flemmings | Entries tagged with history

I have a prescription ready up the street and a hold ready down the street and I was going to do one or both of those when the 25% chance of rain became a thunderstorm rolling in and hanging around. After which the air was pillow mug and the sidewalks were litter wet and I wasn't going anywhere. So I finished how to be a Tudor, whose illustrations are at the very end, so after clearing up a few points (literally) on where one's hose were attached to one's shirt I sent it back to the 1 person waiting. Am still not clear where and how shirts were attached when men started wearing those stuffed bloomers that make Elizabethan types look ridiculous to my eye, but it's not really important. And I hope whoever reads it next can make more sense of how you brew ale and/or beer than I did. It sounds labour intensive, but everything Tudor is labour intensive including serving dinner, which required a truly silly amount of ceremony.

Spot cleaning today was washing the stairs, a bit more lick and promise than last time, though last time wasn't that long ago (weeks, not months) so maybe they weren't that bad. Also some working at the baseboards in the kitchen where brooms and swifters don't reach. I can't kneel anymore and I could never squat, so I just do this bent over like a gleaner, but at least I can do that.

Fighting the urge to spend the whole evening watching tiktok vids and playing solitaire, I went back to the first story in vol.30. Careful rereading reveals that this is one of those stories where Ima Ichiko wrote the action on different cards, threw them up in the air, and drew the story in the order they fell down. Doesn't even employ the manga convention of giving her flashbacks a black border. And there are still obscure bits like what were those fevers of Ritsu's and were they influenced by Kyoichi's-- because he says that after he became Kyoitchi's donor they were linked and whatever happened to K would affect him-- or were they leftover from his mysterious illness inbthe previous volume, or were those fallout from being a donor too? Ima Ichiko: hours of fun, or at least occupation.

Ah-hah. The source for that oft-mentioned (by me) factoid on Old Tymes standard of cleanliness is Ruth Goodman's How To Be a Tudor. Goodman spent six months in a re-enactment of Tudor farm life in Tudor dress. She wore a linen shift next to her skin, woollen stockings, and a linen cap. She changed the shift and linen headdress once a week, the stockings only three times in half a year, and she never bathed. One of the other re-enactors insisted on washing daily and using modern products like, I assume, shampoo and deodorant? but never changed his shirt or stockings. At the end of half a year she says there was a bit of odour from herself which was mostly hidden by the smell of smoke that got into her clothes, while her skin was just fine-- demonstrating again that washing really does remove oils. The guy who washed daily reeked.

This sorts with my own experience of post-surgery not washing, and equally with the non-use of deodorant. As long as I wasn't standing under a shower my skin was happy and nothing smelled. I don't think I even used soap for my sponge, or rather face cloth, baths. But shower once and the smell came back for good, needing to be washed away on a daily basis. Equally if I use deodorant, no matter how natural and non-aluminum, the smell comes back and again, must be washed away daily. Of course it's impossible not to shower in summer: my operations have mostly happened in winter. But it would be nice if I could dispense with stripping oil from my skin every evening.

Mh well. No liquid after 8 pm had the paradoxical effect of waking me three times in the night to empty out the water I didn't drink, which hasn't hapoened in years. Once a night maybe and rarely, but usually I sleep through with no complaints from my bladder. The third time was at 8:30 and I figured hell with it, shall get up and go for my blood draw-- yes on a Monday when for some reason everyone turns up and yes before 10:30 which is usually the only safe time and that's still not guaranteed. So of course when I got there, there were only two other people. A party of three came down from the labs-- none of them incapacitated in any way so why they all had to go watch one of them have her blood drawn I cannot guess. Maybe it's a cultural thing like women not going to a restaurant bathroom alone, though come to that, I've never had company in a washroom in my life. Then they all sat down again and started a boisterous conversation which, with the fans and air purifiers going, created enough ambient noise that I missed the nurse calling my name. But in and out in good time, only next time I tell them to use a butterfly needle and stick it in my hand, so the nurse doesn't have to find this out for herself.

It isn't as hot as it will get and there was a breeze, but I wasn't going to go out again. Come midafternoon I was craving a Vietnamese coffee and a banh mi. Put in an order at my regular place, discover my regular place prefers DoorDash, well fine. Order goes in, driver is on his way to the place, estimated delivery is 3:35, and suddenly Your order has been cancelled. Why? Restaurant is closed. No word about a refund. Go to the help button and get told to take it up with the restaurant. I am deeply suspicious about this, but it's just possible the driver went to the one out the Danforth which closes on Mondays instead of the one west of me that doesn't. Whatever, I'm sticking to Uber from now on.

Began rereading Inventing the Renaissance and heart failed within me. I want to find things in the book but it's 750 pages of dense print. If the library had an ebook... but no, just an audio. Go look at what the Kobo costs, which IIRC is a hideous price and-- oh. It's on sale, half off. Great! Buy it and find at last that detail about illegitimate children that niggled at me last year. Natural children are born of two single people not married to each other. *Spurious* children are born of couples where at least one partner is married to someone else ie children of adultery. Lucrezia Borgia was her mother's only natural child because Mom wasn't married at the time she was born. Her brothers were spurious because Mom was married then, even if it was to two different husbands: neither of whom was Rodrigo Borgia who couldn't marry because he was a priest. The Renaissance is a headache but a fascinating one.

And I feel lousy, actuallly.

Grey, dank, depressing weather doesn't help, of course.

Finished nothing but The Coroner's Lunch, first of the Dr. Siri Paiboun mysteries set in Laos in the mid-70s after the Communist revolution. Am currently reading the sequel, Thirty-three Teeth. Might as well stick the Anglo-Saxons and Leonardo in the donation pile, because I doubt they'll tell me anything I'll remember. The A-Ses are all about church buildings for pages and pages, and do I care? Leonardo is maybe he did this or possibly he did that, and I came here for biography, not speculation.

The city has hired a private company to handle recycling, and because recycling has now happened two weeks in a row, added a little line to their handout saying this week only the city would pick up regular garbage as well as the green bins. I read this on a FB page but had my doubts. With reason. Green bins went early today, garbage did not. Recycling truck came up my street at 4:15 and took the recycling from the west side only. Shall lay bets on whether they come back later. Am doubtful.

The plethora of bins and frozen snow berms made getting up the street a bit of an undertaking. Snow berms must have been from insufficient shovelling on Boxing Day coupled with cars pushing snow onto the walks, because we have no such phenomena on my block. But anyway, got eczema cream for my cracked and flaking thumb, which would probably profit from a humidifier in my room as well. I have a humidifier, I just need to get it out and fill it, which is one of those minor tasks I unaccountably drag my feet on doing.

Spent yesterday evening transferring icons from LJ to DW, now it looks like the former may shut down. It's been months since LJ let me select individual icons for my entries anyway so I won't miss it if it happens.

Having another crack at that ancient outdated book on Anglo-Saxon England. In my last conversation with Vice-fearless Leader, she opined (and I restate) that the history of any country defaults to slaughter, slaughter, and more slaughter. Which is certainly the case of A-S England. This strikes me as a batshit way to spend one's abbreviated lifetime. But then I wonder about what people drank back in those days and was it possible that entire populations were suffering fetal alcoholic syndrome? It would certainly explain the Icelandic sagas.

But a casual mention of the Battle of Maldon sent me to Mr. Wiki to look up same. I read that in my Old English class half a century ago (and more) but nobody *then* mentioned that Byrhtnoth's ofermōd, his overconfidence, that made him give a disastrous concession to the invading Vikings, is a word that in every other appearance refers to Lucifer's attitude that led to his fall. Yeah, Tolkien was right about that one. Hubris, man, hubris.

Just FTR, what did I read in 2025? Well, among miscellaneous others:

Finished Patricia Wentworth's oeuvre in the winter, George Bellairs' Inspector Littlejohn in the spring and summer, Charles Finch's Charles Lenox in the summer and fall, all of Miles Burton's Desmond Merion I could get a hold of in the fall, and John Rhode's Dr. Priestley ever since.

Reread almost all Rivers of London in the winter, and reread a buncha Vlad Taltos plus Paarfi plus his Monte Cristo hommage plus Brokedown Palace ditto. Reread Garner's first two, four Austens and two of DWJ's Howl books. Thumping big books were Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Terra Nostra, Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance, Varraclough's Embers of the Hands, Selected Letters of Horace Walpole in the Yale edition (much better than the Everyman), and Nancy Mitford's Madame de Pompadour. This is a better nonfiction score than most years, especially if you add that still unfinished bio of da Vinci. Whom I still have confused with Leonard of Quirm, needing to remind myself that no, da Vinci was not totally uninterested in the practical use of his inventions.

Comfort rereads were the three best of Pratchett's five Witches books and all but the last Murderbot books, read and reread until I finally had a vague idea of how the action takes place in these space stations. Since I have four of these only in ebook, it's been hard parsing what's going on anyway, but I think I'm on top of it now. I went to Kobo from Kindle and am reasonably content with it.

Personally, money went on many many dentist appointments, a new toilet, and an upright walker. Started listening to opera on Saturdays and radio after, finally began downsizing my manga and doujinshi collection. Major snow in the winter and two elections, and I suppose it would have made no difference if Ford had postponed the provincial one until after the federal, because Fed Liberal invariably means Prov Con. Having the election in February was still a dick move. Smoke all summer, the new normal. My two favourite restaurants both closed and are desperately missed. There's also this little boycott thing going on since the inauguration. I have only ordered one thing from amazon.ca in that time and only because I couldn't get it anywhere else. Having compromised my principles to do it, I had better start making use of it, and I will post if I do.

