Randomness Guide to London

This week's bread: brown oatmeal loaf: strong brown flour, medium oatmeal, turned out a little dense and crust a little cracking, the yeast that was rather delayed in transit coming to the end of its useful life.

Saturday breakfast rolls: (fresh yeast acquired) brown grated apple, light spelt flour, molasses.

Today's lunch: chestnut mushrooms quartered in olive oil, when checking recipe in Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food spotted the adjacent recipe for sweet and sour okra - saute for 5 minutes in olive oil, add sugar, salt, pepper and lemon juice (as I had half a lime going spare I also added that) and a little water and simmer for 20 or so minutes, I also added half of a red bell pepper than was going spare (possibly rather younger okra would have been nicer but this turned out quite well); aubergine cuts into rounds, placed on oiled foil on grill and grilled (turning a few times) until tender (the recipe was a little optimistic as to how long this might take) and then splashed with teriyaki sauce mixed with ginger paste; served with couscous with raisins.

(Reporting in vaxx-boosted, by the way.)

Have been noting hither and yon stuff about blokes 'looksmaxxing' and 'mogging' (which apparently does not involve cats? is there some reference to tomcats facing off and fluffing out their fur? probably not. Who knows.)

This is yet another of those things That Blokez Do apparently in order to attract the opposite sex and I do not think it is because I am Old, and my tastes were formed in A Different Day, that I feel that there is a significant Failure To Do The Research about What Actually Pulls The Chixx.

Not that this is exactly a new phenomenon, when I was reviewing those books on yoof culture in the 60s/early 70s, I was thinking that various of the paths being pursued by (presumably) cis het men, because Teh Gayz were in separate chapters, did not seem to me necessarily terribly productive - maybe being a great dancer, but not if it was all about him showing off moves, ditto the being A Mod Face.

And after all the idea that women only go for men who look a certain way is to laugh at, cites yet again the instance of The Late Rock Star Historian, who was a scruff who was not perhaps quite at the John Wilkes level of having serious disadvantages in the way of appearance to overcome but was - well, I suppose it depends on the artist you're thinking of and there were painters who would have turned out an excellent oil-painting of him but was hardly of male-model looks. But was if not of universal appeal, considerably popular with the opposite sex.

We are frankly not surprised at reports that young women are eschewing the dating game, because what it turns up is very likely young men blatting on about their self-maintenance regime and probably trying to shill for supplements and peptides.

Am also given to wonder whether the people who follow these creatures are all acolytes of their maxxingmessage, or whether at least some % are treating them as the modern equivalent of the old-style freakshow. (Though for all I know, in the darker reaches of the internet you can find videos of men biting the heads off chickens and so on.)

While I was thinking that it would be preferable for them to contemplate upon the natural world and build bowers for, or offer particularly attractive stones to, the objects of their interest, I also became cynical as to whether female bower birds and penguins are quite so appreciative of these efforts as naturalists would have us suppose. ('Him and his bloody bowers' - 'Not another pebble')

On the other hand, I am thinking of the times when I was dealing with a fairly professional set of meedja people either coming with their gear to interview me in my Former Workplace, or else having me in a studio nicely set up for the purpose.

Not recording a podcast from my own front room on my own computer and having to set up my own headphones and mike and feeling that the instructions about Settings could pertain a little closer to what I find there....

And adjust the curtains so that there was not a glare off the portrait photo of Dame Rebecca and all that sort of thing.

- the fact that the connection to Headphones was no longer saying Headphones might have been a clue that all was not entirely as it should be -

So anyway, when I got connected there was total silence and had to do a certain amount of jiggling around and changing the settings and anyway, did finally get to the stage where I was both audible and able to hear everyone else.

Though when I spoke the effect was, roughly speaking, of a 45 rpm single being played at 33 rpm, no, I have no idea why, they were fairly hopeful this could be sorted in editing.

The actual discussion went okay I think - other person who was there to be Nexpert is old(ish) mate who has just writ a book of relevance which cites me quite a bit.

But lo and behold, had a subsequent email from them expressing concern over the slurring issue in case it was Health Thing and should I see my GP, which was thoughtful, but really, it was TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUE. (I did not respond, hey, your image was looking really blurry and faint, are you feeling well? because I assumed that was their camera.)

