I suggest reading both articles. In summary, four protestors were acquitted of criminal actions in a proper jury trial so the UK tried them again with more unjust restrictions (many kept secret) imposed on the jury, the defendants, their lawyers, and all media reporting. The result was that the four previously innocent defendants were convicted of minor criminal charges for damage to property but then sentenced as if they'd been convicted of major terrorist charges (and one of their lawyers is being persecuted and criminalised for representing his defendants by quoting UK law in a UK court). All done for the benefit of the genocidal nation state of Israel and their continued genocide of Palestinians in Palestine (including at least 20,000 murdered children).
Judge in Palestine Action Case Refuses to Recuse Himself Over Bias Claims. He is due to sentence four activists as terrorists in a move kept secret from jury. ( Full text of article for archiving purposes (2) )
Finished Blight, and hope that this series is planned to continue.
Alexis Hall, Father Material (London Calling, #3) (2026) - thought this was rather a slow starter and seemed a bit repetitive at first but then picked up, but honestly, could it get over Luc being absolutely hopeless?
KJ Charles, How to Fake It in Society (2026): um, I'm not sure I'd quite go so far as to say 'phoning it in', but this seemed to adhere to a rather familiar formula?
John Wyndham, The Chrysalids (1955), a recent Kobo deal, and I rather enjoyed The Midwich Cuckoos, but although I did read this ages ago a bit under-impressed. Though did think that these days it would probably be a massive 3-volume at least saga? points for economy.
Slightly Foxed #90: 'Sailing On'.
On the go
Paul Baker, Camp!: The Story of the Attitude that Conquered the World (2023): had enjoyed his book on Polari but I'm a bit less taken with this - I've just come across a passage where he remarks upon Ru-Paul's Drag Race having a fanbase of butch working-class straight males, and I think, 'hello, come on, what about working men's clubs going back decades?' this is hardly a new thing (but can I lay my hands on my copy of Jacob Bloomfield, Drag: A British History, which I suspect has something to this point, not at the moment).
I served four Masses in 24 hours at the weekend, which may be a personal best (or worst?), and has left me with some residual soreness of the knees, but Confirmation and First Communions both went relatively smoothly, and though it was rather exhausting scheduling, I did prefer it to spreading them out over several evenings.
Sunday was very much a flop day as a result; I woke up (as has sadly become customary) at 04:45, but did go back to sleep, and did not in the event leave my bed until after noon.
And I needed it, because it's been go-go-go since then. I said to Miss H that I was actually relieved earlier to realise that it was only Wednesday, because there is so much to get done this week! Not that that is helping me focus my mind, of course.
And last night was choir, tonight is choir, and all day Saturday is also choir, so I'm looking forward to an evening?? at home??? tomorrow. I have nearly a week of washing up to catch up with*, so that'll be a fun time for sure. Then into the office on Friday, and the treadmill does not stop!
I have been reading quite a lot though. Some day I will have time to write up my booklog, but that day is not this week.
* Obviously I should have done it earlier, but when I was inspired to try yesterday in a few free minutes, the hot water wasn't working - a different problem from last time! The plumber texted me back this morning with a description of the basic mistake I had made and how to fix it, so I'm back up and running now... kitchen looks extremely sad though.
didn't finish my tea before I left the house and the contents of the abandoned cup will be gross when I get back after several hours of 84°F/28°C
I hate being so dependent on the bus system, when the bus system is so crappy. Buses should come every ten minutes!
things I got right:
I have my wristwatch
I have a fresh tube of sunscreen to leave in my gym locker
I had naan and brie for breakfast
I am wearing office clothes
my hair is brushed
I have my thermos of hot tea
I have my office key
I am pretty sure I can skedaddle off campus around 3, which will give me enough time to get snacks for the Board Annual Meeting tonight.
ETA: Okay, I snuck out of the morning event and ran home and took my meds and got all my stuff and the giant file is transferring (fingers crossed the transfer time estimate is a lie and I can drop the thumb drive off with a colleague before I leave), and maybe the day is looking up.
I’m squarely middle-aged with friends in their 30s through 60s who have made serious relationship commitments that are now experiencing problems. They bend my ear and speak about these issues in three primary ways (I bet you can guess them): lack of communication, lack of emotional intimacy, and financial stress.
These themes come up repeatedly, and I have given advice that’s never really helped. My friends are deeply invested in their relationships, so they have read droves of self-help books, listened to relationship podcasts, worked through relationship-based workbooks, and sought spiritual and professional help. Nothing seems to work!
I began thinking of these relationship priorities—communication, emotional intimacy, and financial well-being—like leaves on a houseplant. If one of these leaves begins to shrivel and brown at the edges, it might benefit from a little direct attention, but we wouldn’t only speak of and address the dying leaf: we would water the plant. Eventually, I realized the issues weren’t really about communication, intimacy, or financial stress, but rather symptoms of a bigger issue: they had forgotten how to care. And, in some cases, they’ve never truly learned how to care about, for, and with self or others.
