Wondering a little how all the communal activities are going to change once we've got the settlements up. Smaller groups in each place? Getting really fit visiting somewhere else to play cards? Hard to say. Either way it will definitely be
different, which is a little bit sad, though on the whole I still think the settlements are a good idea. If there does end up being a lot of visiting it's easy to see it as a bit of a throwback to when I was a kid, spending a few weeks in the summers on my grandparents' sheep farm up in the valleys. We used to spend all day running around the hills - but there we didn't have all this dense forest. Just lots and lots of grass and some scattered trees, in bunches or long lines of them marking boundary fences, and sometimes tumbled stones where there used to be a shepherd's hut or an old wall. We had a long, long history on that land.
All of which is pretty irrelevant to what I was going to say, which is: Ladyhawke tonight. Very family-friendly, on a level with The Princess Bride. Another epic love story that has to triumph over the meddling of an evil bishop, starring Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer.