It's Always More Complicated

Meet generation stay-at-home: ‘You don’t need to pay to go clubbing: you can sit at home and watch it on your phone’ This is so many generations down the line from when I was a young thing - it wasn't even so much about clubbing when I was a student, because (and this may be down to having been at an on-the fringes of the conurbations campus uni) there were various events involving live bands or the precursors of disco actually on the premises.

Sort of resonated with something I spotted on social media where somebody had screenshotted somebody going 'how did people get together before mobile phones?' and I was very tempted to go 'Eeeeee, we'd go down to the monkey-walk':

[I]t consisted of a parade of unattached young men and women walking along from the clock on the Co-op buildings on Belvoir Road to the clock on Lashmore’s shop on High Street*. Young men would be on one side of the street and young women on the other. They would parade back and forth ‘eyeing up the talent’ as one participent put it. ‘Liaisons’ would occur and often couples would be ejected from shop doorways by the local bobby on his beat.

***

From my very first downward dog, I was hooked. But training as a yoga teacher led me to a miserable world of false promises, exploitation and near-total burnout. Could I find my way back to the mat? Some of this rather reminded me of my brief period of fairly peripheral involvement with the 'growth' or 'human potential' movement around the late 70s, where people did seem to get sucked into the cult, or rather, different manifestations thereof that were around at the time, presumably according to individual personality:

It was wildly chaotic but there was a strange kind of method to it. Something like breaking us down to build us up. We’d spend a weekend each month in her studio, then return to our lives wide-eyed and changed.

And, talking of cults, Italian researchers say that joining the mafia is like entering a cult in which members must leave behind their own identity:

Everything changes, Lo Verso said, when something disrupts the mobsters’ lives. “As long as they are integrated into the mafia family, the bosses do not show any kind of psychological suffering,” he said. “Their own ‘self’ is suppressed because they identify totally with the mafia and their thoughts conform to those of the clan. However, things change when there is a break, a detachment from the mafia, for example, when an arrested mafioso decides to collaborate with the authorities.

***

This is just me being irked, niggled and narky: maybe that is just having been part of a niche community of historians which has been WELL AWARE of these figures since the 1970s or so, has this guy ever heard of Jeff Weeks or Sheila Rowbotham(or is he just Failing to Cite)? Beyond Oscar Wilde: the unsung literary heroes of the early gay rights movement. Grump. Unsung by whom? Mutter fume.

Have started to try and do some exercises (besides my usual tranches of physio things) - some ones for homebound Olds from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (gosh, it is a change to cite that and not have it be The Great Massage Parlours Scandal of 1894*) by way of the local Mutual Aid FaceBook Group; and staircase cardio.

The person who does the yoga class I normally go to is doing it online but via Zoom, and I have lately been hearing Worrying Things about Zoom; or am I being paranoid.

Partner has a minor health problem which in normal times would be probably the kind of thing the GP practice nurse would deal with on a drop-in basis. Has finally after several attempts got the number to ring to make a remote appointment...

Lo and behold and mirabile dictu, an essay review I sent off to a journal in 2017 has coming winging back to me, or rather, what has come winging its way to me is the intelligence that the copy-edits will shortly be on their way, a request for a biographical note, and a rights form to complete, sign, scan and send back.

Publishing stuff for the next volume in the ongoing saga. We note that unless you pony up for expedited delivery, Amazon's proof copies of print version will take over well over a month to arrive. Also, Google Books seems to be taking unusually long to go live...

*Not sure if I have ever regaled my dr rdrz with this episode or not.

Has been rather the theme of this week, one way and another.

It pretty much began, sometime Sunday night/Monday morning, as I went downstairs in the dark and my foot skidded off a stair, jarring my knee. Which was very ouchy all the following day, and still a bit twingey, though it survived yoga.

I was due for a routine mammogram on Tuesday: however, I had just got up to the desk, when they told me that the machine had broken down about 2 minutes before, and I would have to reschedule. (Fortunately I had planned errands in that neck of the woods anyway.)