Care has historically been a feminist project, socially and intellectually. The scholarship of philosophers like Nel Noddings and Carol Gilligan in the 1980s-90s gave shape to the ethics of care. Noddings (1984) argued that care is relational; if whoever the care is directed towards does not feel it, or is not improved by it, then care didn’t happen.
Relationships need similar attention. If you asked my friends and their partners, most of them would agree that they feel cared about because they have continued the basic commitment to being a couple. They feel less cared for and with, but that is not entirely their fault. Aside from service-based care at the beginning and ends of our lives, “self-care” that has been co-opted by capitalist campaigns (think: spa days, treating yourself to an expensive bottle of wine, a new pair of shoes), and healthcare (which doesn’t feel extraordinarily caring to many Americans these days), where else have we been hearing about care?
The self-help industry, predominantly informed by the field of psychology, overwhelming markets one-size fits all solutions (e.g., checklists, habits, behavioral “do this” orders) that tell us what to do rather than helping us develop an understanding of care in the first place.
Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz’s (2019) Manufacturing Happy Citizens, argues that self-help social media fails to make a difference because it fundamentally misdiagnoses the user’s problems. A brief video advising an exhausted worker to “just practice mindfulness,” for example, makes zero difference because it leaves the structural source of the stress entirely intact. Instead of fostering collective solutions or institutional changes, it traps the individual in a cyclical loop of self-blame when the “hack” inevitably fails to change their life. This is an example of “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) or “toxic positivity” (Halberstam 2011), that enforces a norm that individuals should maintain a cheerful disposition to receive care. Social media creates an environment where cruel optimism keeps you running on a treadmill that pulls you backward, while toxic positivity acts as the cultural voice constantly telling you to “smile and enjoy the cardio.”
Of course, social media can be beneficial at times. Staying informed about old classmates’ lives, sharing information with groups who have common interests, and being able to exchange ideas with people who would normally be acquaintances fosters “weak ties” that may offer its own kind of care (Small 2017). But this may not provide the full emotional support and higher levels of care humans need and receive from face-to-face relationships: the connective labor that sociologist Allison Pugh calls “engine grease for our relationships.” True connection requires a mutual, collaborative effort to see and be seen.
We need to start demanding care, not just in our romantic relationships, but from all of our social contracts. Re-centering care requires us to step off the algorithmic treadmill imposed upon us by social media. Many of us are managing relationships like business partners with a logistics mindset instead of partners with human needs and feelings. We have learned to speak of “communication issues,” “emotional unavailability,” and “financial problems” without any mention of care. Additionally, we cannot continue to allow self-help programming and self-improvement media to shape our lives without caring about, for and with us.
In practice, this means refusing to view ourselves merely as passive consumers and instead acting as democratic citizens who assert collective control over the industries, media, and economic systems that dictate how we understand care (Tronto 2013). At the end of the day, I know who cares about care—it’s you, me, all of us. We cannot not be concerned about care, since we are human, but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be distracted from it.
Bus and Windrush line from N London to the southern peripheries to foregather with kake and friends for sociability, which was very agreeable indeed.
Also boo to miserable ol' Matthew Arnold dissing on the growing London railway network of his day as enabling people to merely move between 'a illiberal, dismal life in Islington to a illiberal, dismal life in Camberwell'. Sad git.
***
In other news: have received A Very Odd email alleging that The Textbook (of all things) is now listed on Bookbub.com. It is not entirely easy to ascertain the truth of this, as the site has no search function whereby one can locate specific titles, but searching under possible categories has not shown it up. I am not going to page through the alphabetical list of titles! What is this thing that this thing is? Spam? Phishing?
You led the DNA verification of Richard III. How important was that project scientifically and culturally? What I loved about it was that it wasn’t just the genetics. There were lots of different strands of evidence – genetics, osteology and radio carbon dating – and it involved people from lots of different areas, all bringing their expertise to make it a wonderful project. .... I think one of the things that was missed in the film is that no one person could have done it on their own. Philippa Langley [from the Richard III Society] absolutely got the project off the ground, but didn’t have the expertise to lead it. Another thing the film didn’t capture was all of the women who led various aspects of the science. I’m not worried I wasn’t in the film, but it was two years of work. Nor did all the money come from the Richard III Society. Some of it did for the excavation, but the vast majority came from Leicester University.
And she doesn't say in any answers in so many words 'It's All More Complicated', but it's very much implied, no?
Featuring some of the most batshit possible Heath Robinson arrangements for making a tiny quasi-acoustic version of their industrial noise. MIDI-triggered mug pinging!
Daveed Diggs: "Thank y'all for this opportunity to do needlessly complicated shit."
