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Sticky: Hello, new readersThrow a peeve off a chair and make yourself comfortable. Help yourself to slices of Alice Beatitude's Hippy Hippy Cake. The codfish is swimming peacefully around its tank, and will rise to the offer of cake crumbs.
You have been warned:
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oursin post
ETA I should really be very, very grateful if people would not explicitly associate my erinacine identity with my passport name.
Gosh those people with the archivists' sales team are persistent! I've heard again - okay, different name and email, exact same wordage - TWICE, second time with added 'Worth a chat?'
No, sir, not in the least.
***
This week I got the Authors Licensing and Copyright Society payout, which was an agreeable sum, maybe it would not actually support me in My Old Age, but it is Better Than A Bat In The Eye With A Burnt Stick. Furthermore, as it is itemised - all the tiddly sums that get totted up - it is a Revelation of what works of mine are still being looked at, wow.
***
Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses:
A report claiming the number of young people attending church in England and Wales had skyrocketed has been retracted, after the underlying data was found to be flawed.
The Bible Society's "Quiet Revival" report had been widely reported on since its publication last year and became an accepted part of discourse among many Christians.
Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were "fraudulent".
It has said that quality control measures, which usually remove such responses, were not applied due to human error.
....
But academics questioned the findings, pointing out that the results seemed out of step with other data. Results from the long-running British Social Attitudes Survey, and even the Church of England's own figures, show a long term decline in church attendance.
Experts said that YouGov's methodology - gathering data from volunteers who received cash rewards for their time - left it vulnerable to "bogus respondents" skewing the data.
***
Pepys ‘curated’ letters to conceal being offered enslaved boy as bribe – research:
Howe wrote to Pepys to “crave your acceptance” of a “small” enslaved boy, which “I brought home on board for your honour … Hoping he is so well seasoned to endure the cold weather as to live in England.”
Pepys wrote back indignantly rejecting the offer. But Edwards argues this was not because of ethical concerns about slavery, but the optics of looking like a man who could be bribed.
This is quite resonant with discussion I was having this week apropos of my 1930s feminists and the less visible ways in which the work was happening, so much so that it's been supposed (it was being claimed at the time) that Feminism Woz Ded: The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Activism.
Bit of a flurry of Misguided Spam: this one is quite funny:
[W]e're working with other archivists that are offering historical resources.
I’m currently working with a few archivists on campaigns that are getting their sales teams meetings with warm leads every month. We’re targeting people who need historical resources using personalized email sequences.
If I could help you connect with potential clients like this, would that be helpful to you?
Another one of the usual 'Contribute your article/join our editorial board/reviewer team' from an international journal... offering a space for the exchange of powerful ideas among academics and experts which cannot distinguish between the title of a book I reviewed and anything I actually wrote my own self.
This one is frankly cheeky, if presumably being spammed at a vast array of people?
I am sure you're quite busy, but I would appreciate if you could take a moment to my below request.
Well, our Open Access Journal of Advances in Complementary & Alternative Medicine (ACAM) is scheduled to release its Volume 9 Issue 2 by 6thApril, but we are in deficit of one article. So, is it possible for you to support us with any of your manuscript to achieve this goal?
Appreciate if you could provide your acknowledgement within 24 hrs.
Am also being followed on Bluesky by very dubious looking 'Global' conferences within my fields of interest. Suspect these are a racket.
***
However, in realm of being A Real Nexpert, gave a presentation at Institution With Which I Am Now Affiliated yesterday and I think it went quite well, insofar as there was a certain amount of discussion and people coming up and asking questions afterwards.
Also got 2 compliments from much younger persons on hair (green streaks in) though as one was outside the Scientology HQ in Tottenham Court Road I fear this may be one of their recruitment strategies.
What I read
Finished High Stakes. I previously noted a pattern in Dick Francis of the conditional rather than utter win.
Antonia Hodgson, The Raven Scholar (Eternal Path Trilogy, #1) (2025) - think I picked this up as a Kobo deal, because people were mentioning it? I realise that I am no longer in the habit of reading fat multi-volume fantasies of this ilk. I found it all a bit much, really.
Then did some nibbling (what do Tiggers eat?) and then settled into a re-read of Barbara Hambly, The Nubian's Curse, not one of the top Benjamin Januarys perhaps but still pretty good. Possibly when I am in that sort of phase I should just go Hambly/Haddam/Paretsky/Cross?
