Random Musings

My dearios will have heard me whinge about the massive point thahr misst of so much spam I get offering deals and collaborations with my entirely non-profit and very niche personal website -

- and that sometimes one can see that they've picked up on a word or even a phrase but have totally missed CONTEXT quite apart from the fact that I am Not In Trade, perish the thort, not to mention that they tend to miss what one might consider obvious links.

But, lo, I am boggling like a boggling thing over this:

[A] vertically integrated manufacturer based in China with over 14 years of experience specializing in high-efficiency equestrian gear and innovative pet products.
Our 22,000m² facility provides in-house manufacturing of a wide range of products including saddle pads, horse rugs, fly masks, halters, pet beds, leashes, harnesses, and other items. We are pleased to offer top-tier European and American brands known for their superior quality, cost-effectiveness, and prompt delivery.

I am boggled but in a different way by the spam from a mirror factory in Hangzhou city which informs me that ' it only takes more than ten minutes to drive from our company. I can show you our factory at any time and give you quick feedback to inform you of the production progress.' Pretty sure it does only take more than 10 mins....

I initially saw this because somebody on Facebook posted the video: Boyfriend proposed during the marathon she trained 6 months for, and in the list of Inappropriate Times and Places to Propose, while she is actually running a marathon is very near the top, right? it's bad enough for bloke to be waiting with ring and maybe flowers at the finish line (for many observers, marathon proposals are about men stealing the spotlight).

Run, girl, run.

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To revert to that discussion about The Right Sort of Jawline and Breathing Properly the other day, TIL that mouth taping is (still) A Thing, and Canadian researchers say there’s no evidence that mouth taping has any health benefits and warn that it could actually be harmful for people with sleep apnea.

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Since I see this is dated 2020, I may have posted it before: but hey, let's hear it for C18th women scholars of Anglo-Saxon Elizabeth Elstob, Old English scholar, and the Harleian Library. I think I want to know more about her years in the household of Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715–1785), duchess of Portland, who I know better through her connection with Mrs Delany of the botanically accurate embroidery and collages of flowers.

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I like this report on the 'Discovery of Original Magna Carta' because it's actually attentive to the amount of actual work that goes into 'discovering', from the first, 'aha! that looks like it might be' to the final confirmation.

Pillion review – 50 shades of BDSM Wallace and Gromit in brilliant Bromley biker romance (Peter Bradshaw in Cannes, you have been warned).

But, anyway:

Soon Ray is requiring the gigglingly thrilled Colin to cook and clean and shop for him (though of course never permitted touch his motorbike) and sleep on the floor like a dog at his bland house in Chislehurst*

Safeword for unbearable ponceyness, no?

*CHISLEHURST!!!, the subtle connotations of which I have previously discussed.

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Let me cleanse the timeline with this adorable story about saving the Welsh watervole by making its poo glittery: Endangered water voles in Wales are being fed edible glitter in a bid to save them from extinction:

The hope is that if the water voles are willing to consume the glitter then it will come out in their poo, allowing the small mammals - which are often mistaken for brown rats - to be tracked by conservationists.
Different colours of glitter could be used to allow conservationists to track different families of water voles and how far they range.

This week's bread: managed for the first time in yonks, to score a bag of Shipton Mill Three Malts and Sunflower Organic Brown Flour, so made up a loaf of that, v tasty.

Friday night supper: the hash-type thingy with the last 2 sweet potatoes cut up, boiled, and then sauteed with chopped red bell pepper and Calabrian salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: Tassajarra method, strong brown flour, maple syrup, cranberries, nice.

Today's lunch: seabream fillets, rubbed with ginger paste and lime juice, salt and pepper, and left for a couple of hours then panfried in butter + olive oil, splashed with the remaining juice at the end; served with baby Jersey Royal potatoes roasted in goosefat, large flat mushrooms marinated in dark soy sauce (was meant to be tamari but I didn't have any) + mirin + tspn toasted sesame oil + star anise boiled up together, then healthy-grilled, and asparagus steamed and tossed in melted butter with lemon juice and lemon zest.

Is it ethical to buy used books and music instead of new copies that will financially reward the author or artist?

Okay, perhaps the writer of the query means, books that are currently available new but you are able to score a used copy in the local Oxfam shop or whatever - maybe.

