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with a Rainbow!
Well I thought I'd try brightening the weekend up, ta da! Rainbow hair!
What a miserable few days we've had here in the south west, strong winds, incessant rain and a marked drop in temperatures but I guess it is October, we shouldn't expect the warmth and sunshine to go on forever. On the plus side, fewer people are out and about which is good for the Covid fight right?
The weather has certainly influenced my activities this week, the one dry day, Thursday, I did go for a bike ride, another 'easy' ride towards Gloucester, lunch stop was at Slimbridge, beloved of several generations of twitchers. Not that I was looking at the birds, rather my cheese and pastrami roll and pasty! The return was the 'riverside' route through Berkeley and Hill returning me to base with a little over 65 miles on the clock.
Since then I've been confined to barracks, waiting for a break in the weather to get out. It does mean the shoulder has had more rest but its nevertheless still a bit frustrating. It has encouraged some indoor pursuits, hair dyeing aside, yesterday I cooked a pan of chilli which went down well with the landlady and today I'm planning on a sausage casserole - I enjoy cooking, its the clean up that gets me down!
Today then I give you Summer Girl part 37, Costumes R us, Gaby gets to meet JK Rowling, she may not be flavour of the month with folks here atm but when this was written and set she was a writing idol for tweens and teens. You also get Avoidance part 8, Parental Uncontrol, the new arrivals at Bad Durkheim get settled in although Gaby gets some less than welcome news from home.
So that's about it for today, its still siling down outside the glass, the wind giving the occasional more vocal gust just to remind us of its presence. The forecast is better for tomorrow so hopefully I can get out on two wheels for at least a short ride.
ta ta for now,
Madeline Anafrid
Comments
Since You (Sort of) Brought It Up...
...with your mention of J.K. Rowling's time and place in Summer Girl, does the GabyVerse run on normal time? There's a reference in Summer Girl to the 89th Tour de France, which Wikipedia says happened in 2002, and in the chapter posted today Rowling is reading from Goblet of Fire (2000), the most recent Potter novel then. Does that mean we're still in the mid-20-oughts in Avoidance?
It seems to me that it's been quite some time since anything obvious (at least to a non-cyclist from the other side of the Atlantic) that would date the story has shown up in the BC postings. Until the current book two re-post, I'd forgotten that it was taking place that early -- I guess Drew was born circa 1989.
Is that still the case, or are we operating in a world where the cast, so to speak, is gaining on the present? Or have we just drifted into a more amorphous almost-the-present time zone?
Best, Eric
it has been
a bit blurry at times I have to admit!
In Avoidance, Gaby is sixteen, the year is 2006 he/she was born February 25th 1990. Summer Girl, book 2 is set in 2003 when Drew was 13. I'm pretty sure there are some dating issues in the earlier volumes, perhaps timelines that don't quite work, it'd be quite a task to chase them all down!
Up to maybe book 6 things were keeping apace, about 2/3 years behind the writing time but the amount of stuff going on as well as more than one break from writing has put things well in arrears making it almost an historical series! It has to be set some when, for Gaby, as with many teens, these years of Secondary education all sort of roll into one and the books sort of reflect that.
2020 - Gaby is now 30 - I'm not sure that there is a way to sensibly close the gap or whether there is even a story there! At my current production rate and the recent volumes/Gaby year ratio, (5/1) its not going to happen without completely changing the way the story is told. And maybe that's just as well, maybe the saga as is should end, perhaps when Gaby turns 18 which I guesstimate to be @ volume 30 which could be from late 2021 to mid 2022. Doesn't mean the end of new Gaby, just a chance to catch up to the 'present' with a less intensive, less blog like, telling of her tale.
Hope all that doesn't muddy the waters too much.
Mads
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Thanks, Mads...
Glad to know.
(I've always had the impression that the "historical" aspect is mostly how we lost Tuck; since electronics and computing were such an important part of his background, getting 15 years behind (back in 2013) was not only awkward from a research and story standpoint, but potentially distracting to readers as well. As I recall, back around 2007 some of the newbies on Tuckerspawn were wondering about his (lack of) cellphone capability, and had to be told that this being 1996-97 in the U.S. Midwest, he didn't even have a cellphone for most of the story, just a pager. I think Tuck/Valerie is 39 now...)