Still waiting for a Witty Title

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.