Finally some pictures of mine that are: 1. outdoors and 2. not of birds in trees. Spring is on its way!
As usual, I took these pics when having a walk in the park while my clothes were being washed at the nearby launderette. Who needs excitement?
I’ve been meaning to do these for a while.
The reason for the “maybe” in the title is that I can’t be sure all of them were illustrated by Tom Adams. I was under the impression they were, but then I checked the books themselves and the name of the illustrator is not stated anywhere. As always, I googled it and found this page, which is a great source. It turns out that some of the book covers attributed to Tom Adams were in fact made by another artist, Ian Robinson, but because they’re done in the same style, people naturally assume they are Tom’s. Here’s my collection (no spoilers, only book covers):
A Caribbean Mystery and Nemesis are Miss Marple stories and both of these are definitely Tom Adams covers.
No idea about The Body in the Library but The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side is a Tom Adams cover. Again, both are Marple mysteries. I’m sure you agree with me that the Mirror Crack’d illustration is beautiful. The title comes from a line in Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shallot. Although the woman on the picture makes me think more of the Madwoman in the attic than Elaine, but then again, what does not make me think of the Madwoman in the attic…
By the Pricking of My Thumbs is a Tom Adams. The novel features married sleuths Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Unsure about Passenger to Frankfurt‘s cover. It’s one of Agatha’s late works and it’s not good; the only one I’ve never finished.
The cover for Sad Cypress, an Hercule Poirot story and personally one of my favourites, was made by the previously mentioned Ian Robinson. No info on the Sparkling Cyanide cover. The investigator in this book is Colonel Race, who appears in a few other titles, sometimes alongside Poirot.
Unlike the rest of the paperbacks, these last two were not published by Fontana, but by Pan Books. Again, no idea about the covers–N or M looks like a photograph to me–I just wanted to include them in this post. The cover for The Big Four informs us it’s a Poirot mystery; N or M is one with the Beresfords.
I bought these gems about 15 years ago at a charity shop in my neighbourhood. It wasn’t until later that I learned about Tom Adams. I’m not a book collector, I don’t have space for that in my small flat (as you know, am very much an eBook girl), but I like these and I like that I was so lucky to find them. Thank you to whoever gave them away!
And in 2021, I still find Agatha Christie content to blog about!
As there is already a post on this blog titled A Feast for a Crow, from 2016. It’s been a while!
There’s lots of crows in my neighbourhood, they can especially be heard cawing in the mornings. I wish I could make friends with them but I don’t think they care about me.
This year I went for colour pink, as opposed to red of the two previous years.
I glued the pink paper hearts on the sticks and put them in an empty perfume bottle. It took some time and effort to get the spray top off the bottle. The sticks are those ones they put in your coffee at Greggs, I guess they’re for stirring, I wouldn’t know, I’m a black coffee, no sugar girl. I kept a couple, though I had no idea at the time that I’d make use of them. I love how very DIY the whole set up looks.
I don’t date so Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean anything to me, I just like making these little photoshoots. I might watch a rom com or two, though a Jane Austen adaptation would be even better. I like the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice and the Sense and Sensibility movie with Emma Thompson from the 90s. Last year’s Emma was also good.
You can do it. It’s only a small one.
The map looks historical but as far as I can tell, the countries are all modern ones, by which I mean not colonies like they would have been in those times.
I just think it looks neat.
But, Some Photoblog, you’re at least two years too late with this post!
Eh. *shrugs* By now at least (hopefully) everyone has calmed down.
I first started watching Game of Thrones in 2014, when it was in its fourth season. I was hooked right from the start. It was–and still is, really–the rich world and the variety of such great characters, especially the female characters.
After finishing the first four seasons, I read the books (the book version is called A Song of Ice and Fire), I also read some other stories from this universe, like the Dunk and Egg novellas (pictured below in a collection A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) and a couple of short stories about the Targaryen civil war.
Spoilers for the whole series ahead, obviously, and, maybe less obviously, though not if you know me, there will be some unpopular opinions.
The greatest one of which is, I liked how it ended. I called it!
