wandra

Because I have to deliberately click on 'Feeds' on Facebook, I tend to get all sorts of stuff thrown up by default when I log in, because algorithm or something I guess.

And sometimes there are things I cannot turn my horrified eyes from -

- like the story of the mother whose 25-year-old daughter since graduating college has never held down a job for more than a few weeks because it drains her soul and creativity, but has gone on 3 expensive retreats to Bali, funded by doating father. And now wants to go on a fourth to get her chakras fully aligned, again, on parental dime.

Back in my young day the young'uns travelled overland to Exotic Parts on old lorries and coaches in search of Enlightenment, and I think it did not take the form of lush retreats on Bali. I was actually there, in Afghanistan, at the point where the overland route was becoming non-viable and travellers were driving straight across Iran without stopping.

Even so, one fancies that there must be more economical paths to enlightenment, even in these days?

Though maybe in these days, even on the Road to Nirvana, one's parents have tracking set up on one's phone to check how far one's got? Especially if they're paying for it....

Last week's bread developed mould: made a loaf of Country Oatmeal aka Monastery Loaf from Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread (2:1:1 wholemeal/strong white/medium oatmeal) and perhaps because I actually did the slow rising and proving for once, it turned out very nice indeed.

Friday night supper: as I had the best part of a small jar of Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Mezze Dip left over from last Sunday, I thought this would go rather well over pasta, and had it with penne. I was right.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown grated apple, strong brown flour, maple syrup, a dash of ground ginger (a bit fugitive) - came out a bit dense, possibly because they did not get taken out of the fridge until just before baking time (rather than recovering at room temperature for an hour or so).

Today's lunch: seabass fillets rubbed with salt, ginger paste and lime juice and left for a couple of hours then panfried, served with La Ratte potatoes roasted in beef dripping, fine green beans roasted in pumpkin seed oil with fennel seeds and splashed with Aronia Berry (apparently this is aka Chokeberry?) Balsamic Vinegar, and padron peppers.

Traditional patriarchy has always told women not to laugh. Today, female laughter still disturbs a male-dominated world

An absolutely po-faced article by a (male) social scientist about why women don't laugh. (We strongly suspect that he has not noticed them doing it behind his back.)

(I think I remarked some while ago that men think 'GSOH' = 'laughs at my jokes' and women thinks it means, is actually funny.)

He does not even seem aware of the apothegm about men's greatest fear being women laughing at them?

Maybe this is a cultural thing? Because I look at the literary/cultural tradition of my own nation and even in the works of acclaimed foundational male writers we have Women Being Hilariously Funny, come on down, Wife of Bath, and Beatrice speaking all mirth and no matter along with other Shakespearean ladies.

And once women pick up their pens - or even when their words are recorded - they manifest wit and humour in a fashion, dare we say it, subversive of the patriarchy?

I think this is reasoning from a very limited sample.

On which theme, I was irked earlier this week, in a YouTube thing I came across by a massive fanboy of Stella Gibbons (a very funny writer) while looking for links to the TV versions of Cold Comfort Farm, which was otherwise extremely endearing in how massively fannish about her he was, when he claimed that she was A Rare Bird because she was a professional reviewer as A Woman At That Date - you know, like what V Woolf, R West, D Parker, and a plethora of other scribbling women were?

This is, in fact, creepy:

English village votes to leave UK in protest over migrant housing plan

Residents of an English village have voted to leave the UK in a symbolic referendum against plans to house more than 1,000 asylum seekers nearby.
The result of the poll in Piddington, Oxfordshire, was announced on Wednesday morning after 312 people voted on Tuesday. A total of 285 people were in favour of independence from the UK while 26 voted against. One ballot was spoiled.
The poll was organised by campaigners for residents to demonstrate opposition to government plans to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at a converted Ministry of Defence site in the town of Bicester.

The result was announced on Wednesday morning by a “returning officer” in front of an audience of dozens of journalists and residents gathered outside the village hall.

At best we flash on Kipling's The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat, where a group of motorists who have fallen foul of a village where the local landowner runs his own anti-motorist policing system and sits as magistrate in ensuing court proceedings, initiate a campaign of press sniping at him and his village culminating in a meeting there of a (fake) Geoplanarian Society, culminating in the village voting that the Earth is, indeed flat - subsequently an actual Flat Earth Society turns up and sings Flat Earth hymns on the village green and various shenanigans ensue ending in total collapse of local landowner.

At worst we are actually thinking folk horror and mummersetting locals telling the hikers not to go down thattaways, or the pub landlord telling them they'd best be on their way afore nightfall, etc.

Chuffed as I am (natch) at this intelligence:

Reading for pleasure has benefits at all ages – from improving health and wellbeing to staving off dementia – say scientists

- and the effects are not dependent upon its being Grate Litrachur -

I do wonder whether someone will desperately try to incorporate Fun Reading into the Self-Improvement Grind, sigh?

Though the whole 'pleasure' angle is slantwise to that message.

Do we suppose that all those guys who were 'raw-dogging' plane flights to prove how hard they were will now be reading instead, because It's Good For Them? (this can only be a good thing, really).

Though I am immensely heartened at something that gives pleasure is accorded the accolade of Being Good for Health and Wellbeing -

- yet I daresay yer MachoMaxxers will have nothing to do with it, pleasure is for the weak (better mental health and empathy, pah!).

I'll be over here with my nose in a book.

Last night had the in-person book group chez moi, a bit depleted as 2 people were away and 1 at more or less the last minute got a cold and decided best not to come.

Am now left with rather a plethora of gluten-free vegan snacks....

However, we did have a good discussion of Cold Comfort Farm and Stella Gibbons more generally.

There was also a certain amount of more general conversation, though there were a few moments about which this piece in today's Guardian rather resonated, ahem, when I read it: ‘But enough about you …’ How to survive in a world of monologuists, interrupters and trauma dumpers.