The Secret History of Mademoiselle Suprise

I've just finished The Evil Seed by Joanne Harris and was smitten with it. Considering it involves vampires and the Pre-Raphaelite movement, I suppose that's unsurprising.

However, her second novel, Sleep, Pale Sister (both are re-releases after much clamour from fans), heavily influenced by the life of Effie Ruskin and Victorian sensationalism, which should work beautifully, just didn't quite do it for me.

I read both because of Gentlemen & Players, which came incredibly close to making that top five list last year. Subject matter this time: trouble afoot at an old boys' public school, where the Latin master is facing the attack of new technology and someone with a grudge to settle from childhood. It's the most cunning thing I have ever read.

I now ask for help from anyone who has read her better known books (Chocolat, pour exemple): am I likely to enjoy them? It takes a fair bit of arm-twisting to talk me into anything other than historical novels (not romances) and crime (not gritty) - and it's usually a combination of the two - so any insight would be appreciated.

There's a joke from one of the London papers about how, were the fate of the nation really left in the hands of people on O2, we would all be dead. At the moment that rationale is clear.

If my attentions to you are intermittent at best for the next however long, it is because my connection is having a go-slow, and it is too icy to walk for half an hour, plus trying-not-to-fall-over time, with my laptop to the nearest Starbucks to partake of WiFi. (Buses do not function in snow, apparently. England is broken again.)

I will instead be nestled with my CAPSLOCK embroidery, until such time as I have to resume trekking to London next week - not just for lectures but also two nights at the theatre. First, The Little Dog Laughed with the amazing Tamsin Greig and the grown-to-manhood Harry Lloyd and secondly - because O2 aren't all bad and make it quite easy to win 2-for-1 tickets - The Woman in Black, which I have seen before but couldn't quite resist.

P.S.: Dear Television, enough with killing my Saturday night boys already. It is not a nice way to start the New Year. I cried so much I had a headache.

P.P.S.: You are not all bad. New Hustle is all kinds of shiny. Mmm, Adrian Lester + very expensive suiting = teh sex.

It's less than a week until The Priory now - I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited. (This isn't helping any at all.) I'm seeing a new production of Pride and Prejudice on Thursday, and I can't imagine even Darcy fangirling is going to extricate me from this reverie.

Usually, when looking forward to something quite so much, the time after it seems somewhat desolate, but I need not fear this time. In the New Year, I am going to see Rupert's predecessor chez Spooks, Matthew Macfadyen, in Noel Coward's Private Lives! I love Coward, so this should be fantastic. Oh, and Kim Cattrall's co-starring. Get in!

So that's two super-spyboys accounted for (as well as the amazing Nicola Walker)...just one missing. Whoever could that be?

And for once, maybe, RH actually did it better than Merlin.

Seriously, there's a freaking lake and everything!

Yes, that's the one.

I'm seeing Rupert on stage next month! He's in The Priory, which has come as a total surprise. I'd seen it advertised earlier with Jessica Hynes (whom I love but have never seen in anything) and Rachael Stirling (whom I love and saw in the wonderful Look Back in Anger in Bath with Richard Coyle), and therefore I wanted to go, but London theatre is pricey, and there's a whole list of other things I want to see too at the moment (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, etc.), so it had been put on the backburner a bit.

Then mother came home with the complete London theatre listings, and lo and behold, Rupert's name has been added to the cast list. Cue screaming of 'I have to go!'

So £12 later, I have my ticket for ROW B IN THE STALLS! This will be very good practice in not having a seizure for when RA takes to the stage in his mystery play.

My guess - the answer is yes.

Before I was back online in any useful fashion, I had to rely on the telly guide to tell me of exciting things to come - and in a way, that made it all the more exciting. If I am on one of RA's bang-up-to-date sites of wonder, I know it is news of him I am like to find. However, when it was bestowed on me at random in newsprint, it was like winning a lucky dip.

You will therefore find it easy to imagine just how delirious I was to receive the news on the last page one day that, after reading Rupert Penry-Jones's desperate plea to keep Spooks from being axed (I even recall the phrase "I'll do it for free!"), not only had series seven been commissioned, but it had acquired a new cast member, with whom I was already insanely smitten.

My expectations were high and were reward. Series seven was a triumph. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for the twenty-first century. Don't get me wrong, I always enjoyed watching everyone dash about trying to find the whereabouts of Islamic fundamentalist bomb #457, but the Sugarhorse story arc did make for a refreshing change and a more cohesive series. I think it needed that, as it's always been the personal relationships that have kept the episodes joined up before, and there wasn't scope for that in seven (Adam dead *gulp*, Jo understandably fucked up, Lucas longing for a past that wasn't real anyway). When the big bad comes from within, there's no better battle, and Connie's sheer cold craziness was quite the sight to behold.

Tough act to follow then? ( We're not the bloody NME Awards... )

The leaves on the trees are turning all fiery and autumnal, and so has my hair. Two packs of Feria and it is now a particularly ferocious shade of coppery red. My skin is suddenly even paler and my eyes far more green. I always, without fail, start hankering for the bleach again within about a month, but at the moment, I'm rather in love with it. I blame the current heights of my Pre-Raphaelite obsession.

I had my first MA meeting today, and it's left me giddy with the sheer joy of it all. UCL is beautiful, and just being there for a couple of hours makes all the preamble of my rubbish job and all those times people look at me like I'm talking another language fade away as a necessary and insignificant evils.

