This week, I have been mostly listening to Capital Cities’ In A Tidal Wave of Mystery and watching Arrow on Netflix. I said that I might have to listen to Capital Cities a bit more before getting to grips with the album, but now it is fully embedded in my head. Can’t stop listening to it, can’t stop my brain from replaying it internally when I’m not listening to it. My favourite album of 2014 so far.
I’m at episode 13 of Arrow now, and I’m particularly enjoying the way the relationships between the characters are genuinely changing, and how the plot is unfolding at the same time as Oliver Queen’s back story on the island is being revealed. It hasn’t (yet?) got stuck in a bad-guy-of-the-week rhythm, or forced Oliver and Laurel to replay a tormented “I love you but I can’t be with you” chorus whenever they’re in the same room. (That repetitiveness was one of the reasons I stopped scarfing down episodes of Chuck somewhere in the middle of its second season. That, and the disturbing levels of non-ironic sexism.)
I’ve started on Ken MacLeod’s Descent but haven’t made it very far yet.
The painter is almost finished with the house. The scaffolding is down, and the outside is all finished apart from a few final touch-ups on Monday. We got him to do the downstairs woordwork as well, and that’s looking lovely now too.
This afternoon Abi and I spent an hour and a half pruning back the pear tree, which had got out of control. Last year it threw off more pears than we could handle, even after we finally (6 years in this house) discovered that the right way to deal with otherwise inedible cooking pears is to cook them. So the pear tree is much smaller now.
