Culinary

Aug. 24th, 2025 07:21 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

Last week's bread held out pretty well.

Friday night supper: sorta-nasi goreng, with milano salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 3:1 light spelt/buckwheat flour, turned out well.

Today's lunch: savoury clafoutis with Woodland Mushrooms, garlic and thyme, served with steamed asparagus with melted butter and lime juice, padron peppers, and baby pak choi stirfried with star anise.

With which we had our traditional unwedding anniversary Bollinger (41 years).

andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Spent the afternoon being serenaded by a cinema full of kids at the K-Pop Demon Hunters sing-a-long.

As musical kids movies about demon-hunting go out was pretty darned good and I expect to be earwormed for weeks.

Reading not-Wednesday 23/8

Aug. 23rd, 2025 03:24 pm
liv: Bookshelf labelled: Caution. Hungry bookworm (bookies)
[personal profile] liv
One advantage of my unexpected free month was that I started reading books again. Not a lot but 6 complete novels and a longfic in 6 weeks, which is more than I have for years. Let me catch up with some brief reviews:

Since term properly, properly finished on 6 July, I have read:

  • Circe by Madeline Miller 2018, Pub 2018 Bloomsbury, ISBN 9781526612519
  • Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla (c) Nikesh Shukla 2010, Pub 2010 Quartet, ISBN 978-0-7043-7204-7
  • Will Super Villains be on the final? by Naomi Novik, illustrated by Yishan Li (c) Temeraire LLC 2011, Pub 2011 Del Rey, ISBN 978-0-345-51656-5
  • Some desperate glory by Emily Tesh (c) Emily Tesh 2023, Pub 2023 Orbit, ISBN 978-0-356-51718-6
  • Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (c) Ann Leckie 2015, Pub 2015 Orbit, ISBN 978-0-356-50242-7
  • A free man of color by Barbara Hambly (c) Barbara Hambly 1997, Pub 1998 Bantam, ISBN 0-553-57526-0
  • I transmigrated into Cordelia Naismith! by Lanna Michaels, 2025


Circe )

Coconut Unlimited )

Will Super Villains be on the final? )

Some desperate glory )

Ancillary Mercy )

A Free Man of Color )

I transmigrated into Cordelia Naismith! )
oursin: Fotherington-Tomas from the Molesworth books saying Hello clouds hello aky (Hello clouds hello sky)
[personal profile] oursin

I was very taken with this article (from 2008) about a genre of nature writing, and how, really, it's very dubious to invoke wild and untamed NAYCHUR in our green and pleasant land.

Wild and not-wild is a false distinction, in this ancient, contested country. The contests are far from over. When the wild is protected by management, or re-created by the removal of traces of human history, you have to ask, who are these managers? Why do conservationists favour this species over that? Whose traces are considered worth saving, whose fit only to be bulldozed? If the landscape is apparently empty, was it ever thus?

I mean, we are all about nature, but here I am in London Zone 2 and we have wildflower plots at the edge of the local playing field and an eco-pond, and little copses of woodland and apparently an RSPB sparrow meadow in the local park, rus in urbe, hmmm. In fact London is one of the world's greenest cities, a development which might have surprised dear old Mad William when he was trudging along the chartered streets.

It's also wonderfully codslappy about a certain type of (male) writer going alone into the Wild Places (and not meeting the existential horror that attacked poor Moley in the Wild Wood before he found Badger's house).

It seems to me to resonate with this other thing I came across lately about Rights of Way. Which is of particular interest to me since I am pretty sure that the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949 owed rather a lot to my dear fubsy interwar progressives rambling and occasionally organising mass trespasses because the countryside was for The People and they had a Right to Roam. And was much more about collective enjoyment.

(no subject)

Aug. 23rd, 2025 12:34 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] natlyn and [personal profile] quinfirefrorefiddle!

Photo cross-post

Aug. 22nd, 2025 12:50 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


Gluten free pie and a collection of badges to indicate my new age. I think my family might like me!
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

It's the little things

Aug. 22nd, 2025 06:08 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
I've just discovered that Android has an option that lets you snooze notifications. You have no idea how happy this makes me.
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
1. Have you ever stayed in a hostel? If so, where? Did you like it? If you haven't stayed in a hostel, would you?

