It's Always More Complicated

What I read

Finished Second Wind, which was really a bit kitchen-sinky in all the stuff that happened to Our Hero the Physicist Turned Weatherman - I thought Rare Form of Bovine TB was really going a bit far after all the flying through hurricanes etc.

Finished Free for the book-group - account of growing up in Albania just before and just after the Fall of Communism, in a family with rather a lot of intricate backstory on both sides. And a lot of it narrated via perspective of very young person who is, understandably, not being told everything by the parents and living under that particular regime.

Then read JD Robb, Stolen in Death, (In Death #62) (2026), and while I am always pleased when Dallas is not chasing a serial killer or someone with weird perverse agenda, this one did not seem to me one of the top entries in the series, quite apart from the jewel theft from the TATE!!! blooper. (I was trying to construct any scenarios in which there would be v pricey jewels on display alongside, you know, all the PAINTINGS and some sculptures.)

Then I re-read, the first time in a Very Long Time, George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866). A lot of it reads like practice-steps for Middlemarch, which has so much more going for it. The plot-stuff to do with legacies, lost heirs, etc, is pretty clunky. Felix himself is somewhat of a pain. There's not much of her humour. Even so, there's some terrific stuff there.

On the go

Winifred Holtby, Poor Caroline (1931), which I appear to have re-read slightly more recently than I thought, though still not very recently.

Up next

There's a new Literary Review. Otherwise, feel I am on a bit of a re-reading things kick.

So, it looks probable that I am coming up to be the next person to suggest A Book for the in-person reading group.

And I recently had a flash of inspiration, why not something by Naomi Mitchison?

Except that when I come to Do The Research, hardly anything is at present actually in print, chiz chiz chiz.

I really don't think I can moot The Corn King and the Spring Queen which is Very Long.

We're doing a memoir for the meeting next week so perhaps not Among You Taking Notes.

Otherwise it's The Blood of the Martyrs, about the early Christians, not perhaps as good as the earlier Classical Antiquity novels, or Travel Light, which is not my own favourite among her fantasy works.

I really fancied blowing their minds with Memoirs of a Spacewoman but although there is a Kindle edition of the Italian translation, if you want to read it in English secondhand copies come pricey.

(INFAMY!!!)

So I have to think of something else.

To switch to an entirely different track, maybe Rosamond Lehmann, Dusty Answer, the archetypal Sad Girl Novel?

Hell, maybe I should go for Cold Comfort Farm.

Last week's loaf dried into a solid brick, so I made a loaf of Doves Farm Organic Heritage Seeded Bread Flour - I know I made this quite recently but I noted then that it was moving past its best before, and saw somewhere that this is more of an issue with seeded than non-seeded flours. Anyway, v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: as there is a plethora of apples, brown grated apple with maple syrup, and Strong Brown Flour.

Today's lunch: made something approximating chilli con carne with diced braising steak, Belazu Mixed Beans, a tin of chopped tomatoes, onion, garlic, two rather weary green chillies left over from the other week, chilli powder, hot and sweet smoked paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander, oregano, sugar, salt and pepper, and that turned out rather well (and potent); served with broccoli florets cooked thus and sweet and sour okra.

A somewhat annoying piece in Guardian Saturday on non-professional sleuths in TV cop dramas is not currently online. While it did give some gesture towards the longer history (Sherlock Holmes etc) I thought it was a bit lacking in any general sense of the field, in particular when it suggested that the rise of gurly crime-solvers (presumably as opposed to Knowing Old Ladies like Miss Marple) was a recent phenomenon.

Not only has this long been A Thing in textual mystery/thrillers, as long ago as 1983 Antonia Fraser's Jemima Shore was investigating on the telly.

I'm probably just being a bit My Particular Niche Favourites over omissions in this essay here: Bored of the Swords: The Rebirth of Sword & Sorcery and the Death of the Weird.

WOT no mention of Tanith Lee???

Not sure if one would count Jane Gaskell as S&S - we consider that if Cija picked up a sword she would probably endanger herself before anyone else.

I am not sure if anyone besides me remembers the Silverglass sequence by JF Rivkin, which was perhaps a fairly late manifestation of the earlier S&S cycle?

