David Gillon

Suppose they gave a war and nobody came

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 01:36:54 GMT

Given President Bonespurs is whinging about the European nations, and the UK in particular, not queueing up to join the war he started without consulting them*, I thought I'd look up the precise wording of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty.

"Article 5

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked"

Mutual defence against an armed attack on a NATO power in Europe or North America, does not give Trump the right to drag NATO into an offensive war he started in the Gulf, without consulting them, no matter what he might think.

This is why NATO never got involved in Vietnam, and why Kennedy and Nixon didn't throw a tantrum over it.

Meanwhile there's a pretty good argument Pete Hegseth committed a war crime at his press conference on Friday, which takes a truly special level of stupidity.

Hegseth: "no mercy, no quarter!"*.

Hague Convention of 1907, Regulations: Art. 23: "In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden

....

(d) To declare that no quarter will be given;"

As a former officer Hegseth should know that, and if he doesn't, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, standing next to him, definitely should.

* He may have forgotten accusing all the Coalition powers of staying away from the front lines of Afghanistan just a couple of months ago, but the other NATO nations haven't. As you sow, etc

** At least Hegseth stopped short of yelling "Deus Vult!", but it's still some Crusader-level shit and you can bet the Gulf powers noticed.

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The Most Ridiculous Dream Ever ...

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 23:52:00 GMT

... had me competing in the Olympics.

Dream-brain seemed somewhat hazy on whether this was summer or winter games, and normie or paras.

I'm not sure of the event either, possibly the Biathlon? Though skis seemed an afterthought and I don't recall any rifle showing up.

However in a firm nod to real life I was late for my race by way of being unable to negotiate athlete registration.

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Recent Reading

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 01:33:29 GMT

Beast Business, Ilona Andrews

The Amazon description says this a novella, but it's actually a shortish novella, a related short story, a short vignette, together with several short stories that were previously on their website. Everything's from their Hidden Legacy world, and if it fits into the existing pattern will be the primer for a trilogy focusing on the third Baylor daughter, Arabella, finding a partner. OTOH, Arabella really only makes a guest appearance in the novella and it instead revolves around a couple of secondary characters from the preceding two trilogies.

Diana Harrison, Prime of House Harrison, needs illusionist prime Augustus Montgomery, Prime of House Montgomery, and owner of massive PI company MII, for an urgent recovery operation. House Harrison's thing is animal magic, and someone has stolen a unique tiger cub from them. They have 24 hours to recover it because it needs its mother's milk, which means Diana needs Augustus personally, and she's coming along whether he likes it or not. But they both have their secrets, including the true nature of their magics, and they're going to have to cooperate closer than Augustus prefers. Shenanigans ensue.

The Masquerades of Spring, Ben Aaronovitch

It's the Roaring Twenties and Augustus Berrycloth-Young is enjoying the high life in New York, ably aided by his American valet Beauregard, and his friend Lucy, who can be trusted to know where all the best Jazz in Harlem can be found. Into Gussie's pleasant idyll comes a reminder that he is a keeper of the sacred flame of the Society of the Wise, in the form of the Folly's top magical troubleshooter, Thomas Nightingale. Nightingale is on a mission, pursuing the origin of an enchanted, possibly cursed, trumpet, and he's absolutely sure Gussie is the man to help him track it down.

I'd say this was meant to be a Jeeves and Wooster homage, Nightingale even introduces Gussie as 'Bertram Wilberforce' at one point, but Beauregard really doesn't get much to do. Instead it's Nightingale, Gussie, Lucy and the mysterious Cocoa against an escalating array of music agents, bent cops, and political operators, all complicated by Gussie trying not to let Nightingale know that he and Lucy - Lucien Biggs - are a couple. But never let it be said that a Berrycloth-Young failed to rise to the occasion!

IOW it's a very atypical Rivers of London novella, but Gussie makes for a thoroughly entertaining narrator.

The Vampire and the Case of the Wayward Werewolf
The Vampire and the Case of the Secretive Siren
The Vampire and the Case of the Baleful Banshee, Heather G Harris and Jilleen Dolbeare

Think Due South meets Northern Exposure, with the out-of-place protagonist role played by a London partygirl, rather than a Mountie or a doctor.