Yes, stayed in many YHA youth hostels in women's dorms when I was younger. Some better than others in facilities or location but all excellent in price. I stopped because the people using them changed and I was no longer safe as a solo traveller. I was unlucky to be booked into a large dorm in the Lake District with the remainder of the dorm filled by one group of white middle-class women who decided to harass me. As it was my last night, and a Bank Holiday weekend so I knew there wouldn't be any alternative accommodation available nearby, I ignored them and went to bed early. I was subsequently "accidentally" kicked and trodden on several times. In the morning they got up early so I pretended I was asleep until they'd gone down to breakfast, then packed up to leave and have breakfast elsewhere. By the time I got downstairs they'd complained to the hostel warden and everyone else about me (don't know what lies they made-up) so everyone glared at me while the young warden, who was clearly relieved I was leaving and he wouldn't have to sort out a dispute, escorted me to the door. I'll emphasise that was my one and only negative experience in years of using many YHA hostels and was balanced out by many positive experiences, temporary friendships, safety in the companionship of other women travellers, and helpful wardens.

ETA: But if I'd grown up in a time and place where everybody had cameras in their pockets and immediate access to harassment via online posting then I probably wouldn't have risked hostel dorms, just for the record.
 
2. What is your favourite airport that you've been to? Why? 

Airports? No, thank you! Railway stations provide an endless variety of fabulousness though: architectural delights, public art, trains (most recently one with Paddington Bear on the side), and that atmosphere of humans in purposeful motion (outside depressing commuter hours, obv). Don't recall any notably good bus stations.
 
3. What is the best museum you have visited on vacation?

Recently? Plas Mawr. But I love almost all museums, especially the small quirky local ones about a single subject or obviously mostly run by one dedicated soul. The most unexpectedly good museum was the Cumberland Pencil Museum, now the Derwent Pencil Museum, that I was dragged to by friends. The best Big Day Out was the Black Country Living Museum. And my childhood fave was the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, which in those days was basically a bunch of slightly random old farm buildings I enjoyed playing in with my family (also my introduction to the concept of the garderobe, lol).
 
4. Have you ever made friends while traveling whom you keep in touch with on a regular basis?

Pre-internet I met an Aussie woman in a Youth Hostel in England who was my holiday BFF for a couple of days and we kept in touch by letter when she went to live in Sweden. Then she came over to London for a few days so we went to the theatre together to see the Rocky Horror Show, lol. Then she joined a Christian commune and we lost touch.
And a couple of lesbians from Yorkshire invited me to stay with them after I rescued them from a spider in the YHA hostel in Boscastle.
But best of all are the BFFs for a day: people you meet and share perfect hours with then never see again. My first ever cup of Lapsang Souchong was a gift from an older solo traveller from New Zealand who had camped near my home village as a Girl Guide and was the only person I've met away from there who knew where it was. Or even random strangers who poke their noses into my life to share their local knowledge with a passing visitor, such as the White Van Man in central London who stopped and crossed three lanes of traffic to tell me the bus stop I was waiting at was in a temporary diversion and I needed to walk around the corner to a different stop.

5. Have you ever had a conversation with a seatmate on a plane?

No, but on trains and buses, yes. Especially, to repeat myself, kind people sharing their local knowledge with a passing visitor. Cardiff commuter woman saved me several minutes of potential frustration by explaining the layout of Cardiff Central Station and where the back exit is. And on a train I once reassured a man leading a group walk he had prepared using a map and google earth that there was indeed an extremely unlikely set of stairs where he needed them to be and his group wouldn't have to detour a long way around.
The most recent was on my way back from North Wales when a woman carrying a balloon animal sat next to me, and I eventually asked her if she'd twisted it herself as I'd only ever seen them made by street entertainers at the seaside, and she explained that her party were travelling home from the seaside where they'd acquired the pale pink quadruped of dubious species.

