About the weather

I know nothing about metereology. But after this unnaturally long, unnaturally cold winter, I do have a kind of worrying feeling that something will snap back and we will suddenly have a long streak of violently high temperatures and intense humidity. I just hope I'm wrong.

(no subject)

I just had a rather silly revelation.

A while ago, I asked my friend sanscouronne how she would see herself if she were to cast herself as a superhero or fantasy character. She chose "a Tolkien elf! Paradoxically old but young, whimsical, very perceptive, with sharp senses, able to flit about soundlessly, adept with a bow and arrow.." So - for the first time ever in forty-seven years - I found myself asking myself how I would cast myself. I came up with a beast-warrior - a fat, lumbering, fierce brown bear.

I wonder if any of you have any idea along these lines.

This has been a really weird evening

Just as I was about to get to sleep, I got a loathsome e-mail from an agency I had done a good bit of work for, which amounted to their wanting to pay me as late as possible ( and they are already six weeks late) and as little as possible. I answered back in suitable terms, with the twin threats of legal action and of making their behaviour public among other translators. At that point I was no longer feeling like sleep, so I went on Facebook. After posting a short snarl about what had just happened, I looked at recent entries, and I noticed that jamesenge had published a photo of a magnificent painting by Jeffrey Katherine Jones. Now don't ask me to explain Mr/Ms. Jones, I can't. One thing I can say: s/he is, and has been since about 1972, one of the greatest painters in the world - a Master in the full meaning of the term, and I think I have seen enough painting in my life to know the difference.

So ten minutes at most later I get a request for friending from Mr/Ms Jones.

This is not the first genius who has been a friend of mine. Denny Derbyshire and Kenna Hijja spring to mind. But it is the first living legend, someone whose work was already being reprinted and admired when I was a young fan hunting and pecking around Rome's newsstand together with Franco Urru.