Happy upcoming New Year!

My dearest friends, colleagues, acquaintances, kind passersby and strangers, Happy New Year to you all!

2022 was by far the bleakest year of them all, but let us put aside—at least, for now—our grief and anguish, or, even better, let us leave them all in the outgoing year. Let us imagine 2023 as a successful academic paper which will have gone through the toughest revision by the most pedantic Reviewer 2 and will have been accepted to the most highly rated journal—our lives. I want to wish each and every one of you to be free, and well, and lighthearted, and to be surrounded by your most beloved people. And remember:

If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere ©

Christmas Tree-2022: night vs day (Part 2)

И елка днем, чтобы пересматривать потом игрушки и украшения с радостью и благодарностью.

Christmas Tree-2022: night vs day

И традиционные завершающие посты уходящего года — наша елка, в переливающихся огнях ночью и в полном великолепии днем (дневные фото вывешу отдельно):

Одна из самых тяжелых потерь этого ужасного года. Не было и дня, чтобы мы с Ларри его не вспоминали. В моей памяти он останется именно таким — самым красивым и царственным на свете.

New Year’s Eve tutti quanti: a retrospective of unexpected cosiness (a necklace: En)

And just like that, when I thought that the festive season had been postponed for a bit, I got a parcel with this treasure: one simply cannot imagine a better birthday present than that. What a gem! When I said that I had the best group of friends ever, I didn’t exaggerate: I do! Because you must have a profound talent to make such ethereal things. Janna, Bonnie, Maria, my dear ladies, you are absolutely *the* best artists! My gratitude to you all is endless.

New Year’s Eve tutti quanti: a retrospective of unexpected cosiness (Mince Pie in a liquid form: En)

“Of meats, I fancy I rather prefer beef for all-around consumption, but like most others pretty well. Fond of sausage—especially the old fashioned baked or fried sort. Like fowl—but white meat only. Can’t bear dark meat. My really favourite meal is the regular old New England turkey dinner, with highly seasoned dressing, cranberry sauce, onions, etc., and mince pie for dessert.”

–HPL in a letter to Robert E Howard, November 7, 1932

It was also a time to try mince pies in liquid form; it was good—moderately spicy and warm, with layers of delicate chocolate smoothness. So, we did greet the Solstice as sincerely as we could.

New Year’s Eve tutti quanti: a retrospective of unexpected cosiness (Crimble Crumble: En)

I’ve noticed one amusing pattern: we always make Crimble Crumble (following a famous 2016 Pret recipe) every year and, coincidentally, before making Christmas stollen. Looks like a sort of rehearsal, and I don’t mind it at all. This time the mincemeat was very brandy-infused and the crumble turned out to be even zestier than usual.

New Year’s Eve tutti quanti (En)

Made a gift to myself—surprisingly, nothing too scary, uncanny or disquieting, but rather the opposite: throughout the pandemic and later on we have developed something of a zoo in our garden, which is full of squirrels and birds of different types, and I am eager to find out more about them in this heavily discounted book.

Instead of New Year’s resolutions (En)

Every time I tried to write something that could be regarded as a brief summary of my year*, I failed. There is nothing that can be considered even remotely more substantial than the ongoing war. Everything has been overshadowed by it: nothing, even the most anticipated events, or long-awaited and desired work projects, or meetings with friends, significant colleagues or just new lovely and interesting people can’t feel as genuine and great as it would’ve been without the war.

This year promised to be one of the most successful in my refreshed scholarly career. After I decided to focus primarily on academic Lovecraftiana and horror/Gothic studies, there was NecronomiCon Providence in August, and my engagements with public talks at round tables, and being a speaker and a chair of the panels at the Armitage Symposium, and conversations with the utmost fantastic people to whom I will be insanely grateful as they found the time to listen to me and to spend time with me—it was precious and will stay in my heart forever. My gratitude to them all who didn’t mind seeing me as the new editor of “Lovecraftian Proceedings,” which is released by the best ever publisher “Hippocampus Press,” is endless. Dennis, Derrick, Niels, Martin, Bobby, Faye, Nicole, Joshua, Teri, Sean, many thanks to you all, dear friends, for making it possible.

Какой ужасный год и ужасный день. Сегодня умерли великие Эдуард Артемьев, Вивьен Вествуд и Пеле – люди, оформившие музыку, костюм и движение второй половины ХХ века.  Светлая им всем память.