It was sometime in 2018, I was chatting to a colleague about this series, when I suddenly had a brainwave. “You know what, I don’t think it’s gonna be Jon Snow and Daenerys at the end. I think it’s gonna be Tyrion and Sansa.” If you’ve seen the whole thing, you know I got that right.
Both of them ended up in positions of power–Tyrion as Hand of the King, the job he was always the best at, and Sansa as the Queen in the North, which she should have been in the first place back in Season 6.
I never said nobody else would get to be in power, I just knew it would be Sansa and Tyrion and not Jon and Daenerys–and I was never one of the Daenerys Will Go Mad crowd. Though they turned out to be right, so I hope at least they’re happy.
I also always knew that Jon Snow was the happiest in the far north, at the Wall and beyond, with his direwolf Ghost and the wildlings. This came true as well. His parentage is irrelevant, it doesn’t define him and besides, he was always more Stark than Targaryen; his mother Lyanna was said to be a bit wild, like Arya. He has no interest in being a king. If someone doesn’t want to rule, they shouldn’t be forced to. Imagine you tell me you hate swimming and I push you into a pool. You wouldn’t like it, would you?
That’s what I do. I drink and I know things.
Tyrion Lannister
I like nearly all the characters (some of them more than others, some I’m not that interested in but then later I might get interested, I’m like that), but my most favourite is Cersei Lannister. She embodies that pure female rage.
The level of hate Cersei receives borders on fanatical–and yet it’s non-sensical. She’s not worse than any other character; Game of Thrones is nothing if not moral greyness. The only thing she’s guilty of, same as about half of us, is being a woman. If she was a man she’d be one of the Top 5 favourites. She’s basically the Taylor Swift song The Man. (When everyone believes you, what’s that like? People didn’t believe Cersei when she said she was pregnant, though we were shown the scene where she and Jaime conceived the child. But when any other couple bangs, it’s an immediate assumption that it’ll result in pregnancy.) For the haters, it wasn’t just enough that she died, she needed to die violently. This despite that fact that the city was being torched by dragonfire and Cersei wasn’t the one who was torching it. They wanted Jaime to kill her, when the truth was that he literally came back for her to save the both of them (plus their unborn child), which was the subject of his last conversation with brother Tyrion, who told him of the passage out of the castle. And this is happening while the buildings are falling down and it would be far more likely that Cersei would die in the rubble anyway! I really wonder if the Cersei haters are even capable of logical thinking. (They aren’t.)
The Lannister twins dying together was quite a popular theory, it was foreshadowed enough, so I don’t know what everyone expected. I’d have preferred if they did save themselves and made it to Pentos, but hey, it’s Game of Thrones.
Thinking about what I’d change about the series, it’s really only two things: one, everything about the Dorne plot. Dorne was not done justice on the show. Originally, I’m a House Martell fan, but I switched to Lannisters, because there was nothing going on with the Martells (and who knows where the Dorne plot will go in the books, if there will be any more books, that is). At least Pedro Pascal as Oberyn was cool. Alexander Siddig, on the other hand, was criminally wasted as Doran Martell. I had been so looking forward to him in that role and it was a disappointment. (Last year, I had a similar experience with another actor, as it happens). Arianne Martell is my most favourite books-only character. I’m thinking that if they had put her into the show, she would have just died, so it’s probably better she wasn’t there. She’s the heir to Sunspear, the seat of House Martell, because in Dorne it is the oldest child that inherits, regardless of gender. The show never addressed this, one of its downsides.
The second thing I would change is, I’d keep the Jaime and Brienne relationship strictly platonic. That… umm… scene still makes me gag to this day, so much so that I can’t even stand seeing the two actors in the same shot. Interesting that Jaime and Cersei are an incestuous couple, but their scenes never felt gross to me, like the Jaime and Brienne one did. It’s not like either of them could be with anyone else, not for a long time anyway. I wonder if George RR Martin got inspired by that Wuthering Heights quote “He’s more myself than I am, whatever the souls are made of, his and mine are the same”. It’s very fitting for Cersei and Jaime. (Originally meant for foster siblings, may I stress.)
By what right does the wolf judge the lion?