Wednesday was the aforementioned yoga, followed by Yet Another Trip To The Optician's in hopes of getting my glasses adjusted so that I don't have to keep reverting to my old pair because it is Just Too Damned Uncomfortable. They have put little rubber thinggies on the earpieces - I cannot decide if these are not doing anything, making the problem worse, or whether my ears were just so sore they needed a break to recover. So.

Today I had a non-urgent more or less routine doctor's appointment, largely about getting onto my record an amount of one of the things I'm currently taking sufficient that I don't need to be constantly renewing the prescription. This all went off pretty smoothly. What was absolutely irk-making was spending nearly an hour in the chemist's waiting to get my prescription filled (among a growing crowd of annoyed people also waiting for their prescriptions), and then finding that I am going to have to go back for part of it. Grrr. (It's not the most convenient chemist, either, but it's the one nearest the health centre.)

However, we no longer have building works: correction: we no longer have building works on our flat. Work proceeds rather noisily on the the downstairs flat and I suspect will do so for some time.

I see I was grumpy about the new arrangements at the gym I go to some while ago, and some months down the line from the change of management they are still rearranging the equipment on an almost daily, it seems, basis, which is irksome enough. So there is a fascinating (??) game of hunt the [thing] pretty much every time I go.

They are also continuing to remove various items of equipment that impact my programme, and while I have found substitutions/workarounds I'm not entirely thrilled by all this.

But at least one of my issues goes back before the change, when I had my assessment and a new programme devised, and flagged up very prominently my neck and shoulder concerns -

And while I think the actual things I am down to do on the programme are probably okay, there are contextual problems with setting things up that I don't think got entirely taken into account when drawing the thing up.

Principally, even if I didn't have neck and shoulder issues, I'm not sure a person of my size, build and age is ideally suited to heaving 20 kilo weights on and off the leg press machine, even without the really awkward positioning....

I am beginning to regret having taken them up on what looked, at the time, like a really great deal to pay in advance for 3 years (a system that I had previously subscribed to) somewhat over a year ago.

I do not want to give up all forms of exercise, but neither this, nor yoga, is entirely meeting my needs at present.

Yesterday I had a meeting with some meedja people who are making a programme that impinges upon one of my areas of expertise. And in spite of the fact that I had had to get up earlier than my wont after a not very brilliant night's sleep, and then got to the Tube station and found that there were no trains (and of course buses were sailing fully laden past the stop), but then they decided there was one, so I was not more than a little late, but, well, frazzle, they seemed to think that my expertise was what they were looking for and proceeded to talk about possible filming dates.

So, that.

Also got in some research for a thing I am doing in a couple of months.

But yoga was cancelled, chiz.

And today I went over to South Ken to talk to somebody in a museum in those parts about a topic that is not precisely spot on my area of expertise, but about which I have snapped up a number of unconsidered trifles of relevant information over the years, and at least know where one might look for more.

After which I took a quick turn around the Lockwood Kipling exhibition at the V&A, on the grounds that I was moderately interested and it was free, but that I probably wouldn't make a special expedition to see it so I might as well take this opportunity.

Interesting, but if Lockwood is overlooked because Rudyard, I thought Alice was not as present as she might have been (according to that book about the Macdonald sisters, his career owed a lot to her networking abilities).

But I was feeling in a rather bad mood this morning.

I wonder if part of it is a combination of the slump after some particularly intense period of demands (also possibly the 2 am migraine, even if imigran did its trick) -

Plus, all those things which were being put on hold for the duration and still have to be sorted and are not fun things. (Telephone engineers - if any of my dr rdrz have any thoughts about telephone engineers - BT Callout Service? Private firms? should be v grateful to hear.) (Also, dentists, North London, any testimonials to? My former dentist has moved to the farthest end of the Northern Line, and while it is at least the right end from the point of view of my current location, it is possibly rather further than I would want to sit on a tube train after a root canal.)