(Which of course raises another effikle q that in that case it is For A Good Cause....)

And as someone who has spent years hunting down works which were not in print, or were only reprinted by Virago or the British Library or whatever after I had acquired my collection after arduous searches and considerable expense, or, finally, can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg or the Faded Page -

Hollo larfter.

True, I have also bought copies of works which I probably could have acquired shiny new, but was not entirely sure whether they were for me, taking a punt on something I had heard of, etc etc. And sometimes this led to me buying up everything the author ever wrote, their backlist, preordering their forthcoming, and so on. In hardback.

Plus, while I was appalled at those people who were buying books on Amazon and then returning them and getting their money back, and also at book piracy, on the whole I don't think it is the end-user, the actual reader, who is the greatest villain facing authors, rather than the publishing industry.

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In other book-related news, yesterday I was still feeling the effects of a couple of bad nights with lower-back flare-up and did that thing of doing some small tedious task which has been lingering about for, lo, a very long time.

Transferring my FREE PDFs of Open Access academic books to my tablet (and also sorting out the file titles to be something a bit more helpful than a truncated ISBN) so I can, should I be moved to do so, actually read them. Some of them are things that yes, I should read, and others are more, er, aspirational.

I also, whilst faffing around with my tablet, finally got the issue with Princeton UP's annoying walled-garden app sorted. So maybe I can finally get to the books I bought in their sale nearly a year ago.

What I read

Finished Dance and Skylark, which was a bit slight (felt there was a certain unresolved slashy subtext going on between Stephen and his former Greek-American wartime comrade in arms, hmmm) though I marked it up for the women characters looking as if they might be a bit one-dimensional and then revealing other facets.

Katherine V Forrest, Delafield (2022) - Kate Delafield, still retired, dealing with a stalker who is a woman who her poor handling of a case way back in her career led to being falsely imprisoned, and now released through the Innocence Project, also her PTSD issues, etc, also old relationship stuff.

Long Live Great Bardfield: The Autobiography of Tirzah Garwood - Persephone edition, 2016, initially published in limited edition 2012 - her memoir written when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy in the 1940s, for her family, edited with some supplementary material by her daughter. Said a bit about it here.

Ursula Whitcher, North Continent Ribbon (2024) - v good.

KJ Charles, The Henchmen of Zenda (2018), re-read because not feeling up to much.

On the go

Still dipping into Melissa Scott, Scenes from the City.

Have started the other book for review - wow there is a lot of insider baseball stuff about the Parliamentary toings and froings over the legislation in question, or maybe I mean, how the sausage got made - and maybe my general state at the moment is not quite in the right space.

Just started, Kris Ripper, The Life Revamp (The Love Study #3) (2021) because it was on offer in my Recommended for You on Kobo today.

Up Next

New Literary Review.

Otherwise, not sure.

Since we are hoping to get to the Tirzah Garwood exhibition at Dulwich before it closes, I have finally got round to reading Long Live Great Bardfield: The Autobiography of Tirzah Garwood (Persephone 2016).

I think my original interest was because I thought her arty circles would intersect a bit more with my fubsy progressives, but although a few familiar names surfaced less so than I had anticipated.

However, in an episode rather counter to the kind of narrative one expects in arty boho circles of the period, in 1942 she had a therapeutic abortion in the local hospital, which is a thing I have never come across among all the tales of pills, backstreet operators, sleazo Harley street docs, dodgy nursing homes, etc, pre the 67 Act. She had just had a mastectomy - this was in fact what led her to start writing the autobiography for her family - and became pregnant only a few months later (!!!???). This was deemed entirely grounds for a termination, but even so, doing ward rounds with medical students, the surgeon remarked that it was 'illegal' but that provided medical opinion agreed that continuing pregnancy and childbirth would be dangerous, No Jury Would Convict. This was very few years after the high-profile Aleck Bourne case, that docs were justified if the woman would be left a 'physical or mental wreck'.

I also find this rather resonant, in view of the current situation with women getting charged under the 1861 Act.

The other thing that struck me was that Garwood and her circles could easily be hanging out on the periphery of Dance to the Music of Time - every so often they get invited to a country house or interact with the local gentry, and at one point have to do with a socialist peer who has an encampment of Basque refugees on his estate....