Book review: Perspectives

I enjoyed this; I would consider it as lightweight easy-reading fluff, slightly redeemed by name-dropping Italian painters in a way that made me more interested in seeing their works. Or as the first of the blurbs on the cover truthfully says, "a racy and enjoyable detective story". But I wouldn't call it "funny".

It is written as a succession of letters amongst the various persona; this keeps things moving, and breaks things up into easy-to-read chunks; and indeed it is very readable. But after a while it becomes a little wearing; one longs for some variety.

It looks like from this that the Pontormo frescos, and their controversial nature, were a real thing. But I'm not sure that is terribly important. It was fun reading, but I realise that it hasn't really helped my understanding of any of the painting, or of the history, since I don't know which bits are faked and which not.

Now for the downsides. On the surface, the language is relentlessly modern, which detracts from any immersion into the world; and all the characters write in much the same voice; compare to say Patrick O'Brien who provides convincing conversations. This surface of language extends to ideas; for example Our Investigator starts talking about means, motive and opportunity as though it were an Agatha Chistie.

The Wild Ride of Michelangelo is not believeable; neither that an old man could do such a thing, nor that he would find his long-disused secret entrance, nor that he could do all this unobserved. Using post-horses at the very least would have left a trail of notice in his wake. Nor do I believe that someone like him would have shaken off all his servants. Come to that, that he was the killer isn't very believable either. So rather than - as Our Ag so often manages - to have the final unmasking be a satisfying conclusion, it is more like "ho hum, I suppose the book is over then, that will have to do as an ending". Also disappointing is the Klew of the Repainted Fresco. I kinda wanted it to be someone hiding something in the wall, or something of that nature. It was distinctly unsubtle how often the book hammered home that the repainting needed to be explained. OTOH, killing with a chisel is odd - especially in a city where every gentleman and many others carry daggers - so the complete lack of interest in "why use that as a murder weapon" grates. Of course the answer is that Our Author knows it isn't an interesting clue, but Our Investigators shouldn't know it.

The sub-plot - which isn't really sub; it is more a co-plot - about the Naughty Picture is, at the end, seen to be entirely separable from the main plot; and this I think is a weakness; in a better book they would have been inseparably connected in some way. And in the end, the title is irrelevant too. It is a word related to painting, yes. And a sequence of letters gives us different perspectives, yes. But I expected more; and the out-of-place interpolations about perspective in the book make it feel like the author realised this too and needed to stuff something in.

And lastly: the wrapper for all this is Our Author finding a collection of old letters; but it seems entirely implausible that all the letters described would end up in one collection.

Book review: Against Gravity

Gazza Gibbo again, and yes I know I should have known better. I lasted for 250 pages, about half way through, before giving up. Before I actually say anything about the book, here is a curiously apposite quote from Lewis, in the Allegory of Love:

The De Nuptiis, as is well known, became a text-book in the Middle Ages. Its encyclopaedic character made it invaluable for men who aimed at a universality in knowledge without being able, or perhaps willing, to return to the higher authorities. The fantastical 'babu' ornaments of the style were admired. The mixture of fable with grammatical or scientific doctrine was a damnosa hereditas which it bequeathed to the following centuries; Martianus, I take it, must bear the chief responsibility for Hawes' Tower of Doctrine and Spenser's House of Alma. He established a disastrous precedent for endlessness and form-lessness in literary work. Yet I cannot persuade myself that the Middle Ages were entirely unhappy in their choice of a master. Martianus may have been a bad fairy; but I think he had the fairy blood in him. His building is a palace without design; the passages are tortuous, the rooms disfigured with senseless gilding, ill-ventilated, and horribly crowded with knick-knacks. But the knick-knacks are very curious, very strange; and who will say at what point strangeness begins to turn into beauty? I must confess, too, that I am sufficiently of the author's kidney to enjoy the faint smell of the secular dust that lies upon them. At every moment we are reminded of something in the far past or something still to come. What is at hand may be dull; but we never lose faith in the richness of the collection as a whole. Anything may come next. We are 'pleased, like travellers, with seeing more', and we are not always disappointed. Among all these figurative woods and streams, these wheeling poles and pedantic rituals, these solemn processions and councils of the gods-gods that seem no bigger than marionettes, but stiff with gold and carved with Chinese curiosity-among all these, some at any rate suffer us to forget their doctrinal purpose, and breathe the air of wonderland.

Against Gravity is a bit like that, but without the touch of faerie or curiosity.

I gave it two stars on Goodreads, in a generous mood, perhaps for old times sake.

We meet Our Hero in Edinburgh, a refugee from a collapsed America, in a noire-ish atmosphere so typical of cyberpunkiness. He has perhaps-out-of-control enhancements growing within his body that have killed some of his friends, in a manner that will surprise or interest no-one. These were acquired during a formative period in some implausible USAnian prison complex in Venezuela of which we get flashbacks; meanwhile up in the sky is a cylindrical habitat which has apparently been taken over by nano-super-intelligences intent on building a wormhole to the Omega Point in the far future. Various characters are interested in Our Hero, who may or may not be ahllucinating some of them; and of course there's a giant evil megacorp, whose boss is like so mega-smart he got the Nobel Prize at age 21, FFS, that's less plausible than a wormhole to the future.

Various "adventures" happen but don't greatly advance the plot, and I don't buy scifi to read about people having fights in hotel rooms and falling from the windows, yawn. I think that if there's a story in there it badly needed excavation from the heap of refuse that had fallen onto it, to reveal the bones, if they exist.

100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

I stumbed across the 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels (arch) and thought it would be fun to se how I compare. My own list is here. Links are to any that I've reviewed, which number... 17. Crass omissions from their list: Hobbit, LoTR, Crowley: the Deep, Engine Summer, Beasts; Icehenge; White Queen; Jack Vance; Aldiss, and more.