Snow, slush, semi-melt: nasty weather, basically. But still went out to physio, shoving the walker through the recalcitrant berms. Something passed along the sidewalks at one point earlier: there were tire tracks a metre wide that hadn't cleared the slush but pushed it to either side, and in the middle a clear patch maybe a foot/ 30 cm wide ie not wide enoough for the rollator. Bobcats don't do that. I don't know what does that but it's remarkably inefficient. Thought the bobcats must have done Christie at least so took the side street over and no, no they had not. Was in fact worse than my street. But I pushed on, noting that-- cult though they may be-- the Jehovah's Witnesses alone had shovelled their frontage, and then the smoke house at the corner. Am sure this expedition counts as exercise, so go me.

Finished, I went over to Loblaws who hadn't shovelled either, obviously thinking the clear path under their overhang was sufficient to anyone's needs, and if one had to push through a sea of slush to get to the walkway, well, too bad. I hope I never have to use a wheelchair, even a motorized one. Of course there's still home delivery, and if Blawblaws persists in not having turkey roll, I may use it.

Coming home people either had shovelled or were shovelling, including in front of the vacant lot that will someday, in the far future, be yet more condos. I thanked the shoveller nicely, who grinned back at me and asked how I was doing. Obviously dire conditions bring out the best in Trawntonyans.

Finished Nancy Mitford's bio of Mme de Pompadour finally, so can put with the donatable books. Charles Finch, The Hidden City and Kashiwaba Sachiko's The Village Beyond the Mist. The last being a veeeery distant ancestor of Spirited Away, the only semi-common element being the character who turned into Yubaba. Also did a fast skim of Witches Abroad as a library ebook because I wanted something to read at the restaurant and Kobo is iffy on the phone.

Also finished the first set of Phantom Moon Tower side stories, some of which are parseable and some of which, um, aren't.

Then bought a couple of Dr Priestleys for the tablet because I need to get back to the bike machine. Though now am tempted to just reread Lords and Ladies and maybe Maskerade. This is hibernating 'line of least resistance' weather, and I have vodka and a comfy sofa. A pity to waste that on, say, the biography of Da Vinci.

It snowflurried through most of the day which didn't stick but did leave the sidewalks a damp leafy mess. Thus I stayed indoors and did very little. A wash of underwear and tops, black and colours mixed which you can do when you wash in cold. Read on in Nancy Mitford's biography of Madame de Pompadour, which I inherited from the parents' library. Am finding it not as enthralling as her one about Louis XIV, mostly because Mitford thinks Pompadour was a nice woman and Louis XV a devoted lover and neither had the nasty fascination of the Sun King and his various mistresses and offspring.

The details of the life and mores at Versailles are interesting enough when talking about things like never addressing anyone as tu when the king was present even if you were talking to a close relative. Very Byzantine. But mostly it's the frivolous amusements of frivolous people who were also jockeying for marks of distinction from the king, like being admitted to dinners in his inner chambers, and heartburning when they weren't forthcoming. The courtiers thought they were living at the centre of civilization, but it sounds insupportably boring to me. Mitford assures us that the conversation was scintillating, but conversation is a transient thing that doesn't get passed down to later generations unless you have a Boswell handy.

Wild winds again send the temperatures spiralling downwards. Wild in that they seemed to be coming from three directions simultaneously: south, east, and west. Might be the wind tunnel effect because it's generally not possible to have the last two at the same time. Joints object to this, whatever, or maybe the forecast snow.

Finished last week: Barraclough, Embers of the Hands, the non dates 'n kings history of the Vikings. Am not a Viking fangirl myself-- they burned witches-- but am pleased to be told that pace the Viking reenactment fanbois and their flowing locks, the Norsemen shaved the backs of their heads and grew their hair long at the front, as shown in the Bayeux tapestry. Therefore they looked like dweebs, as any man does, jarhead or whatever, who shaves the back of his head. Also my beloved Lewis chessmen, that have shield-biting berserkers sharing a board with Christian bishops.

Kashiwabi Sachiko, Temple Alley Summer. Ghosts or revenants in a very Ima Ichiko sort of story. The Japanese don't tell you why anything, even if this one does explain some things, but there's several whys I wonder about, like why the mother was invisible to her daughter and the narrator, but this just adds to the general Imaness of the story.

Miles Burton, Death Takes a Detour and Death Leaves No Card. Am running out of Burtons on Kobo, even though he wrote so many. Have had recourse to John Rhodes, which aren't always as good.

On the go: a thick volume of Diana Wynne Jones short stories. TBR: another Kashiwaba, The Village Beyond the Mist, said to be the distant source for Spirited Away.

Up as betimes as S. Pepys could wish (not really: he used to get up at 5 occasionally to be somewhere) and down to the lab where there were only two people waiting and the couple who came in with me: and where my requisition was expired by a scant ten days so, sorry, no can do. Eventually I'll get on to my doctor's secretary and have her email me a form and then get it printed at the library and then try again, but not today because I am peeved. And tomorrow I'm sleeping in till noon.

Finished Dogsbody, which I somehow never read, and a coupla Miles Burtons- Found Drowned and Legacy of Death-- which are bicycle and phone reading. DNFed The Place of Shells which was a bit too Japanese 'no there there' for me. Am currently reading Embers of the Hand, all about the Vikings-- though I wish I had Inventing the Renaissance handy so I could remind me of why the Greenland settlements failed. Also Masefield's The Midnight Folk because it's an ebook and I never read that either. Leonardo when I have nothing else going and/ or need to stop looking at screens.

Packed another bagful of leaves, from the side walkway this time. The walkway is a sea of leaves at this season, sometimes ankle-deep. And because they're all from my trees I feel compelled to remove some of them at least so J doesn't have to pay her gardener huge bucks to do it. Or rather, I feel compelled this year: it never bothered me in the past. But in the past I never registered that J had a basement tenant who had to wade through them to get to her entrance.

Downstairs tablet was playing silly buggers and annoying me to the point of thinking maybe I *will* splurge on a Chromebook. Then it suggested I clear my cache and cookies, which nothing prompts me to do when I'm optimising performance. But done now anyway. I might still investigate Chromebooks if I ever get down to the AGO but googling about suggests they only link to printers that are linked to the cloud which mine certainly isn't. The lack of a printer is starting to annoy me, but so is not being able to access my old files on my dead desktop.

October is my favourite month and it's drawing near the end. Rain and wind, tomorrow and Friday, will put an end to most of the gorgeous colours: the yellow whatever across the street that glows so beautifully under the street lamp has lost half its leaves already. The gorious red maple out back will soon follow. And then comes the darkness, early this year: November 2nd. So sad to see them go, even if November does have its moments.

Read through a bunch of Papuwa doujinshi yesterday prior to tomorrow's recycle pick up, which left me with the usual weird hangover. Is it the trip to a former mindset, the mental time travel, that causes the oogies? The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living, even if it's one's own dead self. But I only had three or four djs to throw out after that and I don't want to waste a recycle day, so I went through the many bags I have stashed in a wicker chest, found the Saiyūki ones, and threw them out unread. There was a great falling off in talent between 1993 and 2001 as far as I'm concerned so I regret nothing. But the idea of doing that with the Papuwa ones is unthinkable. I must reread them all: they hold a portion of my soul.

Finished since last week are Cinder House, House of Many Ways, and Castle in the Sky. One Charles Lenox, An Extravagant Death, and two by John Rhode/ Miles Burton, Death at Breakfast and The Secret of High Eldersham. The last of which was just a tad silly. The Badnasty has been feeding the villagers drugs at regular intervals for several years and manipulating them with mental games. Badnasty is disposed of. Detective says villagers will be fine now. I say villagers will be anything but. Detective would be a fool to settle down in High Eldersham but does, of course. And acquires a wife who, in subsequent books, must go on many visits to friends so detective can continue to detect.

I have another Lenox in ebook and a couple more Burtons on Kobo if they will consent to show. Neither my Kobo Burtons or Rhodes wil display on my phone. I should forge on with that biography of Da Vinci except the author wants to talk about Freud's ideas of Da Vinci instead, even as he admits Freud was working from a mistranslation of the Italian and was therefore All Wrong.

The macrocosm is a dumpster fire that's spread to the neighbouring houses, but on the microcosmic scale, I find that the city has forgiven me three months and change worth of property taxes. This means I am rich! if not beyond the dreams of avarice, at least to the point that I need fear no dentist bill, since the insurance company is getting persnickety in what it will cover. As in that crown, which was supposed to cost me three hundred dollars, wanted a deposit of five. Yes well. Insurance companies are like that.

There was no google when I first read Terra Nostra: indeed, there was no internet. I knew there was something A/U going on because Elizabeth Tudor never married a Spaniard of any description. But I only now discover that Felipe II's father was not Felipe the Fair, husband of Mad Joanna, but a very prognathous Carlos of some numeration. These Habsburgs who were kings and/or emperors of half a dozen countries are an historical PITA. Luckily it's not my period. And equally, Felipe II was quite a different type than the one in the book. So Terra Nostra is not so much historical A/U as magical realist history.

Yesterday was an Accomplish Nothing day, where I stayed indoors in spite of the (still) gorgeous weather. Did finish Inventing the Renaissance and started on Brokedown Palace which I got at the same time as the Palmer and didn't get around to because, well, 650 pages of Palmer. Fortunately it's renewable, unlike the '40 people waiting' Renaissance book. The e-book is haveable for the cost of a moderately priced dinner and tip, so I can buy it if I need to refresh things.

Unfortunately, a bypath in Inventing led me to google Caterina 'La Tigre' Sforza and yuck. Her second husband was assassinated so Caterina had not only the assassins but their pregnant wives and three year old children slaughtered. Yeah, so did Chinese emperors, but Chinese emperors didn't pay lip service to any sixth commandment. Of course neither did half the rulers in the Renaissance. This has rather put me off the Renaissance for now.

Last night I kept waking up in darkness, contrary to my usual 'once down I stay down' habit. So have felt a bit off all day, not helped by that September topos of cool humid mug that twinges all the joints and tendons. But laundromatted and grocery shopped and in the 7 p.m. dusk returned Inventing to the library. I hope physio tomorrow can do something about the swollen everythings, but am starting to think I need to up my water intake by a factor of three.

