kbk

I came over to house last night and promptly got eaten by the internet; stayed up all night reading crap fic, slept all day, did not actually do half what I meant to; parentals have gone out both evenings; planned to get the bus back while they were out but failed and am now waiting for them to come back so I can get a lift.

Argh. Money issues etc continue, but I finally got my arse into gear and went and applied for housing benefit, which is a good step, and I phoned the gas company to change over the account (the electricity had an online thing and oddly enough got achieved like a month ago).

I have way too much stuff. I am now at the point (again?) of throwing my hands up and saying, jesus, too much, may as well just throw all this stuff out because I won't even notice 95% of it is gone. Which is not entirely true but it damn well feels like it.

I re-read 'The Fifth Child' by Doris Lessing, which was an odd experience. It is a book I did for Higher English; it creeped me out quite a lot at the time, which stuck with me through, christ, ten years. On re-reading, I managed to identify a few of the issues which freaked me out so badly, stuff about the destruction of the family, the danger of maternity (I have this whole irrational issue linking femininity to death) and suchlike. Also of course this was just after my mother died. Anyway, I re-read it from a more analytical perspective and hope that has helped; but it was odd because I must have read it a dozen times, and before I picked it up I couldn't have told you more than the bare outlines, but I kept recognising parts of it and feeling like I could have quoted them by heart.

Anyway, then I read the sequel, 'Ben, In The World' and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's kind of odd, again, especially reading them in the same day, because in the first book Ben is basically your archetypal changeling/monster child, and then in the second he's the central sympathetic character. He's still depicted as being 'wrong' but it leads to him being taken advantage of, etc, and it's a very different perspective on the character. I guess that's part of what makes a Nobel-winning author.

Also I watched the Star Wars trilogy, again, and I realised something. The rebel base at the end of the first film, the outside is filmed at Tikal. Which I have visited. I have watched the films before and since, but I don't remember noticing before. I was just looking at it, just when they return from destroying the Death Star, I think, and thought, those bits of stone temple sticking up out of the trees, those look awfully familiar... So I have been to Yavin IV.