Odds and ends

It felt like a boozy weekend:

Friday drinks to mark the departure of a colleague,

Saturday revel (1/2 bottle of watered wine, which caught up with me the next day)

and then a splendid Kerala Indian meal with armillary and Sorcha with more yummy wine, to celebrate their impending wedding. It was rather refreshing to have modern food with Society friends, in modern clothes. :-) I now have to look up Kerala cooking - I know I've had it before, in Ottawa. It features dosas prominently, and lots of fish and coconut dishes.

The revel was a rousing success - Robert outlined the basics of pewter casting, and the first 9 attendees got to tackle their own flat-faced lump of bone-dry plaster of Paris (advanced soapstone or mudstone substitute) with sharpened nails and assorted files.  

Since Robert made his own first pieces with a Swiss army knife and pieces of hardened wire, he doesn't see why you need anything fancier for your first attempt. 

Lots more folks turned up, but there wasn't enough plaster blocks to go round - the second platter of plaster was still damp, and damp 'stone' and liquid metal don't mix.

What really caught peoples' attention, of course, was watching the liquid metal - Robert had brought a portable butane heater and melted pewter to test the moulds, and shortly had an audience. There's something magical about watching it - pouring like mercury - and then hardening in a snap. I'd seen the same draw at the Fettered Cock, but I've grown used to the spectacle, and now take it for granted, where this fresh audience was un-jaded.

And, of course, having it work - it's very cool getting a result, and almost everyone did, if not exactly what they'd hoped for - but it was a far better result  for most than I'd expected, because I know how long it can take to get a mould right. 

Our revel feast was small but delicious, as always, and we have a series of dates and proposed themes to look forward to, hurrah.

I've finished Lev Grossman's sequel, 'The Magician King', and found it much, much darker than I'd anticipated - not suitable for the trigger-prone. I think I would have been happy reading 'The Magicians' alone, without the sequel, though the arc about one of the characters learning magic on her own (outside the 'conventional' stream of US-based magical-Eton-for-college-students) was brilliant.

I also love the idea that Venice is only staying afloat thanks to magical supports and props and without them it would plunge into the swamp.

Have now tried out 2? 3? Jim Butcher books in The Dresden Files, and while worth trying, I've decided not to persue him further. He just seems a bit too glib, and his magic seems to come easily, where Aaronovitch's characters (and Grossman's too) struggle bitterly to get even a toehold into magical practice - suits my view of what magic should be like: freakin' hard, or else we'd all do it to avoid housework.

In another vein, greatly enjoyed 'This is not a game' by Walter Jon Williams. Brilliant take on what happens when you create live-action games for a living; will work for you if you liked Rule 34, or Halting State, by Charles Stross.

Ahem - take care googling for 'rule 34' as it appears some websites have taken the rule to heart...

Will post about the visit to the Guildhall gallery next time!