malka

What I read

Made a rather slow progression through Li, Wondrous Transformations, and finished it, a little underwhelmed somehow. Some useful information, but a fair amount of familiar territory.

As a break, re-read of KJ Charles' Will Darling Adventures, Slippery Creatures (2020), Subtle Blood (2020) and The Sugared Game (2021), as well as the two short pendant pieces, To Trust Man on His Oath (2021) and How Goes the World (2021).

Then - I seem to be hitting a phase of 're-reading series end to end'? - Martha Wells, All Systems Red (2017), Artificial Conditions (2018), Rogue Protocol (2018) and Exit Strategy 2018), and the short piece Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (2020).

Also read book for review (v good).

Literary Review.

On the go

Martha Wells, Network Effect (2020).

Up next

Predictably, Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse.

Also at some point, next volume in A Dance to the Music of Time for reading group (At Lady Molly's).

Still waiting for other book for review to turn up, but various things I ordered have turned up, so maybe those.

So today was my physio let's see how you're doing assessment, at the different health centre -

- which I was in a bit of a swivet about getting to, because the obvious straightforward route is the longest, and there are shorter ones but these involve a tangle of residential streets -

- not to mention, whichever way you slice it, the road winds uphill all the way, yea, to the very end, because the health centre is bang opposite Parliament Hill.

Nonetheless, I found a route which seemed doable, which said 24 mins (and that was not actually starting from home base but from the road by the railway line), which I thought was possibly optimistic for an Old Duck such as myself, but mirabile dictu it was in fact just over 20 but under 25 minutes, win, eh?

And took me along streets I have seldom walked along since the 70s/80s when I was visiting them more frequently for Reasons.

Had a rather short but I hope useful meeting with the physio - some changes to existing exercises and a new one or two.

Thought I would get a bus back as I had had time to check out the nearby bus stops, and there was one coming along which according to the information at the stop was going in a useful direction.

Alas it was coming from the desired direction, but still, cut off a certain amount of homewards slog.

But this did sound awfully like that spate of books where people had A Bright Idea to Do Something for A Year and got a book out of it, which was clearly the intention, and this struck my cynical ayfeist self as 'My Spiritual Pilgrimage to a Mystical Experience, Conversion, Faith, and Publishing Deal'.

Could I become a Christian in a year?

(How long did it take St Augustine? asking for a friend.)

For my perpetual Christian road-trip – beginning in the last months of 2022 and ending in early 2024 – I purchased a 21 year-old Toyota Corolla and stocked the glove box with second-hand CDs. I filled up my calendar with Christian retreats, church visits and stays in the houses of Christian strangers all across the highways and byways of the UK – Cornwall, Sussex, Kent, Hertfordshire, Birmingham, north Wales, Norfolk, Sheffield, Halifax, Durham, the Inner Hebrides – seeking out every kind of Christian, from Catholics to Orthodox Christians: Quakers, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, high to low Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, self-professed mystics, focusing on my generation specifically, those in their 20s and 30s, the youngest set of adults in Britain.

I was also, in the light of this article today, intrigued that it was two bloke friends who set her on this path: I’m delighted to see gen Z men in the UK flocking back to church – I just hope it’s for the right reasons. So am I. I have a friend who has been involved in the much-delayed and still unsatisfactory response of the C of E to certain abuse cases and some of those seem to have been connected with cultish manifestations which were praised for bringing in that particular demographic.

(And having noted the other day that Witchfinder Hopkins was pretty much in that demographic of young men aged 18-24, I'd really like to know where these Gen Z converts are in relation to issues like ordination of women, LGCBTQ+ inclusivity, etc etc.)

No bread made this week, last week's + rolls holding out.

Firday night supper: sardegnera with spicy Calabrian salami; okay but not the great sardegnera I've accomplished.

Saturday breakfast rolls: the ones loosely based on James Beard's mother's raisin bread, made with Marriage's Light Spelt Flour.

Today's lunch: lemon sole fillets, which I baked thus - first cooked chopped shallots, chopped up butter and pancetta in hot oven for 15 mins, then added quartered little gem lettuce for a further 5 mins, then added petit pois (tinned, recipe said frozen but they only had huge bags of frozen) and white wine + water (recipe said vegetable stock but didn't have any) and placed sole fillets on top and seasoned with salt and pepper, baked for a further 5-10 mins, added lemon zest just before serving (this was about finding something to do with spare packet of pancetta left over from the other week); served with warm green bean and fennel salad (dressing actually olive oil + white wine + tarragon, left for a bit to marinate and strained over the beans) (this was using up the fennel left over from last week, also last red onion); and sticky rice with coconut milk and lime leaves.

But this promised to be a short video, by one of my academic crushes.

(Indeed, should I ever meet Professor Hutton I fear I shall melt down and revert into A Teenager in Love to the embarrassment of all.)

Ronald Hutton on Matthew Hopkins, the English Civil War's 'Witchfinder General': 'What really happened when a breakdown of the legal system in the English Civil War fuelled a series of witch-hunts? In this 10-Minute Talk, Professor Ronald Hutton FBA delves into England's witch trials and Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General.'

It was really local, it was really atypical -

- and I never realised how very young Hopkins was, as well as being in a socially marginal position. (Do we think that these days he'd be an incel mass shooter?) In the 1968 movie he was played by Vincent Price who was well on in his career by that date.

What I read

Finished My Favourite Mistake in a mad whirl, really, it just kept going.

Anthony Berkeley, The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) - a group of mostly amateur criminologists sit round discusssing (and also do a bit of freelance detecting) apropos a recent case in which it was assumed that woman who ate the poisoned chocolates was not the target as they were sent to someone else who gave them to her husband: who had it in for the apparent target? - naturally it transpires that massively complicated plot was aimed at the actual victim but the who, how and why remain matters for debate. This was not at all bad, so I downloaded a couple more of Berkeley's Roger Sheringham mysteries from Project Gutenberg.

Unfortunately a bit less prepossessed by The Mystery at Lover's Cave (1927) and The Layton Court Mystery (1925) because we perceive a pattern of Sheringham flailing around and building up theories, coming across clues (sometimes by vast coincidence) and then constructing an entirely new theory, and then right at the end the whole thing turns more or less inside out when the actual murderer is revealed, too late or in circumstances in which it seems prudent to take no action. Do not think I shall proceed with the oeuvre.

Have been thinking for a while of a re-read of Little Women (1868). Alas, these days one does not just glide over the plonking moral lessons that are constantly invoked as one follows the story.

Have just finished Trailblazer, which I was dipping in and out of all week, because I did find the chatty style really rather irksome. Also a few niggly things (e.g. how can you mention Hertha Ayrton without the being rejected for Fellowship of Royal Society because married woman? - surely totally pertinent to the kinds of things Barbara Bodichon was campaigning about???).

On the go

Have just picked up Alison Li, Wondrous Transformations: A Maverick Physician, the Science of Hormones, and the Birth of the Transgender Revolution (2023), which I have been meaning to get to for a while.

Up next

Well, one of the books I am reviewing has finally turned up, so that, I guess, is in my future.