It's Always More Complicated

Though by now it's mostly dispersed - still lying in parts.

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Yesterday had that exasperating thing of asking what I thought was a question for very specific thing (not even for myself, for someone who didn't have access to this particular knowledge-resource) and got, okay, one really good response that was right on point, and several which demonstrated that actual humans are quite capable all by themselves of hallucinating what the question actually was and providing answers entirely tangential and Point Thahr Misst.

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I have had to do with this campaigner: ‘Women have to fight for what they want’: UK campaigner’s 60-year unfinished battle for abortion rights over archives of campaigns she was involved in (I even, as I recollect, suggested an appropriate riposte - a bouquet of parsley - to some weird hostile message sent to her by the notorious Victoria Gillick.)

Pretty much her contemporary, I don't think I ever met the recently-deceased Molly Parkin, but I certainly read various of her writings, including most of her various 'bonk-busters' - I'm not sure they entirely fit that category - which seem to have fallen out of print, at least, they do not seem to have enjoyed e-revival.

Director of the Wallace Collection museum in London from 1992 to 2011 and a specialist on 18th-century Sèvres porcelain.

Okay, you would probably have got me at 'woman expert on FINE CHINA' especially as she was also instrumental in bringing out the importance of Madame de Pompadour as a significant collector. Plus, mention that 'Thanks to a sharp-eyed George IV, the monarch’s holdings of Sèvres is the greatest in the world' makes me very slightly regret that Madame C- was quite so stand-offish about the Hanoverian brothers, because the vision of her and Prinny bonding over an appreciation of porcelain rather than her famed bubbies is an opportunity missed, chiz.

But I was also a bit agape at the statement that a woman (with an illegitimate child) applying for the Directorship of the Wallace Collection was Not In The Running in 1992. (Spoiler: she did actually get it.)

I can only suppose that the world of AAAAHHhhrttt galleries and museums is a lot different from archives:

Savill had cut her professional teeth at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the early 1970s. The V&A, then, was modelled on the hierarchical lines of the British army. Officers – keepers and assistant keepers – occupied the upper floors, and were treated as gentlemen, which, in terms of gender, most were. Museum assistants, in charge of cleaning, labelling and photographing objects, were relegated to the lower floors. Rising through the ranks was almost unheard of. Savill was a museum assistant in the ceramics department, remaining so when she moved to the Wallace Collection in 1974. That she had done her degree at Leeds University, rather than Oxbridge or the Courtauld Institute, did her no favours. This made her appointment, in 1978, as assistant to the Wallace’s then director – in effect, one of its two assistant directors – extraordinary.

Though Dame Rosalind Savill actually seemed to have some fairly posh markers even if she did her degree at Leeds: 'a boarder at Wycombe Abbey school in Buckinghamshire before spending a year at a school in Switzerland, perfecting her French'.

I suppose it is not exactly good ton, when obits all over the place deem one lady 'Queen of the Bonkbusters' (Dame Shirley Conran, died this week aged 91) to growl and pipe up 'I'm the grandest tiger in the jungle' Queen of the Bonkbusters, as presumably Jilly Cooper has some right to do, at least since the demise of Jackie Collins?

(Given that there has been a flurry on social media over some hip-hop battle of 'beef', and extensive references to historical parallels over a range of fields, one rather wishes there could have been a diss-down between these rival queens of Bonk, no?)

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I should probably take this more seriously, from several angles, but it doesdn't half strike me as in the tradition of Ealing comedies: Just Stop Oil protesters use hammer to smash Magna Carta display case: Judy Bruce, 85, and Reverend Dr Sue Parfitt, 82, tried to smash the glass surrounding the Magna Carta at the British Library (they did not actually smash the case).

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Missed the Northern Lights last night (not sure if one would be able to see them here anyway - while they were reported this far south, there's a fair amount of light pollution around here). I am perhaps less troubled by this after seeing all the Day of the Triffids jokes all over social media and warnings to look out for unusual vegetation in gardens this morning.

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I think I may already have mentioned toad crossings, enabling these amphibians to make their way to their traditional mating grounds without being run over: we now have adder tunnels to enable two separated populations of this endangered venomous reptile to mingle and increase genetic diversity:

The snake has has not been seen in Buckinghamshire since 2014 and is now virtually extinct in Oxfordshire. Greenham Common, which became a nature reserve 24 years ago after the closure of the RAF nuclear weapons base, is one of its last strongholds in the region. The tunnels opened for snakes this spring after radio-tagging studies showed two adder populations on the commons were not mixing because of the road. The populations need to meet each other to breed and boost their genetic diversity.