Currently Reading
Dorothy Richardson, Honeycomb (Pilgrimage, #3) (1917) for online reading group.
Up next
Today's Kobo Deal was the latest Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware thriller, Jigsaw, so probably that.
Then possibly more Hambly.
At some point must read Adania Shibli, Minor Detail (2017) for the in-person reading group.
Okay, it was lovely to see the heron again on my walk today. I wonder if it had decided that the eco-pond, with its shoals of Invasive Predatory Goldfish which people have dumped in it to the detriment of other life (frogs, newts, dragonflies) is a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet.
Assuming it is the same heron and that the first did not just tell a friend.
***
In more annoying news, today partner had a go at fixing my printer, which has been giving 'Paper Jam in Tray 1' error messages -
- and after doing pretty much the equivalent of open heart surgery on the thing, lo and behold, there was, entirely concealed from view, a page jammed in the works.
I depose that having to eviscerate a printer to discover this is something of a design fault?
Unfortunately, once the printer was put back together, it decided that the gate was open and it was not going to print anything.
Partner is going to have another go at it tomorrow, but I suspect that New Printer is in the future.
***
Meanwhile, I copied my paper for tomorrow to a memory-stick and took it to partner's computer so that I could print it out there.
This was accomplished successfully.
Anyway.
Partner and I are in need of a solicitor for a fairly routine and non-urgent matter, so, looked up who it was we went to last time we had a routine life admin thing requiring the services of a legal professional.
(This was actually a bit more time-consuming than I anticipated, have I mentioned that archivists are really Not All That at keeping on top of their own papers? The cobbler's children syndrome.)
But, I found the name of the practice and looked them up on The Internetz and they are there, as having gone out of business some few years ago, on Companies House website.
And they are by no means the first solicitors I have had dealings with, though I think the ones in Kentish Town saw me through the purchase of First Flat and present dwelling and possibly various other legal matters, but are now no longer operating more or less adjacent to the Tube station.
I suppose that these days one should not anticipate that you have Old Mr Thing the attorney-at law and Young Mr Thing his son who keeps up the practice and Even Younger Mr Thing who is being brought on in the family tradition -
- and that these things come and go like everything else and they are no longer quite the repository of folk memory like in mystery novels.
Way back when I was starting out as a Wee Babby Archivist, I remember that a big thing of the day, practically A Crisis, was solicitors' records. As I was never actually employed in a repository where I had any direct dealings with the problem, I'm not sure whether this was due to practices going defunct, or just somebody going down into the cellar and realising that they still had all the papers from Jarndyce v Jarndyce back to its origins along with tons of other stuff. But anyway, there were Massive Amounts of Very Misc Material (quite surprising what turned up) which looking back I suspect had all sorts of issues around ownership to complicate matters even further.
(If anyone has recs for N London solicitors would be glad to hear of them.)
This week's bread: Elizabeth's David's Light Rye Loaf, which turned out nicely even though I discovered that the fresh yeast had finally given up and I had to fall back on Allinson's Easy Bake Yeast (which is not, horrors, the same as their former Active Dry Yeast).
Friday night supper: grocery order came early enough that I was able to put in hand the makings of a sardegnera with pepperoni.
Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut, with Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour, turned out quite well.
Today's lunch: game casserole - mixture of pheasant, venison, duck and partridge with onion, garlic, bay leaf, juniper berries, coriander seeds and red wine; served with kasha, warm green bean and fennel salad, and baby pak choi stirfried with star anise
And I don't think I've had Edna before??
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
And the boidies around here in the past week have included the heron in the eco-pond being very up for a closeup, Mr de Mille, parakeets, and several magpie courting couples.
There have been a fair amount of flowers blooming in the spring, trala, for some weeks now, the daffs have been a particular feature, calling Mr Wordsworth, and today there was a massive show of narcissi along one edge of the playing field.
Among the less flamboyant flowers, the Wildflower Corner included grape hyacinths, and dandelions.
The trees along the street are busting out in leaves and blossom.
We also note that toxic nitrogen dioxide pollution in London has fallen to air quality standards in under ten years (rather than the projected nearly 200).
So I think I've pretty much got my presentation sorted for next week at around the right length and with a slightly superogatory Powerpoint, but everybody seems to do these these days, sigh.
And I have got off a review of an article which was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, not bad at all.