This is the real world.

On Wednesday, it is induction day for UCL Classics MA students, and, after three very long years' absence, I am to be one of those.

I just popped into the department to sort out the fairly major technical hitch that was my application form - over which I slaved for ages to get my words just right - going completely AWOL. So I have to do another one. Happily for me, my dear department really don't mind that much! They seem happy to have me back, and it's the only place I really want to be.

I'll be taking Mycenaean Greek (Linear B! The earliest Greek there is, when it wasn't even written using an alphabet but a syllabary with the occasional hieroglyph!) and doing five whole books of Herodotos, who is one of my three favourite Classical writers (alongside Euripides and Propertius). Both classes are with brilliant lecturers I did undergrad classes with, so it'll be gloriously familiar.

Strangely, there was a man sitting at a table across from me discussing choosing his daughter's secondary school. He'd been to an open evening at one where they taught Latin from eleven up - and he said he couldn't see the point: it's 'romantic rather than practical'. That is the point, homuncule!

I hope you have both had lovely days.

My newest fandom ends next week, and to celebrate the joy that has thus far been Desperate Romantics (even given the thumbs up by Charlie Brooker and co. on the awesome bitchfest that is You Have Been Watching!), here's a few icons.

( I find the modern world a most random and confusing place... )

Here is that necklace a few of you so kindly asked to see. It's not the world's best photo (I do have a camera somewhere, but I haven't seen it for years, so I'm dodgy phone-photo reliant), but I hope you can get the general idea.



The class I am giving (still fear!) will be how to make this:



I have a big post to do at some point, but just so you know, Gran has been a bit up and down, but the hospital think she's getting there. The infection came back, so thank goodness they didn't discharge her when they tried to.

I am most liable to do stupid things on account of Pretty.

So when a certain Pretty thanked me for my ‘travelling and devotion’, I opened my mouth and out fell a promise that I would go to see Pretty in Europe. I then closed my treacherous mouth and thought about what a stupid thing it was to do for a moment before Pretty seemed quite happy about the whole thing, so I decided it was a good idea after all.

Therefore, last Monday, I ended up on the Eurostar from St. Pancras, on my way with good company to ( Belgium. )

...completely incapable of thinking of very much else.

While my fellow scribe, fedoralady is in the midst of penning the dramatic end to The Hazards of Love, I have finally talked le beau Capitaine and the charming Wentworth into posing together for me, and, well, it seemed so unfair to make them keep their hands off each other.

( My mischievous muses )

The latest question of the day is "From Dr. Polidori's Lord Ruthven to Stephenie Meyer's Edward Cullen, the annals of vampire lore are filled with attractive, charming bloodsuckers. Which one would you most want to be bitten by?"

Up until a couple of months ago, this would have caused me some considerable deliberation. Now it's a no-brainer.

As pinched from mrs_tubbs, ladygisburn and amandajane17, here is a very choice selection from my somewhat extensive recommended reading list. (Ye gods, this was tough.)

( Reading matter(s) )

This has made me realise just how many more there are that are worth sharing, so there will probably be a follow-up someday soon.

For Warren, read LJ - and have cookies if you recognise the quote.

It was a rather epic night of telly (Tim Minchin's latest live show, followed by Supernatural (yes, I have it on DVD, but that's just not 'the same')), so I thought I'd also do something useful.

Well, maybe not exactly useful but they're my wee small hours of the morning. "There are twenty-four usable hours in every day!" (That's from the same, almost entirely quotable film.)

I made myself a new icon. A flashy gif one to give myself a challenge. I really rather like it. LJ, however, does not. It says it is ten times too big, which is just mean. So I'm putting it here instead, so I don't feel that it was a complete waste of time.

I think a few of you missed the RH Drabblefest, which has been a joy from start to finish, so here are some recommendations and my own contributions along route.

Mother Always Liked Richard Best / A Servant to the People / Coeur de Lion / The Life and Times of Rufus the Lion by ladylovelace:

Four brilliant drabbles in one post, including PJ foot-stamping, Gizzy grooming the way I wanted and lion-taming - what's not to love?

Adequate Compensation by alesh101:

What we all knew happened when Guy was dragged off to London.

A Pattern by tania_sings:

Guy's best chance at redemption!

A is for Apple by mythopathy:

Guy and Marian - thus it begins.

and heaven too by broughps

Guy and Marian - thus it begins again.

And here are my hundred-word darlings...

Dawning (prompt: Guy/Marian; sunshine) and a pair - Revelation (prompt: Outlaw Guy; initiation) and Can't Even Give it Away (prompt: Guy/Robin; sharing willingly).

I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I did.

Anyone remember the clatter of heels that came bearing news of the magical opening of the fresco room at the National Archaeological in Naples, mentioned a couple of weeks ago?

Said clatterer was my first Classics teacher (officially, as my mother used to be one, and I was being taken to Roman villas and learning to count in Latin from the age of three), and I have just received the news (via text and not winged messenger as would have been appropriate) that she has been awarded an MBE!

It's been a while, but I can just feel some congratulatory elegiac couplets coming on.

Please stop it. There's only so much a fangirl's heart can take.

I know you cheer me up, give me such delights as silly boys bickering in fast cars and attractive food critics in a variety of period costume cavorting with genius comediennes, but drama is devastating me.

It's too much, too soon. Give me the chance to grieve.