#339
Mar 30, 2025
Books
This week I read:
Unfinished Tales by J. R. R. Tolkien
I was looking for a new book to read earlier this week, and felt like picking up Lord of the Rings for a re-read — but then I rememberd I had a few other Tolkien books I’ve not read yet. So I went with this one.
At times, it felt like reading bible commentary, with Christopher Tolkien comparing and contrasting different variants of the source texts. That sounds like a negative, but if you’re really into the lore of Middle Earth it’s great to see how ideas changed. Language is a big theme: it is in LotR and the Silmarillion too, but reading the Unfinished Tales I really appreciated the thought that went into the languages, brought into the tales as discussions of etymologies.
I need to pick up The History of Middle-earth some time.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
This week the players followed up on a rumour they heard 2 months (in game) ago, that one of the Sun-Scarred Knights had gone missing in a hard-to-reach area north of the Arena. The players had reason to believe they could get by the guardian and thought having the Knights owe them a debt would seriously help when they finally approach the Knights to ask they not interfere with the party’s war against the Setites.
Since so much time had passed, I decided the situation had progressed a little: the Knight, who had been affected by a mind-controlling slime and had killed his companions, has now spent the last two months living off their raw flesh, and is so maddened by hunger he would attack immediately. Despite that, the players managed to knock him out and restore his sanity, and while they haven’t exactly said “we’re pretty sure you ate the bodies of your companions” he’s starting to put two and two together…
We’re skipping next week because I’m unavailable, but the week after that the Knight is going to return to try to complete his mission and recover the bodies of his companions, with or without the aid of the party.
Miscellaneous
House Buying
It’s been another week of little progress. I got the survey report on Monday, there’s no major concerns but the surveyor did recommend also getting an electrician and a gas engineer to check it out so I booked those in too and should get reports on those next week. With hindsight, I should have booked those in when I arranged the building survey, as the building survey is only structural.
But it doesn’t really matter that I’ll be waiting a few more days for all the survey results, because the sellers’ conveyancer still hasn’t provided the draft contract. This is the very first thing they need to do! Not only is it almost three weeks since they accepted my offer on the house, but also it’s been on the market since January: why don’t they have the paperwork ready to go? If it were me selling a house, I’d get my conveyancer to draft the contract as soon as I listed it and viewings started to come in, so that when an offer did come we could get through the sale—and I could receive my money—promptly.
Anyway, I’ve thought some more about the living room and have changed my mind again and decided I do want to redecorate immediately after moving in. I don’t particularly like the current brownish-cream carpet or the light green walls, and besides years ago I vowed that when I finally have a place of my own I wouldn’t constrain myself to the boring and safe light-neutral walls. I’m going to paint the walls charcoal and get a pure white carpet (I’ve ordered some carpet samples), and add a splash of colour with some art by Goran Gligović.
I’ll hold off on recarpeting the upstairs, because I’ll want to paint first and I’m not sure what colours I want, but after I do I think I’ll probably want the same white carpet up there too, to act as a unifying touch.