Ann Summers supremo Jacqueline Gold dies aged 62:

[Her father gave] her work experience at Ann Summers in 1979, when she was 19, having bought the four-store sex shop business a few years earlier. Unimpressed by the men-only atmosphere, she went on to take the brand into women’s homes, organising Tupperware-style selling parties, bringing vibrators into the sitting rooms of middle England and giving women a chance to earn their own money.

Jacqueline Gold’s proudly smutty Ann Summers changed the UK high street. Well, maybe, but:

[R]ecognising there was a big untapped market of women who wanted the goods but would not step inside the shops, Gold created the party plan as soon as she arrived: basically Tupperware parties, except with sex toys, underwear, my guess is quite a lot of prosecco or, back in the day, Babycham. By 2003 there were 4,000 parties a week in the UK. They were eventually capsized, partly by the internet, partly by the growing realisation among party planners that it was quite hard to make a living. But the brand had more to gain from the worldwide wonder web than it lost: the year after it went online, it sold 1m units of its own-brand vibrator, the Rampant Rabbit, in the UK alone.

That sex toy trajectory, where vibrators went from being a thing women were too embarrassed to be caught shopping for, to a thing they would give each other as a gift, is often put down to the Sex and the City effect, one episode in particular, The Turtle and the Hare, where Miranda lends Charlotte her Rabbit. But more influential in the UK was the grassroots effect, thousands of women a week, over two decades, talking about sex toys quite freely in a social setting. Or who knows, it could have been started with second-wave feminist consciousness-raising groups, but I do not get the sense they centred pleasure in quite the same way.

And there was a point when they were also to be found in the small ads at the back of more mainstream magazines like Cosmopolitan.

Certainly they were mentioned in CR groups. There were also feminist workshops specifically on sexuality in which they featured.

So there were these other stories around. (Not, alas, I thought, told in Rachel Wood, Consumer Sexualities: Women and Sex Shopping (2019))

But it does seem like an entirely different story from the US one in Lynn Cornella's Vibrator Nation (2017)

Obituary of Maureen Colquhoun, Crusading Labour politician who was the first openly gay MP:

Among the many issues for which she campaigned were the abolition of women’s prisons, abortion on demand, creche facilities at political conferences and the decriminalisation of prostitution.

Colquhoun readily acknowledged her change of circumstance, commenting: “The day hasn’t yet arrived when an MP can be unseated by a gossip columnist.” She proved to be only partly correct. When she was deselected, her local party chairman was reported widely as saying: “She was elected as a working wife and mother … this business has blackened her image irredeemably.”

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Remembering Pearl Alcock, the Black bisexual shebeen queen of Brixton:

Pearl created a space like no other, which is near impossible to replicate – especially as gentrifying forces dig their claws into Black communities. She withstood the forces that always try to erase us, from the moral panic of Thatcherism to persistent misogynoir. In the midst of all that, Pearl made some brilliant art, all while showing love and generosity to the people around her. Her legacy remains. When you live a life defined by giving, you can never truly be forgotten.

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Sandy Stone on Living Among Lesbian Separatists as a Trans Woman in the 70s

Throughout the 70s, Stone was part of the famous radical feminist music collective, Olivia Records. But her presence did not go unchallenged. She describes attending a community meeting only to be met with an angry swarm of trans exclusive radical feminists (TERFs) assembled for the sole purpose of expelling her from her own collective simply because she was assigned male at birth.
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[I]n 1987, Stone effectively birthed the academic discipline of transgender studies by publishing her enduringly influential essay, The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.
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And, over decades, she has inspired generations of irreverent trans women to fight transmisogyny unapologetically and bring new, unafraid forms of thinking and making into the world.

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Two grandes dames and a friendship one might not have expected: ‘How many husbands have I had? Not enough!’ Vanessa Redgrave meets Miriam Margolyes (they have actually been friends for 50 years)

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Sex magic, occult art and acid: the story of the infamous witch of Kings Cross [Sydney] - someone has just made a film about her.

Aged 23 and living away from her conservative family in a variety of lodgings and squats in the seedy Sydney suburb, she began to practise trance magic and, later, sex magic. The former involved invoking spells, rituals and taking substances with the aim of achieving a higher form of consciousness; the latter was popularised by the British occultist Aleister Crowley and involved having sex with multiple partners that invoked rituals similar to Tantra.