I suppose the travel things might be fun, if I could get some clarity on the research leave angle. This is one of those things where I am dependent on other people getting their act together. Except that the actual booking process, seldom a bundle of larfs.

I had been hoping to get cracking on with the big cataloguing job today but most of my time was eaten by various necessary niggling things (like being polite to somebody whose proposed research gives my codfish arm twitches).

However -

Bright side!

A splendiferous rainbow over Euston Road this afternoon.

Possibility of some physio chargeable to work health plan, heyhey.

A really good yoga class.

Yet again I was the only person on the afternoon walk, even though today it wasn't raining: however, it is fairly quiet here this week, not a lot of other people around. Still overcast and looking as though it might come on to rain, and the odd sprinkle, when we set out, but moments when there were glimpses of blue sky and the sun (almost or very quickly) peeping through. It does seem to be coming out far more now we're back, although the clouds were looking a bit ominous on the last homeward stretch. Still a bit squidgy underfoot in places, but not as sopping as previous days.

Good yoga class yesterday, did a workout in the gym this morning (according to the fitness-test setting on the LifeSteps machine my fitness is 'elite', WTF). Have a revitalising facial forthcoming later this afternoon.

Media consumption question: Does Babylon 5 pick up at any point? I have got through Disc 1 of Series 1 and feeling rather meh: there are a few promising things going on but I haven't been massively engrossed by the foreground stories in these episodes.

Having one of those days when I don't feel anything inspiring or sparking off a post, but still feel I should post something, because I am in the habit of posting something every day.

So I'm going with being meta about doing things as a habit.

Which I think can be a rather good thing, because it gets me into the momentum of doing something rather than hanging around for inspiration to strike, and really, this can be useful.

Given that if you stop doing something, or only do it occasionally and randomly, it can drop right off the agenda. Whereas if you are doing it in however lackadaisical a habitual fashion, it's there as an existing container for when the spark ignites again.

Not to mention, the general incrementality of doing something gets you somewhere - I have been noting some significant advances in my yoga practice and while some of this is doubtless down to the style of the new instructor, it wouldn't be happening without the previous years of not feeling I was getting beyond a certain point.

A related thing, though it's not actually about continued habit, is how I have dealt with rather challenging projects outside my daily work and against a deadline, which has been to do something on them every day (including weekends), even if it's only getting the footnotes consistent and the bibliography sorted.

I think this may actually be yet another reprise of the small steps theme upon which I have expatiated heretofore.

My netbook is refusing to acknowledge that it has a wireless adapter and can connect to the internet.

As of this morning.

A very nice young man described by the receptionist as 'our IT guy' (I do not think this is his main role on the staff, somehow) took an extended look at it, ascertained that there is too a wireless adaptor, but also that it would not connect via cable either, and suggests that there is some setting blocking access.

Any suggestions on this gratefully received.

He has very kindly lent me a spare laptop so I can get online - there is a public terminal but one doesn't really want to spend very long on it.

However, on the good side, Wake Up and Stretch, walk, cranial osteopathy (in the course of which I discovered that certain headaches I've been having are to do with low blood pressure, who'd a'thought?), and yoga. And the usuals.

Yoga hedjog managed a successful Tree posture (foot resting on opposite knee) without wild wobbling and held for, oh, at least a minute each side I should think. Yay.

Further thought:

Is the practice finally having RESULT more generally, or is the Thursday class just slightly less challenging than the Wednesday one?

***

I am so giving props to the obituarist here: Murdoch Mitchison:

A quiet, very self-confident scientist, but with a wide-ranging curiosity, Mitchison was influenced by the salon that gathered around his mother, the novelist Naomi Mitchison, at her holiday home at Carradale, Kintyre, which was for many summers a lively centre of cross-disciplinary dialogue. Mitchison's father, to whom he was also close, was the radical Labour politician and lawyer Dick Mitchison (made a life peer in 1964 by Harold Wilson).