooms full of boardgamers and so on and so forth.

So it wasn't entirely a surprise when it became apparent, within a week of my return, that I had in fact acquired something interesting and respiratory.

It isn't covid, or at least I've got a negative result on all the covid tests I've been taking. I even tried a brace of those fancy new ones that also test for flu and RSV, and got negative results on those as well. So I'm not quite sure what it is, except that it's definitely annoying.

It started with a general feeling of being tired that had developed by Saturday morning into enough of a something that I cancelled my social plans for the afternoon and spent most of the afternoon asleep instead. The worst of it was over within a few days, leaving just the post-nasal drip and associated cough which do not appear to be in any hurry to go away.

I've been sticking at home to be on the safe side, and skipped board game club and other social occasions. (And a committee meeting, which felt particularly weird because I don't think I've missed a meeting of that committee in years and there's a part of me that worries about what they might get up to without my eye on them.)

One of the ways I passed the time during the week was re-reading Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic tetralogy, and then the sequel tetralogy, The Circle Opens. I started reading them years ago along with the Mark Reads online book club, but for some reason I don't now recall I stopped partway through. The decision to re-read them now and finish the series was partly a choice to read something fairly undemanding that I knew I'd enjoy, and partly a deliberate attempt to manipulate my reading statistics on StoryGraph: The all-time stats page includes a top ten list of the authors a user has read the most books by, which in my case starts with Terry Pratchett at #1 and continues down through several excellent SF writers, two creators of classic detective series, and the most prolific author of Doctor Who tie-in books, to finish – now – with Tamora Pierce at #10. The previous #10 was an author who I regrettably read voraciously during my undiscerning teen years but would now rather not give any hint of endorsement to, so I'm glad to have crowbarred him off the list.

Remarkably Bright Creatures fit the themed reading challenge for November ("a book about families") and the last book of The Circle Opens fit the challenge for December ("Finish a book or series that has been lingering for a long time" – and also the alternate option, "a book about someone who is gifted"), so I've completed that set of challenges ahead of schedule. On the other hand, I'm straggling with the random book challenges: I haven't finished the October book yet (This Is Improbable is one of those books that was designed to be dipped into on odd occasions, not read in long stretches) and I haven't settled on a November book. The November challenge is to pick a book at random from the books with your favourite StoryGraph 'mood' ("adventurous", in my case); I failed to get on with my first pick, as previously detailed, and my next few attempts to re-roll the choice landed on books I wasn't in a suitable frame of mind for. Part of the trouble, I think, is that if a book with my favourite mood has been sitting on the to-read shelf for years there's probably some reason I'm not keen to read it. I'm currently having a shot at a Sabatini novel I picked up in a second-hand shop once, and being reminded that although Sabatini inspired several classic adventure movies I've never entirely got on with his books at first hand.

Went to town, for the first time since before Covid. Caught up with my favourite aunt, my favourite niblings (and their parents), and a few friends from the old days. Got dragged along (not unwillingly) to a community orchestra rehearsal, where I played a trombone for the first time in years and was reassured by how much I still remembered. Got my dress shoes repaired. Visited the beach and looked at creatures in tide pools. Went clothing shopping, with questionable success. Successfully avoided coming home with more books than I arrived with. As usual, was too busy doing things to write anything down in detail.

One unanticipated benefit of being away from home with no reliable access to news media or social media was that certain major world events were just a faint noise in the distance instead of something I was living through as they happened. Actually, having most of a week away from social media probably did me a lot of good in general.

My hold on Remarkably Bright Creatures came up shortly before the trip, and I borrowed it with the intention of reading it on the train, but when I got my ebook reader out it turned out it had somehow not downloaded, so I had to leave it until I got back. Instead I read the new Rivers of London novella, and finished off Try Whistling This. I also tried reading my November book for the random book challenge, but I gave up on it after a couple of chapters. It had originally been published as a serial with a rotating set of authors taking turns writing chapters, and I found the effect off-putting; instead of setting up a definite story, it felt like the opening was throwing balls up in the air for other authors to catch, without any real idea of where they would land or any reassurance that they wouldn't be fumbled and dropped. While I was in town, my main book for reading on buses and trains was my other library book, Say Nothing, a fascinating non-fiction book about events in Belfast during the Troubles, which I managed to finish before I left, partly because it's so compelling but also partly because I spent so much time on buses and trains (everything is so far apart in the city).

I played the Dungeons and Dragons: Adventure Begins board game with the niblings. They enjoyed it, especially the bits where players are encouraged to tell a story about what happens when you roll the dice, and were curious about the differences between the board game and regular D&D.

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Before the trip away, we had another session of Pandemic: Legacy, and are now three-quarters of the way through Season One. I'm still enjoying the gameplay, but finding the unfolding season plot predictable and uninteresting.

At the regular weekly evening boardgaming session, we played Nemesis: Lockdown. We had very fortunate starting conditions, with no aliens showing up for several rounds, and most of the players having co-operative objectives that meant we could share information honestly and didn't take long to establish what we needed to do to survive the endgame. The downside of everyone being so well equipped for survival was that the game went on for hours - we only narrowly managed to get finished and packed up before the venue closed. Every game of Nemesis: Lockdown I've played has run long, and I think from now on it's going on my list of games not to start playing in the evening. (It may also end up on my list of games not to play at all, because the other thing that's happened every time I've played is that I've been killed by aliens over an hour before the game ended and been stuck with nothing to do waiting to see how it all turns out.)