1. Dune by Frank Herbert

2. Foundation by Isaac Asimov

3. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - only technically scifi

4. 1984 by George Orwell - ditto

5. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells - way too high

6. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - read as a teenager

7. Neuromancer by William Gibson

8. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin - read years ago; I haven't felt the urge to re-read it; perhaps I should; but Earthsea is her best

9. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick - again, read years ago

10. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - and again; elegaic, but I dount they rank this high

11. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood - never read

12. Hyperion by Dan Simmons - quite enjoyed this but this is too high

13. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - decent

14. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin - tosh

15. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - never read

16. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - years ago, seems high though

17. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler - never read

18. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke - its OK

19. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. - decent

20. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov - too high

21. Contact by Carl Sagan - never read

22. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by H.G. Wells - I think I read this as a teenager; I think it is likely tosh but don't really remember

23. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes - I think I read this as a short story or novella

24. The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons - can't remember

25. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin - again, this is the wrong one. Her politics isn't really great; her adventures were better

26. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer - never read

27. World War Z by Max Brooks - never read

28. Perdido Street Station by China Miéville - never read

29. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein - should be higher

30. Solaris by Stanisław Lem - read as a teenager, I recall this as boring and pointless

31. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - never read

32. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein - I'd put this higher

33. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman - and this

34. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - not really scifi

35. Ringworld by Larry Niven - terrible

36. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor - never read

37. Blindsight by Peter Watts - meh

38. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells - I recall the film

39. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - as-a-teenager; decent

40. Anathem by Neal Stephenson - too low

41. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi - never read

42. The Power by Naomi Alderman - never read

43. City by Clifford D. Simak - never read

44. The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton - as-a-teenager; can't recall

45. Shards of Honour by Lois McMaster Bujold - never read

46. Gateway by Frederik Pohl - as-a-teenager; decent

47. The Road by Cormac McCarthy - never read

48. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood - never read

49. Embassytown by China Miéville - I think I read this after M gave it to me for Christmas years back. It was OK, but didn't inspire me to read others-by

50. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler - never read

51. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick - as-a-teenager; decent, should be higher

52. Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan - read, quite liked; see-also Broken Angels

53. Spin by Robert Charles Wilson - never read

54. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal - never read

55. Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds - yup, liked this

56. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe - should be much higher

57. Light by M. John Harrison - no

58. Wool by Hugh Howey - never read

59. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie - higher

60. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson - decent

61. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson - terrible; DNF

62. Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - never read

63. Red Rising by Pierce Brown - never read

64. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell - never read

65. Under the Skin by Michel Faber - never read

66. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge - higher

67. Morning Star by Pierce Brown - never read

68. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - I think I read 1 and 2 when D did, on the holiday to Spain

69. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami - never read

70. Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill - never read

71. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham - read-as-a-teenager; can't recall

72. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart - read years ago, not that wonderful

73. Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky - never read

74. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North - never read

75. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - never read

76. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - never read

77. Eon by Greg Bear - meh

78. Diaspora by Greg Egan - never read

79. The Postman by David Brin - never read

80. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - never read

81. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - quite liked

82. The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard - read-as-a-teenager; should read again I think

83. The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham - ditto

84. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - never read

85. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - meh

86. The Night Side of the Sun by David Wingrove - never read

87. Pavane by Keith Roberts - higher

88. The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi - never read

89. The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson - never read

90. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis - never read

91. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

92. A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick - read-as-a-teenager; can't recall

93. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch - never read

94. Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey - kinda generic potboilerish, if I recall correctly

95. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins - never read

96. Recursion by Blake Crouch - never read

97. The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross - never read

98. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey - never read

99. Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer - never read

100. The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin - never read

Book review: Travel Light

By Naomi Mitchison. We have owned this - or perhaps M has owned this - for time out of mind; and it is possible I've read it before; it is eerily familiar in parts. It is... whimsy; a jeu d'esprit; or so I say. Perhaps I missed anything deeper.

Halla as a baby is rescued from the court by her nurse-turned-bear, stays with the bears for a while, then as winter and hibernation approaches is transferred to the dragons, with whom she grows up. Slowly - later on, towards the end, it is revealed that the stoary has taken many generations and perhaps hundreds of years - men grow stronger and dragons more precarious; her protector is killed, and following a chat with the All-Father she heads off towards Midgard-aka-Byzantium, travelling light, forsaking the golden ornaments that her dragon-self loves. In Byzantium her ability to talk to animals allows her to predict the chariot races, earning money for her friends and an audience with the Emperor, and eventually the replacement of an Evil Governor that her friends had come to petition for. Returning, the result is less rosy than hoped, and she ends up heading north to Holmgard, where she abandons the world of men for the Valkyries.

So, a nice story nicely told of higher than usual literary quality. There are digs at heroes and their antics along the way, and men as a sex don't get a good book. Is there a point? Not a clearly defined one and perhaps it is all the better for that; the point is the look-n-feel.

Book review: The Twilight of Briareus

By Richard Cowper, aka John Middleton Murry. I like this one; it is from my childhood. Wiki will tell you about it; and also that there is no star or constellation called Briareus.

The tone is "subtle, lyrical and moving" which is kinda fair I think; there's a sort of eerie tone not dissimilar to some of the faerie parts of Pavane. The story, read through from the start without foreknowledge, mostly works. Here's an enthusiastic Goodreads review with which I largely agree; or this one.

Reading it again but with foreknowledge, and as an adult, the gaps and oddities are more obvious. Quite what the "newcomers" want of us, quite what they are offering that is worth a risk of extinction, really isn't clear. Quite how our bodies have decided to shutdown reproduction, quite how our old brains have recognised something that our new brains have not, ditto. But never mind; one can still glide over these improbabilities. The ending jars; Calvin kills himself for no obvious reason, other than to fulfil some unclearly expressed prophecy; I don't like prophecy.

A consequence of the supernova is a shutdown of the gulf stream, leading to England becoming snowbound. That's a nice part of the story - it gives him a ready isolated environment for his characters - and isn't particularly implausible.

Book review: The Neutral Stars

By Morgan and Kippax, authors of "Seed of Stars". This one is #3 (SoS was #2) and the theme of Earth-space-colonies-menaced-by-aliens continues, as does the theme of harmful mutation. The book itself is a bit disjointed, and I think doesn't work as well as SoS; to say why requires spoilers, which I'll provide, since the chances of you finding this slim tome, let alone reading it, are negligible. Goodreads isn't impressed.