Rain all day, but when I finally got out it was cool enough to require a jacket, first time since May, I believe. This will not last: next week will be back to the muggy mid-20s. And of course, between ragweed and mould, my sinuses have been extremely unhappy. Is why I forgot to pick up my prescriptions yesterday when I was actually in Loblaws, and had to go out today, because they keep emailing me reminders: Pick up your scrips!

Otherwise little to report. I am still reading everything I was reading last week, though I did start the new Astreiant finally, and shouldn't have. Palmer is due back in a week and I have 150 pages to go, and then want to construct genealogies using her tags as mnemonics. This requires leafing through 700 pages with only the unsatisfactory index to guide me. And then go read, or reread, Machiavelli.

The local weather app is always predicting thunderstorms even when the sky is cloudless blue, or when other weather wps simply say showers. Today for a change we actually got the thunder and rain: not bad, but a neighbourhood FB said her dog was cowering in a corner because of the thunderclaps. Upshot being that I spent the day indoors and on the sofa, reading Inspector Macdonalds on the tablet. The plotting may not always be as knotty as Miss Silver but there's a grateful lack of romance. Though it seems there's always a graceful young lady in the mix.

Will get back to Palmer eventually, but I've been beavering through at a rate of 50 pages a day for the last ten'night so one day's holiday won't break me. Presumably if you were familiar with these personages, Palmer's habitual reference to them by sobriquet might annoy. Me, I'm grateful because no way I can keep the Sforza and the Strozzi and the d'Este and the Gonzaga and the Malatesta and the della Rovere clans separate. Still can't. I need a bunch of family trees, with pictures: and also, the index is by no means exhaustive, which doesn't help.

Muggy achy weather so I didn't go out. Broke up boxes for recycle, after a month or so, which is about the extent of Go Me for the day. If it's dryer tomorrow, will try for my 3 month blood draw and a wash on the line. This not helped by suddenly spasming adductors in my left leg. But wash must happen, either here or at the laundromat, because am running out of socks and about to run out of underwear.

Finished my umpteenth reread of Network Effect. I don't think it's just tablet reading: I can no more visualize these space stations etc. than an aphantastic can. Still makes for pleasant reading.

Continue along with Inventing the Renaissance, now I'm in the chapter about individual personalities. Did not know that both Poliziano and della Mirandola have been proved to be poisoned, though of course their contemporaries said so. Am quite willing to believe it was Piero the Unfortunate's doing though really, it could have been anyone. The amazing thing is that so many Renaissance men survived to old age, before syphilis became commonplace and cut them off in their 40s. Couldn't have happened to a nastier bunch of people, but I still *mind* about Mirandola.

Continue on also with amusing Walpole and 'grows on me' Emma. She really is the one Austen heroine we see growing morally. Elizabeth has every reason to think badly of D'Arcy: she's intellectually wrong, but not morally. Ditto Catherine. Elinor and Fanny of course are always Right but Repulsive. While Emma gets to live and learn, and one can almost say, Poor Emma.

The Christiest Baptists, in the course of constructing lord knows what (a wheelchair ramp for some of it) have removed the pollinator garden on the verge of their property, which was nowhere near the current construction. Boo hiss Christiest Baptists. Especially as I'm prepared to swear that they took down an old tree on the property, only to replace it with six saplings, which a) is a requirement of the city's when removing trees, and b) have as much chance of surviving as the perpetually dying saplings up by Loblaws.

Now if they had the wisdom of serpents, they'd have sold off the front half of their humoungous lot for housing.

Equally the Ghazale restaurant in the Hot Docs building has vanished. I thought the new owners might have turfed them out, but the new owner is an anonymous philanthropist so maybe not. I'd have thought the foot traffic on Bloor would have guaranteed its existence but it seems they moved over to Walmer north of Bloor.

Started on Inventing the Renaissance. The fact that the Dark Ages weren't was common wisdom when I was an undergrad fifty-some years ago, but it bears repeating. Also good to learn the newer meaning of the term ie periods where written records didn't survive. And of course, if you read any history at all-- as letussay background to Dante-- the fact that the Renaissance happened against a constant background of war-- civil and otherwise--, chronic violence, plague, and famine, is just a given. It's all in Cellini, all in Cellini: bless me, what *do* they teach them at these schools? Well, not Cellini, or even Dante, for sure. I suppose even a concern with the happenings in the Renaissance is a kind of privilege these days.

Well yes, that humidex was certainly hot, largely because of the blazing sun that we haven't had to contend with for a few weeks. I mean, I'll take it over smoke any day, but the smoke certainly made a difference to the temps. On the plus paw, a midday wash dried in short order on the line; on the minus, once again did not get out to the library to return holds, nor did I bag up the vines in the back yard. Now that dusk approaches and it's slightly cooler I could, but dusk also brings the mosquitoes out so here I am, indoors still.

Across the street neighbour with the strollers had a wading pool out front and the hose on and his two kids cooling off. So now I know they have two kids, which I was never certain of: a preschool boy, maybe rising four, and a toddler girl of 18 months or so. Front yard because the back faces the burning west, and my guess is it lacks any sort of shade tree. The Sicilian influence is still strong in this 'hood: trees are supposed to earn their keep and anyway, grape vines are better. Though I observe that NND's tulip tree is now a proper tree after four years of being a spindly twig, so Strollers could well plant a tree of their own.

Also Inventing the Renaissance suddenly appears in transit, a good four weeks before I could reasonably expect it, and that will probably knock Terra Nostra on the head while I beaver through it, because of the umpty many other people who have it on hold. Of course, could be that it's just too heavy a book for the dog days and that's why I have it so early.

And of course there's still Return to Dragon Mountain to finish, even if Zhang Dai begins to wear on me. Also sent me haring down the side path of Tao Yuanming whom I hadn't heard of in spite of him being evidently so famous. I mean, I may have, because Home Again and its lack of carriages in front of the house rings bells, except I think I'm thinking of somebody else referencing him, even if I can't remember who.

The weekend did see me finally putting books out on the front sidewalk. Saturday Whoever only took two of the art books, but when I put them and a whole bunch of others out front again, Whoever took them all and, more importantly, left me the box they were in. Which is not always the case, even if I also provide bags (cloth, from Walmart, copped from someone else's front yard freebie) to facilitate carrying away.

My weekend reading is the first of Charles Finch's historical mysteries. Finch is American so when his Victorian Londoners exit a house they stand on the stoop, and a housekeeper refers to herself as Miss Harrison. Unmarried people engaging in sexual relationships say they're having an affair, which could be Victorian usage for all I know to the contrary, but it sounds odd to my ear. And there's an earl who was a military man and is called Captain Lord James Grey, Earl of Deere, and I'm not even going to try to guess if that's kosher because the usage of British titles is a one-way ticket to madness or migraine or both.

My other book was The Gates, a kids' book about a, well, kid called Samuel Johnson and his dog Boswell, which was nicely Pratchetty with footnotes and all, until chapter two introduces some unlikable adults who are henpecked if male and domineering if female and fat, whatever. Ah yes, nasty fat people, a staple of children's literature. Pfui, as that other fat man used to say.

What I want more of is Clark's fairy tales, particularly Tom Brightwind's Jewish physician friend Montefiore. I thought there were two stories with Montefiore but there's only one.

Succeded in cutting down a swath of the creepers out back and inflicting some damage on the mulberry that's trying to take over the AC compressor, but clearly I need to rake up the leaves that have fallen from the cherry tree. A nuisance, because stoop labour hurts, dammit. Have been looking at ads for back braces but I *have* back braces, they just don't brace enough. Will core strengthening ever have an efffect?

We're getting the brocade effect on the trees now, and about time. The maples in particular decided to turn red about three days before they began to fall. My poor physio booked a bus tour of the fall colours up north a fortnight or so ago, and there was nothing to see.

That Guardian article about Horrible Histories has me ear-wormed now, because I was so taken with faux-Simon and Garfunkel singing the praises of the kinder gentler Vikings that I watched it about five times. And of course it referenced one of my two favourite codas of all time, so now the mental muzak is playing The Boxer nonstop. (The other one is Layla, of course.) Must admit I've lost my ear for Brit accents because I couldn't make out the lyrics of anything else the article linked to, and especially not Rowan Atkinson's Henry 8.

A belated happy 100th birthday to President Carter, and a happy new year to those who celebrate.

I think I'm about done with Unruly, with a fair amount of skimming. Didn't really tell me anything I didn't know and was unfortunately not much help in untangling the Anglo-Saxon kings. But of course the A-S are as difficult to untangle as their coevals, or co-evils, the Merovingians. Nasty, brutish, and short, the lot of them: and the women just as bad as the men. Why would anyone want to be a monarch? What's the appeal of power? especially when having it means everyone else wants to take it away from you. But it's like those dudebro billionaires who, not content with having more money than they could ever spend in three lifetimes, seem to want a voice in politics as well, which will give them-- what? What is it they haven't got?

Otherwise I've finished nothing else this week. On the go is Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, of which I had high hopes. But it has switching time frames, a new one every chapter, which I find far more disconcerting than switching PoVs. And *seems* to be doing a Craft schtick in which divine power is governed by, or involved in, the stock market, which was head-hurty enough in the Craft books.

Also a couple of manga, and Chuang Tzu (why did the translator use Wade-Giles? I'm no fan of pinyin, but at least it semi-makes sense), all of which are library books and the manga at least are 'five people are waiting' ones. Will get back to Aaronovitch eventually.

The minor drawbacks of living in the future include informing people who automatically debit your credit card that you have a new one with differing expiry dates etc. And especially when one of them is Patreon which has the most useless and infuriating webpages imaginable, starting with their Login page not giving you a login option.

