epershand

This week's bread: brown wheatgerm; 8:1 strong brown/wheatgerm, made up with buttermilk from open pot left over from making rolls; quite tasty but a little dense and heavy.

Friday night supper: grocery order delivered early enough that I had time to make sardegnera with chorizo de navarra.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls recipe, 4:1 strong white/buckwheat flour, dried cranberries, Rayner's barley malt.

Today's lunch: seabream fillets rubbed with salt, pepper, ginger paste and lime juice and left in the fridge for a couple of hours, then panfried in butter; served with miniature potatoes roasted in beef dripping, white-braised baby courgettes and red bell pepper, and pak choi stirfried with garlic.

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.

***

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

Or words to that effect.

Anyway, general sense of Point Thahr, Misst, in this piece: Can I learn to be cool – even though I am garrulous, swotty and wear no-show socks?

Mind you, and perhaps this is a generational thing, I murmur, thinking of dark jazz cellars and so on, I so do not associate 'cool' with:

Cool people are desirable and in demand; others want to be them or be with them. That social clout readily converts into capital as people buy what you’re selling, hoping it will rub off on them.... A much-publicised paper recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that cool people are seen as possessing six attributes: they are extroverted, open, hedonistic, adventurous, autonomous and powerful.

And further on, we have an interview with somebody author of article considers Peak Cool:

[S]tudying fashion in London, she learned how to talk her way into fashion week events, pretending she was “supposed to be there – like, no doubt about it”, she says, eyes glinting. She then parlayed that talent for networking into styling and creative consulting work. “All the coolest people I know are hustlers,” Delaney says. “If you’ve just had it given to you, then it’s not that cool.”

Perhaps this strikes me as particularly Not Getting It because I have just been reading Eve Babitz?

And IMHO, you do not 'learn' to be cool: if you are cool, what you do is imbued with coolth, even if it doesn't tick the obvious boxes.

What I read

Finished Encampment, which was brilliant, and intense.

So intense that I had to decompress with a brief Dick Francis binge: Driving Force (1992) - a bit subpar I thought, slow start, massively convoluted plot; Wild Horses (1994) - the one involving a paraphilia I actually did a post here on back when, and making of a movie; Twice Shy (1981) which has a lot of v retro though presumably at the time cutting-edge computer nerdery involving programs on cassette tapes.

On the go

Have started - this was while I was out and about in the world last week - Peter Parker's Some Men in London: Queer Life, 1960–1967 (Some Men in London #2) (2024), since I was recording a podcast last week with the author and he assured me it was somewhat less of a downer than the previous, 1950s, volume. I think it may be a dipper-in over some while.

Still dipping in to Readers' Liberation - liked the first chapter, which is about what readers bring to the book, the second seems a bit heavier going.

Eve Babitz, Eve's Hollywood (1974) - perhaps not quite as good as Slow Days, Fast Company, but it was her first published work.

Up next

No idea: have just sent off for The Scribbler Annual but no idea when it's likely to arrive.