Daibhid's Journal

For various reasons, I never wrote this up in 2022, the first year I was there on my own, and also the first one I'd been to since we lost Terry. So I'm trying to get back into the habit now. (I may even go back and do a "Things I Learned at the Science Festival" post, if I can remember anything I learned at the Science Festival this year. Anyway.)
( Getting there )

( Friday )

( Saturday )


( Sunday )


( Monday )

So, with it being the Year of the Dragon again (my own Eastern Zodiac sign), I'm thinking about year names in fantasy fiction. It's something I mostly associate with Discworld, but I've seen it in lots of other places. And I'm not sure where it comes from.

Obviously, the fact I made the connection means there's a superficial similarity to year names in the Eastern Zodiac. But it's not really the same.The Eastern Zodiac has a set pattern of twelve animals and five elements, for an overall cycle of 60 years. Learn that pattern,and "I was born in the Year of the Fire Dragon, and it's now the Year of the Wood Dragon" provides pretty much the same information than "I was born in '76 and it's now '24". But if I tell you Windle Poons was born in the Year of the Significant Triangle and it's currently (according to the Emporium) the Year of the Moribund Aardvark, that tells you absolutely nothing, because there's no pattern. The only way you can use that to calculate Windle Poons's age is if you've memorised all the year names.

This really struck home the other day when I was reading old Dragon magazines (appropriately enough), and there was a lengthy article about the history of Forgotten Realms, and every time it said an event happened in the Year of the Unstrung Harp or whatever, it added the year number in Dale Reckoning in brackets. Because without that, the year names are useless. But with that, the year names are unnecessary. The bit you need to know is that it was 1371 DR, and the Unstrung Harp bit is just decoration.

So does anyone know who started this trend in fantasy fiction, and why it caught on as something a fantasy society would do? It's not Tolkien for once; his cultures all had different calendars, but they all numbered the years sensibly, rather than giving them random names.

So,apparently, this is what happens if I work on the TV Tropes page You Mean Xmas and listen to Mitch Benn's Christmas album within close succession...

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So, the trailer for The Amazing Maurice is out.




And my immediate reaction is "Maureece? Is it Maureece? I've never pronounced it Maureece. Stephen Briggs in the audiobook doesn't pronounce it Maureece."

And then, as so often happens, I heard the voice of Mr Laurie's old m'collegue in my head. And it said "Some dine on cream like the fattest of cats, while others hang out with a bunch of rats. Go and hang out with the rats, Morris."

(With apologies to Bob Seger)

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It's been a while since I've heard a song, and spontaneously come up with the beginnings of a filk on the spot. I think I was so surprised that Tesco was playing non-Christmassy music that I paid more attention to it than I usually would.

It was an interesting one to do, because the format meant I had to double the chorus, whereas normally I still very close to the original structure because, well, that's the whole point. Anyway....

"The Shape of the Sender of Eight"
(TTO "The Shape of My Heart", Sting)
( Warning: Contains semi-obscure Cripple Mr Onion references )

So, after due consideration, and getting increasingly perturbed by reading about Viagogo on the interwebs, I decided the best thing to do was buy a new ticket for The Muppets Take the O2 directly from the O2 website. That went fine, then I looked into returning the other ticket.

It turns out that, because of Viagogo's nature as a secondary ticketing site, I can't return the ticket, What I can do is use Viagogo to resell it, but given that the problem is I'm not convinced it's going to be a valid ticket, I'm not comfortable doing that. Chalk it up as a life lesson, I guess.

In the middle of all this, I got another e-mail from the Discworld Convention saying I'd come to the top of the waiting list again. And, after thinking about it, and the fact I already have several things happening over July/Aug and am already a bit stressed about all of them, I sadly let them know that I wasn't going to make it. 2020, I hope.

(Tune: Padstow May Song, trad.)

Unite and unite and let us all unite,
For summer is a-coming today,
And all across the Discworld, we all will unite,
In the merry morning of May.

The wizards of Morpork, they might if they would,
For summer is a-coming today,
They might have sang an anthem from the high Tower of Art,
In the merry morning of May.

The assassins of Morpork, they might if they would,
For summer is a-coming today,
They might have built a garland with blossoms from Hide Park,
In the merry morning of May.

Oh, where's the Elf King? Oh, where is he-o?
He's under the Long Man, deep in Faerie-o.
Down dives the Suicide Thrush of Lancre-o.
Nanny Gytha Ogg saw the mound from above,
And it looked like a tonker-o.

Oh, where have the wizard and assassins got?
For summer is a-coming today,
They've all stayed a-bed, they might have but would not,
In the merry morning of May.

(All May festivals are from the books, or at least the supplementary material. The Companion describes the UU May anthem, and how, since the Tower of Art is 800 feet tall, the listeners can't hear the choir and don't notice if they haven't turned up; the Assassins Guild Diary goes into a long description of the May Blossom tradition that concludes "for the past seventy years, no boy has bothered to give it a try"; and Nanny mentions the Scouring of the Long Man in A Tourist's Guide to Lancre, including its useful educational aspects.)

(Yes, apparently that's what I'm officially calling these.)( Read more... )