Not that I've activated my new card yet because my old one doesn't expire until October, and I want to get the 'beginning of month' charges out of the way first. But then I'll have to trundle down to Rogers and let them deal with updating my phone plan, and somehow figure out how to deal with Squaredle. Possibly by getting a new plan.

Blood draw finally happened Friday so I'm fine till the end of December.

The light these days is autumnal even if the humidices are August. But a 22C / low 70s with a breeze isn't the same as a breezeless 27. So I'm quite comfortable in a tshirt for the present. Went out and had Eggs Bennie on a patio this afternoon, with blue skies and very white clouds, until the grey clouds moved in and the landscape became autumnal indeed.

Unruly, about the monarchs of England, makes for very dispiriting reading. That might just be that Mitchell doesn't think much of kings in general, but equally it could be that those were nasty times period, in which a king could be effective and bloody, or ineffective and bloody-- if only in the wars caused by various rebellions against him-- but nothing else, given the way things were settled back then. "Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."

Brief respite from the heat and possibly longer respite from the rain saw me sleeping with the window fan last night and hanging a laundry on the line this morning. Turns out I didn't have that much line laundry, having forgotten the two shirts I wear over my tank tops that get drenched with sweat. Shall do them in hot at the laundrette. But I was running low on socks and underwear, having also forgotten the socks I'd left on the furnace room lines. Anyway, hung my underwear on my new clip dryer, which has many many clips. Which means they can all go on the one but also that they don't dry as easily as on the round hangers. The Korean super didn't have them any more, and amazon didn't have them at all, and I can no longer bike down to Chinatown where I'm perfectly certain the stores do have them. So the square hanger it is. Am tempted, in NND's absence, to hang the thing on the line and let the sun and wind do its worst, or best.

The articles that my browser suggests for me suggested a drink, purportedly Brazilian, and I wish it hadn't. It's one part cold coffee, one part chocolate milk, and two parts cola. Not excessively high in calories if you use diet pepsi, but I can't have it after about 6 p.m. if I intend to sleep before 4 a.m., and I want it.

An oddity in Elizabeth Ferrars' mysteries is how many people have grey eyes. I thought grey was even rarer than blue. The other oddity, though it wasn't at the time, is how much people in the earlier mysteries smoke. Tired? Light a cigarette. Upset? Light a cigarette. Thinking? Light a cigarette. Oh, and everyone also drinks a lot. This gets lampshaded in the Virginia and Felix books from the 80s, where Virginia thinks Felix smokes too much and Felix thinks Virginia drinks too much but neither does as much as the protagonists from the 40s.

Bardcore has a medieval & renaissance take on We Did Not Light the Fire. It bothered me that it wasn't even remotely chronological until a commentator pointed out that it duplicates the rhyming scheme of the original. Also mentions a whole buncha people I never heard of, some of whom are apoarently known through a video game series Civilization.

https://youtu.be/drDs-Y5DNH8?si=SSzTtRgfP0sdrYNn

In spite of rain, the temps have been warmer than average. Thus the little brown knots on the cherry tree from yesterday have turned into little green buds this morning, and green mists the thin branches of Prof Islamic Studies' apple tree, and even the diminutive tulip tree next door is bravely putting out, well, something.

Mild nuisances dep't: I bought an electric can opener, the kind that runs on batteries, because my hands can no longer cope with the manual kind. Many five star reviews, works like a dream, etc etc. Should have read the one stars that said 'there's no gap between the two cogs to insert the can edge into' because, guess what, there's no gap between the cogs to insert the can edge into. Good thing it wasn't expensive. But now must hoof it over to Wiener's hardware to consult the oyaji there and make sure I get one that works. The other thing I need is a new air purifier because the motor on mine begins to wheeze and is not long for this world. Cannot buy online because they're all advertised as whisper quiet and I want one that makes white noise. The air purifier function is secondary and, in the current beast, not terribly functional at all.

The most interesting essay in Mary Beard's book is actually the one about Astérix. She suggests that the reason Astérix isn't as popular in America as in Europe is that the new world doesn't have the legacy of the Romans engrained in its cultural DNA, nor is there a subconscious memory of resistance to an invader that gets pinged by the small Gaulish village holding out against Jules César. Me, I never thought resistance to the Romans was the main theme of Astérix. I mean, yes of course they do, but that's just the settei. The real point, I thought, was the wordplay and the puns and taking the mickey out of national stereotypes. That's why I prefer the French originals. The English translations may be inspired but I appreciate their cleverness as translations, not as original wit. But then in some ways I may be closer to my French and English roots than yer average sixth generation whatever. But I also think it's Beard's bias to think that the Romans are so terribly terribly important to modern Europeans (and yes that includes the English.) Sure, their remnants are everywhere, but the remnants are part of the now, not a reminder of the then. Like cathedrals, like temples in Japan: yeah, they've been standing for centuries if not millennia, but they're part of the modern world now-- sitting next to subways and, in Japan, high rises, because that's how the present works.

Mhh well. I still limp about but my physio says I have a huge bruise back of my knee. Possiby I just bruised my leg but personally I think it comes from me having poked about back there in an attempt to feel what was going on.

Spent yesterday evening reading lj entries from 2005. 2003 doesn’t seem that long ago because I've revisited it often, but 2005 (which memory says was utterly forgettable and is thus forgotten) really was another life.

Reading, I finished A Fatal Thing Happened etc, and two Corvinus rereads: In at the Death, where a young senatorial sprig throws himself out a window, and Illegally Dead, about a country lawyer's murder. Would happily reread more but I remember the plots too well, even if I forget the side plots completely.

Currently am not taken with The Bright Ages, A New History of Medieval Europe, because the personages involved are as rebarbative as their Roman predecessors. Thought to reread some of my 'once if that Pratchetts'-- Mort, Sourcery, Equal Rites, Monstrous Regiment-- but unfortunately began with The Amazing Maurice, which is far darker than I'd remembered. Am also having twinges of spring SAD, not helped by twinges of spring allergies, and downer books do not help.

Oh, and saw SND in her back yard playing with her new pupper. Who really does look like a beagle puppy and not a chihuahua anything. Maybe it's another rescue dog entirely?

Snow tomorrow, whoopee. A touch more seasonable than the 20C of last week and I wasn't going anywhere anyway. Hope it's not much because I certainly can't shovel it. The recycle didn't make it out yesterday either, and it was my four week accumulation. But I ordered in yesterday evening, two full items from a Vietnamese place, that will provide six meals the way I eat now.

Have been reading A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, popular history of the bloodthirsty Romans, and also rereading Marcus Corvinus who isn't as horrible as the horrible people in A Fatal Thing. Possibly the horrors of the emperors are filtered through biased sources, but it was unarguably a slave state which cannot fail of being horrible. Corvinus and his bought help notwithstanding. It's not stated outright but he has far more slaves than the ones that get named-- nameless skivvies and lots of them‐ whose existence he doesn't register at all.

And I would walk three thousand steps
And I would walk three thousand more
Just to be the one who walks six thousand
Steps and falls down at her door

Id est, went to the lab this morning and no, there was no faxed request waiting. They tried to call, I tried to call, no one picked up. Came home, had breakfast, doctor's secretary calls: The number you gave me isn't working. Odd, because it's the lab's fax number. 'Oh wait, let me try this-- OK that works.' So glad to hear it. Go up street for physio, come down street and go to library for two holds, go over to Bathurst LCBO and walk in on a robbery ie guys walking out of store without paying and yelling Bullies at the staff ushering them out. Stand in line behind guy who is finally persuaded to part with the mickey he secreted in his coat pocket and just pay for the cans of hard cider he put on the counter. Never a dull moment in these parts. Phone says 7400 steps though if it was 1100 steps down to the lab this morning, why is it only 900 when I trace my steps back coming home?

But anyway. Finished a Flavia Albia this week and am working on another. Have Wishart's Germanicus but it's both political and very early so not going fast. Was reading Robert Aickman weird tales but had to return ebook because tales were getting too weird for me. May do the same with Never Whistle At Night, Indigenous dark stories which I thought were Indigenous and Black, and were also real Indigenous stories not modern day horror. Have The Pushcart War to read as well, also A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, to pad out Marcus Corvinus and Didius Falco. Which is quite enough to hold me.

Day was 20C and I was up earlier than I wanted to be. Tomorrow will be cooler but I may still have to be up early for the lab (finally!) and then shall sleep the lying-in sleep of the just, also finally!

One must move to move,of course, but an achy joint day might not be the best time to wash my stairs, given that the elbows wouldn't grease. But they're slightly cleaner than before, and I wasn't up for the task of vacuuming the downstairs and washing the kitchen floor. Also hung up my orange shirt for September's Every Child Counts, only a third of the way through, and wasn't that an undertaking. I can't reach the porch hooks without a step stool and I was fine in June hanging up my Pride flag on its rod but today, holding a shirt on a hanger, I was all wibble wobble I'm-going-to-fall. I hope that was just fallout from yesterday's gardening, sweeping a bag full of linden whatevers from the front walk, because bending down repetitively stiffens the hamstrings something chronic. But otherwise I must believe I've actually lost strength in my legs.

Did a laundry, mended the strap on one of my shopping bags, and otherwise sat on the sofa with grateful beanbags warming my poor poor lumbar area and read M. Didius Falco in Germany. Made the mistake of looking up Varus' legions which led me down the rabbit hole of early imperial Roman politics which led to the usual revulsion that Rome has always induced in me ever since my mother gave me I, Claudius to read at an early age. (Really, what was she thinking of?) Horrible horrible people: almost worse than imperial China which lord knows is bad enough. I never could understand why people wanted to be emperor of either, or wanted their sons to be, if female. Had a prof in uni for Drama to 1642 who was entranced by Marlowe's Tamburlaine and besotted by the speech that ends 'The sweet fulfillment of an earthly crown.' And couldn't for the life of him understand the jaded looks his students gave him as he warbled on. I ventured to suggest that we'd had sufficient experience of power-hungry rulers in recent history to not think much of the breed. Our prof, who'd actually lived through the war, thought that was piffle. Ah well. Some people have the power virus and some, luckily, don't.

