It's Always More Complicated

Dept of, what will they think of next (some of this is, as I remarked elsewhere, resuscitating Ye Good Ol' Victorian Quackerie - though, as we concurred, VIBRATORS ARE NOT VICTORIAN!!!): With the menopause dildo, we've officially reached peak menopause bollocks.

(Declaration of interest: I once did a podcast with the author.)

***

Dept of, well, on the topic of dildos, or at least, urgent phallicism: I spent a year dating conservative [frothingly alt-right] men:

Something about getting ready to go on these dates made me feel like I was 18 again — except now I had the ability to run professional-level background checks, which I did. Not because I was operating on preconceived notions but because the few peers I told about my mission encouraged me to. Given some of the vitriol against women in online alt-right groups, they felt I should treat every date as if it were a threat to my life. I came up with a routine: before a date, I’d tell at least three people in advance where I was going and what time they should expect to hear from me by. I enlisted a friend who’s a former Navy SEAL to be my unofficial security consultant.

And that's before getting to meet the actual doozies who are, apparently, not even the worst types on the dating apps.

***

Dept of, let's have some better news, good news about snails (the snails that one thought had been mown down in the ONward March of Progress, or at least, building much needed housing):

the snails are OK. Nothing bad is going to happen to the poor little Whirlpool Ramshorn Snail, the endangered creature which our Chancellor unfairly blamed for stopping a housing development, causing me to get grumpy on social media. But in following up to try and see what actually happened, I found out a bunch of interesting – and in my view extremely heartening – stuff.
.... it was always a false dichotomy, it was always possible to have the houses and the snails too.

Dept of gilded snails in a very different space: From snails to street signs: Soho’s history revealed on a new digital map - the snails on the facade of L'Escargot Restaurant.

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Dept of, gosh I have met (many years ago) the curator of this exhibition: New York City celebrates the “Gay Harlem Renaissance”

Irvine Welsh: ‘If reading gives you comfort, you’re not doing it right’.

We must suppose that he lives on hardtack* and sleeps on a bed of nails, or at least a very uncomfortable lumpy mattress?

He is apparently married (for the second time): presumably he informed wives 1 & 2 that what he looks for is 'a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman... how else could this be achieved save in the long monotony of marriage'.

Am I right, or just prejudiced, in thinking it is always blokes who take this rigorously puritanical approach to reading? (e.g. Will Self.) While women writers may occasionally express wish to dissociate themselves from what are considered the lower echelons of popular fiction (and given the tendency to dismiss them on those grounds, one can quite see why) I don't think they are going 'and I make my readers suffer'.

I now wish to present Mr Welsh with a voucher for a meal at this restaurant, reviewed by Grace Dent, who is levelling up almost to the Jay Rayner class: 'The menu is irresistible, which makes the fact that they cannot cook any of it a huge source of dismay'.

*Link includes mimsy modern version with sugar, dried fruit and spices, pshaw. However, still HARD.

What I read

In To Be a Pilgrim: Pilgrimage #7. #8, and #9: Revolving Lights (1923), The Trap (1925) and Oberland (1928). 'Hypo' (HG Wells) is beginning to buzz around with what we anticipate is an interest in more than intellectual interaction. In Oberland one can see as it were the faint traces of an absolutely bogstandard novel about British tourists in a Swiss hotel behind Miriam's apprehensions of her own experiences and impressions.

Jay Rayner, Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights: A Journey Deeper into Dining Hell (2018) - he points out that his negative reviews are actually a bare 5% of the whole but those are the ones that got the hits. Collected here and one must admit, very amusing.

Re-read of Katherine Addison, Witness for the Dead, as it seemed a good time to do so with a sequel shortly forthcoming.

Nicola Griffith, Spear (2022): as she says, 'All Arthurian tales owe their existence to previous iterations' (pity she does not mention Mitchison in the list of the more recent precursors! - does have Henry Treece, whom I would consider now a bit obscure?). Well-done without pushing any of my particular buttons.

Stephanie Burgis, Scales and Sensibility (Regency Dragons, #1) (2021), which was on offer, and because I wanted something a bit fluffier. Unfortunately working with some tropes that make me twitch a bit, even if all turns out well...