And I have read the thesis I was asked to read and am trying to think of some questions which are not, which novelist would you pick to depict the seething tensions within [local organisation therein discussed], because I was going, hmmm, is this Barbara Pym purlieu or not?
And although there have been some hiccups along the road a further volume in the Interminable Saga should be appearing in the not too distant future though there are some niggling things still happening.
And I may have mentioned Doing A Podcast some months ago and the same people have come back to ask me to contribute to another one in their series, for which I realise I ought to do a certain amount of prep.
Book review still hanging over me.
Various matters of life admin.
What I read
Finished Victoria's Secret - still slightly meh about it - could possibly have engaged a bit with a longer history of 'Monarch has favourite/s who are not Quite Our Sort', even if historically the gender issues in play here were different??? Also had a bit of feeling that QV was not entirely NOT treating John Brown in the light of A Very Large Faithful Dog devoted to her to which she was also devoted and which she insisted on imposing upon people who hated dogs.... Thought it was good on her awful childhood, though.
Clare Pollard, The Modern Fairies (2024) - telling stories about women telling stories, i.e. the precieuses at the time of Louis XIV, the stories they were telling and their stories and how those reflected one another.
Susan Ertz, Woman Alive (1935), my attention having been drawn towards it by a mention of its having been republished. I have a copy of the first edition, Ertz being one of the early C20th middlebrow women novelists in whom I have had an interest going back decades, but not sure whether I ever actually read this. It is sf Of The Period, in which someone is cast forward into The Future by sciento-psychic means, this is his account. And okay, is not (unlike a cluster from around the same time) about the dystopic crushing iron heel of fascistic misogyny, is about the dysoptic outcome of a war in which germ warfare has killed all the women. Except one who has survived courtesy of mad scientist neighbour's experimental process.
Points for her being a young women of education, character, and something of a backstory conveying a certain cynicism, but she still concedes to the agenda of marrying and going forth and having babbyz, though I think everyone is a bit optimistic that she will pop out multiple daughters and even so, we do not think this will Save Humanity. (Also, no-one seems to suggest she should have Plurality of Mates, surely that would be advisable?) But then it just stops with our narrator pinging back to his present day.
Most recent Literary Review
Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington (1988), which I really enjoyed and am now looking out for more of hers - think I have copies of some somewhere?
Robert Barnard, Death of a Literary Widow (1979)- everybody in it is a bit of a caricature, not just the American academic.
Emily Tesh, The Incandescent (2025), because I have been hearing well of it. Pretty good, but is it just having Read A Lot that made one character look like a honking parade of red flags?
On the go
I think I am actually giving up on I Am A Woman, I don't think Being A Sad Lesbian is enough to provide a rounded character? Maybe it gets better?
Nibbling at various things. Realise that it is 2 weeks to next Pilgrimage discussion and I do not want to read Honeycomb too far in advance.
Up next
No idea.
Am still being harried by spam from those dodgy-sounding conferences of very little relevance to my actual interests, happening in v attractive places:
International Conference on Time Series and Forecasting (ITISE 2026) (wot is this even), Gran Canaria (Spain).
6th Current Issues in Business and Economic Studies (CIBES) Conference at the University of Valencia.
13th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (okay, is brushing somewhere in the region of Stuff I Have Worked On?) in Kyoto.
But really, YOY?
A new twist on this has appeared via my shiny new academic email address: really weird journals giving themselves out as academic that sound totally synthetic -
Journal of High Speed Networks (not as far as I can see associated with even one of the less esteemed academic journal publishers):
a forum in which researchers from academia and industry can address a wide range of topics related to high performance networking and communication and report findings on concepts; state of the art, emerging standards and technologies; implementations; running experiments; applications; and industrial case studies. Coverage can range from design to practical experiences with operational high performance/speed networks including communication network architectures; evolutionary networking protocols, services, and architectures; and network security.
As, I suspect, is this one:
Invitation to Join Mesopotamian Journal of AI in Healthcare (MJAIH) Editorial Board. - there is in fact a website for the Mesopotamian Academic Press (I see they also publish Babylonian Journals of this and that.
Even without the complete mismatch to my actual realms of expertise here I am sceptical about this enterprise.
This is so much what I've been thinking about a different period that I'm writing about - that it's there, even though people are saying It's Ded, it's just not doing the flashy newsworthy visible stuff or the results are the things are are not, or no longer, happening: The one thing everyone gets wrong about feminism.