Am feeling mildly knackered now, unlike the days when I would jaunt down to Broadcasting House, do my chat on Woman's Hour, and then go and do my normal day's work.

Of course, I was Younger then.

What I read

Finished Never After, I can see that there are good things about it, but it was just not really what I was looking for at this particular time. It's historical novel, rather than romance.

Latest Literary Review.

I then finally got stuck in to Edward St Aubyn, Parallel Lines (2025), but although I did finish it, did not think it came up to Double Blind, found it hard to keep track of the various characters, and was a bit disappointed.

Started SJ Fleet 'The Secret Barrister', The Cut Throat Trial (2025), which is that ?tapestry-style novel of a trial where it gives you the viewpoints of the various parties involved, and even though I could see (or maybe because I could see?) it was not going to turn out as clearcut a case as it looked, could not get involved, gave up.

Also started and gave up, Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing (2023), because I was getting vibes of a kind of narrative I have been there and done that many times over the years and this was not bringing the over and above that would have kept me reading.

Decided that I wanted to read some more Arnold Bennett and found that I had Mr Prohack (1922) on the ereader and not sure I'd ever read it. Not by any means one of the top Bennetts but still quite acceptable.

On the go

Project Gutenberg have only just released Naomi Royde-Smith's The Tortoiseshell Cat (1925). I have been wanting to read something, anything, by Royde-Smith for ages, and this is showing very promising. Our protag starts out as teacher in a girls' school with rather more ambitions than those in which D Richardson's Miriam finds herself, but has just been fired.

Up next

No idea. What do Tiggers eat?

Have just out of the blue had an email from a meedja person about what a cause of death on early C20th certificate MEANS, a colleague of theirs contacted me - what must have been in days of yore - and I was really helpful. I think that may have been a case in which Sid was involved, this was not, but we do our best in posing as a Nexpert.

I was able to flash a bit more relevant knowledge in the question portion of online seminar this pm (even though I dozed off, did not sleep well last night, during part of the actual seminar).

Have got off my desk and conscience something that has been hanging over me, to wit, second review of article I did a previous review of some weeks ago. Was somewhat prejudiced about it (it is actually not at all bad doing what it does) because it rather glances over the amount of work that went into getting the archive used into usable condition (personal interest there noted) and role of archivists in between the creators of the records and the end-users.

Think I mentioned some while ago possibility that longtime academic friend and self may be editing for publication Important Work on Significant and Highly Relevant Subject of friend of ours who died very unexpectedly last year. We have now received the draft manuscript and it seems more of a manuscript (rather than notes and materials) than we had feared.

Still have review that has been hanging over me and keeping getting put off to do.

Have podcast to record later this week.

Also must begin to turn my thoughts to being instructive yet entertaining on the history of ye baudruche (and finding illos, fortunately I already have quite a few).

Including flashbacks to a visit (that did not take place) during the early stages of lockdown.

***

I am seeing a troubling pattern of people dispersing collections or not treating collections as they should be treated as research resources -

(BBC Written Archives Centre, I'm looking at you - 'structured content releases' - WE direct what you should be researching....)

There was that guy recently, an actual history professor, who uncovered a hoard of Roman coins and was about, yay, auction rooms (thought I linked this, but can't find it).

Then there is this daisy: Woman to sell hundreds of treasure pieces she found:

Her detecting skills have been so successful that her cabinet at her home in Wilden, Bedfordshire, is now full and she needs to make some space.
So on 16 May her collection of hundreds of items found in fields in Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Norfolk will go under the hammer and is expected to sell for about £11,000.
She says she is not auctioning her items for monetary reasons but hopes her finds will go to "someone who loves history".
....
She says since she started in 2006, she has collected "hundreds" of items, from all over the country, including her friend's garden, but will not reveal the exact locations.

And this is maybe just as sad a case of material getting dispersed into the ether when, should it be kept together in some place for the benefit of future historians, it would not only be the individual items but the synergy of the critical mass of material: The $100m pop culture collection now being broken up at auction:

Jim Irsay, the man who bought these artefacts, died last June at the age of 65. Over the past few days the billionaire’s collection was sold at Christie’s New York in a series of auctions. Irsay cared greatly about the memorabilia. You can tell that not by the most valuable items, but by the least. Buying the handwritten lyrics for Hey Jude does not prove you are a true fan. But an unused ticket from a 1966 concert, worth a few hundred dollars? That does.
Now that many of the objects have gone to the highest bidders, their fate is to be apart. That is how they began their lives, imprinting themselves on the American psyche from all corners of the world. But the shared story they tell, decades later, raises questions about who they are for, where they will go next, and to whom they truly belong.