The action centers around <planet>, which has been colonised and run as a great success by the mighty, and thus inevitably in this sort of book evil or at best amoral <corporation>. A fish biologist, of all people, sent out to investigate, realises that the wonderful harvests of ever-increasing salmon have been accompanied by a strong and - utterly implausibly - unnoticed dimunition in lifespace of the millions of human colonists. How they are supposed to have not noticed is beyond me, never mind, the response is that the <corporation> realises that the <bureaucrats> will order the colony abandoned. So, in order to avoid embarrassment they decide to nuke the colony and wipe out the survivors, and trust that everyone will assume it is the naughty aliens.

Meanwhile, a second plot - which doesn't get resolved in the book - has people looking for a Warp Drive, since the aliens clearly have one. Although why they don't just look for a faster FTL drive I'm not sure, since they already have one FTL drive.

In the end - which is pretty slow of them, I guessed much earlier - everyone guesses that it wasn't the naughty aliens, since last time they just used a <space ray> that turned the entire planet to slag, so why would they descend to nukes this time? And anyway one of the nukes didn't go off, and was labelled "I am a human nuke" as a clue.

In the end - and I give the book some credit, it isn't clear in advance how it was going to end, with the <corporation> evil but triumphant, or destroyed, or what - the <corporation>'s bosses daughter kills the <evil CEO> and life continues much as before. Except for the dead folk, obvs.

Side note: although the mighty Venturer Twelve and friends are nominally there to protect Earth and the colonies, it becomes clear - more in #2 than here, though here by default - that they are actually fuck all use; the only aliens they meet are so powerful that the Earth ships and weapons are useless.

Book review: Tales of Pirx the Pilot

Tales of Pirx the Pilot (Polish: Opowieści o pilocie Pirxie) is a science fiction stories collection by Polish author Stanisław Lem, about a spaceship pilot named Pirx, says wiki.

They are... of a type. Kinda soviet-ish; but also of the naive scifi era. When spaceships were sent out "on patrol" - why would you do that? When space had sectors. And when displays were cathode ray.

They also feel a bit tame. As though Lem wasn't really sure what he was allowed to do with the new medium, and felt obliged to not stray to far from classical ideas. The prose is often of decent quality rather than pulp rubbish, but the ideas perhaps less so.

For example the last one is something of a ghost story, transmogrified: assigned to an old refurbed ship, Pirx discovers the reactor being maintained by an old robot who is revealed to have survived the crash years ago that killed all the previous crew, slowly. For no obvious reason it starts tapping out in morse code transcripts of the crash. This unnerves Pirx who ends up rather thoughtlessly recommending scrapping the robot, thereby removing the unsettling from his life and settling for the known.

This Goodreads review is a little harsh - I would be kinder - but is substantially correct.

New Blue Montane Coat and Rab Trousers

Ellis Brigham in the Lion Yard are having a "refit sale" so I got this coat for half of its std £250; and the trousers for half their std £90. The coat weights 390 g, 110 more than my previous Rab Orange at 280 g. It is a Cetus (not the Lite); arch; officially 395 g but I see I have a "small" (accidentally; it was on a L coathanger and I failed to check. Still, it seems to fit, including over a down jacket).

What sold me on the coat was the pockets; the orange Rab only has one, and it is high. This means that when walking I can't put my hands in my pockets; or, I have to lift up the coat and put my hands in the pockets of whatever is underneath. Either is annoying, and I readily get cold hands. The new coat is slightly (but only slightly) stiffer material - which I think I only notice because the Rab is so nice and slinky. The "true mountaineering style" is high pockets so the harness doesn't get in the way, but well: I spend more time walking than with harness; and quite often put the coat over the harness anyway.

The new trousers are the same model as the previous, except they are in a women's make, which seems to mean a smaller waist. I think that's OK; for £45 it was worth an experiment. The old trous have a minor hole in one knee, as tends to happen.

Refractive lens replacement surgery

After Scotland, I finally decided that I cared enough to look at laser eye surgery. The problem is rain-on-glasses; on the summit plateau of Ben Nevis, I could barely see anything, and white snow and white cloud makes it hard to see what you can't see. This has obvious implications for safety. After some research-aka-googling, I went to talk to Optical Express, who told me I would get Refractive lens replacement surgery not lasering. This is because... natural lenses tend to start going around sixty or whenever; I forget the exact details doubtless you can find them if you care. Getting tested takes an hour and a half and involves about eight different machines, and ends with what is doubtless intended to be a reassuring video narrated by what looks like a prosperous farmer in a nice three-piece tweed suit, but is actually their CEO. Mostly, they are trying to reassure you that the chances of them miss-slicing up your eyeballs are small.

Lens replacement is more expensive; I was quoted and accepted £9590 for both. Trying to scout around for comparison is tricky, since people are shy about revealing prices. I decided to wing it and not go for two or three quotes.

The promise is that I won't need glasses afterwards. They are a touch vague about exactly how much I won't need them, but I'm reasonably confident they'll do as well as anyone, so I'm just going to suck it and see.

I thought about it for a week and could see no reason not to proceed so I did, booking my appoinment for early-April and handing over my £1k deposit. Naturally there is financing available, but I avoided that. Now I wait, having paid my £8590 balance (actually £8690, because they mistakenly added in a £100 price increase, but they have promised me the £100 back).

2026/3/31: I had my I had my videophone (Teams) chat with my eye surgeon today. All well, he answered my questions (mostly: what is the delay post-op about? Ans: mostly, letting a non-symmetrical lens settle in, so that any shocks won’t cause it to rotate). He did say they weren’t certain of getting my lenses in on time, but we’ll see (geddit?).

Book review: Blitzkrieg

By Len "Funeral in Berlin" Deighton. Newly deceased, which was the reason for me ordering and reading this tome. This one is purely historical; but anyone reading his spy novels will have noticed his interest in military history. I think the book gains somewhat by him being an amateur: he doesn't stand on academic ceremony, and has no rivals to knife. Against that there's a certain pop-y feel to some of this. Nowadays, it is nice to just be able to look up various elements, like say the battle of Sedan, if you want more details or a second opinion.

Deighton traces, well, as it says: from the rise of Hitler to the fall of Dunkirk, with the intention of studying the Blitzkrieg, by which he means the rapid German advance. He asserts - quite possibly correctly - that this is the only instance of such; for example, the fall of Poland wasn't. And so it is a uniquiely interesting event to study.