My sister had her hip replacement scheduled to just before Christmas, then had it rescheduled to Sept 25 and now has had it sudenly rescheduled to this coming Friday. Which as she says is good to get it over with, and she has her church friends to rely on, but there's such a thing as kokoro no junbi/ being in the right mindset, which no doctor and especially no surgeon has ever heard of.

There seems no rhyme or reason to my owies, but I might hazard a guess that yesterday I hurt because it was so humid and today I didn't because it was so dry. And dry it was when I ventured out after four, solid summer heat like the French countryside from childhood, and the smell of vegetation like that too. Pleasant to be inside in the cool and pleasant to be out in the warm.

Also, after canvassing all drugstores within walking distance and not finding ankle braces in my size anywhere, I had recourse to the mighty river which sent me a velcro brace in very short order ie yesterday, poor delivery guys. Sitting on the porch when I went to close the door in the wet facecloth mug of yesterday afternoon. Tried it on when I went out today and not only does it stabilize my ankle, it seems to stabilize the whole right leg as well. Since the right leg is now the weak one with the panging knee, this is straight good news. So I am pleased.

One of my ebook holds was a Marcus Didio Falco, private Roman eye (reference to an ancient but locally famous comedy skit, Rinse the Blood Off My Toga. "My name is Flavius Maximus, private Roman eye." Contains the classic line, where Flavius goes into a bar and asks for a martinus. Bartender: You mean a martin*i*. Flavius: If I want two, I'll ask for them.) I'm not a fan of the Romans by and large, but as historical fiction goes it's miles better than most of the medieval ones I've read, and as it's my first, if she has the same tropes in all her books (as Brother Cadfael does) I don't know what they are. Since tomorrow will be 32C again, I shall sit happily in the fan and finish it off.

The Sibyl in Her Grave was really really good, quite the best of the Hiary Tamars by me. It features as well what I think of as anti-Dick Francis characters: those poor hapless English souls who simply can't say no or enforce what we today call boundaries. Whereas Francis is full of out and out bullies and harpies who have never heard of the rules and ride roughshod over everyone's boundaries as if they don’t exist. And not all of them are the arrogant rich, though of course some are. But the rest are just unpleasant people who probably cut in line, which I believe is supposed to be the English sin that cries aloud to heaven for vengeance. Though of course no one says anything when they do.

The mug of the past few days blew away finally as I was out spending money in restaurants, so I walked over to the subway to see what progress has been made on installing the elevator. Damned little. Signs say project will be finished by the end of 2024. I can still subway back to Christie because it has up escalators, supposing them to be in operation and not closed off for cleaning. But there's no way down with a walker unless one wants to rely on the kindness of strangers, always a dicey proposition. And I'm convinced I'll be using this walker to the end of my life. Though I should recall that I didn't walk for years after that cyst and my legs consequently stayed weak just as long. But neither did everything else hurt as much as it does now.

My sister finally has a date for her hip replacement. Alas, it's just before Christmas. I am not impressed by her hospital, nor by the rehab centre she'll probably go to. Which was well enough in the day, but seems to have had a falling off since covid. My dentist had horror stories of her 90-some year old aunt not being allowed to walk around post-knee surgery because the staff thought she might fall, so she got 30 minutes of exercise a day, period. But I say nothing; it is what it is. Luckily S has all her church friends as well as good up and downstairs neighbours.

Bro and s-i-l are in Stratford. S-i-l was mightily unimpressedby their production of Richard II, which I understand rather plays up Richard's (dubious IMO) rep as one of what was known in my day as the faggot kings of England. It's no use them trying to appeal to any audience but Boomers because no one else can afford their prices, and come to that, neither can this Boomer.

Occurred to me that it's time I read that booklet on the Primavera I've had for the better part of 40 years, and no I don't recall where or when I picked it up. Turns out to be about the restoration work done on the painting but also includes historical background and interpretations of the painting pre and post treatment, with lovely full-colour plates not only of the Primavera itself but of other works. (Botticelli was a practical joker, did you know? He doesn't look like one in his self-insert in the Adoration of the Magi but so he was.)

This is not only happily reminiscent of reading Magnifico, which I did seven years ago-- and how did 2016 get to be that long ago? yes, yes, covid, but also the Trump years which I blotted from memory. But also hearkens much further back, to high school, and the Florentine Shop and a Time-Life book on the Renaissance with pictures of various interiors, and possibly The Agony and the Ecstasy (book, not movie). It wasn't the first fully-furnished mental time/space construct of my life but was one of the most brightly coloured. These constructs are always made of scraps of this and that, bolstered by random conflations-- the university gothic of Victoria College, that I passed through on my way home from school, and the clear blue sky of a November late afternoon through the arched windows thereof, and the golden background of some Fra Angelico angels, all came together to make a seamless whole, which then was echoed in the backdrop to an early scene in the Prokovieff Romeo and Juliet, pale dawn sky over a narrow cobbled street.

And of course the real Florence did nothing to contradict my version, but wouldn't matter if it did. Mine is a Renaissance Florence of the mind and quite divorced from reality. Though if I'd seen a lot more baroque wretched excess there, instead of an almost Quakerish restraint, I might have felt different. Rome certainly was all baroque wretched excess, even if the last time I saw it was when I was an ignorant twelve who knew no art history. But Rome sorted very well with the kind of Catholicism I was then neck-deep in, all relics and holy cards and glorious martyrs. Which of course had its roots in the baroque Counter-reformation of the sixteenth century. And by the 16th century my Renaissance was over, replaced by men in trunks and beards who all died young of syphilis.

No, back to the serene beauty and balance of the Primavera, and its newly (in 1984) revealed glowing colours.

Yesterday was a total write-off, not only because it was raining but because my right side everything went sproing and I could barely move. Hip flexors and glutes, mainly, which sometimes complain but not like this. So it was beanbags and muscle relaxants all day, meaning I dozed periodically and finished Mr. Currelly furnishing his museum with a lot of coincidental luck and a lot of wealthy friends. Pirate Bishop White didn't turn up until page 245. Currelly admires Pirate Bishop White who, he says, once held off not one but two Chinese warlords intent on sacking the town of which he was bishop. This might or might not be true. I mean, Currelly also believes the story that it was Armenian activists intent on bringing down the Turkish government that started the Armenian genocide.

One can't expect someone born in the 19th century to question whether it's a good thing to amass goods from other cultures for the edification of one's own, but at least he thought it was for edification: since people can't go to China to see how wonderful Chinese culture is, we'll bring Chinese culture here. Sacking of summer palaces aside, at least some of the works he brought here were sold by mandarins anxious to raise cash to get them the hell away from the warlords. Others-- like the famed Buddhist reliefs-- were sold by starving monks whose food had been confiscated by said warlords. So you might argue for some sense of preservation there.

Today was some better, after vigorous stretching and rolling on foam rollers and tennis balls, enough that I walked to acupuncture and back, which was probably a bad idea. Also wrote out a holograph will on a form that I bought decades ago, since the dates all start 19. But now I need two witnesses to sign in my presence and each other's, which is a slight nuisance since people come to my house in singletons and it's not that easy going to my neighbours'. Requires going up steps. However, I suppose I can manage it. I also seem to recall, from my younger brother's law classes, that holograph wills with no witnesses have been admitted to probate, like the guy who died out in the wilderness and wrote 'all to Minnie' on his shirt before doing so. And of course, one hopes it won't be needed in the near future.

I have happy memories of reading Takuboku's poems in Sad Toys and Romaji Diary lo these 30+ years ago, so I settled in for a happy reread. Alas, the Suck Fairy has visited and left her calling card. The poems may still be alright but Takuboku was a git even by Meiji standards. Self-absorbed, narcissistic, irresponsible, self-pitying, and of course a horndog. Actually, can I think of a Meiji intellectual who wasn't a git? No one comes to mind. Like, back in shogunate days guys, at least samurai guys, were trained to be devoted to their lord or their clan or duty or honour. Come Meiji and some people suddenly decided to be devoted to nothing but their own sweet selves. I suppose under both systems guys treated their wives badly, on the automatic assumption that women exist for men's convenience. But I don't have to read them doing it.

Turn back to Currelly and find him frolicking among the great. Petrie is a marvellous conversationalist but a dry lecturer. Weigell has a nervous breakdown from tunnelling into pyramids underground. Theodore Davis suborns 'dear old' Gaston Maspero. And of course Currelly excavates at Deir el Bahri, finding a gold-plated tomb, supposedly that of Tyii except the mummy is a guy, and generally serving as the model for Radcliffe Emerson. Even back home, there he is hobnobing with people who in my day had become University of Toronto landmarks: Burwash (Hall), Massey (College), Gertrude Lawler (Building), McLennan (Physical Labs). Like reading about Waley's young manhood: when there were giants abroad in the land.

Herodotus is getting to the boring bit ie the actual Persian wars, and anyway I can't keep anyone straight given H's tendency to interpolate backstory, so I turn to my other Wee Free Library find of last summer, I Brought the Ages Home. And am at once reminded why pre-70s Ontario was such a claustrophobic place. All Canadian biographies of that era begin like this:

"I was born in the village of Exeter, in the county of Huron, on the eleventh of January, 1876, the morning on which the first train of the new railroad, the London, Huron and Bruce, came through Exeter from London to Goderich. My mother was Mary Treble, of the Trebles of Vognacote, Devonshire. and my father, John Currelly, was the son of Thomas Currelly, who had settled in Durham County, and was of the ancient gens Corelea of Rome. My father's mother was Jane Doney, sister of Thomas Doney, an engraver who spent most of his life in Paris, and later came to the United States to do a series of historical portraits. The elder brother worked in Paris until a nervous breakdown made it necessary to bring him back to Devonshire. As my great-grandfather was moderately well off, he was advised to bring the poor shaking boy to the new world. where, it was assumed, the quiet forests and all the wonderful developments that were being talked about would probably cure him. Unfortunately he died soon after they arrived."

