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What I read

Finished Diary at the Centre of the Earth, which I really enjoyed.

Then on to Anthony Powell, Hearing Secret Harmonies (A Dance to the Music of Time) (1975) in anticipation of the final meeting of the reading group. This is the one that appears to have been invaded by characters from a Simon Raven novel, or that thing I have mentioned about writers getting a plot-bunny that was meant to go to someone else.... On another paw, at least Isobel gets rather more on-page time than she was usually wont.

Finished The Lathe of Heaven.

Discovered that there was a new David Wishart Corvinus mystery, Dead in the Water (2025) - I would say that not being informed of this is due to their only being available via Kindle these days, except Kobo, really not all that at keeping one informed of books in series one has been keeping up with. So I gritted my teeth, and read it via the app on the tablet. Not perhaps one of the top entrants in the series.

On the go

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count (2025), for the in-person book group meeting in a week on Sunday, and nearly finished. I have writ before of the genre of '4 (usually youngish) women, connected in some way, affronting their destinies', which was all over in the 60s-80s, but possibly not so much these days? to which this has some resemblances.

Up next

I got partner the most recent Slough House thriller for Christmas and he has now finished it, so I guess that's probably my next read.

From all overish:

Grab the nearest book.
Turn to page 126
The 6th full sentence is your life in 2026.

Huh. The nearest book is (probably) Eve Babitz, Eve's Hollywood (1974), and the sentence is

'And songs.'

Hmmmmm.

Alternatively, the nearest book is Callum G Brown, 90 Humanists and the Ethical Transition of Britain: the Open Conspiracy, 1930-80, in which p 126 is a blank page between chapters.

***

I rather liked this, because it accords with a lot of my own feelings that The Internet is not entirely a seething pit of toxicity and there are, actually, benefits:

[A]s someone who, like millions of others, lives in a different place to where I grew up, interacting with other people’s lives online and posting about my own could still provide a surprisingly wholesome function. It’s not just about bitching about my ex-classmates being arrested or getting into multi-level marketing scams. It’s also a way to stay connected, to feel less homesick.
During the pandemic, and before that when I had to isolate myself during chemotherapy, social media wasn’t just a distraction; it was a lifeline. It was a way to feel sane and engaged with people I couldn’t reach out and touch. If we couldn’t be together in person, I could at least see snippets of their world.
Even now that I am free to be out and about, I miss those snippets. I wish we weren’t too cool or too bored or too frightened of being judged to invite each other into our online lives a bit more. I think it’s time to bring back that connection.

*Though I had a version of 'the place that was there just now has disappeared' dream last night, where I was in some kind of train station, or maybe it was a platform with indicators, and saw a destination and time that I didn't need at that moment, and went back again because that was now what I wanted, and of course it was all different. Symbolickal?

This week's bread: the Collister/Blake My Favourite Loaf, strong white/wholemeal/light spelt flour. Okay, but not as nice as sometimes.

New Year's Eve evening meal: partridges with ducky little bacon weskits, pot-roasted in brandy and port (the drainings of the port, less than I thought we had) (one of them for some reason turned out partially undercooked, not sure why that was); served with cornmeal cakes, which for some reason turned out less satisfactory than usual, possibly the batter was a tad too slack, fine green beans and sliced baby peppers roasted in walnut oil with fennel seeds and splashed with gooseberry vinegar and cauliflower florets roasted in pumpkin seed oil with cumin seeds and splashed with tayberry vinegar.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, light spelt flour, worked rather well.

Today's lunch: kedgeree with smoked haddock and quails' eggs (the rice took an unconscionable time to cook and possibly I slightly I overdid the cayenne), and a salad of little gem lettuce, white chicory and baby tomatoes dressed with salt, pepper, lime juice and avocado oil.

Partner's substituted veggie burgers had to be panfried rather than ovencooked (we actually usually spend a fair amount of time making sure that they can) and have RUINED the frying pan with some adherent substance which scrubbing and soaking has failed to shift.

Fortunately we live in the future and I was a) able to consult Which about the best frying pans (they have quite recently surveyed these, yay) and b) order one for same day click and collect at the local Argos.

Even if we entirely failed in entering the details to get our Nectar points on the transaction.

In other news, it appears that there was SNOW some time earlier today or last night which was still lying in shadowed spots when I went for my walk. Bitterly cold out but very bright.

Parakeet disporting around the back gardens and adjacent park.

We have not seen anything more of the fox which came right up the steps from the garden to the back door, after a leisurely descent left its marker on the garden fence, and then got into it with next door's cat, which was sitting on the back fence going 'come and 'ave a go if you think you're 'ard enough'.

Subsequent to the ereader issue (I am yet again having to go through marking books as finished, with additional 'did I ever read that?' vibes), this morning when I turned on my desktop I got Not My Usual LockScreen Picture and then after a certain delay a message that Windows was failing to login to my account. Try again.

So I tried again and it just hung so I switched it off, and next time I turned it on it came up a bit slowly but behaved itself.

Hmmmmm.

So, looking back over last year:

Apparently read the usual 220+ books, exclusive of works read for review purposes.

In being an Ancient Academick:

Had 3 reviews published, one and a fairly extensive essay review somewhere in journals publishing pipeline.

One chapter in an edited volume appeared.