Last week's bread held out very well.

Friday night supper: however, I felt frittata had been featured fairly recently, so made Gujerati khichchari, with cashews.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft roll recipe, Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour, the last draining of maple syrup from the bottle I had, and chopped dried apricots. Not bad.

Today's lunch: lamb chops, marinated overnight in avocado oil, wild pomegranate vinegar, sumac, salt and pepper, browned with a little chopped onion, then the marinade poured on and slow-braised for two and half hours, served with 'baby' (adolescent) rainbow carrots roasted in lemon-infused olive oil, sweetstem white and purple cauliflower roasted in pumpkin seed oil with chopped Romano pepper, and baby sugar snap peas stirfried with star anise.

Because when I read this, I had Further Questions.

London pub thief sold £2.2m Fabergé egg and watch set to buy drugs

I am going, hello?

Enzo Conticello, 29, took the Givenchy bag belonging to Rosie Dawson as she stood in the smoking area of the Dog and Duck pub in Soho, London, on 7 November 2024.
Inside the £1,600 bag was an emerald-encrusted Fabergé egg and watch set belonging to Dawson’s employers, the Craft Irish Whiskey Company.

went to the Dog and Duck pub in Soho. She was outside the premises in the designated smoking area, she put her handbag on the ground in between her legs, and a few minutes later she noticed her handbag was no longer there.

Dawson had the Fabergé items because she had taken them for display at a work event earlier that evening.

(Am trying to think of any circumstances in which, in former days, would have been taking precious unique archival and manuscript items out of the building in the first place. When we had them out on display for visiting groups, they got put away pronto.)

I probably read too much crime fiction, but this reads like 'set-up for heist/insurance scam that went pearshaped'.

So dr rdrz will be aware of my recent problems with printer, so I finally bit the bullet and after consulting Which Best Buys and so forth, went for an Epson Eco-Tank from John Lewis.

Which arrived at lunchtime today.

And I had anticipated spending hours if not days whining and stressing and beating my head on the ground and wrestling like until Jacob with the Angel to get the thing talking to my system and actually printing/scanning/copying.

Behold me sat sitting here having achieved getting it connected to the Wifi (the Wizard, though, is crap because it assumes that your password is a word rather than numeric, fortunately there was an alternative route), appearing under printers/scanners in my desktop computer settings, and copying, scanning, and printing.

There was a little hassle with printing which turned out to be due to Advanced Printer Settings turning out to have weird Paper Size as default rather than A4, which given that A4 is supposed to be their standard size, was bizarre.

This is positively uncanny, do admit.

Personally I suspect Blake Morrison has either not read terribly deeply in memoirs of the past, because I could probably without too much struggle come up with instances which were not at all about being 'a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers)', but one sees that this is a position he has to take up in order to make his case about Ye Moderne Confeshunal memoiring.

‘Enough of this me me me’: Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing

(Harriette Wilson would like a word, just saying, for starters.) (We can so imagine dear Harriette on social media, no?)

I'm not sure he's really got an argument there rather than some vague blathering about published memoirs vs social media and blogs, especially given the, er, thinness of his historical grounding (though in some cases past memoirists prudently arranged for the work to published posthumously).

And as for people being somewhat lax with the truthiness of their memoirs, how about this chap: The schoolteacher who spawned a Highland literary hoax:

The book’s author and narrator, Donald Cameron, describes his early life in Blarosnich, a remote hill farm in the Western Highlands in the 1930s and early 1940s. The book presents a Brigadoon-like spectacle of an agrarian community seemingly little touched by modernity, populated by pious women, elderly aristocrats and lusty farm lads.
....
Donald Cameron was, in fact, a pseudonym of Robert Harbinson Bryans, an itinerant bisexual schoolteacher turned travel writer who was born in Belfast in 1928 and died in London in 2005. Also known as Robin Bryans, his name is now largely forgotten apart from among students of plots and conspiratorial claims.