Ie 'Lest anyone should suppose I am a son of nobody, I may say our line is an old one, related to the Trebles of Vognacote, Devonshire (where?) and tracing our ancestry to the gens Corelea of Rome (what?), and bitheway we had this obscure artist in the family as well whose brother (?) had a breakdown and died in Canada.' If you don't declaim your ancestry, however obscure, in Anglo Canada, how will people know who you are?

Thank god for immigration.

Otherwise I find myself in a peaceable psychological backwater, very pleasant for as long as it lasts, where I'm quite content to do my exercises three or four times a day, especially when I can intersperse them with the stretches my pilates woman showed me that may succeed in opening up my hips. I even began the chair pilates exercises again, hampered only slightly by the disappearance of sound on my upstairs tablet-- for that site, at least, because youtube plays just fine. Fortunately it's closed captioned, since I'm not a fan of people's voices at the best of times.

The wind blusters about the house but before it rained I got to the Christie St coffee shop that makes the amazing smoked salmon bagels with what I took to be dill mayonnaise. Only it's not: it's cream cheese whipped with olive oil and lemon juice and dill, and delish. I hope the place is a money laundering operation because there's never anyone in there.

In the Eat More Veg dep't, I bought baby artichokes and have concluded that there's really no point to artichokes, young or old. Almost worse than pomegranates.

And then there's the cozy comfort of the latest 100 Demons, to which I shall return shortly.

The dread Torontonian three h's are upon us: hot, hazy, and humid. Must still say it's not that hot- 28 may be muggy and unpleasant but doesn't constitute a heatwave. (Bro and s-i-l at the lake were wearing sweaters on the weekend to counteract the 17C and rain.) But there are forest fires up north so the hazy part is really bad haze.

I swapped the summer duvet for the down one a few weeks ago but kept finding myself cold. It's supposed to be a queen, while the feather one is a double, but somehow it kept creeping up or creeping over and exposing my poor feets to the fan or AC or both, and never covering my shoulders properly even though I wear long sleeves to bed. So last night I put the winter one back on and slept like a baby in the AC's 20C. I can't sleep in a natural 20-- way too hot-- but artificial cold works wonders. Also there were none of the leg cramps that plague me when, I'm convinced, my feet get cold. Had to wear socks with the summer duvet because of its wandering tendencies, and my socks always come off as I thrash about, and then-- leg cramps.

Email today from my wonder-working acupuncturist of long ago, back from six years travelling atchi kotchi. She needs to put in x many hours to requalify in Canada and is doing it for laughable fees. But. Her office is in Chinatown and I'd have to cab it and getting a car to anywhere on Spadina south of (the about to be renamed) Dundas Street is almost impossible. So can't see it happening.

Dundas delayed the abolition of the slave trade in England. The original 'with all deliberate speed' guy, and we're certainly not going to free people aleady enslaved because what good will that do them? Not a nice man. It will cost between 5 and 6 million to effect the change, and people have rightly pointed out that the money might better be used to help, say, First Nations towns that don't have clean water. But government is government and TO is only allowed to be responsible for itself.

Discover by accident ie poking around menues which evidently is how you're supposed to find techy things out, that the command to kill images is located in Chrome's privacy settings, which OK fine. But this allows me to scratch an itch of half a century's standing. The Egyptian Unknown Prince aka the Screaming Prince (whose corpse I have no desire to view thank you very much) has been identified as the parricidal son of Ramses III who managed to off himself while undergoing interrogation about same. The Turin Judicial papyrus says he was left alone, presumably in the Egyptian equivalent of the library with a pistol containing a single bullet, and was then found dead: possibly because you don't execute princes however unnatural. That might explain the oddities of his burial. Like, he murdered his father so yes we embalm his body, but not in the usual way, and we wrap his mummy in a sheepskin which is considered unclean, and then... we put him in a royal tomb? that gets robbed like all the royal tombs, so his body gets gathered up along with a whole buncha pharaohs and put in one of the mass reburials of later times. Which is, again, OK fine. But at least he's no longer unknown.

Tooth has calmed down nicely but it seems I no longer bounce back from 90 minute dental procedures. Napped yesterday, slept like log last night, want to nap today. And hurt all over, which could equally be early spring sudden pressure/ temperature changes. The wind that was banging about yesterday and blowing in monsoon rains continues to bang about today, blowing in a cold front. Yawn yawn.

My easy care reading at the moment is something called The Age of Exuberance, a fifty year old semi-textbook designed to give American students some background to 18th century lit. Which is fine until we get to 'A note on titles.'

'Much confusion is caused by "courtesy titles" and the designations "Lord" and "Lady". none of which are *official* styles of any peer. Elder surviving sons of earls, marquesses, and dukes are given the "courtesy" title of (usually) the second highest peerage held by the father: eg., the eldest son of the Duke of Chandos was referred to as the Marquess of Carnarvon (but in official documents merely 'Henry Brydges, Esquire, commonly styled Marquess of Carnarvon".) Younger sons of marquesses and dukes bear the courtesy designation "Lord" with given and family names: Lord Sidney Beauclerk... was fifth son of the Duke of St. Albans. "Lord" with the title only, and without "of", is also the normal designation, except on official occasions, of barons (it would be very unusual to hear a baron addressed as 'Baron So-and-so'), and it is the informal mode of address of viscounts, earls, and marquesses, but not dukes: eg., the Marquess of Rockingham was frequently referred to as "Lord Rockingham", but the Duke of Grafton never as 'Lord Grafton."

Baronesses (normally) and viscountesses, countesses, and marchionesses (informally) are addressed as "Lady", with the husband's title, but never duchesses. All daughters of earls, marquesses, and dukes are "Lady" with given and family names. When married to a man of lower rank, they change their own family name to their husband's, but retain their own given name: eg, when Lady Mary Pierrepont, daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, duke of Kingston, married Mr. Edward Wortley Montague, she became Lady Mary Wortley Montague (her husband remained "Mr. Wortley Montague".) Marrying a man of higher rank, they assume the title his wife would normally carry: eg., when Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of Charles Spencer, Duke of Marlborough, married Lord Bolingbroke (2nd Viscount Bolingbroke), she became Viscountess Bolingbroke (Lady Bolingbroke.) Divorced from him and married to Topham Beauclerk, she became Lady Diana Beauclerk. (Topham remained "Mr. Beauclerk".) The wife of a younger son of a marquess or duke, if of lower rank than her husband, becomes "Lady" with her husband's given and family names: Topham Beauclerk's mother was Lady Sidney Beauclerk...'

...but somehow Topham was plain Mister even though his father was a peer. Fine, OK. File this away with Pratchett's explanation of old English currency under 'wakaru hito wa wakaru' ie you gotta know how it works to know how it works.

Everyone else's life is being so traumatic just now that I'm trying to be grateful that the only thing bothering me is that the plumber somehow got my metal shower hose twisted about in such away that the shower head won't stay facing out, as it has for the last fifteen years, but wants to turn its face to the wall, thereby rendering it useless as a shower. I've fixed it in place with electrician's tape so it now functions just fine as a shower but can't be used to wash the under bits that showers don't reach. This is why we can't have nice things.

Clearly I was stressed about the plumber because today my system decided to rebel against, oh I don't know, could be any one of several things it's been known to rebel against: pad thai or Johnson cocktail or peanuts or wine or some combination of same. Which is fine. I need to stop the daily gin even if I hurt so much without it. Put braces on elbows and curl up under the quilts with bean bags.

As for reading Wednesday-

Finished?

Duckworth, Carolingian Portraits
-- deadly deadly history: doctrinal disputes* and internecine backstabbing. Enlivened only slightly by the Charles and Camilla saga of Lothair II and his wife and his mistress. Wife was in fact twice widowed before marrying him, he'd already had several kids with his mistress, wife couldn't have kids, Lothair tried for an annulment or a divorce such as several of his relatives had indulged in, most notably his great-grandfather Charlemagne, but his uncles and his uncles' tame churchmen (Hincmar, who does not come across to me as the shining light Duckworth thinks him) were having none of it. The fact that Lothair had no legitimate heir was exactly as his wicked uncles liked it: 'more land for us!!' Empire fell apart because the Carolingians couldn't stop coveting their brothers' territory long enough to put up a united front against the Vikings, the Magyars, the Saracens, the you name it.

*I have always maintained that you can't argue theology in Latin because Latin is just too damned vague, and several of these disputes prove my point. You have to argue in Greek, which at least has articles, but once you start arguing in Greek there's literally no end to it.

Reading now?

The Woman in White showed up in a crossword puzzle the other day and I thought, in my loose-ended fashion, that it might prove diverting. Alas, I'm not particularly diverted, except by the pencilled marginalia some appreciative previous owner has added, admiring Collins' more purple passages.

I tried rereading Neverwhere and I tried rereading The Napoleon of Notting Hill , but I'm in a 'man delights not me nor woman neither' mood, and both Gaiman and Chesterton are quirky enough to bug me.

Reading next?

Maybe I should reread some of the Pratchetts I've only read once, like Reaper Man or Monstrous Regiment.

Lying in bed as is my habit, because it's warm and I don't hurt, and thinking gloomy thoughts about knee replacements, or more pecisely rehab after knee replacement, phone rings. Is surgeon's office booking for March and do I want a date and by the way he's retiring in early May. The question turns out to be moot because they want people to wait six weeks after dental surgery, so it's late April at the earliest. Which is partly relief and partly here we go again. What's with the retiring professionals?