A fortnight ago Elizabeth Barrington - Bunny to her friends - was a partygirl about town, then she woke up dead and decided a century of servitude to the king of the vampires just wasn't going to happen. Now she's the newest recruit to the police force of the small Alaskan magical town of Portlock, bringing the total strength of the force up to three - Bunny, Gunnar the Nomo (chief of police), and Sidnee, a friendly siren. Bunny was theoretically hired as an admin assistant, but Sidnee mostly mans the office, and one man, even a man-mountain and alleged demi-god like Gunnar, can't manage 24 hour coverage on his own, so pretty soon Bunny, and Fluffy the rather too intelligent Alsatian, are neck deep in a complicated murder case, variously aided and hindered by the town's political movers and shakers, including smooth vampire Connor Mackenzie, rough-and-ready polar bear shifter Stan Ahmaogak, and human hunter Thomas Patkotak.

Book 2 has Bunny being formally sworn in as Officer Bunny, but she's barely had time to get used to that when an encounter with a new drug almost takes out Gunnar, turning Officer Bunny into acting-Nomo Bunny, and leaving her with a drug crisis to take care of, with the competing help of Connor and Stan. Gunnar's back for book 3, but Sidnee's definitely out of sorts, there's an arsonist about town, and there's an escalating series of thefts which threatens to bring down Portlock's protective shield, and there's definitely something dangerous out there in the wilds, waiting for its chance to feed.

3 down, 9 to go.

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Gigging With Satan's Slaves/Catholic Teacher Humour

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:19:59 GMT

My sister and I went out with family friends last week* to catch a band at one of the local pubs, the slightly unusual element being that it was at the local biker bar (Satan's Slaves, County Durham Chapter). I did wonder if the band ('One-oh-One, I think) would be any good, but they opened with All The Small Things, then segued into London Calling, followed by No More Heroes, and I'd basically found my ideal playlist - I did think at one point 'All this needs to be perfect is Swords of a Thousand Men', and it cropped up shortly afterwards.

There's something slightly incongruous about having a bunch of bikers in denim and leathers warning you as you leave to "Be careful on these steps now, they're really slippy. Hope you had a good time, this rainy weather's horrible, isn't it?'

My sister was also out the day before at a Lourdes fundraiser at a church-hall over in Darlington - pie, peas, and 'Bongo-Bingo'. Proper Bongo-Bingo is apparently a raucous franchise version of bingo with lots of party games, silly prizes and dancing on tables, but this was the Catholic version, so they missed out the dancing on tables. The compere/bingo caller, sitting next to a life-sized cut-out of Pope Leo, was moonlighting from his day-job as Head of RE at the local Catholic comprehensive, and pointed out any complaints should go to the Dean (senior priest, sitting on my sister's table).

Sample bingo call: 'Thirty-Three - Nailed to a Tree' (OMG, you can't say that!)

"We have bingo dabbers for sale if you need them - a pound to Catholics, four pounds to Protestants"!

"Hands up if you're a teacher?", followed by disappointed look + <*Teacherly voice /*> "It's your own time you're wasting".

Trying to jolly everyone up "This is about as lively as the Lourdes fund-raiser at St Johns!"**

First prize dished out was a Virgin Mary fancy dress costume, other prizes included the life-sized cut-out of Pope Leo.

* I wrote this the next day, but accidentally lost the complete post just short of posting and didn't have the energy to re-write it, but it restored itself when I accidentally went into message creation just now.

** The next Catholic comprehensive over, the one I went to.

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Hive-mindless

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 21:54:14 GMT

We got back to my sister's last night to find her Hive central heating control system had failed because the thermostat's batteries had run out of juice.

So she popped out (post Traitors final) to get replacements and then we set about trying to get the thing to reboot.

Cue an hour in her freezing garage arguing about how to interpret Hive's guidance on how to get the thermostat and the boiler to talk to each other again if they aren't speaking. (And it's not just that we were mis-interpreting them, they were seriously crap, for instance a how to reconnect video that showed you there were three different models of thermostat, but then only went through the process for one model, that didn't work in remotely the same way as the model we had).

At midnight, after an hour's trying, I announced I was freezing and I was going back into the warm to read up on the system. 10 minutes later I walked into the hall, held down the reset button on the 'Hive Hub', which is sort of a mini-router, for 10 seconds and the system promptly reconnected itself.

*headdesk*

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He can have that one

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 20:14:39 GMT

My sister and I were telling my mother (who is in hospital again) that we had been meeting with her doctor, but he had to dash off because he's adopting and had a meeting with the social worker.

My mother instantly looked across at me and said "He can have that one".

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Patience

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 22:55:00 GMT

My sister and I sat down together to watch the 1st episode of the second season of Patience - autistic criminal records clerk helps the murder team in York catch criminals. Neither of us had watched the first season.

