David Gillon

I was parked at the end of the London-bound platform at Chatham yesterday evening, waiting to catch the train into St Pancras, along with the passenger assistance guy with the ramp. As we're standing there the train to London Victoria heads out, and then we chatted for a minute before hearing an announcement about my train being delayed, despite it being at Gillingham station, which is only a couple of minutes away.

We're just wondering what the issue could be when a train pulls into our platform, but heading coastbound. Passenger Assistance guy's eyes bugged-out and he mutters something and then turns to repeat it to me: "I've worked here for forty years, and I've never seen a coastbound train come into this platform! Excuse me while I go and find out what's happening."

Turns out he still hadn't seen one, it wasn't a coastbound train, it was the Victoria train reversing back. Apparently a freight train had broken down alongside the platform at Rochester (two minutes up the line London-bound) and they'd sent the Victoria train back to Chatham to wait while they got things sorted out.

We were only delayed 20 minutes, which wasn't too bad because I was still five minutes early for meeting the university crowd for pre-Christmas drinks. And as we're now using the Betjeman Arms inside St Pancras station it was much more convenient for me than our get togethers used to be as I now just wheel from one end of StP to the other and don't need to haul myself and the chair down to Ye Old Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. (We swapped pubs a couple of years back to make things simpler for me, but this is the first time I've been able to get there since, OTOH it also makes things easier for another two out of the five of us).

We'd booked a table, and because they were using their dining room for a Christmas party we were put in 'the study', so effectively had our own wood-panelled private dining room for the night. Very swish! (As well as the big dining room and a big bar they also have an 'outside' patio area looking out across the Eurostar platforms, the place must be doing a bomb). Given how crowded it was at the bar when we arrived (I only maimed one ankle, and we'd told him to move), I let one of my friends get the beers in sight unseen, which is how I ended up drinking 'Hazy Pale'. You know how some wheat beers are slightly hazy? Well this is a bit like that, but hazy to the point of being completely opaque. Not something I'd drunk before, but would definitely drink again. Though I might have paced myself a bit differently if I'd known it was 5% ABV. 

The food was mostly good - I thought the mushrooms on toasted sourdough was a bit bland, but the fish and chips I had were done to perfection, and the other choices around the table - chicken pie, Cumberland sausage and Lancashire Hot Pot - all got the ex-Lancastrian seal of approval.

I packed in at 9:30 in the hope of catching the 9:50, as my neck had suddenly decided to become very unhappy, only to discover when I got to the platform that there isn't a 9:50 anymore, so I had to wait on the platform for about 40 minutes until the 10:20 arrived. Fortunately it was a fairly amiable crowd, I was even offered a beer by the guy sitting next to me - 'No thanks, I've had quite enough already'. There were one or two sparkly party frocks and jackets wandering past in the crowd, but style points had to go to the woman wearing the Snow White dress and tweed hacking jacket, both of them adorned with large cardboard and tinfoil stars.

Into Chatham by 11, in bed and asleep by 11:30!

The House of Lords have been taking evidence on the Assisted Suicide Bill.

Disabled folk to Parliament: The possibility of being compelled into assisted suicide scares us

Pro-assisted suicide mob to Parliament: a few disabled people coerced into assisted suicide is still worth it.

Honestly couldn't make it up

Me, Last night: It's bloody freezing in here!

Me, this morning: It's not bad, but still colder than it should be. Maybe I should check the central heating?

Central Heating: Look at all my pretty blinkenlights!

Me: It's probably the water pressure, I'll need to top up the system, but I need to warm up first

So I go put the fan heater on in the living room until the room is nice and toasty and I warm up

Warmed up, check the pressure: 0 Bar.

So I turn the awkward little knob underneath that lets water into the system (not the nice big handle next to it that doesn't) and fill the system to 2 Bar. Turn the system on, blinkenlights keep flashing

Me: I'll give it quarter of an hour to sort itself out

Quarter of an hour passes

Central Heating: Pretty blinkenlights!!

Me, still cold: Hmm, that big red blinkenlight says 'reset', it couldn't be? Yes, it's also a button.

Me, after pressing the reset light/button and an obvious restart: I'll give it quarter of an hour to sort itself out

Another quarter of an hour passes

Central Heating: Pretty, pretty blinkenlights!!

Me, still still cold: Bugger, must be something -- oh, you idiot!!!

Walk into still toasty living room, pick thermostat up and carry it into kitchen

Central Heating: Oh, wow, it's cold in here, hang on a minute and I'll get that sorted

Hidden Legacy Series, Ilona Andrews

(First trilogy reviewed here. As a quick primer, magic has existed since the mid-1800s, runs in families called Houses, led by the overpowered Primes, and mundane law enforcement mostly refuses to get involved with their feuds).

Diamond Fire

Book 3.5 as it's a novella, and Nevada Baylor, protagonist of the first trilogy, is about to marry billionaire Connor 'Mad' Rogan. But they're two wedding planners down and Nevada's middle sister Catalina has decided she's going to make this wedding work if it kills her, or if she has to kill someone else. The problem is, someone already has killing in mind, a major theft already happened, and prime suspect for that is probably one of Connor's mother's family. So it's shy, brilliant Catalina against a dozen spoiled Spanish aristos.

I like Catalina as protagonist, but I think my favourite character is the utterly irreverent Runa Etterson, a Prime specialising in poisons: "Yes, the frosting is definitely poisoned - everyone grab a spoon and dig in!"

Sapphire Flames

Catalina has now replaced Nevada as head of House Baylor and the Baylor PI agency, on the grounds it's the only way to stop Nevada working herself to death. Summoned on a mission of mercy, to lure a grieving teen off a ledge, Catalina is horrified to discover his sister is Runa Etterson, and that they are the only surviving members of their family after their mother and sister burned to death in a house fire. Runa is convinced it was murder, and as the new head of House Etterson, she wants the Baylor Agency to find out who did it. Meanwhile, her mother had her own safeguard in place, and has hired an assassin to avenge her, an assassin Catalina is horrified to discover is billionaire playboy Count Alessandro Sagredo, subject of her teenage crush. In person Alessandro is arrogant, entitled, and annoyingly, evenly shockingly competent. It's love at first hate. 

Emerald Blaze

"Holster your weapons, and step away from the monkey!"

Nine months on from Sapphire Flames and Catalina is mostly over Alessandro walking out on her in pursuit of his personal obsession. But when both she and her secret boss, the grandfatherly Linus Duncan, aka the scary Warden of Texas, are attacked by summoned creatures, Linus decides that the attacks mean Catalina needs to take point on the investigation of the murder they may relate to. Which is when Alessandro reappears, strangely stripped of his arrogance, humbled even, and swearing to protect her. Which considering the investigation means going face to face with not one, but four combat Primes, the prime suspects in the murder, and a bunch of assassins, might be just as well.

Ruby Fever

A year on from Emerald Blaze and the Speaker of the Texas State Assembly (ruling body of the Houses) has just been assassinated, while someone walked through Linus Duncan's overpowered security to leave him comatose, which means Catalina Baylor, Deputy Warden of the State of Texas at the age of 23, is on her own when it comes to who is running the investigations. But that doesn't mean she's on her own for actually getting stuff done, because she has the full assistance of her family aka House Baylor, and her fiance, Alessandro Sagredo. Plus an annoying Russian prince. And she's going to need all the help she can get, because this time it's war.

Okay, these are David-candy, and I had to ration myself by insisting I read each book twice before moving on to the next, otherwise I'd have blown through the whole double-trilogy in three days. There's a definite pattern to the two trilogies: Book 1, best of frenemies, Book 2, reconciled lovers, Book 3, partners. But Nevada and Catalina are different characters, possibly overly defined by their older sister/middle sister roles, and if their partners are both dangerous billionaire bad boys, they're at least different dangerous billionaire bad boys - Connor as a soldier and Alessandro as, well, Zorro.

They're very much about family - the Baylors start as the three sisters, their mother, their two male cousins, and Grandma Frida, all working together, but also found family, because by the time the second trilogy wraps they are up to somewhere around twenty characters considering themselves to have family ties - and all but a couple of the younger kids with fully developed characters. 

The world-building is equally good, as is the plotting, with underlying arcs binding the trilogies together. I think I caught a couple of things that were raised and not developed, but nothing major. They even covered a point in the Baylor heritage where I initially thought they'd missed the scientific implications.

Impressed.

It's surprising that sometimes the reason you had quibbles about a book the first time around is the reason you like it more the second time around.

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

Teenage Maia is stunned when woken in the middle of the night to find out his father and half-brothers are dead in an airship accident and he is now Emperor of the elven lands. But as the despised fourth child, product of an unwanted fourth, political marriage, and mixed race at that, he has spent his life in internal exile and has not received the necessary education to rule. Maia isn't ready for the elven court, but neither are the elven court ready for Maia. 

I love this, I think the writing is gorgeous, but first time around I thought the neologisms were overdone. This time around it was the mention of chamomile tea, not isvret or ochor, that I found jarring.

The Witness for the Dead, Katherine Addison

Thara Celehar, cleric of Ulis, the god of death, wants little from life except to be left alone with his role as Witness vel ama, Witness for the dead in the city of Amalo. But witnessing for the dead, being able to recall their last thoughts for family, religious or legal purposes, inevitably leads to complications when your newest dead body has vivid memories of being pushed into the canal and hit over the head. But this isn't Thara's first investigation, being the Witness vel ama who solved the murder of Maia's father and brothers gives him the tools to pursue his religious duty, a duty he's already once destroyed his own happiness over.

Thara's a particularly dour kind of hero, a man who has allowed himself to be defined and delimited by his often stated I follow my calling, but all the more compelling for it.

The Tomb of Dragons, Katherine Addison

An unfortunate series of events leads to Thara finding himself Witnessing for a dead dragon haunting a mine, the site of a historic massacre of the last of the local dragon population. The problem being that doing so will put him at odds with powerful noble families, at a time of political uncertainty centred on the nobility. But Thara remains a man defined by I follow my calling. The first time around I was annoyed that Thara doesn't get an entirely happy ending, but this time I think I've come to accept that the mixed outcome is perhaps for the best, even if somewhat unfair on everyone. Thara really isn't the kind of person who gets entirely happy endings, and he definitely isn't the sort to presume he deserves one.

(I still haven't read The Grief of Stones, the second Thara story)

My sister and I sat through a 4 hour online seminar on Saturday, on what to do to prep claiming Continuing Healthcare funding for my mother (so the NHS pays for her care home place rather than the family). The presenter was a lawyer, backed by a MH nurse turned patient advocate. They were obviously trying to drum up work for their little firm ("The Lawyer and The Nurse"), but in a "we're here if you decide you need us" way, not "you absolutely need us". Very useful.

There's a daunting amount of stuff to do before the Decision Support Tool assessment on the 22nd, and we'll likely need to ask for a postponement in order to get stuff like copies of my mother's hospital notes and understand the relevant bits - we'd hoped we could rely on her discharge notes, but there are a couple of things missing because the in-hospital reaction was "well, that's weird, not sure why it's happening, not a lot we can do", which translated to not mentioning it in the discharge notes at all. *headdesk*

I did get to ask during the Q&A about my worry that the sheer extent of the crossovers between symptoms in different areas would be missed if the nurse-assessor wasn't familiar with my mother's rare issues, and was told we absolutely needed to emphasise every crossover in writing, not assume they would recognise them, and that it would be useful to get input from my mother's consultant.

We've actually done this before with my dad, but his case was so obvious that we didn't really have to fight to get it, though there was one attempt to take it away where I now know I happened to say the right thing to get it for him completely by accident.

 I went to grab the bunch of spring onions out of the fridge last night and they wouldn't move. Further investigation revealed they were welded to the shelf by a block of ice the size of my fist, which was also blocking the drainage hole at the back. I had to empty half the fridge to be able to loosen everything off with some hot water and leave the chunk of scallions to defrost in a bowl.

Maybe need to check what temperature the fridge is set at!

TLDR: hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, with known immune system crossovers, turns out to have weird immune system proteins on top of all the other weirdness.

Interesting new hEDS paper I saw mentioned on FB today,

"Proteomic analysis revealed 35 differentially expressed proteins in hEDS, with 43% involved in the complement cascade and 80% linked to immune, coagulation, or inflammatory pathways. ... Cytokine profiling revealed alterations in nodal immune cell mediators in hEDS patients, supporting a model of dysregulated inflammatory response. Our findings indicate a systemic immune dysregulation, particularly involving the complement system and profibrotic cytokines, as a common feature in hEDS pathophysiology."

https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/exciting-new-research-sheds-light-on-heds-biology/

Pretty much all the senior members of Trump's cabinet created a chat group to discuss attacking the Houthis, and didn't notice they'd accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic.

Posted this earlier in the comments to the Guardian's live politics feed, pointing out the massive gap in the logic of Labour's disability benefit cuts:

Completely missing from Labour's whining about the difficulty of getting disabled people into work is any discussion of the far cat in the room - the widespread experience by disabled workers of discrimination in the workplace from management (and colleagues, but mostly management). A gag clause means I can't name the national flagship company where a very senior manager engaged in a multi-year campaign to drive me out of the company, to quote him 'your disability is a threat to my schedules' (it wasn't), and where the rest of management closed ranks around him when I challenged him on it through the grievance procedure.

The DWP's Disability Confident campaign asserts it isn't disability discrimination, managers are just 'embarrassed', which goes down about as well with disabled people as you might imagine.

Unless Labour sets about a serious campaign to drive disability discrimination out of the workplace, then the only logical conclusion is that they don't care about getting disabled people into the workplace, just off the benefits bill. And that's disability discrimination as government, as Labour Party, policy

Deeply, deeply furious with Starmer over this.