His main conclusion is, I think, that the success was a mixture of, on the German side, luck and rewards-for-preparation-and-daring; and on the Allied side a mixture of bad luck, and failure-due-to-incompetence.

The entire thing is pretty readable, especially the second half about the campaign itself, so if you're interested I recommend just reading it; I'll try to pull out some factoids here.

LD goes through Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and so on, and from a German point of view these are great successes, driven by Hitler's daring, contempt for the old order, or recklessness, depending on your viewpoint. The campaign against Belgium, Holland and France follows in the same light, so although the tactics were down to the generals, inevitably Hitler gets credit for being bold enough to go with the flow. Likely, any other leadership would not have taken the risk; perhaps better said, likely other leadership would have more correctly assessed the risk and declined it.

But none of this would have worked without the gross incompetence from the Allies; most notably the French. LD points out that they had more tanks, and more aircraft, than the Germans. On the aircraft, there's a little section: why did the Germans have air superiority? Answer, because in the very first attack, airfields were attacked. In response, the French flew planes to safety in dispersed sites, and their comms and org structure was so schlerotic that they didn't bring them back into use.

From WWI, the winners had deduced that defensive warfare was how it was going to go, having won. The losers had concluded that was a really bad way to fight and something better needed to be found. At least in this instance, they turned out to be right. As to going through the Ardennes: "everyone" knew this was impossible, and yet - says LD - in fact some low-ranking Frogs had war-gamed / tested actually doing so, and it worked; naturally this kind of upsetting fact found no favour. It was all like that.

Update: in arrears, I ponder: I think a lot was down to individuals with initiative: not a teachable matter; not something you can write into your battle manuals.

Goodreads. Wiki.

Book review: Derai

Derai, by E.C. Tubb. #2 in the Dumarest saga, of which Toyman is #3. I love the covers of these editions. See how manly Dumarest is, with his bulging thighs.

The story... well, things happen. They make some kind of sense, perhaps, but not really. Folgone, towards the end, offers some kind of life-extension - if you look at it sideways - but bizarrely rations access to that not by money but by fighting; that's weird, obvs, but also it doesn't make the fighting public, which would be the only point of doing this stuff. Hive makes money by selling its mutated-bee products, which appear also to extend life, but only at the cost of turning you into a bloated incommunicado semi-corpse, so that isn't obviously a win.

The point of all the series is that Earl keeps wandering because he is desperate to find Earth. In this one, he is sort-of offered a kingdom, perhaps even a planet, and he still prefers the search for Earth. This is taken as a given, and is merely the answer whenever he is presented with a choice, but nonetheless it is odd: the book, and the series, never really answers why he cares so much.

Book review: Marune: Alastor 993

A "minor" Vance I think I should say; part of the Alastor "series" whose main element is Trullion: Alastor 2262. This one... is somewhat paler. We have a memory-lost protagonist who in his usual resourceful way discovers himself heir to a principality and acts to secure it; but I find the action and plot thin. Only the traditional Vance language saves it. Goodreads thinks better of it.

Replacement pole tips

Somewhere up on Ben Nevis the tip of one of my new poles resides; I think it got pulled out by the mini-snow-basket thingy.

In this modern world of ours I realised I could order a replacement online from Amazon with next day delivery. It turns out that I could get four generic ones for under £5; or I could shell out something like £20 for a genuine replacement part; guess which I went for. I feel a tiny bit sad about it though.

I'll need to glue the new bit into place though.

This is the first time the tip has ever come off a pole. I did consider cannabalising one of my other older poles but I couldn't persuade any of the others to come off or move at all.

Book review: Cold Steel

Cold Steel by Kate Elliott is the third in a trilogy, begun by Cold Magic and Cold Fire. I quite liked both of those - though one of them I didn't finish, because some rotter bought the Waterstones copy that I was reading; so it goes. But by the time of Cold Steel something has gone wrong; either my tastes have changed or her abilities have slipped; or she got bored and ran out of ideas to finish this story off. She certainly didn't run out of words though; this brick is 750 pages long and I got through 450 before giving up. Also this review is very late; I put it aside well before Christmas, perhaps in the hope I would wish to come back to it; but no.

The original, if I recall correctly, preserved some sense of mystery; this volume is young female brats being cwuel to their young male lovers; really, sublimated schoolgirl stuff I think.

The characters wander around an alt-Europe to no particular purpose; very little sticks in the mind except a nice scene by a reedy misty cloudy riverbank; but that's not enough to make a book of.

Subsequent to this I read the Witch Roads and liked it albeit with qualifications, so there is hope for her yet.

Book review: Final Days

Final Daze by Gazza Gibbo opens with an eerie claustrophobic exploration of an enigmatic alien structure hundreds of trillions of years in the future. This is by far the best part of the book, and why I started reading it. Alas it is all too soon over and we return you to your regular diet of wham-bam unthinking action in a variety of uninteresting locations.

Incidentally, the "hundreds of trillions" is just candy, really; it is of no great importance, and also they don't say how they know: the only clues appear to be the appearance of the sky, and could you really tell one, ten or a hundred trillion apart? Better books, like Icehenge, have their chronology uncertain and debated and actually matter to the plot.

Aanyway, back to the action: various people wander around - it takes a while to work out which ones we are following - and an important shipment of alien material is lost on Earth, hijacked. Predictably enough it turns out to be deadly and a "plague" of giant structures starts eating the Earth (it seems a bizarre coincidence that just the hijacked shipment is deadly; or perhaps they all are; the book hints at some connection between the disaster and the resurrected man); most of the rest of the excitement is then about Our Hero getting off Earth and shutting down the gates (did I mention that there are wormhole gates that humans have made, and also we've found distant mysterious alien gates that connect to the said far future) before the evil alien stuff infects the colonies, too.

At the end, the bloke who has been reconstructed by alien tech says that no, the alien stuff is actually trying to be helpful, by transporting people forward into the far future where they can live with genuine free will. But our hero destroys the gates anyway, because he has a messiah complex, and the book doesn't try to argue with him.

Aside: given the catastrophe that losing a wormhole would be, and in the book is, wouldn't it be prudent to take two or even three with you?