Not bad, the autism seems mostly well handled - the self-help group seemed designed for humour though. The plot had perhaps a little too much reliance on weird science - revolving around someone with Rh-Null blood caught up in fringe medical stuff, though the vampirism red-herring was nicely handled. The second episode has infrasound as a murder weapon, and probably overplayed hyperacusis as a superpower, though it did also spend a lot of time showing how much of a problem it is for Patience.

But immediately the first episode finished, my sister turned to me and exclaimed: "She's exactly like you!"

I didn't answer that until the next day, because I was completely freaked out by how exactly like me she is.

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Finally!

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 23:47:38 GMT

Storm Goretti has finally brought us some snow. Not much, just a light covering, but it really was getting ridiculous, it seemed like everywhere else in the country had snow, while we were surrounded by it, but resolutely dry.

Not any more. Let's see what the morning brings.

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DoT Consultation on "Mobility Devices"

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 17:34:22 GMT

The Department of Transport has launched its long awaited consultation on getting rid of the despised term "Invalid Carriages" and bringing the law on "Mobility Devices" into the 21st Century.

It's mostly sensible, but I do get a shudder when I come across phrases like "someone who is permitted to use a wheelchair". Permitted? Really?

I'm not entirely certain about "Mobility Device" as the replacement for "Invalid Carriage", god knows it needs replacing, but I don't get the warm fuzzies over "Mobility Device", though I can't actually think of a better alternative right now.

I can see spats with the cyclists coming over whether we're allowed to use cycle lanes (apparently we're not, not even manual chairs - who knew?!)

The intentions seem good, but there really is the potential for this to go horribly wrong, such as options where you can say any power-assisted chair shouldn't be allowed on the pavement. I'm not convinced this was written by someone who actually understood the full range of power assistance types and how different the capabilities are. I need to think about it, but I think we may need more than three classes of "mobility device".

The consultation's open now, and closes end of March.

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Not a compliment I was looking for!

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 13:44:09 GMT

Shouted across the lobby and lounge of my mother's care home, as I sat in one of their armchairs talking to her:

"Eeee, David you look just like one of the residents!"

That was from the senior carer, cheeky so-and-so!

(She was at school with my sister, I blame the company she grew up with).

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All that festive stuff

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 22:37:24 GMT

Well Christmas dinner could have been a disaster, but for the fact that my sister decided to cook the turkey joint on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. We popped the turkey into a hot oven after cooking pizza for ourselves and then settled down to watch Red One, which was almost so bad it was good. At the end of the film my sister went to check on the turkey, which was now mildly defrosted, as opposed to piping hot. The oven was just as cold, no matter what the controls said. Cue panic.

Fortunately the oven started heating up again as soon as we started fiddling with knobs, and it was just 10PM, so there was just time to cook it for another 2 hours, this time with frequent checks, and still be in bed before Santa started on his rounds.

Christmas morning we went down to see my mother for a couple of hours, cut slightly shorter than expected because the care home was starting dinner at 12:30 rather than the normal 1PM, but hadn't actually mentioned that to any of the relatives. Mind you we passed the hot food trolleys on the way out and it smelled gorgeous.

So we didn't even start cooking veg etc until after 1PM - I say 'we', but in truth it was almost all my sister, I just helped around the edges. And we finally sat down to eat at 3:30ish, much later than we have in the past. Amazingly the turkey had come through its ordeal of four hours in the oven without drying out.

When we finally got around to presents it was quickly apparent Poppy the dog had more than the rest of the family together - though now my sister has to persuade her that a reindeer soft toy almost as long as she is just isn't appropriate for taking on a walk!

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Well that was a trip

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 20:02:38 GMT

Well yesterday's trip turned epic in (mostly) all the wrong ways. I was halfway across the platform at Kings Cross, Passenger Assistance guy in tow, when he was flagged down by another LNER guy, which soon turned into a conflab with at least four of them. I didn't catch the full conversation, but I was pretty sure I heard "one under", which he confirmed when he came back to me - person under a train, nothing moving, and they'd been instructed not to board anyone, so back to the PA lounge for me. He was back for me in about 15 minutes, and this time we made it as far as the train and he was getting the ramp out when the instruction came through not to board anyone, so he put me aboard anyway.

