Out of the Debauched Sloth

Chaz Brenchley's Fortnightly Newsletter

“Bad news travels fast. Good news takes the scenic route.” - Doug Larson

The biggest news of the past fortnight—and I mean internationally so, people: word has spread to every continent, excepting only perhaps Antarctica—is that I lost my sourdough mojo. Once again, for the cheap seats: I lost my sourdough mojo. I made two bad loaves in succession. Woe was me. Fortunately, today’s is glorious, so I may have my mojo back again. Only time will tell.

Now that the reverberations of this shock revelation have died away a little, I can also tell you that vol three of the Books of Outremer, A DARK WAY TO GLORY, is now published and available from all good outlets. Go forth and buy, by all means—indeed, by any means necessary—but do read vols one and two first. These are not standalones in any sense.

What else? California has seen more precipitation this rainy season—this rainy snowy sleety haily season—than at any time these last seventy years. It is raining again as I type. During these shutaway days I have developed a minor addiction to American-style crosswords, which surprises me somewhat (I was raised on British cryptics; my music teacher at school compiled them for the Times, and taught me all he could, as he stood no chance of teaching me any music), but it’s fun. And a useful distraction, as we make our difficult way through parlous times.

Oh, that’s the other news, yes. Times are parlous*. Be careful out there, people.

- Chaz

*a derivitive of “perilous”, to absolutely nobody’s surprise