March's calendar slot

One of the things I'm most lucky with in my job is the opportunity to travel. The furthest points east, west and south that I've ever travelled to have been through trips to scientific meetings (Dubrovnik, Victoria and Ubatuba respectively). Often followed up with piggybacked holidays, to be fair.

Sometimes I even get to go to Scotland!

One of the major ongoing programmes I'm involved with is Changing Arctic Ocean, an interdisciplinary (aren't they all?) affair to study the ecosystems of the Arctic. In any case, two of its projects shared Oban for their kickoff meetings, so I duly travelled to the Motherland.

I have a bit of mixed history with Oban. Although it can be beautiful when the weather's nice, on one of my first holidays as a child, we stayed in a caravan there and endured a whole week of rain. Fortunately, this past May was balanced at the sunnier end, and I was able to enjoy a couple of nice days in between the town and the neighbouring village of Dunbeg where my meeting was taking place.

The photographs from March are all from my last morning in the area, when I walked the coastal path from Dunbeg (where I was staying) to Oban. While prominently labelled up as "3 miles", my phone's GPS exposed that particular untruth (see below). However, it was a really nice jaunt, taking in woodland, the shoreline, and great views over to Mull and Lismore. And, before the rain finally did settle in, I was even able to pop up through the town to take in McCaig's Tower, a fabulous hilltop folly with great views over the town.

Old Man's War

Old Man's War, John Scalzi

After the success of another Scalzi novel, The Collapsing Empire, this one sounded like a nicely offbeat and interesting read. A story about an old man who, unexpectedly alone in retirement, signs up for colonial military service to fight for humanity on the High Frontier. In execution, it overlaps rather a lot with Heinlein's classic, Starship Troopers, with a rather straightforward narrative focusing on the training and early missions of a group of "new" recruits, and wrapping up on a big mission. However, it fell down hard for me largely because of two consecutive chapters late in the book that undid all of the preceding solid work. One gave a "clever" explanation for the unpinning science (it's all driven by the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics) that obliviously undercuts any reason for getting invested in any characters or events - since these would (implicitly) play out differently in another universe. While the other dealt with the growing qualms that readers (this reader anyway) might have with the novel's colonialist militarist vision of future human life by telling them (via the main character) to get over it. So much for a modern retelling of Starship Troopers that undercuts its predecessor's fascist tendencies. My good will evaporated after reading these, and didn't return.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

A Christmas money purchase this time inspired, in part, by hearing Sedaris read out his now-famous (it has an article on Wikipedia ...) piece, The Santaland Diaries. It's not part of this particular collection, but it didn't need to be, there's plenty more comedy gold in here. A little less on the pathos that Santaland sometimes touches on, but plenty of the laughs. Sedaris has real skill in recounting short tales from his own life that must, at times, be quite mixed experiences into something we can be amused by, while deriving some insight and understanding from. He is, to be fair, often helped by his family, his sister, Amy, in particular. So an excellent read - the super-short Big Boy is almost worth it on its own (if it weren't already available online).

The Iron Tactician

The Iron Tactician, Alastair Reynolds

Despite a novel's price tag, actually a little novella. Without me realising it at first, it's part of an intermittent series I've read by Reynolds on-and-off, about a character named Merlin, navigating the stars on a mission of revenge in a ravaged future galaxy. Usually these tales appear in short story collections, but here it's a separate, super-thin (but full-priced) volume. Leaving aside the pricing policy, this was a pleasing, if brief, read, telling the tale of Merlin's discovery of a damaged hulk, its sole surviving crew member, and how he gets inveigled in, and helps resolve, a nearby solar system's multigenerational war. Easy and enjoyable, though definitely cheekily priced.

The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet

The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

2018's first read, and a new novelist's first book. It's a rather cuddly space opera romp, in which our protagonist-with-a-secret washes up with a diverse crew of roughneck pilots and engineers who make a living connecting star systems via hyperspace bypasses. They all start out gruff and unapproachable, but gradually the novel teases out the right-on details of their lives, revealing all of them to be leading complete, wholesome and quirky lives. There's intrigue, romance (both trans-species and organic-AI) and, by the end, the crew's construction as a surrogate family is complete. So, much more The Next Generation than The Original Series, with a healthy serving of Mass Effect and Firefly on the side. All of which makes for a nice, breezy read, but the world- and family-building does tend to sideline the plot a bit, to the point that, when the action finally arrives, it feels like it's wrapped up all too quickly. It certainly doesn't come as a surprise when a sequel is tee-ed up in the closing pages, but the journey is definitely enjoyable enough to justify such a return visit.

February's calendar slot

Some photographs from another coastal jaunt on C's coastal quest - this time from its western limit. Durdle Door is one of those places that's very close to Southampton, and that I've heard a lot about down the years, but never managed to get to in 20 years. Until now.

As the photograph shows, it's a classic limestone arch, with an associated beach that's a magnet for visitors. Not quite so much when we visited first thing in the morning in April, but it was already getting quite busy when we passed by it (careful use of Photoshop's spot healing tool gave us the view more to ourselves).

To my mind, much more impressive is Worbarrow Bay, just to the east. We'd reached this at the very end of 2016's conquest of the Isle of Purbeck, and it was quite a sight. Getting itself justifiably used in 2017's calendar. The photo here (top right) doesn't do it quite as much justice, but it's still gorgeously coloured.

In terms of walking, this part of the coast is nicely undulating, so much more of a test than the eastern limit of C's quest (though that's got shingle to contend with). It's still not especially difficult, but it makes you feel like you're achieving something, and it gives nice views of the coast. Through most of the two days walking here, we got great views of the approaching Isle of Portland, one of our future targets.

While the walking's good here, the public transport isn't. On both days, we had to rely on local taxis to get back to our car after completing our day's walking. The excellent public transport in Brighton and surrounds really spoilt us.

January's calendar slot

Some snaps from a segment of C's quest to walk the UK's coastline. This time between Bexhill-on-Sea (hence the De La Warr Pavillion) and Dymchurch. Due to shingle (mortal enemy of the amateur beach walker), slightly dodgy weather and crappy bus services (but not the worst we've had), we didn't quite manage the stretch around the Dungeness headland, past its eponymous nuclear power station. It's only a few miles, so we'll save that for our next jaunt to Kent, at which point we should finally be clearing the eastern edge of the south coast and turning to head northwards.

Highlights of our trip were definitely Bexhill-on-Sea - although that's a given - and also Hastings. The latter was surprisingly nice, to the point of catching us off guard a little, as we'd previously been appalled by its shoreline run of penny arcades and their slot machines. But, as it turned out, these were much less dominant than we'd feared, and the town additionally benefited from its new pier (bottom right in the collage).

In terms of walking, not the most challenging of coastal segments, with even the shingle relatively restrained (or avoidable). The missing section around Dungeness promises a more trying journey, however.

My 2018 calendar

In an attempt to start getting content back into my blog, I'm going to take an easy route and shove in monthly entries based on the calendar I prepared for 2018 for family and friends. It's scraping the barrel in terms of content, but should at least give me an opportunity to test my memory on the photographs as they roll up. And give me 12+ entries for 2018 to boot.

This first snap is the cover image, and technically a cheat from 2016. We walked the Seven Sisters at the very end of the year as part of C's coastal quest, so after 2017's calendar had been pulled together - so justifiable use. The photo was actually taken on Beachy Head Road as we began our journey home. The local weather had conspired to have a local mass of air over the land that created the front that these clouds were stuck at. Or so we were told by one of the many the parascenders taking advantage of the conditions. Combined with the clear, calm weather, and a well-timed journey back, we got a spectacular view of the sunset over the Seven Sisters, and this photograph.