Honestly, that is a large animal with sharp teeth and it might consider your wee babby a snack rather than pictorial content: 1,000kg seal’s antics feed ‘double-edged sword’ of fame. I mean, I love a cute pinniped as much as anyone, but this one looks as though it might squash a person if it rolled on them....

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I thought this was adorable, and my mind immediately went to The Borrowers (are these still current figures in children's reading?) as potential cleaning staff: Focusing on the little things in life in the Thorne Miniature Rooms (always part of of my visit to the Art Institute).

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We will concede that Certain Elements have made perhaps too much of The Brits Abolished Slavery (rather than that, er, it was there to be abolished in the first place, ahem), but this still sound like an amazing resource The Slave Trade, c. 1830–1893: British Foreign Office Confidential Print:

After decades of abolitionist campaigning, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807 ended Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic trade in enslaved people. It also marked the beginning of a new chapter of international anti-slavery diplomacy in the nineteenth century. This included the formation of a Royal Navy squadron to police the West African coast and intercept ships of other nations still engaged in the slave trade. There was also a concerted diplomatic endeavour to push other states and rulers—in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas—towards abolition.

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Found in the archives - during the process of cataloguing by a volunteer, we note, and points for no invocation of dust in the story - Rare copy of US Declaration of Independence found by volunteer in UK archives .

And would actually quite like to see something that had been Never Before In History.

What with A Schism - though not yet an Anti-Pope?

Gonorrhoea making a comeback: that sneaky little microbe has been evolving drug resistance since the days of sulphonamide, sigh.

Though, actually, I am not sure that this is Going Back To Days of Yore, because the profession of midwife is an ancient one, and actually involved training, and at the very least, women giving birth were surrounded by other women who had been there and done that and lived to tell the tale, and this woowooyness is beyond batshit and into murderously ignorant: A US champion of ‘freebirthing’ always claimed there had been no maternal deaths linked to the movement.

I have had my issues with male gurus of 'natural childbirth' like Grantly Dick Read, but they were at least about informing women about what was going with their bodies and what the stages of labour were and giving them strategies to breathe through the pain (or effort, as he constructed it) rather than just going “birth is as safe as life gets. And if we leave it alone, it unfolds beautifully, [the] majority of the time.” Historical demography tells a different story, really.

This is rather lovely: ‘Literally growing the future’: volunteers help save Scottish rainforest by collecting 11m seeds:

A small band of volunteers has helped to grow nearly 8m native trees in Scotland, crucial to efforts to restore lost parts of the Atlantic rainforest, after collecting 11m seeds by hand.
About 100 volunteers, including retired teachers and doctors, office workers and young families, have spent tens of thousands of hours venturing into often remote woods in the western Highlands and islands to search out seed-bearing trees.

Less heartening: One person a week in England dies with undiagnosed TB, study finds:

Tuberculosis rates in England are at a 10-year high, with 9.4 cases per 100,000 people in 2024. The rate is only just below the World Health Organization’s “low incidence country” threshold of 10 cases per 100,000 – a level expected to be breached when 2025 figures are published.
....
Tuberculosis is the biggest infectious disease killer globally, with 1.23 million people dying from the disease and an estimated 10.7 million falling ill in 2024.
It is preventable, and treatable using special antibiotics, and recent advances have dramatically reduced the time patients need to be on medication, even if they have drug-resistant forms of the disease.

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This is a rather weird sheep-related story - I did not realised feeling ran so high among scientists of ovine matters: Farmer's push to return lost CSIRO archives reveals 200 years of merino history:

Dr Carter was a leading wool scientist at the CSIRO in the 1940s and 1950s who left for the UK after a dispute with colleagues.
"He was really hunted out of Australia by competitive scientists who had other ideas about breeding sheep," Mr Small said. "It was a very nasty event."
His collection of Australian merino specimens went with him, and remained overseas until he died in 2005.