On the go

Have just started Paula Byrne, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (2021).

Not sure if Fashion and Authorship is on the go or just being occasionally picked up.

Also in the 'possibly picked up in order to read specific chapter/s of interest', Kristin Bluemel, Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain (2009), for chapter on Stella Gibbons and suburbia.

Up next

Thought I had another preorder dropping this month, but nothing until the beginning of May.

Onwards with Pilgrimage.

I.e. Cross-posting to Livejournal seems to be happening, at least, last night's post on this journal, and this morning's on the other, seem to have gone through.

And I spent some time over the past couple of days manually cross-posting the missing entries on both. I shall be very annoyed if they do, eventually, automatically x-post, after that faff.

***

But on a thing that I do not see getting back to the former-normal anytime soon, I so resonated with this letter in The Guardian today:

I long for the noon buffet at the Diwana Bhel Poori restaurant in Drummond Street, near Euston station in London, where the beauty of the display is matched by a variety of taste and texture – the ideal place to go with my curry-loving grandchildren from 14 to 27, but now a no-go for an 87-year-old.

But it's not just those crammed tables that are a problem, I am sure that buffet and its jostling line of customers are off the menu for a considerable while yet, if they are ever to return.

A quiet morning wandering around Valletta, as we had tickets for the Hypogeum, which partner had been forethoughtful to book in advance, as they only allow a few people in at a time, for conservation reasons (and space considerations), with timed entry.

And the guidebook told us that there were frequent buses and it was not far from central Valletta.

The buses turned out to be a bit less frequent than we supposed. The first one was cancelled. The next one was displaying signs of mechanical problems, but at least a substitute was rapidly provided.

When we got to approximately the right place we, now running rather late, were misinformed about the right stop and had to work our way back from the wrong one, asking for directions, given a massive lack of signposting, from locals who had never heard of it.

We did, in fact, get there just as tour slot we were booked for was starting, but this was all a bit nerve-wracking.

However, very well worth the visit as the article at that link suggests.

We also went to the Tarxien Temples, very close by, also worth the visit (though I'm not sure the app they persuade you to download adds anything to the experience).

Then, this evening, ascertained that restaurant booking I'd hoped I'd made via their website had either not gone through or not been confirmed and they were booked solid, as were a couple of other places we tried. Finally managed to book somewhere, but they only took cash, which necessitated a preliminary gallop in search of an ATM (only to find there was one onsite and several in the vicinity).

Nice meal though.

However, on way home, managed to trip over (no major damage I think) and we got lost even though this was really near our hotel.

But there was not the usual trip to see flamenco at the Sadlers Wells Flamenco Festival sometime around February-March this year.

Because I went to look this up for booking purposes, and lo, it was not happening in 2019, sadface.

However, I did notice that they were advance booking, very advance booking, for Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras — Sombras. So we thought we might as well book for that and make sure of getting good seats.

(And also make sure of a table at Ottolenghi for a meal beforehand.)

And lo and behold, what appeared to be a one-off gig when we booked is now part of a Flamenco Festival, which I would never have thought of looking for at this time of year, possibly somewhat reduced from its usual extent. Have not actually seen much about it.

Apparently solo dining is becoming A Thing? (scroll down, it's the last thing)

In New York, there’s a rising trend for eating alone and some restaurants have amended their menus and tables to cater for this. The restaurant booking site OpenTable has also reported a rise in solo dining.

Perhaps I am a grumpy ol' misanthrope who has had one or two too many group meals which have involved going, finally, to some place that is nobody's first choice but will fit everybody in and accommodate everybody's dietary requirements/a person turning up late and keeping everyone else from ordering/that person who either takes for ever deciding what to order or is too busy chatting to address the matter/person who takes an inordinate time longer than everybody else to finish a course/ - yes, I am a grumpy ol' misanthrope.

Also, I have my book/e-reader/phone/laptop for company: I do not want a giant teddy-bear vis-a-vis. I should not have to come over all Greta Garbo 'Vant to be alone' at a teddy-bear. At least, one may hope, the bear will not attempt to engage one in lively conversation ('What are you reading/is that a good book?').