That confirmed what I'd suspected from my seat reservation, I'd been upgraded to first class - and at that point I was the only person in first class, though it filled up eventually. The train was made up of two five-car Azuma units joined together and I'm not sure if the five-car Azumas actually have any wheelchair spaces in Standard Class, so it may well be an automatic upgrade to 1st if you get the right train. We were forty minutes late leaving in the end, but the crew were soon around offering drinks and a tumbler of a rather nice rioja and a mug of coffee made the delay much more palatable. Lunch followed, though the hot option was gone by the time they got to me, so I had to settled for what the Christmas menu described as a "Boxing Day box with Olivier Salad", but which I described to my sister as a posh Ploughmans without any bread - "All the flavours of Boxing Day in one box: pulled Wiltshire ham, Olivier salad, tangy cheddar, vibrant pickled red cabbage, onions and cornichons, cherry tomatoes, spinach and a touch of piccalilli." There was only about a spoonful of the Olivier Salad, which I'd not come across before, so looked up later; seems it's an alternate name for Russian Salad, though the LNER version seemed to be mostly mayo dressing plus peas. Given pretty much everything else in the box can be a part of an Olivier Salad (according to wikipedia), I guess the whole thing amounted to a deconstructed Olivier salad.

There were another couple of rounds of drinks afterwards, though I skipped the third one as we were almost at Darlington. More fool me. Five minutes outside Darlington the train pulled up, and the guard announced that we were delayed because of trespassers on the line north of Darlington, with the station already full of earlier trains. So we sat, and waited, and waited, and eventually found out that the 'trespasser' was a vulnerable person on the 75ft tall viaduct just outside Durham station, with the police trying to talk them down. Staff came around with another round of drinks, and we eventually moved off after a delay of about an hour and twenty minutes, making us an hour and fifty five minutes late into Darlington. So instead of reaching my sister's at 16:30 it was more like 18:30, making for an eight and a half hour journey.

And then I slept for twelve hours.

On the positive side, I should get a refund for at least 50% of the ticket price, possibly all of it (the website is a bit unclear).

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WTAF, 3

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 18:29:44 GMT

Apparently Calibri is un-American because it's easier for people with dyslexia to read.

Seriously.

State Department to switch from "woke" Calibri to Times New Roman

Perhaps Rubio should also insist they write everything in BOLD CAPS like the glorious leader?

ETA: what I hadn't noticed initially was that Rubio specifically calls it out for being a DEI_A_ initiative. Apparently accessibility as a whole is now un-American.

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WTAF, 2

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 23:47:55 GMT

US at the weekend (new National Security Strategy): We need to oppose Europe for insisting the right to stop hate speech overrides freedom of speech

US today: We're going to insist we can see 5 years of your social media* before we let you into the US in case you said nasty things about us.

So one rule for people saying things they like, and another for people saying things they don't? Not quite sure that's how the Founding Fathers anticipated free speech working.

* Also your phone numbers, your email addresses, plus the names and addresses of family members, including children. And if you've ever worked as a fact checker or in content moderation there is apparently a blanket ban,

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/tourists-social-media-trump

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I'm sorry, but WTAF?!?

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:27:48 GMT

I haven't been able to bring myself to actually read the new US National Security Strategy, but according to reports the highlights from the European perspective appear to be:

Adoption of the White Supremacist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory as official US Government policy.

The US must therefore divorce itself from Europe because some European states might become non-White* majority in the future. (I think the appropriate description for this triumph of logic is utterly barking, the EU states average 5-15% non-EU born citizens, and that includes Brits nowadays, the only exception is Liechtenstein, and that has a population of 40,000, plus the whole international banking and financial services hub thing going on).

Apparently the US has to protect Europe against 'civilizational erosion' by working to undermine the EU and further the Far Right, because protecting your population against racial hatred is contrary to the sacred principle of free speech.

Meanwhile, South of the Border, they're reinstating the Monroe Doctrine because apparently the South American states need an American guardian to tell them who they can have relations with.

As I said, I'm sorry, but WTAF?!?

* They don't actually say 'non-white', but they're fooling no one.

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I've never in forty years!

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 14:51:18 GMT

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!

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Well that was weird

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 21:41:51 GMT

4AM-ish I wasn't asleep, and heard something which I couldn't work out if it was an aircraft or thunder.

So I popped open the bedroom window to see if it was any clearer that way, just caught the very end of it, and still couldn't tell.

I stood listening for a while, as it's rarely that quiet, and I could hear a freight train going past in the cutting down the hill - you can only really hear the trains at that time of night as otherwise they're drowned out by the traffic noise.

And then, for about 10 seconds, I heard the distinctive clip-clop, clip-clop of horse's hooves. WTF?

