A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Champs-Elysées

So I'm catsitting in London for my friend Saskia for 5 days. She is in Rome with her lovely and brilliant daughter (currently acing it at Christ Church, Oxford), I am in her charming Bayswater flat with her two cats, Willow who's beautiful and hostile, and Barley who is a very, very cool cat. Which is good,  because I'm here not only to feed the two cats but to give Barley two insulin shots a day, and he is totally relaxed about it. Metrobius would already have eaten half my arm.

I'm also working and seeing friends, and I am returning the many invitations of one of them by giving her dinner at a Pall Mall club which is both grand and friendly, as befits the place where Phineas Fogg started his 80-day journey around the world. (It has reciprocal arrangements with my Paris place.) It is raining buckets, because London, which I hadn't planned for, because it was 32C in Paris when I left Wednesday, so I borrow Saskia's nice umbrella with the resolution of not forgetting it on the Tube, etc.

We have a terrific dinner, which is also grand and friendly: scallops for me, smoked salmon for her, lightly breaded first-rate lamb cutlets for both with baby potatoes, all excellent and all things you'd never be served in a restaurant in town. It is time travel, we are very happy, we finally part, and after the process of getting my things, I ask at reception if I can have my umbrella back. "Umbrella"? the two chaps at reception, who themselves are rather grand and friendly, repeat. "You know, the grey one with the curved handle? I asked if I could leave it there and you said yes?" Ah yes, they say, but it's not here. I tell them I borrowed it from my London host. Ah, they say. They look around. I look around. They produce a foldable one. It's not mine.

"Let me find the culprit, I bet we have him on TV", the younger one says. The reception screen turns into one of those Spooks monitors, the ones Malcolm handles. Soon we spot my late umbrella, or rather Saskia's. Nice, grey, folded, demurely leaning against the radiator. "I see your robber! Ah, no, he hasn't taken it, still there. Lets fast-forward. Oh yes. That's the wife of the American reciprocal, from the XXX Club (names grand  but not terribly friendly New York place). First time they come, and here you see them leaving. See, she's grabbing your umbrella and taking it into their taxi." CRIME IN A LONDON CLUB. "I suppose we could let their club know." "I'd like that," I say, because I'm vindictive, "but I still haven't got my friend's umbrella..." They look at one another, the younger one tells the elderly one to hold the fort, "I'll find a solution". Vanishes. Reappears five minutes later with a nice cellophane-wrapped navy blue, curved-handled Club umbrella, which he gives me. "You don't know where i found it, right?" he says. "I don't," I answer, which is absolutely true.

So I got back home on the excellent number 94  bus, door-to-door between Waterloo Place and Lancaster Gate, with a beautiful umbrella for Saskia. Barley the cat (pictured below) loves it, though I worry his human might still be unhappy, because it's nice and light but man-sized, while the grey one was a woman's size. She's much taller than me, though, so perhaps this will work out and if not, I'll find her something closer to THE STOLEN UMBRELLA OF PALL MALL. Good that Arthur Conan Doyle was a member of that particular club, eh?

Fausta is dead.

I took her Wednesday afternoon to the vet's, because I worried that she was not in good shape again, and losing weight. We did bloodwork, which looked relatively normal until the nice Dr Elbaz ran one of the samples through a more powerful machine, diluted to make analysis easier. The results were through the roof, white cells and transaminases; which meant the pancreatitis and hepatitis were back. He gave her antibiotics shots, and I got an appointment two weeks later for another, to reduce the inflammation.

I took the two carriers back home, hers and Metrobius's (he has a kind of bronchitis), and left them to their own devices at home while I was puttering about the flat: Fausta climbed on her hammock on the radiator in my bedroom, I stroked her, rubbed Mirataz inside her ear to help her appetite — it had worked pretty well since last summer; then went to my computer in the study to take part in Presqu'ensemble, our weekly streaming podcast on politics. Metrobius came to my desk during the programme, unusually needy. I made myself dinner afterwards, sent email, spent too much time on my computer. When I finally decided to call it a day, Fausta was still in her warm hammock; she was warm when I stroked her; but she was also rigid, her eyes open.

I feel awful that I took her to the vet's, which she hates — she went to hide under the chest of drawers in my living-room when I walked in with her carrier; I knelt and took her easily (too easily) and got her into the carrier with no fuss, when once she would have fought me all the way.

