It's Always More Complicated

Well, I suppose getting a text from the GPs apropos slots opening up for Covid booster was not entirely unanticipated - I was looking the other day to see whether these were on the horizon - so anyway, my dearios, I am scheduled for mine in just over a fortnight.

But the other thing was getting an email from radio people as to whether I could talk to them about History of Criminalisation/Decriminalisation of Abortion THIS VERY AFTERNOON -

- which it so happened I could, and these days, it is not just talking to them, it is being on Zoom as well with instructions re camera -

So I am always up for saying that the way the police have been carrying on of very recent years, and the health professionals who have been grassing women up to them, is worse than the Victorians as historians have pretty much failed to find anything much in the way of prosecutions of women rather than abortionists -

- possibly because in most cases that even came to light it was because the woman had died, though there are a few cited In The Literature where she lived and testified in the court case, and presumably was granted immunity.

I suppose it is not totally improbable that a very detailed search of the British Newspaper Archives using the various likely search terms under which one would anyway search for cases of abortion (not the word mostly used) would turn up a case or two of women prosecuted for procuring their own, but I really think it's more likely to turn up a lot of fascinating detail about who was doing illicit abortions, and whether local juries thought they were performing a public service and had just had bad luck in this one case (came across at least one in a fairly random swoop myself).

Unfortunately time constraints and what they actually wanted me to talk about (like why the 1861 Act still pertains, cue me ranting about having to defend the 1967 Act, which just introduced Exceptions to the existing Act, for decades because of the RtL mobs rather than press forward with further reform) prevented me from doing the full oursin Boring For Europe on the subject.

Mr 'warm leads for archivists' is still badgering me.

I mean, I sort of knew this was on the horizon, but I didn't expect it to suddenly come bursting over it because of Unexpected Factors.

I.e. Partner has been saying that he really ought to go and visit his mother, who is now over 100, in Australia, this year. But was going to leave it until impending cataract surgery was over.

Only - ooops, text on Tuesday am to say, on account of Junior Doctors' Strike this week, first appointment (of the several involved) is postponed for several months into the future.

So antipodean trip is being put in hand to take place before that (I shan't be going).

This has involved various ancillary turmoils, though at least passport is up to date.

Flights have been booked, but I am sure there are further related matters still to come.

AAAAARRGGHHH.

I suppose that there is some arcane law of Parliamentary protocol that means nobody can actually pick up the Mace and conk BJ with it and have him carried out unconscious?

I see all over the place people going 'Worst PM EVAH' and the only reason I am not so doing is that I really don't know enough about C18th PMs to be absolutely sure, because I suspect some of them were pretty bad, going on into early C19th, really - 'I met Murder on the way/He had a face like Castlereagh' - in spite of, many many years ago having endeavoured to read Namier's History of Parliament, which is a strong contender for driest work ever.

***

In other news - I am not sure this actually counts as the lighter side:
Taiwan kidnapping charges over botched marriage proposal dropped: Prosecutors decide woman bundled into suitcase and driven off in car boot was surprise gone wrong

In March, 24-year-old Yang, of the north-western city of Taoyuan, decided to propose to her girlfriend, Huang. She wanted the experience to be memorable, so she hired two men through a part-time job search app to stage a “kidnapping”.... [T]he men burst into Huang’s flat in the early hours of 17 March. They took her away in a large suitcase. which they placed in the boot of a car and drove towards the local household registration office, where marriage certificates are issued.
....
Sensing the car had stopped, Huang found a way to open the suitcase and and the car boot. According to local news reports, she jumped out and shouted: “Help! I was kidnapped.”
....
The two men said the original plan was that they would park outside the registration office, where Yang would propose to Huang. They also said they had intentionally left the suitcase zip loose so that Huang would not suffocate.

And was there any intention of putting the proposal on TikTok...?

I heard today about a young man who took his girlfriend on a romantic trip abroad, and when they were in a particularly romantic location, proposed in full formal style* -

In a public place, with people passing to and fro.

This is perhaps not so bad as the chap who set up a surprise party to propose, since, as this was a romantic foreign spot, they were presumably at least strangers who didn't know either of the couple rather than their entire social circle.

Is this public performative proposing becoming a thing?

What this actually reminded me of - 'I will orchestrate a SURPRISE for my beloved, of course she will be thrilled and delighted' - was a query addressed to Dr Petra Boynton's agony aunt column in the Daily Telegraph:
'Shall I surprise my girlfriend with an escort so we can have a threesome?'

An exquisitely tactful codfish was applied.

*Perhaps, with all this down on one knee proferring a ring retro-behaviour , the appropriate response would be 'Sensible as I am of the honour you do me, you must ask dear papa for his blessing first.'? (Rushes round corner, texts dear papa to say NO! NO! BLESSING NO CAN HAZ.)

I've recently been ingesting Stella Gibbons' Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm and other stories (1940). Which is definitely one for the Gibbons completists, and am I glad that a copy turned up at under £20, because previously the only copies I could see via bookfinder.com were priced well into 3 figures. Even the 1972 library reprint edition.

It's all rather slight, and I think I have remarked before, Gibbons doesn't strike me as a natural short story writer, her length is the novel.

Also, nearly all the stories, except the title one, which does what it says on the tin, are about nice young women, initially exciting but ultimately annoying &/or shallow bohos, and the pleasures of cosy undramatic affection and domesticity.

Which, okay, Gibbons is all about the anti-romantic and the disadvantages of the hurlyburly of the chaise longue or the hollow under the sukebind hedge, but these represent a very narrow portion of her range, especially as regards class.