Mail then brings me a letter from the accountants that my retired accountant has referred me to. Forms to fill out and mail in the not-enclosed envelope no matter what they say. Which will require getting stamps which requires being able to negotiate sidewalks. Oh well. Spring is coming, I should be able to bike long before I have to send all my stuff to them, even before I have all my stuff to send. They're in Scarberia, which will be a hefty chunk to courier, because even were I mobile, I wouldn't take it in myself.

Mail also brings revised forms from the insurance company, that still say my pipes date to 1910. People.

On a whim and because it's sitting there for some reason, put on a Patarillo CD for my biking time. This takes me back to when I was reading and watching Patarillo, the late 90s, so I read my Patarillo fic on my phone, which takes me back very precisely to 1997 and calls up certain oogies from that time. I respond by dumping several stacks of Patarillo manga in a clear garbage bag and putting it out for tomorrow's recycle pickup.

Reading wise, I've finished only Okorafor's Ikenga. Montaigne and the Carolingians drag, especially the latter. Carolingian scholars, all wound into knots on points of Catholic doctrine, squabble like fannish schoolgirls, while the kings keep trying to grab their relatives' land for themselves. Bunch of ragamuffins indeed.

Finished Pursuit of the Millennium yesterday, which left me in a scratchy bloody-minded mood. A steady succession of narcissistic megolomaniacs, all of whom preached mass slaughter to their followers, or else wound up slaughtering their followers themselves, and who invariably ended up beheaded or burnt alive after the region's population had been decimated in the wars to get rid of the megalomaniacs. Nobody in their right minds would want to live in northern Europe in the sixteenth century, largely because your life was likely to be brutish and short.

Also no one will behead the current narcissistic megalomaniac, or even impeach him.

More calmly today I started on Belles Saisons: a Colette scrapbook, which is photos of Colette and her circle with biographical tidbits. Glorious days, those. Natalie Barney, Liane de Pougy, Mathilde de Morny... those women had style.

Evidently a Pepsi at 4:30 without prophylactic muscle relaxants or antihistamines means wide awake till past 3. Usually I'm content to lie in the dark and drift but this was AWAKE awake, so I got up and checked Barbara Mertz. Because an acrostic clue earlier had said 'fifth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty' and wanted me to believe it was Hatshepsut while I made it Thutmose II. That's because I start the 18th with Kamose and obviously other people don't. But I'd also, in the umm 35 years since I was up on these things, misplaced a couple of Amenhoteps and a Thutmose and wanted to refresh my memory. Turns out tney were eminently misplaceable- at least Amenhotep 2 and Thutmose 4.

I could have done all this more comfortably on my phone, but wikipedia *will* stick photos of the relevant mummies into the articles, and I really can't be having with the long dead at 3 a.m. Or any other time, come to that. Browsers used to let you block all pictures but if Chrome does that, I can't figure how.

Otherwise it's going to snow tomorrow and my knees have been telling me all about it, in detail, even with acupuncture.

I must have been channeling zeitgeist, because I was awake at 7 a.m., irrevocably dry-eyed awake a mere six hours after going to bed. To bed, note, not to sleep, because it takes me 45 minutes to fall asleep. So I did double the usual number of exercises and had breakfast at a normal hour. And the day's Event passed off without fuss. I'm not used to living in Normal any more. It feels most peculiar. And of course, it's only superficially normal. Abnormal is still around, still screaming that their führer wuz robbed. But for now, some things are getting yanked back on track.

Finished?

Raverat, Period Piece
-- growing up in Cambridge in the 1890s. And whatever was happening in the haute and demi monde, Raverat (née Darwin) makes it clear to me that the middle classes were still bound by a stifling puritanism. Maybe not the Darwin sons, per se, but their wives, yes indeed.

Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and other travel sketches
-- now must go look at another translation to see what his poems really say, because Yuasa's four line expansions really annoy me.

Reading now?

Coupla doorstoppers as a months-long reading project

Montaigne, Essays, and Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium

Sacks, Hallucinations
-- because an acrostic I did was an excerpt in which he once saw the colour indigo in the Egyptian collection at the Met as a result of hearing Monteverdi there, but never saw it again. Sacks is an easy author: goes down easily, even on a tablet

Kipling, A Selection of His Stories and Poems
-- vol 2, bought 2nd hand years back. I've probably read at least half of these before but he's good dipping reading. Though not nearly as easy as Sacks.

Next?

I think I have enough to be going on with.

I have a pair of down at the heels berks that I wear in the basement, though I wish the basement was clean enough that I didn't have to. Took a load of laundry down yesterday, returning left my berks at the head of the stairs, went to put stuff in dryer and... right berk was missing. Gone. Not there. Not anywhere near. Luckily I have a newer pair and luckily it was the right sandal that was missing, because the left one of my new pair doesn't stay on my foot. But I do wonder where it went to.

I'd watch Bridgerton and its not!regency perioding only because I've wanted black aristocrats ever since seeing Neverwhere and being pissed that the Marquis de Carabas wasn't a real marquis. Especially since there's no reason he shouldn't be: London Under has its own aristocracy, Londinium was always a melting pot, nothing says its aristos must be lily-white. At least give us the Chevalier de Saint-Georges without nasty Napoleon getting in the way. But I gather it's a streaming service? and I don't stream, and the books are different, and have 1800 holds for 35 copies etc etc. Besides being too not!regency even for me, judging by a previewed first chapter of book 1. Pity. It's a nice idea.

There's a down side to the kanji study, which is that I start to review them in my head as I'm falling asleep, and then get wound up because I can't remember the radical of one I reviewed today, or the reading or the meaning. I can look them up on my phone in the dark but the wp is like molasses, and if- as is invariably the case- I misremember any of the foregoing it's an exercise in extreme frustration. Mogi no gi 擬, not benshou no shou 償. And so on.

Finished?

A Hazel Holt mystery. Somehow felt I needed the next one, and because the library didn't have it I ordered it from Indigo. I now have my credit card number memorized and must seriously stop using it.

El Cid from Medieval Epics. Tells me no more than the recap in Medieval Myths but is a lot bloodier. Have put ME back on the shelf because I'm not in the mood to do this all over again with Roland and Siegfrid. Though reading the introduction to Roland I find there's a bit of a mystery to Roncevaux. Roland died, not in a battle against 400,000 Sarcens, but in an attack on Charlemagne's rearguard by Basque warriors as he returned from a Spanish campaign against the caliph of Cordoba. On the way back he sacked and burned Basque cities, and the Basques attacked in retaliation. It was a skirmish rather than a pitched battle, that still cost the lives of many nobles and all Charlemagne's booty from his campaign. But why was the baggage train in the rear of the army when it should have been in the middle as was usual? Wikipedia has nothing to say on the subject. Overconfidence, military SNAFU, or simply not knowing the terrain through the mountains, maybe?

Pratchett, Making Money
-- been so long since I read this that I'd totally forgotten the plot. A nice palate cleanser.

Reading now?

The perennial standbys: Muromachi poetry, Claudine, and Kafka. Claudine wears on me. Want to swap her for someone else. Wonder if I still have that French translation of Tanizaki's Manji (Buddhist swastika)? OTOH Tanizaki is as likely to wear on me as Claudine. Oogey writer, that.

Next up?

I have Piranesi but I'm not sure I want to start it in my current scratchy state. Am having a rare attack of missing People, which I will deal with in the usual way, but that takes time.

When one's books on the go prove indifferent, it's a lot easier to do the necessary other things like exercise and kanji writing. Yes, and indifferent French reading practice as well. Claudine in French gets on my nerves, possibly because I detect the slimy hand of Willy. But I wish I had better books on the go. The second Vinyl Detective came in. Once again someone wants him to find a record. Once again, no sooner does a lead appear than the lead is murdered. If the theme of the series is going to be 'accidental judgements, casual slaughters' then I'll drop it now and let the sixteen people behind me in the library queue have it instead.

Then, having finished the rather charming and certainly out of date The Medieval Myths, completist me has to start in on the only slightly later Medieval Epics which is what I read Beowulf out of in my medieval lit. survey course. But this is a translation, not merely a retelling, prefaced by in-detail historical background.

Thought I'd start out with El Cid because he, alone of the Medieval Myths guys, behaved like a decent human being and not (cf Roland, Prince Igor, and Sigfried) a berserker bathing in the blood of a thousand youkai/ whatever. I'm still wading through the preface to that which is all head-spinny shifting alliances among a dozen Muslim and Christian kingdoms, when I thought the tory was just about El Cid trying to win back the love of his king Alfonso who for reasons unstated had sent him into exile. Yes, well, reasons were that El Cid had been fighting against Alonso on the side of his brothers, since the three kings, in best medieval fashion, were constantly trying to take over each other's territory. So when oldest brother is murdered and Alonso takes over his territory, Alonso is not gonna be best buddies with brother's champion. (Incidentally, Spain provides a strong argument in favour of primogeniture. Though I suppose if you're fratricidal enough, it hardly matters if only one of you is king.)

Maybe I should read some Pratchett instead.

Also low-fat low-carb eating is getting old. I would die for some toast and butter, or sweetened yoghurt, or chocolate. Someone on the FFL lost thirty pounds not eating wheat or sugar. Won't happen to me, not with my sedentary lifestyle, but the vague hope of getting to what I weighed in 1987 keeps me sticking to it. I cruise various restaurants on various delivery services, click on pad thai and hamburgers, and then back button.

Found this poem on the blog of someone I no longer follow because, though rather younger than I, they've gone curmudgeonly old: forgetting our glorious Boomer past to carp about People These Days pulling down statues and breaking windows and telling Curmudgeon how he should think which, because he's still a Boomer, he takes exception to. Oh well. At least he finds neat poems:

Crofter

Last thing at night
he steps outside to breathe
the smell of winter.

The stars, so shy in summer,
glare down
from a huge emptiness.

In a huge silence he listens
for small sounds. His eyes
are filled with friendliness.

What's history to him?
He's an emblem of it
in its pure state.

And proves it. He goes inside.
The door closes and the light
dies in the window.