Okay, everybody and their dog has already taken a rotted codfish to this: Beyond Porridge and Boiled Mutton: A Taste of London, with its assumption that only in the last few years has cuisine in the Great Metroplz heaved itself out of a Dickensian mire - indeed, we wonder if the writer did his research in London's Pulse, which would suggest far worse things than boiled mutton (which was probably not even mutton...).

I did wonder if perchance Mr Draper had gone to Heston Blumenthal's Dinner and mistaken his careful and probably utterly delicious recreation of some dish from British culinary history as standard London resto fare? - because I can just about imagine some dish that was listed as 'porridge and boiled mutton' in a C17th cookery book featuring on the menu there.

But even if we do not go back to the period of London dining described by Lt-Col Nathaniel Newnham-Davis, Dinners and Diners: Where and How to Dine in London (1899), the period when London dining got out of its trough of post-war austerity and gloom was, I depose, round about the 1960s.

I'd really be quite intrigued to know where Mr Draper was served mutton, which is by no means commonly found on menus - there used to be a Moroccan place in Kentish Town, long since defunct, which did a couscous with mutton chop, and I think I've recently once or twice seen hogget on menus.

Maybe it was on offer as part of a reconstructed Victorian workhouse experience? After all, it would more or less approximate to skilly, a weak broth of oatmeal and water in which salt meat had been boiled.

And on the subject of Victorian reconstructions, this gave me to think hmmm? and WTF: The Victorian School - I think it's actually a perfectly genuine site of useful historical resources on Victorian schooling, but that particular page made me blink as being of somewhat specialist interest.

Today partner and I went over to Tate Britain to see the Queer British Art 1861-1967 exhibition, which was actually rather good, even if there was some fuzziness about who was in and who was out, and some things that were portraits of relevant people, and a certain amount of contextual things, like the door of Wilde's cell at Reading Gaol. But I thought it worked fairly well with the fluidity and the unknowability that exists.

(Partner suggested that, actually, it worked as an exhibition of BritArt generally for the period, with particular theme.)

A few stray thoughts -

Evelyn de Morgan's Aurora Triumphans, which is apparently depicting the goddess of Dawn breaking the shackles of Night (shrouded figure departing left): evoked in me the thought that Aurora and Night had been engaging in some kinky bondage scene...

There was a portrait of Edith Sitwell which was there I think because the artist was gay, but wasn't there something rather camp about Ms Sitwell herself? also her tendency to fall for gay men.

Did no-one ever paint EM Forster? there was a portrait of his policeman lover Harry Daley but none of him.

A thought I'd had before about female couple relationships generated within a familial network (I'd forgotten that Claude Cahun's partner was her stepsister) (see also the 'Irish cousins' Somerville and Ross.) But am I the only person who finds the Bradley/Cooper 'Michael Field' relationship more than a little creepy, and getting a pass that wouldn't be there if Bradley had been Cooper's uncle in a quasi-parental role rather than an aunt? Also, surprised that they didn't include some of their very Aesthetic Movement production of their poetic works.

Props for pointing out the various problematic economic/class/racial issues in some of the relationships between artists and models.

And after we had done the exhibition, we went and had lunch at the Rex Whistler Restaurant: food excellent, less than whelmed by the famed Whistler mural - I was not amused...

I have probably seen the odd movie or two with Bill Nighy in that I enjoyed, but there's something about any role in which he is massive amounts of *EPIC MANPAIN* that makes me wish you could hurl movies at the wall as well as books (he was not the only thing wrong with the movie of I Capture the Castle, but his being entirely wrong as Mortmain was one of them).

However, I quite empathise with his comment in this interview, as a person who likes to sit alone reading in restaurants:

“Oh, people thinking because you spend time on your own, you’re troubled,” he nods. “There’s a thing in restaurants, where you’re sitting there, eating, reading a book, and people think that they’re going to be of greater value than any book can be. They think you’re in trouble because you’re reading: ‘He hasn’t got a friend, poor old sod.’ So they come over and sit with you, which is fine. For a bit. But I’ve actually had to stop using a couple of restaurants, because the proprietor insists on coming and sitting and talking with you, because he thinks: ‘Oh, he obviously needs someone because he’s got a book.’