Actually got out and attended 2 conferences (did miss one due to sudden health issues), one of which involved Going Away, and the other of which involved Doing a Keynote (at rather short notice....)

Project in which I have been involved for some years didn't exactly crash and burn but due to various issues (including email errors meaning I was out of the loop for several months) changed and mutated and I may yet decide to Just Send That Article to relevant journals and see what they say.

There was the whole Honorary association with Institution of Highah Learninz not being renewed after over 2 decades because after 1 person who was Honorary Lecturer doing Awful Thing Bringing Institution into Disrepute, they viciously tightened up the protocols. This involved me scurrying around and applying for and getting an Honorary Fellowship at an entirely appropriate and esteemed institution just down the road therefrom.

And am giving a paper to the Fellows' Symposium in the spring.

There is also the possibility re BBL and myself editing the ms of important work of recently prematurely deceased friend and scholar.

So, not quite irrelevant yet...

In more general life stuff:

This was the year of engaging with physiotherapists! On the whole the results have manifested positive results.

I in fact started pursuing that because, following that Routine Health Check last year, I was doing resistance band exercises and noticing some problems. Anyway, have been, cautiously, continuing these and have even moved up from The Really Wimpy Pink One to the Green One. This, plus daily walks, and probably doing my physio exercises, has seen some reduction in weight, and sleep improvements, though whether there's been any benefit re blood pressure, cholesterol etc, who knows.

This has also been the year of tentatively poking my nose out of my hole, both, see above, attending conferences and going to more social events at New Institution, and more general social interactions.

I only finished and published 1 volume in The Ongoing Saga but I'm currently well-advanced in the next one.

Hesitant to say My Plans For This Coming Year, which there are, but I don't like to say, because I think they have been plans before and not happened.

What I read

Finished Pointed Roofs - gosh, how bizarre is that German girls' school? It seems more like somewhere that parents send their little darlings to until marriagable age, and actual education is not a priority.

Simon R Green, Which Witch (The Holy Terrors #3) (2025), enjoyable popcorn read.

Which could also be said for Simon Brett, Death in the Dressing Room (A Fethering Mystery, #22) (2025), phoning it in a bit perhaps.

I thought Janice Hallett, The Killer Question (2025), was doing the opposite of phoning it in and straining too hard. This might be the thing one sees when a writer has done Something Fresh and Exciting but there comes a point when that is hard to sustain and there is a feeling that they have scurried around a bit and it feels kinds of effortful.

Matt Houlbrook, Songs of Seven Dials: An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London (2025) (which is, I may point out, well after the epoch of Seven Dials in which I have shown interest....). It's very good, very readable, if I had been sent it for review I might have made a few quibbles - e.g. on the basis of the evidence he adduces about the changes going on in the area, even if the mixed race couple the Kittens hadn't brought a libel suit against entrenched wealthy interests, wouldn't their cafe have had to close eventually anyway? Also was reminded of those lecture by Gayle Rubin on the leather community in San Francisco and how very specific local contingent factors meant that certain phenomena could arise, also very much within a specific time. Also that cities (if they are places where things are still happening rather than historical relics) tend to see changes all the time and there is a fluidity around spaces.

On the go

Still on the go, Diary at the Centre of the Earth, which I am enjoying a lot.

Exasperatingly, because of the e-reader issue and because Some Men in London 1960-1967 alleged it was not properly authorised I had to reauthorise my reader via Adobe Digital Editions, as a result of which a large number of my books have been removed from the ereader, including that one, removing my place markers when I reimported it.

Up next

Should probably get on to Anthony Powell, Hearing Secret Harmonies (A Dance to the Music of Time #12 (1975) for the final meeting of the book-group next month.

Firstly:

So, farewell then, PSC, whose advice to the sexually-bothered (rather than the lovelorn) has so oft provided fodder to oursinial musings. Guardian G2 today includes 23 of the best Sexual Healing columns

Not sure if they are The Greatest Hits rather than molto tipico of the kind of thing she addressed: in particular we note (as she stresses in the interview about the lessons learnt over 10 years of agony-aunting):

The female orgasm is still a mystery to some people
I’m still getting questions that show me people continue to think that the only “correct” type of female orgasm is one that’s purely vaginal and doesn’t involve the clitoris. For people to still think that, or to have that as the ideal, is extraordinary, but there it is. They just haven’t had the education to understand otherwise.

We also note the recurrent MenZ B Terribly Poor Stuff theme, what with the one who appears to regard his wife's bisexuality as a USP meaning *3SOMES* and two or three where one feels she did not interrogate sufficiently whether the male querent was actually gratifying his female partner before offering reassurance/solution e.g. 'My stunning wife makes no effort with our sex life' where we should like to know precisely what effort he is putting in, ahem.

However, there are also some of the wilder shores there.

***

Secondly, and could we have a big AWWWW for this: David Attenborough seeks out London’s hidden wildlife:

Filming the wildlife of London requires an intrepid, agile presenter, willing to lie on damp grass after dark to encounter hedgehogs, scale heights to hold a peregrine falcon chick, and stake out a Tottenham allotment to get within touching distance of wary wild foxes.
Step forward Sir David Attenborough, who spent his 100th summer seeking out the hidden nature of his home city for an unusually personal and intimate BBC documentary.