The book gets some points by knowing enough relativity to realise that, were they possible, wormholes are also time machines (but loses some by not realising that two, back to back, are one by themselves and don't require some FTL communicator). It then gets its knickers dreadfully twisted when it realises that this implies terrible things for free will - the plot is driven by videos-from-the-future showing the destruction to come - and "solves" that by having the aliens having decided to disappear off into the future past the end of the last wormhole, thus regaining free will. At this point, recall William's Principle: no-one ever says anything intelligent about free will.

This (enthusiastic) review reminds me that he also wrote The Thousand Emperors.

Book review: Maker of Universes

Ah PJF, familiar from my childhood; see my review of The Green Odyssey. Unlike that, Maker of Universes is one of his classics, and almost one of the classics, but sadly although the central idea is great, the trappings are not. The Goodreads reviews say this in more detail.

I'll assume you've read that or similar, so know the setup.

The lower, antient-greek-garden tier, is at first glance a paradise: everyone lazes around eating and drinking of the abundance. As things go on it becomes a bit darker, but I think he could, and a better book would, have really gone into the horror of it: people, transmogrified into odd shapes, condemned forever as pets of a now-absent lord, with nothing to do except drink themselves into a stupor as their past life fades away.

Above that, the teutonic and amerind tiers are less interesting; the writing is somewhat bland; and somehow despite the vast canvas he has given himself the situation is rather bland too.

Book review: October the First Is Too Late

October the First Is Too Late is a science fiction novel by astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. It was first published in 1966 says wiki, laconically. There is more to be said but you'll enjoy the book more without this review, so read it first. I guess that's a recommendation. But don't let me get too carried away: whilst it is written by yer Notable Physicist and while it is based on a quasi-respectable idea it is tosh.

The plot: our hero, a composer - and making the hero a composer is cute, and lends nice colour to the book - goes on holiday with a scientist, and mysteriously the scientist goes missing for a bit, before reappearing. Life goes on. Then it is discovered that - somehow, inexplicably, obvs - the sun is acting as a giant transmitter, beaming vast streams of information off somewhere. I don't think anyone ever bothers to try to work out exactly where it is being sent, because as it turns out that doesn't matter, which obviously the characters know in advance. Then, while they're in Hawaii, the world mysteriously fractures into multiple zones, each corresponding to a different time: Hawaii in the "present" of the book's narrative, England the same except a few months off, Europe back in WWI, Greece at the time of Sophocles, Russia in the unimaginably far future where the Earth has been through scouring by an enlarged sun and is now a flat glass plain. The characters talk about the "solar transmitter" and realise the bandwith is what you'd need to xferring the full state-of-the-Earth, and deduce that errm this somehow relates to the splitting. Out hero goes off to visit antient Greece, cue various hilarities, gets into a music competition and is whisked off to another bit - Mexico - where the folks from 6 kyr ahead have ended up. Where his scientist friend mysteriously turns up. Cue much discussion - about the moving spotlight theory of time and so on -  but since none of it made any sense I paid little attention. The end.

The book doesn't even pretend to trouble itself about who might be making the Sun do this stuff, or who may have fractured the Earth, or why; so inevitably as the book ends with none of that explored let alone explained, a sense of disappoinment ensues. The people 6 kyr ahead have, as usual, a mixture of super powers and comedy levels of tech already superseded by mobile phones; such is the fate of all such. Hoyle attempts some naive and rather dreadful politics: after about our time the world goes through cyces of expansion, collapse, the same expansion and so on; until eventually folk realise that having lots of population is really awful - think of all those dreadful plebs, watching those ghastly football matches, my dear it just doesn't bear thinking about - and the world would be better with - let's pluck a random number out of the air - 5 million people. The idea that people, in and of themselves, thinking, might actually be valuable never occurs to him, because naturally he, being a valuable and indeed notable astronomer, is going to be one of the saved. See-also Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion.

Trivia: I mentioned the scientist-going-missing bit, and indeed this occupies a fair slice of the intro. It turns out that he comes back - ta da! - without a birthmark he formerly had. Towards the end, when it gets all science-y, we are told that he came back as a copy, but an imperfect copy. But... why would the vague impersonal copying process choose to make such a mistake? Why not turn him blue, or come back without a spleen, or any of a million other possibilities? If it wanted to send a signal, why not tattoo him with a message? And why did this one guy get a copy / exchange, months before the real action of the rest of the book kicks off? It makes no sense at all, unless our Fred hadn't plotted it all out in advance, had this one bit written, and decided not to remove it at the end even though it had become irrelevant.

New Friends

E and I were in Fort William with the 4Cs, and on a wettish grey Sunday afternoon after Cowhill, we hit the shops. She got new boots, I got panties, oops no sorry I mean I got new Friends. These are #1 and #2 size, much smaller than my existing lot, but I thought I'd give such a try. At the least, they are lighter than the larger grades.

Cost, £80-90 raw, less with discounts and sale, but still enough to make me pause; but I do need to continue with the cycling of my 30-year-old kit, and I do love new shiny stuff, and this will act to push me into using it. Plus, by next month I'll have forgotten the cost and be up for buying more.

See-also: Old Friends.

Book review: Operation Chaos

More forgettable sci-fantasy pap, this time by Poul "Tau Zero" Anderson, who also wrote "The Enemy Stars". But I only got half way through this one. What finally did it for me was the not the cardboardness of the characters, but their inability to be even vaguely intelligent: for example, when left in the darkness at night, our lead decides without thinking to run as quickly as possibly, inevitably falling over rocks and hurting himself and getting lost. And so on. I think that if you're writing an actual novel, you need to do better at thinking of ways in which your characters don't win immeadiately; this was just too unimaginative.

The storyline itself is sort-of OK in a very meh way, featuring "magic" as actual techology, but done in a fashion I could not like; with no verve or panache, nothing to what Jack Vance might have provided.

I got about half way through before giving up.

Book review: Journey to the Center

I have vague but fond memories of The Halcyon Drift, but have not read any Brian Stableford for... many decades. The cover of this is not promising, but never mind, I gave it a whirl. I slightly regret doing so; the book itself is not worth reading, as I should have known, except perhaps as a slight foreshadow of Bank's Matter.

The first para of this review is pretty telling. Both for why you might want to read it, but why you actually don't.

The plot - I expound it, because I shall rely on your accepting my recommendation not to bother read this thing - is the familiar lone-explorer type of guy getting pressed into leading a group of people into a situation, in this case a quasi-artifical planet with multiple levels. Since each level is, say, only 100 m thick there are - unlike in Matter - potentially tens of thousands of levels in the interior, and who knows what vast riches of alien relics; we get the usual sort of stuff where loners go off exploring. Weirdly, it is supposed that there may be aliens in the interior who have lost contact with the surface, for some reason when building the world they neglected to lay any cable feeds upwards, never mind.

Aanyway, apart from a bit of wham-bam stuff Our Hero ends up meeting the aliens, sort of, and then comes out again. This is but the first of a trilogy so somewhing more exciting might happen in the next two volumes, but I'm not holding my breath or planning to find out.

Scotland, 2026

The 4C's - well, AH - have organised a trip to Scotland again this winter, and it almost feels like a tradition now, harkening back to the days of yore. Following last year's Cairngorms, we're going to Fort William this year. Here, as an aide memoire, is a pic of most of the stuff I'm taking. I'm driving alone in the car so can afford to take whatever I feel like.

So we have:

* (green bag on left): Miranda's boots and raincoat

* (grey bag on top with stripey stuff): misc winter clothes likely not to be used (spoiler: they weren't)

* (black bag rightwards): Daniel's yellow sleeping bag, a bivvi sac, and inners for me and E; I expect to use none of that (and didn't)

* (white bag above that): rock shoes, chalk: since E has invited me bouldering on Thursday night

* (small black bag rightwards): my usual "little black bag" of compass, spare batteries, spare glasses, lip salve, headtorch

* (purple bag): my walking boots, and my old plastic boots, to go with the skis

* (black and white holdall): two new tech axes, two old tech axes, two lightweight axes, two aluminium crampons and one steel, and the new Leopards, E's helmet, two Z-fold poles and two telescopic poles

* (blue bag): std gear bag, which I guess I'll sort on Friday night, or maybe Thursday

* (rope bag): old slinky blue; new slinky orange 60m, new non-slinky blue, my helmet, E's harness (my two are in the gear bag)

* (in front): my old skis with Silvretta 404 bindings (and, not shown: poles). I might get a chance to try them, who knows. And hope to hire some modern bindings for a day, too.

In my big blue rucksac: old green warm waterproof trousers; new black waterproof trousers; raincoat; down jacket; thin yellow spare raincoat; walky-talkies; yellow bag with chargers and cables.

Also to take: car food, and enough pasta to get us through Friday night if we need it; and 4 x 100g fruit+nut bars.

In retrospect: I took too much stuff, though it didn't actually matter much so maybe I didn't. Had I paid more attention to the wx, I could have skipped the skis and old boots; and I could have pre-winnowed the ropes perhaps.

What actually happened

A quick run through; I don't think I need to trouble you with details. Full pix for the trip are here; just mountain ones here.

Thurs: drive up, starting off about 9, a few stops along the way, most notably at Barter Books in Alnwick and a walk along the coast just before Bamburgh. Arrive at Edinburgh before 8, join E and Milo at The Climbing Hangar for a fun hour and a bit of climbing, nice to be on totally new stuff; then back to their flat, sleep overnight on their sofa.

Friday: wander to the National Gallery in the morning, discovering war memorials in the gardens along the way, and look again at the collection. More slowly this time, with several stops for coffee and fish-n-chips for lunch; discovering that the collection is smaller than I'd remembered, but still good. Leave with E about half 3; arrive with no stops around 7. The hostel is actually about 2.5 miles out of Fort William in Glen Nevis; this is fine for us, with a car, but might have been annoying if we'd been on foot. Present: us, Laurent, Andy Buckley, Seb. They make a chilli; I preserve the remains for tomorrow; we discuss what-to-do and decide on walking in from the North Face car park.

Saturday: [GPS] up at 6 as decided, b'fast, I'm ready by 7 but Larent is a little late, never mind, we're ready to start walking at 8. Trundle up, mostly in the dry, it is nominally 2 hours into the CIC hut; we manage 1:45, then have a brief break while L+A, who have places tonight, drop stuff. Andy Halley and Jon are presumed climbing up above somewhere. On the basis of <caution> about avalanche risk - Laurent is far more cautious than me - we're doing Ledge Route not a gully. L+A are a party; E and Seb and I will be another, but I'll be relying on L's route finding. At least from below the line of the route is unclear, but then again the cloud level is on the cliffs. There's no snow at the hut but there is by the time we're getting into the gully. As it turns out the route finding is easy; the route itself is natural, there are some footsteps, and there are a couple of other parties. A good route, but long. Wx is cloud, and some rain, and "warm", so we're all a bit damp by the top. I've stuffed up my gloves game - I need to have a spare dry pair accessible but don't; I should have swapped before going over the top but didn't, I should have dried my glasses ditto - so when we finish we come out of comparitive calm into rather strong winds, sufficient that after a bit we abandon hope of actually going to the summit. For the records, the Ben Nevis forecast was 45 mph; that gets you wind strong enough that facing into it is literally painful. Fortunately L navigated us off happily, with the aid of the OS app. Really I should have tried using the Strava heatmap to do the same, but was sufficiently cold-in-the-hands, and fogged-in-the-glasses, that I just let him do it. After a while, perhaps half an hour, we've come down far enough that we can see a bit, and the wind is less, and things go more easily. Around where we take crampons off we've come to above the lochan, where there's a clear path branching off down, so E and Seb and I take that, trusting there's a path from lochan back to the NF path. And... there is, sort of, rather wet underfoot but not actually boggy; you have to continue quite a long way to get to the bridge below the dam to get over the main river. Looking in arrears I think we would have been better just going up the path behind the hostel, which is actually a good path and not boggy at all, and would have made descent easy. Soir: E and I have reheated chilli - and then she has some pasta too - while Seb gets a pizza.

Sunday: [GPS] Seb decides to go back on the train - he has been up since Thurs - and E and I decide on an easy low level walk prior to her taking the 5 pm train home, since the wx today is no better and we don't fancy another long day in the wet. And so we do the Cowhill circuit, with nice views either back to Ben Nevis - still in cloud - or the loch. This bookended by coffee, and then lunch, in The Old Deli. After, to Nevis Sport then Ellis Brigham to get <stuff> in my case to small - #1 and #2 - friends; in E's case some new mountain boots, since her old ones, although nice, are really wearing out all over. Soir: pasta, and a beer. Oh, impressions of Fort William: a bit of a dump. Sorry. Not helped by a grey wet visit, but the way the A82 runs along the loch front rather ruins the ambience.