Nothings and triviality (En)

Watching in a short period of time productions from Aardman Animation (the “Wallace & Gromit” and “Shaun the Sheep” series) and those directed by Simon Pegg (his Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy), I can’t help but imagine a mashup where the main character from one of Pegg’s films is suddenly trapped in the Wallace & Gromit universe (like it happened in “Hot Fuzz,” for example), where Shaun of the dead is fighting the Were-Rabbit alongside Shaun the Sheep, and both Shauns drink lots of beer at The Winchester pub, surrounded by zombies, androids from “The World’s End,” blocks of cheese, giant vegetables etc.

(And no, it’s not a job for bloody AI, of course. Addressing it to whom it may concern: stop it, get some help; your Christmas series is scary enough).

***

From now on, I am a devoted fun of “Private Eye”: until now, I had no clue that their classified ads page wasn’t real.

Champagne rioters from “Extinction Rebellion,” take all reasonable precautions, please.

A bit more post-Christmas tutti quanti

That was a very good speech—warm, and heartfelt, and moving. His Majesty’s voice was soothing and calm, and it felt meaningful and great, touching all the right strings—love, thoughtfulness and compassion. Absolutely adored every minute of it.

***

Farmageddon (BBC 1) from my beloved Aardman Animation contained a fair dose of silliness, but my favourite part was all the Easter eggs—references to BBC News, “Space Odyssey-2001” and to “Doctor Who” (Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor in his stripy scarf).

***

For the first time in my life I’m watching “The Wizard of Oz” and am feeling odd: to see the original of what later had become “The Wizard of the Emerald City” for the Soviets is a bit unsettling, but amusing.

UPD. Jeez, it’s weird.

Boxing Day: misc. (En; photos)

And a few pics to the previous post:

Boxing Day (En)

As all Cambridge folk were slowly flocking to Grantchester today, performing what is called a “first post-Christmas crawl” (in order to burn all the 50.000 calories in one brisk walk, as the author of Very British Problems has pointed out), L. and I decided that all the Grantchester locals should have flown to Cambridge instead—just for the sake of entropy.

Anyway, the crowds throughout Lammas land, Grantchester Meadows itself and the village, were ginormous: people who looked like they’d been preoccupied with eating cheese, pigs in blankets and turkey with pudding pretty much 24 hours around the clock (and don’t forget Prosecco, Port, Pino Grigio and that red wine that Steve brought to the table around 3 p.m.), moving slowly but persistently. Their dogs were much more boisterous, sniffing strangers with all required attention.

Anglican Christmas: a feast and a bit more (En)

We are having a very calm Christmas: due to the illness of our dear friends, our current plans to have proper festivities were cancelled (or rather postponed, because we will surely meet soon), so we have spent it on our own, trying to make it as cosy as possible. There was a bit of a feast with Stollen, and Moscato, and crackers with silly jokes, and L. wearing his ugly Christmas jumper, of course.

Anglican Christmas (En)

Merry Christmas to all the folk who are celebrating today! Wishing you piece, and joy, and contentment, and happiness.
The angel Gabriel from heaven came,
his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame;
‘All hail,’ said he, ‘O lowly maiden Mary,’
most highly favoured lady: Gloria!

‘For know a blessed mother you shall be,
all generations praise continually,
your son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold,’
most highly favoured lady: Gloria!

Anglican Christmas Eve: in photos

 And that is bow I spent this day: 

Anglican Christmas Eve (En)

This Christmas Eve is feeling less and less Anglican and more and more like my own, personal Christmas. By saying “personal” I don’t want to permit myself to mention my fair share of struggles or any hints of being introspectively sentimental—I guess, given the ongoing circumstances, it would have been lousy: the world is definitely *not* about anything that could be even remotely regarded as obsessive navel gazing.

Yet to go completely contemplative is not a perfect solution either: what else is left then?..

My answer is: A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s. It has a strange and long-lasting impact on me: everything is seen from a distance, good and bad (the latter more this time), marvellous and bleak (yet again, the second is mightier than the first), yet, miraculously, this exact defamiliarization appears to have the greatest therapeutic effect—and this time it is much more enduring and rewarding. Suddenly, you can fully associate yourself with that one trembling boy, a solo chorister from King’s College School, who is chosen immediately before the actual service is about to begin. And here he is, singing the very first lines of “Once in Royal David’s City”:

“Count Magnus” (BBC2)

“Count Magnus” from the Ghost Story for Christmas (BBC2) was brilliant and perfectly Jamesian—spooky without being maudlin, creepy with a decent amount of eloquent silence and unsettling visuals. My huge thanks to Gatiss for recreating the world of the past with no intention of making it bleached-out and miserable. No academic drudgery, but pure scholarly curiosity that could lead to the macabre fairly easily. Chapeau!