J'y suis, j'y reste

Well, in terms of the actual travel things could have been a lot worse. The shuttle picked me up within 5 minutes of the appointed time, I got through bag-drop and security with great expedition, and after a certain degree of faff the plane took off pretty much on time and arrived slightly before scheduled arrival time.

Really v impressed with my Hindu vegetarian dinner (this time it wasn't chickpea curry, it was bhindi and dahl with saffron rice, mmmm), though I'm not sure what made the breakfast of rather meh fruit cup and dryish blueberry muffin special... however, at that point I was more interested in COFFEE.

However, because of the very short night, I had probably slept for maybe an hour before they started waking us up again.

Just missed one Heathrow Express but they are at least frequent. Some woman tried to jump the taxi queue at Paddington - or hadn't noticed that there was a queue and that people were being allocated to pull-up spots and she couldn't just take the first taxi that was drawing up as she came out of the exit, because that was mine, and there was a bit of an altercation.

The real problems were when I tried to get online with my desktop once I was home - it was running very slow and sluggish and being really unresponsive. I think this may have been due to a massive anti-virus update downloading. Anyway, once this had finally finished (well over an hour) I restarted and things seem to be okay.

Except that partner had been using machine (though presumably not much, or the anti-virals would have been updating in more manageable tranches) and although I thought he always used IE as his browser, had managed to do something with Firefox that had lost all my tabs. Aaaaargh.

Am now on my third load of washing and have bread in progress.

Forgotten female messiah

I posted, briefly, about the Panacea Society (and bent people's ears about it) after hearing a wonderful paper about this bizarre organisation at the 2008 Berks in Minneapolis.

Now there is the book! Jane Shaw, Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and Her Followers.

Two reviews. (Though neither mentions except by implication the ritual teaparties where everything had to be just so, which appeared from the paper I heard to play a significant part in the organisation.)