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What news reports from 1600s tell us about life in Mughal India:

The Mughal news reports survive in at least four known collections - in London, Bikaner, Sitamau and Kolkata - though historians suspect others may be in private hands.
One cache was preserved in bundles in the cool, dry basement of Jaipur Fort. In the early 19th century, James Tod, an East India Company official and antiquarian, borrowed a large number of these reports and failed to return them when he left for Britain in 1823.* He later donated the collection to the library of the Royal Asiatic Society.
The richest cache, in Kolkata's National Library, consists of 21 volumes devoted to the reign of Aurangzeb, who ruled the Mughal empire from 1658 to 1707 and was its last great expansionist emperor. The volumes were once part of the personal library* of pioneering Indian historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Aurangzeb's most influential biographer.
At first glance, much of the material appears crushingly mundane: appointments, disputes, military movements, gifts, illnesses and endless administrative minutiae.
Yet taken together, the reports amount to something rare - a near-continuous record of an empire watching itself, says Faruqui.

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Very much part of that period 'fresh air and sunlight' movement: “When we get down to swimming, we get down to democracy”: The story of the outdoor pool. The one depicted here is less ravishingly modernist than some.

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The Birkenhead Case – Wright Robinson and Conscientious Objectors: They were claiming exemption from fighting because they wanted to be treated as conscientious objectors, on moral grounds: i.e. not religious issues, which were the only ones tribunals would accept at the time.

Last week's bread developed mould in the humidity, so I made the Country Oatmeal aka Monastery Loaf from Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread (2:1:1 wholemeal/strong white/medium oatmeal), a bit dense but tasty.

Friday night we were OUT.

This also meant no making rolls, so we had toast for Saturday breakfast instead.

Today's lunch: lemon sole fillets spread with salt, chopped remains of fresh green coriander from last week, ginger paste and lemongrass paste, folded over, placed in a greased baking dish, drizzled with sesame oil, sprinkled with breadcrumbs and some rice wine splashed in, covered with foil and baked for 20 mins in a moderately hot oven, served with sticky rice with lime leaves and tat soi stirfried with garlic.

Some while ago partner observed that there was going to be a Flamenco Festival as in former years at Sadlers Wells, and we decided to book tickets for at least one of the offerings.

We of course had not anticipated (nor, I am sure, had the organisers), that it would take place during a Major Heat Event in London.

But anyway, we set off yesterday on what was not just the hottest day of the year but the century, eschewing the Tube and catching a bus instead -

- I suppose these temperatures possibly convey an additional aura of authenticity?

We were seeing Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía Tierra Bendita, which was amazing - particularly taken with the section involving some very intricate clicky castanet work - had great seats in the front stalls.

We had a snack beforehand at the on-site Fox Garden cafe, which is convenient, but not particularly wonderful foodwise.

And on the way home, spotted a fox flaneusing along our street.

I should probably indicate that these are not snakes that one might reasonably encounter on a golfcourse in the north of England. They were BOA CONSTRICTORS - sick ones at that, on two separate occasions.

Golfers find two boa constrictors in one week on UK course:

Cox, who moved to the UK from Australia eight years ago, said he was used to snakes in his native country and that it was not uncommon to see adders around the course, but that large snakes such as boas had never been seen in this part of England.
“I’ve been over here for what, six, seven summers, and not once has it ever happened. And now we’ve seen two in a week, and now there’s three more just down in North Yorkshire,” he said.

but can live for more than 30 years and require a lot of food and care, leading to some owners abandoning them. Cox believes that their former owner left them on the course “because they can’t look after them, the food bill started getting too big and they were unwell, so instead of probably taking them to the RSPCA or to a pet shop or to a vet they’ve just dumped them and let them die”.

The search for Gracie the giraffe, missing in Texas, hit its two-week mark on June 25 .

One would think a giraffe would be extremely visible, stick out like a sore thumb, but apparently not.

Exotic animals appear to be quite the thing in Texas:

There are many landowners in the region with agricultural land, and it's not uncommon for them to have exotic animals. Cedar Hollow Ranch has a "couple hundred" animals all told, including the giraffes, and multiple species of antelope, ibex and deer, said Jones.
In Johnson's career, he's dealt with missing water buffalo, chimpanzees and other types of monkeys, he said.
"We've had all kinds of exotics over the years escape the owners' containment, and they go on a fling," Johnson said. "In almost 30 years of being a lawman, this is my first escapee giraffe."