Monday: [GPS] all alone I get to decide what to do; Strava heat maps show me Stob Ban and Mullan nan Coirean as a circuit so I give that a go; it turns out well. As expected there's quite a lot of up - SB is 999 m - but I can cope with that and have plenty of spare at the top. Navigating purely by heatmap - because of the clouds - works, and although it is somewhat unnerving to commit myself - because there's decent and re-ascent, so after this point I can't simply walk back easily - it is also exciting. There are also occasional footprints. I'm carrying an axe but don't need it, though I consider getting it out on the final slopes up to SB. From SB it is really a walk around the ridge at the head of the corrie of the Allt a Choire Dheirg. And so back. I've managed my gloves rather better this time. Soir: moved from our 4-bed room to a "dormitory" which had 7 beds I think; but I was the only occupant.

Tuesday: time to go home I think. Wx is not improving. Drive along looking over the loch; stop briefly in Glencoe village but it isn't interesting; consider stopping in Glencoe but cloud halfway down the hills puts me off. Stop at Tyndrum; pass the Kelpies; around Edinburgh; stop for an afternoon walk along the sands on the N side of Bamburgh this time, lovely [GPS]; at Barter Books; and so it is about 7 when I get into Durham so just as well I didn't linger in Glencoe. Find "City Hotel and Bar", which is conveniently central. It was lying about having parking, as I suspected, but the main carpark is nearby and I stop for a pint in The Boathouse on the way back; what I didn't realise is that its windows would be thin and the outside have shouty students and traffic till late; but never mind I sleep.

Wednesday: up early no breakfast wander Durham [GPS]. Highlights the river, and the cathedral. Which is kind-of Hereford like: rather heavy and dark outside, thick Norman columns inside. But with redeeming features of interest. After that, it is four hours drive home.

Book review: The Inferno

The Inferno by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle is very much in the style and tone of his other books, but my first impression is that despite the non-stellar¹ prose, it is just more intelligently written than the other stuff I've been surfing through recently.

The plot, in brief: a Scientist, Our Hero, Cameron who is in fact The Cameron, in Australia to arbitrate rival designs for a new radiotelescope, notices a reddish patch in the sky that isn't Mars, and which turns out to be not a supernova but even more excitingly the first signs of the galactic core turning into a quasar. Returning to his home in northern Scotland, conveniently shielded by the season from the core, he and a few others survive and begin to rebuild, encountering and overcoming vicissitudes along the way. At the end, he discovers that a providential darkness that had shielded the Earth from overheating had some unexplained extraterrrestrial origin.

All of this is quite nicely handled. There's a bit of religion thrown in - Cameron's wife gets religion and leaves him for the madness down south, there's a nice singing-in-ruined-cathedral scene at the end, and Cameron ponders the observations made by the Mad Astronomer which reveal that the darkness-that-saved wasn't natural. Cameron speaks gaelic to ghillies and ponders Culloden. I could find out if the Hoyles had roots up there, but perhaps it is just the climbing: there's a lot of names of mountains and the A9 out of Pitlochry stuff. The initial build up is nice: our man is from CERN, but knows enough to arbitrate UK vs Oz radiotelescope designs, flys around the world a bit, and sees kangaroos or are they wallabies in Oz. It all seems a bit like the rather more gentle pace of scientific life in the 60s. The scene when "Mars" is seen is almost comic, undoubtedly by design: Hoyle is either making fun at, or just replaying in-jokes, about astronomers only looking through computer-pointed telescopes and not actually knowing where any of the planets are.

In a way the ending, by which I mean all the stuff after the inferno, is - apart from the cathedral - a bit mechanical, working through "the obvious" sort of problems, but not in a heavy-handed maner.

Notes

1. Arf arf.

Book review: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe by Ralf Dahrendorf is a book; Goodreads starts off The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 effectively ended the division of Europe into East and West, and the features of our world that have resulted bear little resemblance to those of the forty years that preceded the Wall's fall. The rise of a new Europe prompts many questions, most of which remain to be answered. What does it all mean? Where is it going to lead? Are we witnessing the conclusion of an era without seeing anything to replace an old and admittedly dismal way of life? What will a market economy do to the social texture of various countries of Central Europe? Will it not make some rich while many will become poorer than ever? That last question at least turns out to be answerable No: most have become better off, some greatly so; few have become worse off.

However, I read this thing more than a year ago and, as Spike Milligan memorably said, it left an indellible blank on my mind. The title aims far too high; not only does it - as I recall - fail from this distance in time to manage much in the way of foresight, but philosophically it falls far short of Burke.

Books read, 2026

I have a (crudely ranked) sci-fi books list; and an "other" list. This I one find myself in need of: simply a list of books read, in order. See-also the 2025 version.

* As On a Darkling Plain, Ben Bova

* The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Quentin Skinner

* Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Ralf Dahrendorf 

* The Inferno, Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle

* Journey to the Center, Brian Stableford

* Operation Chaos, Poul Anderson

* October the First Is Too Late, Fred Hoyle

* Maker of Universes, Philip Jose Farmer

* Final Days, Gary Gibson

* Cold Steel, Kate Eliott

* Marune: Alastor 993, Jack Vance

* Derai, E.C. Tubb

* Blitzkrieg, Len Deighton

* The Case Against Education, Bryan Caplan

* Tales of Pirx the Pilot, Stanisław Lem

* The Neutral Stars, Morgan and Kippax

* The Twilight of Briareus, Richard Cowper

* Travel Light, Naomi Mitchison

* Against Gravity, Gary Gibson

Book review: As On a Darkling Plain

Scifi tosh of my least favourite genre, a self-conscious² attempt to be a proper book. By Ben Bova; see-also The Exiles Trilogy which I also didn't like. So why did I buy it? Mostly for the title, and the hope that it would be an interesting Icehenge knock-off. But it isn't.