Jaime Lannister
As for Jaime, he essentially fulfilled his promise to Catelyn of returning her daughters–or one daughter as it was believed Arya was dead at that time. He just didn’t do it himself, but delegated the task to Brienne instead, giving her the sword Oathkeeper (made from former Ned Stark’s sword Ice) and Podrick Payne for company. Brienne carried out the task, she saved Sansa from the Boltons and safely accompanied her to the Wall, where she was reunited with Jon Snow. This not only proves that he did what Catelyn asked him to, but that Catelyn wasn’t stupid when she trusted him to do that. She was proved right. Another reminder: Jaime knighted Brienne, making her the first female knight. This enables her to knight more people, which means she can make more women knights.
But, you know, “character assassination” because he didn’t kill the woman that carried his child. You can click this link to see a breakdown of Jaime’s quotes, directly from the script, proving that he always chose Cersei.
[Note: Jaime actor Nikolaj Coster Waldau has stated multiple times that he liked the ending of his character. The haters are coming up with absurd theories that he’s being forced by The Powers That Be to say that, instead of simply accepting that he might have a different view from them. Like I said, with these people, logical thinking is absent.]
Next character I want to give shout out to is Arya Stark. I’m not a House Stark fan. I do like the two Stark girls, in later seasons I preferred Sansa more. I got a leeetle bit annoyed at the way Arya’s storyline in Braavos got handled–it seemed to me that she only used the Faceless Men for her own interests. The Faceless Men served more like a plot device for Arya, but make no mistake, they’re bigger than her and bigger than House Stark. The Free City of Braavos is my favourite location in this universe, I love everything about it, but then again that’s just me and the vast majority of the audience won’t care, they just want to see Arya get her revenge. But I want to talk about something else, something that matters to me very much.
Back in Season 1 there is a conversation Arya has with her father. When she asks if she can be a lord of the holdfast one day (something Ned suggests Bran can be now that he can’t be a knight of the Kingsguard due to his disability), he laughs and says that she will marry a high lord, and rule his castle, and her sons will be knights and lords. She shakes her head and says: “No. That’s not me.”
[Note: Ned’s a conservative]
And at the end, it’s still not her. She rejects Gendry’s proposal of marriage and sails away towards adventures. You don’t know how much it meant to me to see her do that. If there is a female character in fiction who says she doesn’t want to have children (marriage optional), you can pretty much guarantee that by the time the story ends, she will have them. This is disappointing and extremely infuriating. (I’m looking at you, Katniss Everdeen.) I’d rather have the character want children, or not mention anything at all. It certainly doesn’t help when you’re like that in real life and people just go “oh, you’ll change your mind.” But Arya knew herself and she stuck to her guns. I mean, this is a young woman that learned to be a water dancer, avenged her family and killed the Night King. And you want her to become the lady of Storm’s End and promptly get knocked up? No, sir.
Representation Matters.
Another one I’ve got here is Sandor Clegane, aka The Hound, a lover of good chicken and a reluctant adoptive father figure to Arya. Occasionally I like to channel him.
I live in a monarchy.
Last but not least, I want to give a shout out to Samwell Tarly.
I have no Sam goodies unfortunately, so I had to resort to taking a pic of my laptop screen while it played the YouTube video of the scene in question. The scene is from the finale. The noble lords and ladies are having a council meeting where they’re trying to come to some decision regarding the next ruler of Westeros. Sam is present at this meeting. He stands up and proposes that everyone should have a vote, all the citizens of Westeros, including the smallfolk. The reaction to this is laughter and scorn from all those present at the meeting, with unoriginal, lame jokes supplied by Lord Royce and Edmure Tully about horses and dogs having the right to vote too. Nobody sticks up for Sam. Not. A. Single. Soul. So he sits down and shuts up. It’s upsetting and potentially triggering seeing Sam treated like that, a character who has been abused by his father, struggled with self esteem issues, and still found it in his heart to help a poor wildling girl, herself also a survivor of abuse.