Norman MacCaig

Have been reading an ancient paperback, The Medieval Myths, summaries of Beowulf and Roland, Prince Igor and the Cid. But also Peredur, the ur-form of Percival, or possibly the other way around. I thought I'd read the Mabnogion but I must have skipped this one. And it's weird in that very Welsh way that makes Jungians very happy and has the editor of this compilation citing Jessie Weston, that muse of T S Eliot's. That whiff of 19th century anthropology is choking, but the images in Peredur are dreamlike (meaning brilliant and unexplained, not misty) and suggestive of things not graspable. If I were feeling more grounded I'd go back to Tim Powers' Last Call which, Gaiman-like, puts the Fisher King in America. But I'm caught in September Ghost Tide with no infants to counter the unsettling, creeping tendrils of the past, so I won't.

Only you know what? The Fisher King is De Troyes or someone misreading a French source of le roi pécheur (sinful king) as le roi pêcheur (fishing king). So the Mabinogion has to be later because it keeps the misreading. If it is a misreading and not what the original, possibly not-Christian source had in the first place. I mean, a wounded fisher king is much more resonant than a wounded sinner, but the latter is much more likely,

1. Doctor says my dreams haven't really changed, it's just that the current meds put me into more REM states than usual. Well fine. I can only say that last night I dreamed I was editing someone's handwritten Kirk/ Spock fanfic, and several nights ago I dreamed I was having sex with a bicycle. Which is a Robertson Davies reference. From a book I last read forty years ago. Could we please go back to dreaming about babies and not!Japan (except that it really is)?

2. Read the Parasol Protectorate manga last week, am now rereading the books. May I say that Lord Akeldama is easier to take when seen rather than heard? Also googled to find out who Akeldama was, and am disappointed in the results, because a) he must have undergone a personality transplant in his change to vampire and b) I wanted him to be Horace Walpole. Or at any rate, some legitimate, well-informed, butterfly of a dandy.

3. Sun and temps well above freezing raise my seasonally drooping spirits. This is good, because every bit of me hurts in spite of massage on Saturday and acupuncture on Sunday. Did succeed in getting almost all my laundromat laundry done (one duvet cover remaining) in spite of the unspeakable so-and-so who occupied all ten of the cheapest washers today with precisely sorted tiny washes. I know it's the same guy because all the machines stopped at the same time and none of them were emptied after ninety minutes when I came to get my bathrobe out of the dryer.

4. Must get serious about doing *all* my exercises and *all* my stretches every day, meaning two hours of same instead of one. This has to become a reflex by next May, so that I don't drag my feet post-op when I really must be ready to do all the exercises prescribed. Weight loss will have to wait for the new year, but needs to happen as well. Knees are registering every extra pound these days.

5. Paris was Yesterday draws to a close, in the year 1939 when no one is certain if there will be a war or not. Flanner mentions an exhibit of the art work surrounding the then-defunct Ballets Russes- its curtains and sets painted by Braques and de Chirico, Mirò and Rouault, Matisse and Max Ernst and Modigliani- in what the French then referred to as les beaux jours of the early 1920s, "the days of civilized, uncensored pleasures... when pliticians as well as hedonists thought a permanent, pleasant, peaceful age had been born." The 30s were indeed dirty, but if I try, I can't think of a decade in my nearly 70 years that has been at all clean. Yes, there were the beaux jours of the 60s, but they were beaux only for people like me; everywhere else was another story. Flanner's book ends a page later, with the declaration of war in September. If the present doesn't have the same sense of impending apocalypse, it's only because the apocalypse seems incontrovertibly here.

So, fifty years ago or so I seem to recall I was sitting at the rather too small bedroom desk that I rarely used (because when I was a kid I did my homework at the dining room table), translating Xenophan's Apology which was the first real Greek text I'd ever worked on. Did I actually see the moon landing? Did someone call me downstairs to come watch? That part I don't remember at all. And for all I know, I might not have been sitting at my desk that day either, because my memories all conflate and can never be trusted.

I'm thinking of memory and its fallacies because I finally finished the first four Severian books and then happily went off to read discussion boards and spoilers about 'how unreliable a narrator is Severian after all'. No one seems to agree, but ohh did the Reddit threads have the whiff of early fandom testosterone. So thanks but no thanks, I shall not be reading the sequels where My Character Becomes God and my narrative becomes a mess. (Checked out The Urth of the New Sun in Bakka and passed up on it because the typeface is uuuuugly. A narrow escape.

Am a bit gakkari, because my first reading of the series left me with an impression of something rare and strange. The SF aspects washed right over me. And now that it turns out to be all multi-universes and time twists and alien intelligences guiding human development and and and, it seems much more mechanical and infinitely less resonant. Sigh. I hate it when people get SF in my fantasy.

So now it's either back to Gideon the Ninth or Tobias Winter, but neither is what I want to take the taste out of my mouth. Shall read something mindless and wait for the heat to break on the weekend.

Crossposts: https://flemmings.livejournal.com/978739.html

Mother's Day I know to avoid, but was unprepared to find a three generation, three family Father's Day party taking over half my local coffeehouse.

Cool but damp still, making work an achy proposition. Scrub that- makes moving an achy proposition. Much struck with this sentence from G's WIP: "...lowering himself into the only chair. His back was erect, but he moved with the careful protectiveness for hips and knees that (redacted) had seen in elderly (people) with arthritis". Got it in one, G.

I don't do Reading Wednesdays now because my life is still Read All The Things. Did finish A Madness of Angels and did resist urge to go on to the next one, but am bemused by the fact that nothing of hers before or AFAIC since has the umm depth and volume of Matthew Swift. Maybe those four books exhausted her? They would me, for sure.

Am still annoyed that Matthew's reflex reaction to a threat is Run! Boy must be in really good shape. And also, howcum she gives Japanese names like Oda and Mikeda to people she claims are African and Russian?

I did get within spitting distance of the end of Waning of the Middle Ages, but then googling around to hopefully find where it is that Huizinga quotes the original nomina nuda tenemus, which I should have noted, discover an article fulminating about the badness- in fact, the falsification- of the translation I have, and recommending the new one from 1996. Which I have ordered from the library with no optimism about reading.

Ordered two books of acrostics from the Evil Empire, Canadian dep't. Work has gone silly and I expect to be braindead this week from lack of sleep. Thus, acrostics.

Crossposts: https://flemmings.livejournal.com/973809.html

We had our sunny warm perfumed May day today: sunny after the rain cleared mid-morning and warm until a cold front blew in this afternoon. But I'll take it.

Am relieved that I'm not actually as crippled as I felt all day. Evidently I failed to take my anti-inflams this morning, being engrossed by Postsecret, I guess.

I have a couple of books on the go, inspired by my successful polishing off of The Castle of Otranto yesterday afternoon. Another slim volume to weed from the shelf, Cyril Connolly's The Unquiet Grave. But oh does it drag in comparison to Walpole!

Connolly was one of those between-wars literati who hobnobbed with all the other literati and travelled about with them and stayed at their houses and behaved like Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy: complained constantly, made demands, and left the places he stayed in a mess. All without being able to hold down a job, while sponging off his parents and mentors. Why am I reading him? Because in my naive 20s the literary critics of the time pushed certain English writers at the public and I tried reading them, never understanding what the fuss was about. VS Pritchett, Anthony Powell, Nigel Nicolson, and all the Bloomsburyites. Maybe you had to be English to get the point; or maybe the litcrits were all English males and naturally in tune with that particular zeitgeist. Anyway, Connolly was one of them. and I kept The Unquiet Grave ('a word cycle') thinking I might understand it at some later date. Forty years later I understand it all too well.

The book begins, "The more books we read, the sooner we perceive that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence." Those who cannot do, pontificate. *Especially* if they've been to Eton and Oxford.

Connolly inveighs against women, especially women who have female friends, because women are always trying to break up other women's marriages from spite against men, when they aren't leaving their own marriages from spite against men. I assume some personal grudge at work here: his first wife left him after seven years of marriage, which had to be from spite and not because he was sponging off both her and her mother. In any case, Connolly feels very very sorry for himself and knows the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Marriage invariably ends in hatred or boredom. Friendship is dead. Yahoos are everywhere. The past was so much better than the present- in Rome under Augustus, in Restoration England, in the eighteenth century- and that's where he sees himself belonging. "Civilization is maintained by very few people in a small number of places, and we need only a few bombs and some prisons to blot it out altogether. The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this the uncivilized have not forgiven them." Oh, the jeunesse dorée of a hundred years ago: what an unquestioned sense of superiority and entitlement Eton and Balliol can give a man.

OK, this book was written in during the second world war and Connolly was clearly suffering from depression. But the basically selfish and self-centred nature of the man is everywhere, and one can't help suspecting it to be a large contributing factor.

And of course, he was probably right about how he should belong to another time. The other book I'm reading is Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle Ages (coincidentally, also a book from the 70s that I couldn't parse then but can now, after reading both A Distant Mirror and Magnifico.) Connolly would be out of his depth in periods of high reason like both Augustan ages; he's better suited to the calamitous 14th century of Deschamps:

The poetry of Deschamps is full of petty reviling of life and its inevitable troubles. Happy is he who has no children, for ~~then he can write his masterpiece~~* babies mean nothing but crying and stench; they give only trouble and anxiety; they have to be clothed, shod, fed... Happy are bachelors, for a man who has an evil wife has a bad time of it, and he who has a good one fears to lose her. In other words, happiness is feared together with misfortune. In old age the poet sees only evil and disgust, a lamentable decline of the body and the mind, ridicule and insipidity. It comes soon, at thirty for a woman, at fifty for a man, and neither lives beyond sixty, for the most part.

I shall think of Connolly as sitting out the Black Death, and maybe his witterings will go down better.

*"There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall" says the man who had no children until twenty years after he wrote that line.

Crossposts: https://flemmings.livejournal.com/971915.html

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