One story that particularly made me go 'huh?' was the one in which a former frequenter of boho circles, now cosily married and living in the country, is visited by former dear friends. And her lovely, understanding, conventional husband is:

A doctor.

If there was anyone I would not expect to use a doctor in this extraordinarily conventional trope of desirable marriage to professional man of caring nature, it would be Gibbons, whose father, though apparently a wonderful GP, was a toxic human being in domestic life and probably the model for pretty much all the Starkadders, especially the unreformed Aunt Ada Doom.

I then remembered that one of the episodes in Miss Linsey and Pa in which a young woman writer is rescued from an oppressive menage with a possessive older woman by the local doctor.

And seem to recollect that the male lead in My American becomes a doctor? (can't lay my hands on my copy at the moment) after his involvement with gangsters, at least partly in reparation?

But I wouldn't have expected Gibbons to place doctors as both figures of quiet romance and the signifier of undramatic yet agreeable married life.

Early C18th manuscript domestic recipe volume--

Yes, I'd anticipate 'Triffel' (which doesn't really conform to modern expectations for trifle, honestly) and assorted marmalades.

And if there were connections with the East India Company or at least the eastern trade generally, it's not wholly unlikely that you might get 'pillau' and 'kebobs'.

The one that beswozzled me was 'Fromage Fondu'. Shades of the 70s, what? But it is recognisably a cheese dip thing served with toasted bread.

Thinking (for some reason) of experiences of heart-lifting beauty in circumstances that were less than ideal.

There was, of course, the lapwings on Lundy thing. This was on a really badly thought-through holiday in the West Country in a campervan in April at about the midpoint of the Slow Motion Train Wreck relationship. The weather was cold, campervanning would not, even under more benign climatological circumstances, ever be my chosen way of having a holiday, the whole thing was largely a mistake, but on one day we took the boat to Lundy. It was an overcast and drizzling day. On the boatride we saw two cormorants (or possibly shags) swimming in the waves. On Lundy, we did not see puffins, but what we did see was a hare dashing across the skyline.

And, across a field, against the complex chiaroscuro of the clouds (and through the light drizzle) we saw huge numbers of lapwings doing their famous aerobatic tumbling mating flights, and pee-witting as they did it.

Wow.

And also remarkable, on the really horrible cold wet day we went to Sirmione on Lake Garda during the Veneto trip in 2003 (in the belief that surely the weather would improve as the day wore on, which turned out to be mistaken):

We walked up to the 'Grotto di Catullo', which I understand had no connection at all with the poet, but is the ruins of a rather large Roman villa. What I liked most there was a grove of olive trees on the site of what was originally an enclosed garden surrounded by a peristyle. These had the gnarled picturesque quality common to olive trees, and there was a certain atmosphere, a genius of place feeling. Most of them were bent one way, presumably by the prevailing winds, but not all of them were leaning in exactly the same direction.

Also, last year, being reliably cheered by the autumnal colours of the trees in Urbana-Champaign.

So I wish to state that I am very impressed indeed with the Home Office Drug Licensing people.

I have had to do with this governmental office because the most recent issue of Holiday Which has a whole article on taking medicines abroad, in the course of which it indicates that if you are going abroad for more than 28 days, you need a licence for any medicines containing controlled substances.

On investigation, I discovered that a couple of medications that I take intermittently do contain substances listed in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

So I obtained a chit from my GP to confirm that these were prescribed items, and faxed off the necessary forms yesterday morning. Because according to Holiday Which, you should do this at least 14 days before leaving the UK (and I thought I had better also allow a few days in case of postal service strikage).

I later emailed them because the fax machine was Acting Funny and flashing up all sorts of weird error messages, even though it appeared to betransmitting things okay.

And got a response saying my form had been processed and put in the out-tray yesterday afternoon.

And I received it today.

Heavens, one might be living in the nineteenth century!

Anne Karpf, 'I want to avoid avoidance':

There are times when I long for the comfort of ritual. On several occasions last year I found myself talking to a relative or friend who was dying or had just been bereaved. With close family members and friends you can bank on instinct to tell you what to say. But with those you know less well? Formal expressions of condolence are so much easier than trying to confect something personal that's also meaningful and soothing. Here I've taken a wild stab and often quite missed the target.
....
There's a danger, I've come to believe, in the new, psychobabblish assumption that everyone wants to talk about their loss and is just waiting for you to ask them about it. I agonised over what to write to a couple I know whose adult daughter suddenly keeled over and died recently, and then bumped into them before I had. In the moment all I could think of was to shake my head to convey my shock, and hug them. That was enough but it didn't seem like it so then I offered to bring them some food. No, they protested, please don't: they hadn't yet managed to eat their way through a freezer full of other people's offerings. I next saw the mother after an agonising work meeting in which every single client had felt required to say something about her daughter when all she'd wanted to do was wear her work hat.

In the end what's most needed in contact with the dying and bereaved, I think, is the realisation that one can't make it better, and then a willingness to listen and be present, to try to tolerate the depth or complexity of other people's grief without the need to timetable or shape it. That might be the most consoling thing of all.

In praise of Samaritans.

[I]t wasn't until she was in labour that she discovered that she was nine months pregnant. Neither teenager in denial nor middleaged woman assuming it was The Change:

You hear about this happening, but most of us don't believe it. It's like an urban myth - you enjoy the story without quite conceding it's true. Be honest: how could you be pregnant and not notice? The nurses at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, where Daniella was born, told Becky they see a case like it once a week. "Only, in 70% of cases," she reports, "it's an underage pregnancy - obvious to everyone - and the mother's in denial."