Art and Life. And Lovecraft. : Robin McKinley

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It is very late.? It is very very late.? It is very very very late and I haven?t even started a blog post yet.? I?ve been busy.? Aside from life?s basic necessities of tea and hurtling, we all went to Mottisfont today.*

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Those monks sure had an eye for location.

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Most of the roses are over. But not all. This is Crimson Glory. She smells too.

Pink roses on a wall. Always a good look.

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Lavender. Wow. And it's full of happy bees.

The famous white bench and rose arbor shot. When the roses aren't out. The echinops are good though (those round blue thistly things.) And the bees love them too.

I fully endorse Andraste's colour sense.

. . . and then Luke, Aaron, Percival and I played Arkham Horror.? http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15987/arkham-horror?

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AAAAAAAAAAAUGH

Never mind the monsters.? Sorting out all 1,000,000,000,000 of those frelling little pieces has already sapped your initiative to -12 before the game begins, and you?re almost glad to be dismembered by the Flying Polyp (Physical Resistance, Nightmarish 1, Overwhelming 1) or the Star Spawn (?The bosun was the only one left alive.? We dragged him screaming from the cargo hold.? ?That thing!? he wept . . . ).

??????????? At least we managed to win this one.? Arkham Horror, I am embarrassed to admit, belongs to me.? Which is why I was the one doing all the frelling sorting.? Well, it got all these fabulous write ups and recommendations and I have a weakness for Lovecraft . . . and Luke and his family are why I started playing frelling board games again for the first time in a quarter century or so when I moved over here.? Aaron has a point about it being easier than making conversation.? But as a result I?ve spent rather more time in board games shops and on board game web sites than I would have if left to my own innocent devices.**? And I bought myself Arkham Horror, and gave them Mansions of Madness

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/83330/mansions-of-madness

which they had brought along this time specifically to torment me with, although they always take large wodges of board games with them on holiday and?according to Andraste?the boys sit around for days on end, playing board games.? Whatever floats your boat.***

??????????? Anyway.? I don?t think you can win Mansions of Madness.? It?s far too slanted toward the Evil Keeper, which role Aaron had made his own in his inimitable Aaronish obsessive board game nerd way and indeed I had some trouble taking seriously the likelihood that I was going to burn to death and then be eaten by zombies because Aaron was busy performing Vincent Price on steroids and this was very diverting.? However we all burnt to death and were eaten by zombies, but Luke had already gone insane so he probably didn?t mind as much as Percival and I did.?

??????????? Arkham House throws you the occasional crumb of hope and help, and we won, we think, without misunderstanding too many crucial rules.? I particularly like the fact that you can buy back your lost sanity for $2 at the Arkham Asylum.? I?m not sure that cut-rate sanity is all?that reliable but maybe it doesn?t matter?. . . Ia! ?Ia!? Cthulhu Fthagn!? Ph?nglui mglw?wfah Cthulhu R?lyeh wgah?nagl fhtagn!?

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* We went because I wanted to see the EH Shepherd WIND IN THE WILLOWS show?they have a bunch of his original illustrations on display.? I did carefully check the web site for ?accessible? and we got there and . . . in the first place, while there is a disabled? bay in the car park, they haven?t done anything to improve the surface, which means you?re parking in a rutted swamp.? Great.? Swell.? Andraste, because she?s like this, went off to tackle the admin about it:? what if the disabled person is the driver?? There is no way he (or she) would be able to unload his/her wheelchair and get into it on this surface, or lack of surface.? Andraste says that her impression, after rather too much experience around this issue, is that the assumption is that the disabled person either can walk?not far, but for example the little mobility buses Mottisfont uses to run people from the front gate to the house and garden do assume you can get as far as the bus?or that they have an able-bodied companion.?

??????????? And the able-bodied companion(s) was of no use whatsoever when we got to the house, which does have a ramp up to the ground floor (as advertised), to discover that the art show that we were there to see . . . is on the first floor.? And there is no lift.? No.? None of us saw it.?

** On the other hand if I hadn?t had a forum full of knitters I probably wouldn?t have tried knitting again, it having so signally failed to ingratiate itself last time.? How had I managed to live fifty eight and half years without knitting.^? So I?m not really complaining about peer pressure.?

^ I?ve been knitting between turns the last two nights.? And I?m getting to that first dangerous stage of being able to do a certain amount of straightforward knitting without thinking about it . . . with the result that I had frelling cast off the Left Front before a faint memory trace drove me to look at the pattern again and discover that I was only supposed to cast off the first nineteen stitches, and continue on with the remaining thirty-four.

??????????? Language ensued.? But I actually got the little ratbags back on the right needle more neatly this time.?

*** Yarn.? Yarn.??

? Which may or may not mean Yes!? Yes!? In his house at R?lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming!?

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Source: http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2012/08/01/art-and-life-and-lovecraft/

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