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I suppose in this age people can sling around accusations of witchcraft without having to set up pricking, ducking, or identifying familiars: 'Witch' tweets reflect society's fear of older women, says Mary Beard. Query: might there not be something in there about Wymmynz having Knowynngz - 'tes flying in the face of nature, they cannot be using it For Good.

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Five works by the dazzling and seldom-seen painter Florine Stettheimer emerged on the market in 2020. But some stood on shaky ground.

Born into a moneyed family, Stettheimer did not need or want to sell her art. She once famously said that “letting people have your paintings is like letting them wear your clothes.” After her death in 1944, most of her work went to institutions. Still, every once in a while, a legitimate Stettheimer emerges.

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And also on the topic of fakery: A celebrated writer and professor, he challenged his students to take hold of their own narrative. But the truth came out — his life story, like his books, was a work of fiction.

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My dearios will know that I usually sniff suspiciously when somebody is deemed 'forgotten by history', but in this case, this is someone who has pretty much slipped from the record and is here restored to it (well, and in the book by the author): Durex condoms: how their teenage immigrant inventor was forgotten by history. He also had a strong interest in mediumship and spiritualism.

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Hippos imported illegally into Colombia for Pablo Escobar’s private zoo have gone feral in the lush tropical countryside and must be culled before their invasive presence starts to wipe out indigenous flora and fauna, scientists have warned.
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Government attempts to control their reproduction have had no real impact on population growth, with the number of hippos increasing in the last eight years from 35 to somewhere between 65 and 80. A group of scientists is warning that the hippos pose a major threat to the area’s biodiversity and could lead to deadly encounters with humans. They say the hippos must be culled or their numbers could reach around 1,500 by 2035. “I believe that it is one of the greatest challenges of invasive species in the world,” said Nataly Castelblanco-Martínez, an ecologist at the University of Quintana Roo in Mexico and lead author of the group’s study.

Sad to see that Vonda N McIntyre has died, though it was not unanticipated - earlier news that she was seriously ill.

While I concede that Dreamsnake is indeed great, and one of the reasons why we should go back and reconsider the 70s, I also have a lot of time for the 'Starfarers' sequence, which, although it actually appeared late 80s-early 90s, has a lot of the same vibe, including all that diversity that certain elements seem to think is some new millennial phenomenon wot.

And thinking about McIntyre, and ok, she was working predominantly within sf rather than strictly fantasy, but, even so, I suspect that one would find the same sorts of things being said -

How is it this thing that this thing is, that when they get somebody to write a piece on some phenomenon, it is somebody with zilch, or possibly less-than-zilch, actual background knowledge???

What's the next Game of Thrones? All the contenders for fantasy TV's crown.

This comes up with such startling apercus as 'whose hero, in an inversion of the standard fantasy trope, is a heroine'.

It is to bang one's head upon the desk, srsly.

There is also 'subverts fantasy tropes, showing the protagonist not as a shining hero but as a guilty and broken man'.

Aaaaaargh.

And yes, I would like the actual TV series of Starfarers, but I suspect that a series in which people solve problems by intelligence and cooperation and competence rather than hacking and slaying and betrayal might be even more of a no-no than the bisexual polyamory...

Sweden is bringing rabbit showjumping to the London Pet Show (yeah, I'm doing the Bunny Boggle over here - 'hip-hop-hip, wiggle your nose, boggling the bunny is the way it goes' - a justly-forgotten B-side in the Bogglemen's oeuvre).

Oh dear, I'm not sure even being a postmodernist meta-fiction excuses exploiting Ms Evans for fun and profit: Sophie and the Sibyl by Patricia Duncker review – an audience with George Eliot: 'This sprightly postmodern comedy of manners wittily critiques the conventions of the historical novel'. (Query: is not the word 'sprightly' in a review or blurb something that sends a cold shiver down the spine?)

Tribute to Ruth Rendell (and are we not pleased that she and PDJ were pals?) and appreciation.

New translation of Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Divine Love is Nicholas Lezard's paperback of the week.

And, in Dept of Coincidences, Church that gave refuge to Charles I and inspired TS Eliot in need of rescue - shall all be well for Little Gidding. But, WHUT??? no mention of George Herbert?

Also, life lessons from the Rule of St Benedict (ring my be-e-ell, ring my bell).

Hadley Freeman on her definitive movies.

This sounds vaguely creepy to me: can schools teach children how to be better people?