Indeed to my surprise it predates Icehenge. This post tells me also that it is a fix-up, which neatly explains the pointless "Jupiter" part which takes up 2/5 of the book, and in which our author runs through yet more cod psychology, and fails to think of an alien animal more interesting than a whale or a shark, but like really really big.

Unlike Icehenge, which manages to imbue the monoliths with a sense of mystery, here the buildings on Titan are just big buildings that throb like a post office motorbike¹.

Going for two out of two on annoyingness³, the book also displays the irritating trope where the character sees something - in this case the buildings - and instantly and unshakeably adopts some prejudice - in this case that the aliens are hostile. And then even more irritatingly the characters have a stupid discussion in which the hero blatantly fails to advance any plausible arguments in favour of his prejudice, and no-one calls him a dimwitted tosser. Sorry, am I ranting?

Lastly, at the end of the book, it turns out that the mysterious throbbing motorbike - sorry, I mean buildings - are emitting gravity waves aimed at causing sunspots and solar flares, in a pathetically inefficient attempt to erase life on Earth. Why the aliens would choose such a hopelessly wigmawolishly woundabout⁴ way of killing us all instead of just tossing a couple of asteroids or even a few big nukes at us is never made clear.

Trivia: Sirius B went white dwarf 120 million years ago, so his timeline doesn't fit; but that may not have been known then, for all I know.

Notes

1. What's big and red and throbs between your legs?

2. If, per Lewis, the chief virtue of medaeival literature is its lack of strain, this type of book is the opposite.

3. I shall discretely ignore the dull love triangle stuff, but make it 3/3 if you like.

4. Asimov, Foundation, part II The Encyclopaedists, chapter 4: visit of Lord Dorwin:

When did Lameth write his book?'

'Oh - I should say about eight hundwed yeahs ago. Of cohse, he has based it lahgely on the pwevious wuhk of Gleen.'

Then why rely on him? Why not go to Arcturus and study the remains for yourself?"

Lord Dorwin raised his eyebrows and took a pinch of snuff hurriedly. 'Why, whatevah foah, my deah fellow?'

'To get the information first hand, of course.'

'But wheah's the necessity? It seems an uncommonly wound-about and hopelessly wigmawolish method of getting anyweahs. Look heah, now, I've got the wuhks of all the old mastahs the gweat ahchaeologists of the past. I wigh them against each othah - balance the disagweements - analyse the conflicting statements - decide which is pwobably cowwect -and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. At least' - patronizingly - 'as I see it. How insuffewably cwude it would be to go to Ahctuwus, oah to Sol, foah instance, and blundah about, when the old mastahs have covahed the gwounds so much moah effectively than we could possibly hope to do.'

Hardin murmured politely, 'I see.'

Scientific method, hell! No wonder the Galaxy was going to pot!

New gear: wires, crabs

I was in Wales last weekend with the 4C's in the Rucksack Club hut in the Llanberis pass - more on that anon - and passing by Joe Brown's in Capel Curig stopped to poke around. They have an excellent selection of gear, I've not seen better elsewhere, probably better than Outside in Hathersage. Anyway I've begun my project to renew my gear, some of which dates back to the early 90's so is up to 35 years old. Although I do have a lot of newer stuff. First up is a set of wires, technically Wallnuts, from DMM.

And some crabs aka carabiners.

Note what isn't desperately obvious from the picture: they are smaller than standard, by a little, thus lighter, hence "Wisp". Looking at the online prices, Joe Brown's was actually slightly cheaper, something to remember.

Llanberis

To Llanberis with the 4Cs, to a Rucksack Club hut just above the town on the outskirts of the pass itself. I got all keen and threw my ice gear into the car but it was too warm for that: through the cloud one could vaguely see snow high up on Snowden but only in patches. Pix are here.

Friday: arrive. An easier drive than expected; I didn't listen much to music but mostly to my thoughts.

Saturday: [GPS] we settle on Tremadog, largely based on agreement between Keith Sands and Charles Moreton; I don't have strong opinions nor it seems to Pete Atkinson, the Italian guy, and I've now forgotten who else was there this was a month ago don't forget (I'm writing this on Feb 28th). Wx is grey, and rain is predicted from around noon. In fact it doesn't start and that gently until about 4, but this does set our expectations. We go to the upper tier, Craig Pant Ifan. My logbooks says I did Bulging Wall HS 4a, Falling Block Crack S 4 and MTN S 4a. One of those was something Keith, and then Pete, backed off. Soir: we walked down to the Vaynol arms; it was too busy to serve food, but I'd already eaten, so while they went further into Llanberis I sat and had a quiet pint.

Sunday: [GPS] it rained a lot overnight, and inevitably all the rock was going to be soaking wet. With cloud covering the hills we didn't have a Howard level of enthusiasm for multi-pitch Diffs, and after much discussion K+C decided on an out of the way crag, Craig Y Tonnau. This was actually quite cute, I lead one V Diff - Diane's Approval - but the rock was running with water and we all got rather cold hands, to the point of starting to lose feel. And so we felt that would do, everyone feeling mildly guilty at not doing more. With the others I stopped for coffee in Betws y Coed, then headed off early; I went back via Joe Brown's in Capel Curig - see new wires - then back to the Hut for a quiet night alone; I slept in the living room.

Monday: I'd left my options open but with the wx remaining iffy I decided to go home, via a walk along the beach at Porthmadog to nearly Criccieth; and a mosey through Porthmadog, which left me wanting to try the narrow gauge trains and relive my youth. And so home.

Of the hut

A nice place, well equipped for our purposes, pretty cold when we first got in and needed the fires going. Here's the "strangers" dowm upstairs; no blankets bring your own sleeping bag of course:

Here's the main "comfy" living room:

And here's the "dining room" and entrance way:

And the kitchen:

And from the outside:

New running shoes

Happy New Year. Having lost my beloved Boston Adizero 9's to old age, mountain walking and erging, themselves replacements for the 8's,

I had bought some Altra's in July 2024:

These are nice, without too much absurdly overbuilt heel as almost everything has these days, though a little bitey on the ankles; I've had to cut them back a little. But I still hankered after the Boston's, though you can no longer buy the 9's. Or so I thought! But recently I found some online (Joom) and bought them:

They are nice, although when wearing them I do find them a touch flat :-). I may now be eligible for Imelda status: