la_marquise: (Marquise)
la_marquise ([personal profile] la_marquise) wrote2012-07-05 09:48 pm

Au coeur du Lyon?

We are all, I suppose, getting older. But I, as you may know, am an ageing baggage whose skirts are occasionally Too Short and who will insist on dyeing her hair. (Right now I'm brunette. I felt like a change.) It seems that while I get older in body, I remain frivolous at core (well, at part of my core, anyway).
And in oh-help-just-over-a-week, I have a landmark birthday. A birthday, indeed, that my PhD supervisor once informed me was the beginning of old age. I seem to remember saying 'Bah humbug' to that at the time, and I still think it. But all the same...
The marquis, who as we know is wonderful in almost every possible respect, decided that I should have some kind of special celebration. So he's taking me to Lyon for a long weekend with flowers and champagne and traboules.
Being me, I am particularly excited about the traboules. I've spent the night in Lyon twice, but on neither occasion was there time or opportunity to see the city. I've wanted to see it for many years, since that first visit when I was 14 or 15. And now I'm getting to go. (Eurostar permitting. Those of you who know me well will know I'm a claustrophobe and I'm particularly antsy about tunnels. They catch fire. I know this. I told them so in advance.) We're off tomorrow morning and back late on Sunday. I am taking my posh dress and high heels and, yes, the laptop, because I have a deadline.
I am so looking forward to this. Because, you know, traboules. (And Roman remains and architecture ranging from the 12th to the 19th c. and silk weaving and, well, traboules. Yes, I am a bit fixated on those traboules. I've seen them elsewhere, but these are the really famous ones.)

This means that this year we are not having our usual summer party. (Various people have asked.) We are hoping to have one in the autumn, work permitting.

Skirt of the day: long burgundy silky.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/ 2012-07-06 07:54 am (UTC)(link)
You are not a bit old.
I just read The Quibell Abduction and loved it and have Thoughts, btw. (Did you write The Haunting of Haderon? I loved that, but sadly lost my copy years ago.)

[identity profile] lil-shepherd.livejournal.com 2012-07-06 08:29 am (UTC)(link)
Tell me that when I wake up, crawl out of bed, take my pills like a good person (which reminds me...) and try to get Bren to go down to the garden. I'm just not grown up....

Yes, I wrote The Haunting of Haderon. I've just checked and I don't appear to have kept the digital copy I edited when [livejournal.com profile] watervole reprinted it as part of a multi-author zine a while back, but I do have a copy of said zine somewhere and will lend it to you if you like. (I'm not so upset about not keeping the digital copy of that as I am about the digital copy of The Machiavelli Factor which I very much want to put on AO3 and will now probably have to scan... all 200,000 or so words of it. Bugger.)

So I now have over 20,000 words of Avengers fan fiction when I should be writing something else entirely, and it looks like coming out around 40,000...

Oh, and HAVE A GREAT TIME. (I passed through Lyons on a tour bus a long time ago and was impressed.)
Edited 2012-07-06 08:31 (UTC)

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/ 2012-07-09 10:29 am (UTC)(link)
I would love to borrow it: thank you. I don't think I know The Machiavelli Factor at all: which fandom is it?
And Avengers' fic is always good.

[identity profile] lil-shepherd.livejournal.com 2012-07-09 11:42 am (UTC)(link)
I hope you had a wonderful time! Will there be piccies?

The Machiavelli Factor is a huge, angsty Blake's Seven novel that Ina and I published in 1981, taking place in a massive artificial system in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, with lots of aliens and mad tech and political infighting. Misunderstandings abound.

[livejournal.com profile] watervole republished a somewhat edited - i.e. I toned down some of the hurt/comfort wallow on the advice of Peter Anglehides - version (with the most glorious five colour portrait cover, but you'll see) about ten years ago. Now Out of Print. You could regard it as an alternate to 4th season.

In a mad moment (and because, Lord help me, I had an IDEA), I signed up for the [livejournal.com profile] cap_ironman big bang, which means at least 25,000 words (and in this case it looks more like 35,000-40,000) pretty much in shape by the end of August. Trouble is, I keep getting distracted by plot. Jim Rhodes wasn't even going to be in this story, and War Machine has suddenly appeared...

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/ 2012-07-09 02:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I look forward to reading it. It sounds wonderful.
Ideas must be chased...

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/ 2012-07-09 10:30 am (UTC)(link)
Definite thoughts. We should get together and talk some time!

[identity profile] lil-shepherd.livejournal.com 2012-07-09 06:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Come and see us.

I've emailed you.