If you hear hoofbeats, suspect auditory illusions?

I have no idea what it actually was, but it sounded like hoofbeats. At 4AM.

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Department of Couldn't Make It Up

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 21:39:03 GMT

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

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Well, that was sub-optimal

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 21:07:24 GMT

After three days in a row of not getting to sleep until after the sun was up (and then being woken mid-morning), I've basically spent the entire day asleep, apart from answering several phone calls from my sister and then almost immediately falling asleep again*.

I answered those sitting cross-legged on the bed, and I fell asleep in that position and then slept that way for several hours. My hips are NOT happy with me.

* I was particularly impressed that I picked up the thread of a dream I'd been having before one call afterwards. Strange dream for me, unusually non-action movie style.

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In which I am a bear of little brain.

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 18:25:57 GMT

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

*headdesk*

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Well, that didn't go as planned.

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 22:10:05 GMT

The day didn't start too badly, but come about 12:30 I suddenly started shivering and feeling really crappy. I'm not quite sure what was going on there, I started to feel better after eating some biscuits, so might just have been low blood sugar, but it's eight hours later and I'm still feeling somewhat off.

Once I started feeling ~~better~~ non-shivery I decided to go ahead with my plan to cut my hair, but that meant finding the appropriate sized guard for my trimmer, which should have been on my bedside chest of drawers, but wasn't.

"It's probably slid down the back of the drawers," I decided.

On the positive side of things I've finally tidied up all the crap down that side of the bed. And sorted out all the wiring for the things that live there.

On the negative, trying to move the drawers resulted in the castors on the far back corner snapping off (it's a repurposed part of a computer desk). Which meant moving the bed out of the way so I could get the space to lay the drawers on their side to try and fix it. Which was the point two more sets of wheels snapped off. *headdesk*

I eventually managed to get the chest of drawers on its side, and at that point gave up on putting the wheels back in place and took the one remaining set off.

By the time I got the chest upright again and back in the corner, my legs were screaming at all the crouching in small awkward places and I had to go lie down for a couple of hours. On the plus side I was right by the bed. On the negative, I was trapped behind it by two sets of drawers and the headboard.

And then I went into the bathroom and immediately found the trimmer guard.

*Le sigh*

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Recent Reading

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 01:23:04 GMT

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.

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It's not meant to be a cryptic crossword!

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 16:25:11 GMT

I've got an Asda order due for delivery later, but a couple of the substitutions in the confirmation email confused me, What the hell are "slice cheoni" or "pizza pepsal"?

Finally worked out it's a cheese and onion slice (euuww, that's going back), and a pepperoni salami pizza. C'mon, Asda, it's not meant to be an intelligence test!

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Recent Re-Reading

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 20:34:42 GMT

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)

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New UK hate crime figures, sigh

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 17:24:51 GMT

The new hate crime figures are out, apparently disability hate crime is slightly down. Am I being cynical in assuming that's probably because some of the haters are too busy committing hate crimes against muslims and/or jews and/or anyone who doesn't look like them?

Trans hate crime is also slightly down, but I'd presume that would be people feeling even less safe to report it, rather than an actual reduction.

The figures exclude the Met, the biggest force in the country because they're busy adopting a new crime reporting tool - so give us their figures as a separate entry, don't just exclude them entirely. *headdesk*

Somewhat embarrassingly for the police/Home Office, the Office for Statistics Regulation is still insisting they include a caveat to say their data is actually pretty crap.

What comes through when considering that the figures cover the period of the Stockport-related race riots is that the figures, even if recorded as intended, are utterly incapable of recording mass events like riots. If 300 people are chanting racist slogans and throwing bricks, but the police only arrest 3 of them, then only 3 crimes would be reported. It's definitely working as intended, but is working as intended what they actually intended?

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David Gillon

Suppose they gave a war and nobody came

The Most Ridiculous Dream Ever ...

Recent Reading

Gigging With Satan's Slaves/Catholic Teacher Humour

Hive-mindless

He can have that one

Patience

Finally!

DoT Consultation on "Mobility Devices"

Not a compliment I was looking for!

All that festive stuff

Well that was a trip

WTAF, 3

WTAF, 2

I'm sorry, but WTAF?!?

I've never in forty years!

Well that was weird

Department of Couldn't Make It Up

Well, that was sub-optimal

In which I am a bear of little brain.

Well, that didn't go as planned.

Recent Reading

It's not meant to be a cryptic crossword!

Recent Re-Reading

New UK hate crime figures, *sigh*

New UK hate crime figures, sigh