6. Et vous?
oursin: My photograph of Praire Buoy sculpture, Meadowbrook Park, Urbana, overwritten with Urgent, Phallic Look (urgent phallic)
[personal profile] oursin

Or maybe not.

Only over the past day or two there have been various things on listservs and social media relating to research I have done and published (and not just my research, much lamented Canadian historian in the same area's work) and I realise that this was Back in the Day and maybe it has fallen off the radar.

But how is this thing that this thing is that - I suppose this comes with working in a particularly niche area - that people are not aware of the Horrible Hystorie of the Heinous Synne of Onan?

I am almost tempted to go forth and offer a conference paper WOT.

I'm not sure I have anything in the way of startling new research to offer but a lot of the same anxieties have been popping up again around Precious Bodily Fluids etc.

On another paw somebody was advance-mentioning a book they have coming out and that made me think, though it's not directly related, that there's a piece of research I keep meaning to get back to that's a similar sort of story.

Meanwhile there is something a bit weird going on, I fear, with conference I have been invited to speak at next month, having had rather cryptic message from person who was liaising with me. Shall get on with book reviewing before investing any more energy in paper-prep.

(no subject)

Aug. 22nd, 2025 09:48 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] elisem!
oursin: Illustration from the Kipling story: mongoose on desk with inkwell and papers (mongoose)
[personal profile] oursin

A few days ago Ask A Manager posted stories of co-workers overstepping their expertise.

And I guess this is not quite the same thing but I had a massive flashback to That Morning of Hours I Will Never Get Back when the whole library staff had a session with an outside consultant.

I am honestly not sure what the rationale was for having us give up an entire morning of our precious closed period - during which we did all - well, seldom actually all, but as many as we could manage - of those essential backroom housekeeping tasks which cannot be undertaken when the place has actual readers coming in and USING THE COLLECTIONS dammit.

Possibly we had either just undergone, or were just about to undergo, one of the restructurings of which I saw many during my years there, distinct from the physical relocation upheavals.

But anyway, consultant.

Had consultant been briefed? Had consultant done any due diligence about what sort of institution this was?

Okay, did know it was a LIBRARY.

Had not the slightest apprehension that this was a world-renowned RESEARCH collection and that, you know, we were not lending out books and stamping them with return dates (I am not sure that this practice, by the date in question, even pertained in public libraries).

We were sitting there cringeing and wincing, wondering when it would all be over.

Were we not very restrained by not going, in huge chorus, in the manner he would doubtless have anticipated we learnt as part of our professional training, SSSSSHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUSSSSHHHHHH!!!!?

An auspicious beginning

Aug. 21st, 2025 09:14 am
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
So far today, I was woken up at 4am because the children had been playing with an old alarm clock yesterday (I got back over though).

And Sophia hurt her wrist falling off of a swing yesterday and it still hurts this morning so we're off to the Sick Kids at 10am for her to get checked out.

Happy birthday to me!

Edit: No break. Possibly minor sprain. Just needs to take it easy and stay off the monkey bars for a few days.

(no subject)

Aug. 21st, 2025 09:04 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] kerrypolka!
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Gideon, heading for a recently arrived package, holding a knife "I'm not going to stab *anyone*!"
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished Dragon Harvest.

Read the latest Literary Review.

Read Angela Thirkell, What Did It Mean? (The Barsetshire Novels Book 23) (1954), which, I depose, is the one where Ange, sighing and groaning, realised that she was going to have to write The One About The Coronation, like what everybody else was doing. (The title alludes to a cryptic prophecy by one of the local peasantry.) So there is a fair amount of phoning it in, but on the other hand, some Better Stuff than one might expect for that period of her output.

On the go

And it's back to Lanny: Upton Sinclair, A World to Win (Lanny Budd #7) (1946), in which WW2 is raging but so far, USA is not in it and Our Hero can still pootle about Europe under the guise of being an art expert while mingling in very elevated company indeed.

Up next

Once that is done, I should probably turn my attention to the very different WW2 experience of Nick Jenkins in the next one up for the Dance to the Music of Time book group, The Soldier's Art.

(no subject)

Aug. 20th, 2025 09:44 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] gmh and [personal profile] ravurian!

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