***
I am a great admirer of Professor Athene Donald's blog, and I like this recent post: Unintended Consequences - in particular perhaps this apercu:
Business gurus tend to talk about ‘being authentic’ as the right way to lead. But if you are a testy, over-bearing soul being authentic may be very destructive for those around you.
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This is another story about mobility in the world: Looted from a royal palace: The medieval jug now on display in London:
A large bronze medieval jug bearing the English royal coat of arms would be a rare find if dug up in England, but somehow it had ended up in West Africa, in modern-day Ghana, thanks to early trading routes between nations.
Dating from between 1340 and 1405, the jug is the largest surviving bronze ewer from medieval England. Decorated with an English inscription, royal heraldry and coat of arms, it was originally a luxury object — but its meaning changed dramatically as it moved across continents.
I've had to do with either this artefact or another very similar in my working days, I did not know about the biological contamination (we didn't know for quite some time about the radioactive notebooks, either): a parchment scroll designed to guard against the dangers of childbirth:
Until now, this scroll’s worn surface and suggestive staining constituted the main evidence for its use in childbirth. However, new research by Sarah Fiddyment, presented in the exhibition, reveals that human proteins found on the scroll’s surface indicate the presence of cervico-vaginal fluid. This is an important breakthrough in the burgeoning field of biocodicology, which seeks out the invisible traces left behind by users of manuscripts, as they held, rubbed or kissed a parchment.
***
You know, I would have sworn that back in my working days I came across something appertaining to this historic event: How smallpox claimed its final victim, but I'm unable to trace it.
Last week's bread held out admirably.
Friday night supper: ven pongal (South India khichchari).
Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, came out a bit more vanilla-y than usual.
Today's lunch: Norwegian halibut fillets panfried for slightly less long than suggested on packet, as I have found this in the past to be a bit of an over-estimate, served with samphire sauce, baby cauliflowers quartered and cooked thus (used lime and lemongrass vinegar for the acidulation) and La Ratte potatoes roasted in goosefat.
Goodness knows, some real weirdness is revealed in You Be the Judge in Guardian Saturday, but today's produces a theory which is entirely new to me -
But apart from all this hoohah about HYGIENE, I am rather taken with New Health Scare Theory:
Boiling water twice is a no-no for me – there is a change in quality and taste. My life had a certain drabness to it – I now attribute that to consuming poor-quality water for so long without realising.
I was going to ask are they living in a log cabin or what in Ohio if the kitchen is so freezingly cold in the mornings they have to warm up the mugs so that they do not immediately chill the coffee but I see the issue is poor insulation.
Maybe they should do something about insulation rather than bicker over 'secondhand water'?
Or whatever. This is clearly my week for being Grumpy Archivist.
Have been solicited to review article for journal with which I have had a long connection, following a recent backstory I will not go into.
But anyway, I have been asked to review it, and it is definitely Within My Purlieu -
Perhaps too much so, because on opening the document to check that it in fact was, the person sending it having given me no indication of what it was about -
Discovered it was based upon an archive with which I had a significant history.
And no, the fact that there is this beautiful and fairly substantial archive in lovely curated order available to the researcher is a lot less down to the creating body (okay, I will give them points for the stuff actually having survived in fairly good nick) than to the work of archivists over 2-3 decades acquiring the material (in batches as it turned up during office moves and so on), sorting it into some kind of coherent order, and cataloguing it.
A saga which is actually recounted in the online catalogue to the collection, not to mention an article wot I writ about the organisation in question.
It is actually a pretty cool organisation, compared to some I have had dealings with, but superior archive processing, not really in their skill-set.
Grump. Will try and make tactful point about acknowledging the labour of archivists....
***
We may recall the saga of the tech bro whose sprog did not want the AI teddy he had acquired for her to talk back, and turned the speech facility off, his head around this he could not get -
And this is very creepy, no lessons have been learnt: AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately, researchers warn:
The parents in the study were interested in the toy's potential to teach language and communication skills.
However, their children frequently struggled to converse with it. Gabbo didn't hear their interruptions, talked over them, could not differentiate between child and adult voices and responded awkwardly to declarations of affection.
When one five-year-old said, "I love you," to the toy, it replied: "As a friendly reminder, please ensure interactions adhere to the guidelines provided. Let me know how you would like to proceed."
The concern is that at a developmental stage where children are learning about social interaction and cues, generative AI output could be confusing.
branchandroot