High Water

Was alerted to Zoom seminar I must have signed up for ages ago and not put into my diary, with link, approx 30 mins before it was due to happen.

Well, that was interesting and informative: 'Protest and Identity Formation in the Time of Covid: The UK in Historical Context', if ultimately rather grim.

Given that I am in the cohort that thinks the response of The Powers That Be was very much in the Day Late and a Dollar Short ballpark and marked by gross ineptitude even where corruption was not in play, I had not realised how much there was resistance based on the belief that it was an excuse for the imposition of The Iron Heel (and this crisscrossed a wide spectrum of beliefs).

And a lot of the evidence for that was actually not widely reported.

And one observes that there are doubtless differences between the overall picture and the impact of immediate local policing practices.

But looking at what one might consider the wider penumbra of the panic (the torching of 5G towers e.g.) I was reminded (I would be, wouldn't I) of some of the episodes in Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millenium, especially as the speaker invoked the Black Death as a comparison point for epidemic + social upheaval.

That the place I was very glad to leave in my youth is now The Top Place to Visit in the UK, though I think 'visit' may be the operative word there, after all back in my day the foreign language students and other summer visitors had an entirely different vision of it. Street foodstalls and trendy bars, not to mention galleries, Not In My Day, though we did have the walks in nature and seascape.

***

(The person who asked about this could have found the info themself, it was really easy to find.) Stillbirths only had to be registered in England from 1927.

(This was the person who had found me as A Nexpert in a field I don't consider my main field of xpertise via Google AI. I was, in fact, able to provide quite a bit of information from the depths of Mi Knowinz. )

***

How to decode the less than intuitive citations in footnotes to Gould and Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (1898 edition).

(Though I think the person asking the question to which this was actually the answer could possibly have given the matter a little thought and worked it out themself? Maybe not: maybe they have not had the years of dealing with Weird Citation Practices that are under my belt.)

***

Still got it for telling people Where To Find Archives....

Last week's bread seemed to be holding out but got very dry and was eked out with the rolls.

Friday night supper: the rather ersatz 'Thai fried rice' with Milano and Napoli salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, something like 60:40 strong white/white spelt flour (end of bag of the latter).

Today's lunch: venison crumble, with this diced ragu which is more or less rather more finely diced than usual venison, cooked in a moderate oven in red wine with shallots and garlic and a few juniper berries for a couple of hours and then a crumble topping of 2:1:1 strong wholemeal flour/strong white flour/pinhead oatmeal + butter + seasoning + crushed coriander seeds (I think I made rather more of this than I usually do) spread on and baked in somewhat hotter oven for a further 30 minutes; served with Boston beans roasted in pumpkin seed oil with fennel seeds and splashed with gooseberry vinegar, and baby pak choi stirfried with star anise.

Do we think this trip is doomed already???

My best friend Kady and I are planning a backpacking trip around south-east Asia in a few months and I have proposed the idea of us getting matching tattoos:

We’re both 20, and I think we’ll look back on them when we’re older and remember what a fun life we’ve lived. Tattoos are a reminder of a particular time, and I want to cherish our youth. I’ve found a cool tattoo parlour in northern Thailand, where we’ll be staying. I’ve seen videos of people having great experiences there and the tattoo artist is really talented.... It’s not like I want to get a random tattoo. I’m quite creative and have already started sketching ideas that represent who Kady and I are.

***

In other gruesome news, okay, it is not one bloke spreading his seed to 100s, but I'm not actually sure that 'a worldwide limit of 75 families for each sperm donor' as applied by the European Sperm Bank isn't somewhat on the high side, even when it doesn't turn out further down the line with more sophisticated testing that a donor has a rare cancer-causing mutation.

***

And this is sad, rather than gruesome, and makes me wonder about the whole marketing of the 'freezing eggs' thing as 'a groundbreaking act of empowerment', especially as it hasn't turned out like that:

I did not anticipate the emotional landscape that I would face a decade later, as a scientific intervention became a personal meditation on time, money, and unfulfilled dreams.