It is especially a let-down seeing not even Sansa speak up for him, she who has been through so much, and who has just told off her uncle Edmure. Arya wouldn’t, she’d cut your throat for having a bad opinion on Jon Snow, so clearly she can’t handle democracy (not that she’s interested in politics, it’s puzzling that she’s at that meeting at all), but Sansa could have at least refrained from laughing–though there is a shot where the camera focuses on her face and she looks like she’s having thoughts. Let’s hope so!
I like to think that Sam continued his fight for universal suffrage and I like to think that Tyrion listened to him (in Season 7 Tyrion praises the way the Ironborn and Night’s Watch choose their leaders). Keep fighting the good fight, Sam.
In 2018 I went to a small independent Game of Thrones convention here in Manchester. I brought back three autographed photographs; Ian McElhinney (Barristan Selmy), Roger Ashton-Griffiths (Mace Tyrell) and Toby Sebastian (Trystane Martell). I can confirm they were all very nice.
I don’t know how else to wrap this up other than saying, thank you for reading.
Valar morghulis.
They fly together in loops above the roofs of the houses in my neighbourhood, and once they’re done with that, they settle down on this tree next to my house and chill out.
I wonder if they know how much they provoke my cat!
They also make appearance in my flash fiction short story The Camera Smiles (written for a prompt by The New, Unofficial, On-Line Writer’s Guild). The story is true, except it was initially a crow that made me reach for my camera, not the starlings, but by the time I got it out and pried the lens cap, which really got stuck on the lens (to the point where I had to google how to take it off), the crow flew away and the starlings took over the tree.
Not that long ago on Some Photoblog I did two posts with a shared theme of home; I imagined they could bring out the feeling of peace and warmth of home. These days, home means not just the place we escape to from the cold weather–it also helps save lives.
Have some pics, with addition of some thoughts of mine.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is the prequel to Jane Eyre, the story of Bertha aka Madwoman in the Attic, here named Antoinette. For a while now, I’ve been her defender; she is always Antoinette to me. The prose in this book is beautiful and it’s a short read–and much easier than Jane why-use-one-word-when-I-can-use-ten Eyre. It also, rightfully, portrays Rochester as the villain.
Although I have my own theories regarding the madwoman. Most of all, I maintain that there was nothing wrong with her. If she did become mad, it was from living in the confined space of the attic–not hard to believe now, eh? I operate from the point of view that Rochester is lying. If you look at it that way, the story changes completely. After all, it’s narrated by Jane, who is eighteen, inexperienced, who’s lived a sheltered life and knows shit about the world. There is no evidence of any madness in the book. Heck we can’t even be sure it was really the madwoman who set the house on fire. We are told that by a stranger, a pub landlord, who for all we know might be as credible as today’s tabloid press. And even he admits it’s only a guess!
They say journalling can be beneficial to your health. I don’t know, I don’t journal. At least I haven’t started yet, I’ve only been using the pictured notebook for journalling prompts I found on Pinterest. So you can say I do journal, a bit, lol.
I bought this loaf and when I put it on the wooden chopping board, it looked so nice I had to take a picture. But my white kitchen top made too harsh a background, so I later bought another loaf of bloomer and did it again using a kitchen towel for a background.
Bread is one of the oldest man-made foods and is culturally and religiously significant. It’s also often used as a metaphor for sustenance. The Lord’s Prayer, for example, features the line “give us today our daily bread”. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre says to (that bastard) Rochester: “Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup?” Bread-winner is used to describe the member of the household who earns the largest chunk of the income.
My cat is very unbothered by *points at everything in the world*. What matters to her is what has always mattered to her: that she gets fed and finds a comfy place to chill out. This sometimes means she steals my spot, for which I have to fight her for.
She is constant.
However, she is also constant in other ways.
Pepper came to my life seven years ago. She’s been with me while I went through all the stuff I went through, the good and the bad and the ugly; she’s never left my side. She may not be able to speak human, but she’s still a faithful companion. Better than other humans, often. She’s not the one who, for example, disbelieves me when I tell her something. She’s not the one who dismisses my trauma or handwaves my worries and fears. She doesn’t belittle me and she never laughs at me.
There is evidence that pets are good for our mental health. Of course, everyone who has a pet knows this, but it’s good to have it backed by science nevertheless.