I feel awful that I wasted time at my desk when I could have held her in my arms as she died, or at least been just next to her: when I go to bed — went to bed — she would wait until I pulled the covers over my legs, then jump on the bed and establish herself on the pillow next to me, purring. I reassured her; when I turned on the other side to read with my back to her, she'd come to my own pillow to see my face.

I feel awful for all the times when I didn't let her curl on her back against my side and stroked her soft belly, as she loved, her paws limply in the air, purring like a little engine, because I wanted to read, or to sleep, and we would have time for that later. We had many moments like that, but not enough.

She would have been 17 in March.

I took a last picture in the hammock, where she lay warm still — rigid, her eyes open; but I'd rather share one of her typical inquiring expressions.

I've now read Winter's Orbit, the published version of Avoliot's wonderful The Course of Honour — and I hate it. Well, not exactly hate, since there's enough of the original material left in it to make you aware of what horrors were perpetrated on the text. I LOATHE what Tor's editors did to it. CoH was a quirky atmospheric whodunit with plenty of small details that added depth and complexity, underlaid by a sharp intelligence. WO is a formulaic political thriller in which you care little about the outcome and nothing about any of the supporting cast. Even Jainan, Kiem, Bel, Aren, Vaile, and more, have been sandpapered to frustrating characterlessness. The editor added clichés, a stale political-plot-for-dummies, erased all the subtle nuances of character and class, introduced stupid woke labelling (yes, in the original we got that genders were fluid, we didn't need to have people wear wood or metal accessories to signal it loudly) and erased some brilliant characters. The original intrigue was a very believable tale of ordinary corruption, with motivations and background; the political plot is a McGuffin with no hinterland or explanations. The resolution, in which massive political change and transfer of resources is suddenly approved with nary a word by the Emperor, has the political depth of a Meghan Markle Instagram post.

Characters like Chief Agent Rakal, an engagingly complex personality, are reduced to a couple of short scenes; their deputy disappears completely. We see next to nothing of Press Officer Hren Halesar who was a brilliant take on the Blair cabinet's Alastair Campbell. General Fenrik becomes a stock character villain instead of an old-style martinet with complex influence and power. Professor Audel, who was such a recognisable academic type, is changed to become a cliché secondary character only tasked to further the plot, losing her personality and realism. Nelen has been edited out completely. We lose dozens of small world building details, from the ski trip to the disgruntled aide, the corridors of the university, the press pack, prince Kiem's personality quirks and examples of his personal charm. (What kind of a rewrite kills off scenes that make the protagonist come alive???) The language has been SIMPLIFIED, dear lord. The ski expedition has been cut. I could go on and on, because this is infuriating. All of this has been brutally hacked by an obviously American editor, let loose on a clever and imaginative work, to produce a kind of Marvel comic from an Evelyn Waugh novel.

There's an acknowledgement and thanks page from the author at the end of the book. It says nice things about Avoliot's supports and fan readers, and goes on to praise Tor, but it would be difficult not to for one's first book, wouldn't it?

I've finally got hold of a copy of Georgette Heyer's suppressed 1923 novel "The Great Roxhythe", and stap me if it isn't her Great Gay Novel. Well, as gay as you could make them in 1923, but TWO homoerotic relationships? I hope the ebook edition means there will be FANFIC.

It's a snip on Kindle, anyway:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Roxhythe&i=digital-text&ref=nb_sb_noss

...Even cheaper!
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Roxhythe-Restored-Text/dp/1773231421

 Looks like the new (wrong) display of this journal is in fact the one of the separate comm I created for Course of Honour fics. I will fix this once I'm back on the desktop; but in the meantime, bear with me? Facebook has made me inept and lazy. 

That's IT. Operations moved to DW now.

I come bearing REC:

The Course of Honour by Avoliot

which some of you have already heard me rave about. It's an original fic, ongoing but faithfully updated Mondays and Fridays. It is TERRIFIC: Vorkosigan meets Captive Prince meets Melissa Scott. It is witty, well-written, and in turns hilarious and exquisitely angsty. 95,000+ words and going strong. GO READ.

have you heard

Here's someone who knows their Stasi and their NKVD. A study in sedition among stormtroopers, naturally miles above the original material.

Yeah. Cats.

We are well and truly fucked. All of us.