Dept of this is probably just me, groaning away about something that some journo has only just discovered, in this case Boulton and Park, aka Fanny and Stella, of the famous 1870 court case under the sodomy laws, which is so not 'a forgotten story', really, though maybe my own acquaintanceship with the historiography on Victorian homosexuality is the factor here. Even so, I don't think you can make a case that they were 'gay activists of their time' as opposed to two young men by chance caught up in the meshes of the law. (Also, in re Grayson Perry's claim to be 'probably the first tranny at the palace': there are claims that Prince George of Kent was given to cross-dressing along with the bisexuality and drug-addiction.)

Dept of, yet another call-out to Joanna Russ and How to Suppress Women's Writing: it suited everyone to think of Thompson not as a journeyman writer but rather as a hedge-scribe, an empty vessel through which the rural England of the 1880s had channelled its dying song.

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Dept of, getting it Rong Way Round: This was a Rosetta Stone before the key had been found. No, the point about the Rosetta Stone was that it provided a key...

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Dept of, sounds interesting: This story of a Nigerian expat's life in the English capital takes a refreshing look at themes of family, race, literature and music

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Dept of, looking forward to reading this: Diana Wynne Jones's final book – completed by her sister – is a delightful and assured quest adventure (I knew this was in the pipeline).

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Dept of, it feels like there might be a whole other book there: you would think that women flocked to [Hemingway] because he was brilliant in bed. In fact he had lengthy periods of impotence and was often too insecure to be generous.

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Dept of, possibly this is a bit showing off his knowingz about Noel?

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Dept of, a novel Ruth Prawer Jhabavala didn't write: her mother had died in mysterious circumstances in India.

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Dept of, not really surprised: "Private in vitro fertilisation is charged not on what it actually costs to deliver the treatment, but what it is thought the market will bear," he says.

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Dept of, no, I can't really drum up any sympathy for this plight: why taxpayers should not fall for the promises of promoters selling schemes that are all too often too good to be true. Not only will the taxpayer waste money on the fees for these failed schemes, they will still have to pay all the tax, interest and penalties that are due. (Sound over here like gurgling drains.)

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Dept of, knock me down with a feather: Martin Amis credits stepmother and Jane Austen for literary success (famous father was 'mixed blessing').

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Dept of, depends what you mean by 'real': is sex in cinema getting too real? if 'real' means grim and not fun and that your movie will get five stars and accolades from Peter Bradshaw, maybe.

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Dept of, no idea where Ian Jack has been dining: Dining out in Britain has become a febrile, noisy, expensive ordeal. O rly.

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Dept of, don't we just love lady primatologists? In Lemur Behaviour (1966), she was the first to establish clearly from meticulously reported field observations the odd fact that among the lemurs she studied, females typically had priority over males, upending the longstanding assumption that male primates are always bigger, fiercer and dominant. Hail and farewell, Alison Jolly.

Dept of did she actually say that: Expression employed by one of the trainers at the gym during the week: 'I've got a memory like a fish'. I've never heard that before and am not sure whether it's an idiom I just hadn't encountered, based on what I believe researchers have proved is a scurrilous myth about goldfish and their memories, or whether it's based on a mishearing or misremembering of the expression 'memory like a sieve'.

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Dept of unexpectedly larfing liek drayne, and at work at that: Bangable Dudes in History.

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Dept of heritage in miniature: model village gets Grade II listed status.

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Dept of Cool People one only discovers when they die and one comes across their obituary: Bi Kidude, Zanzibari Taraab singer: fascinating further account.

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Dept of the price of everything and the value of nothing, while doubtless thinking it's all online now and that's just as good (if so, why is it worth a potential £50 million?): Field Museum may be planning to sell rare books. SIGH.

Splendid tribute to Nora Ephron by Hadley Freeman in today's G2 section. Includes this:

Ephron bristled whenever her book was described as a "thinly disguised novel" ("the words 'thinly disguised' are applied mostly to books by women") and anyway, as she put it, triumphantly and rightly: "One of the things I'm proudest of is that I managed to convert an event that seemed to me hideously tragic at the time to a comedy – and if that's not fiction, I don't know what is."

But Y O Y, if you've got to get a film critic on board for a tribute, do you get Peter Bradshaw on the job? This is a guy who clearly does not much like, and possibly does not get, anything that could be described as falling into a feel-good women's film category, whatever its actual virtues.

Maybe there is something about feeling they had to get their Top Fillum Crytyk on to it because that is a tribute in itself?

But he is so clearly floundering. I'm sure that he thinks he is paying her a real compliment by invoking male comedic writers like Woody Allen and Neil Simon, rather than coming over as condescending. And ignoring female comedic traditions entirely. Duh.