Deferred whatever

Firm date for returning the Dowager Countess to Lincolnshire: Saturday. I hope.

In the meantime I've been listening to the Doctor Who Unbound series from Big Finish, alternate takes on the history of the Doctor which I hadn't heard all the way through before. I started with Sympathy For The Devil, which starred the man who isn't really Jan's Uncle Dave and featured some guy called Tennant as a rather foul-mouthed, foul-tempered UNIT colonel, and Sam Kisgart as the villain. (I see a promising career ahead of that lad.) I went on (or back) to Auld Mortality, with Geoffrey Bayldon in the starring role, and by the final line I was in happy floods. Big Finish continues to be an unending source of wonderfulness. Highly recommended.

And now for some writing, hopefully.

The Temple of None, and a worry

I've just started fleshing out a throwaway line from "Two Magicians" into a concept I rather like.

When Tamland (my fantasy kingdom) was founded, it was, like America, a sanctuary for people fleeing from religious persecution. Briom, the place most of them came from, was a land with many gods and a rich and fairly corrupt priesthood. So they built a Temple of None, which contains the golden image of No God, and whose bell rings three times a day to remind people not to pray. In extreme cases, if you want to, you can go to the temple, stand in front of the image for a moment, and then walk away again, though some people feel even this degree of acknowledgment of the possibility of deity is dangerously excessive; but the point, for Tamlanders, is that even if gods exist, they are not to be propitiated, feared, or relied upon.

Also, my friends and occasional sparring partners lil_shepherd and inamac, who have a largish number of dearly loved (and pedigree) cats, are worried that one of them may have FIP, which I imagine stands for Feline Infectious something or other, and that therefore they may all be at risk. Good thoughts would be welcomed.