Last was in May this year and the next - probably just camping - will be in September.
I am very fortunate in having a friend with a holiday chalet. A group of us go down to open in up and stay for a week or two most years. The only cost is the fuel to get there.
My SO and I usually aim to get another week away - maybe camping, maybe a holiday cottage - later in the year too.
We are in the UK and always go to other location in the UK for holidays. Neither of us have flown since the '90s and have no intention of doing so again.
UK ministers have scrapped plans to use Whitby near Liverpool as a testing ground for hydrogen in domestic heating following objections from residents, in a sign of the difficulties involved in decarbonising homes.
Its suitability is fiercely contested, however, with critics saying that hydrogen is an expensive distraction whose use should be limited to industrial applications.
Personally, I always used to carry a paperback with me and would read in the odd moments that this writer seems to recall as being so dull and soul destroying. I still do carry e-books on my phone of course and use them in exactly the same way - but also with the option of doomscrolling, of course.
As for TV, I was never one for TV - or radio - as background noise. With fiends, I had a bit of reputation of going round and turning such things off when I entered the room, so that we could talk without distraction. I would ask them first, of course.
Some that I have enjoyed:
- A Spy Among Friends
- Slow Horses
- The Ipcress File (both the recent TV show and the 1965 film are great)
- Traitors (2019)
- The Night Manager
- London Spy
- The Game (2014)
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (both the TV show from 1979 and the 2011 film are great)
- Smiley's People
I'm enjoying this AMC show so far - and would say it is the best SF airing currently - that I am aware of.
I have not read the books but my SO has read the first of them and is also enjoying it. She can't recall a great many details from the book though - her memory doesn't work that way.
One tiny point that I am curious about - a detail that my SO doesn't remember - is whether the characters who have seen the Pez dispenser actually recognise duck as a duck? Do they know what ducks - or birds in general - are?
From episode 1, IIRC, it seems to be suggested that they did not understand what the things flying in the sky in the outside world were.
Anyway - what are your thoughts on Silo?
Yes - -for certain values of SF. Nobody is going to call the MCU hard SF, and superheroes are a fairly clear genre of their own, but in the broadest sense that genre certainly feels like it fits into the overall category of SF.
Recently, I had The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher (the adult fiction pen-name of Ursula Vernon) recommended to me. It is inspired by, and is a approximate sequel to, Algernon Blackwood's The Willows.
The Willows - as with several other Blackwood tales - is clearly playing around with the original concept of 'panic' - the oppressive terror that you can experience in truly wild places, which was, according to the ancient Greeks, inspired by Pan. As such these tales are only a step or so distant from Lovecraft's cosmic horror - which embody the utter indifference of the universe.
Kingfisher's tales (I am now half-way through my second: The Twisted Ones) feature very engaging, very human protagonists and typically intersperse the horrific with cosy, mundane interludes and so have a very different tone to Blackwood (or Lovecraft), but do make for easy and enjoyable reading: still with some memorable imagery and concepts, but never really soul-raking stuff.
Has anyone else read any of her works? What do you think of them?