But, okay, the UK system is different anyway (this looks to be very much about the US setup), and anyway I did my PhD in a history-related discipline Many Years Ago and I was basically Doing It For Fun, although my workplace also considered it a form of professional development and gave me study leave, paid fees, etc.
And at the same time I was writing fiction - sf and fantasy, i.e something pretty much unrelated to my research (though that, as it were, mulched down into the soil that nourished the roots of a much later fictional endeavour!).
So it was a break and something different using different mental muscles.
I am pretty much there with the author of the article that the anticipated synergy is unlikely to be there, and the credo that
I truly believe that one has a better chance of becoming a writer by working at a bakery, a coffee shop, a bookstore, a 9-to-5 corporate job, a blueberry farm, a publishing house, etc.
(I am reminded of a Jules Feiffer cartoon featuring a guy behind a bar who mentions all these guys who used to come into the bar he tended who had sold their novel on their basis of having done these various manly roughneck career things, like working on fishing boats and tending bar, and he pitched a novel on the basis that he has done all those things, taken the advance and set himself up with a bar of his own.) (If anyone can point me at this, please do.)
Also that 'Much of the performance of creative writing happens in moments of quietude and, quite frankly, daydreaming'.
We are given to wonder whether the people who undertake this rather ill-advised course are writing for FUN or is it srs bznz? Perhaps they would do well to consider the case of Carolyn Heilbrun/Amanda Cross and writing a kind of campus fiction that involves pushing pompous professors out of windows and finding out whodunnit.
Reading. Finished Dead Hand Rule, Max Gladstone. Am disgruntled. Might soothe the disgruntlement by rereading the Sequence of adoration past.
Also finished Fight Right, as previously mentioned; I am sort of interested by the range of disagreements I have with them and also by some of the things they omitted (they make no suggestion of exchanging Tokens Of Good Faith when brain is too Bad to talk usefully???); I am kind of sad for them and specifically for Julie that they... are much less good at this than they think they are, based on their reports of their own fights. (Two key examples: including Julie saying "I'm always [negative]" during Model Apologies with zero indication that this is not good practice on multiple axes; the whole lengthy story in which neither of them seem to notice that what she actually wanted was for him to say Hey, You Did A Hard Thing You Struggle With, Good Job and instead got him assuming out loud that she had in fact done the polar opposite of the hard thing and proceeding with the conversation on that basis.)
Casting around for Maybe I Want Some More Non-Fiction, my "maybe read this one day" queue in the library app has yielded: Much Ado About Mothing, James Lowen, which is obviously relevant to several of my interests though I'm prepared to be disappointed by the lack of any meaningful incorporation of My Favourite Shakespeare. I am in chapter three and having a good time.
Listening. Today was Laminate All The Things day, so we have listened to another chunk of Hidden Almanac! Mord's hellebores.
Cooking.Broad bean kuku with the ALLOTMENT SAFFRON. Experimental Kaiserschmarrn with blueberries instead of raisins, and pear and rhubarb compote. Another round of the potato and kale and bean thing.
It turns out that the tiny 2.5kg weights A has for their dumbbells do really well for squishing tofu in a hurry, which would be a more useful fact if A were not considering getting rid of that set of dumbbells given that I have the fancy ones...
(Weights nerds: the 1" spinlock things that are endless faff.)
Eating. SAFFRON from the ALLOTMENT.
Exploring.
Creating.
Making & mending.
Growing.I made it to the plot. I spent very little time there but I made it; cherry tree looking EXTREMELY unhappy about not having been watered but soft fruit all looking promising; should def harvest some broad beans (or maybe just have An Million to do a whole bed full next year).
At home: some TLC to the smaller orchid, which is looking very sad (having successfully sent up a flower spike most of which never opened, sob) because I am having a time trying to get watering it right without moving it into its own saucer that I don't reaaaaaaally have space for on that windowsill. (Am I contemplating going back to the charity shop and Acquiring the pointy teardrop open terrarium situation I saw there yesterday? Yes I am.)
Observing.Baby birds! The teenage foxes continue to yell SO MUCH. Many excellent plants in passing. Gosh it's nice being outside at the moment when it's not, you know, absolutely bucketing it down.
This week's bread: 2:1 wholemeal/strong white and a couple of tablespoons of wheatgerm + some pumpkinseed oil; a bit dense but quite tasty.
Saturday breakfast rolls: was intending brown toasted pinenut, but the pinenuts turned out to be well past their Best Before, so made brown with dried cranberries instead. Not bad.
Today's lunch: halibut fillets which I poached thus (perhaps a little overdone) with samphire sauce, served with mangetout peas and sliced yellow bell pepper roasted in lemon-infused olive oil, and boiled baby Jersey Royal potatoes.
I’ve been feeling some kind of a way about this story! I’m reluctant to say I Am Writing Again, because this felt like a huge struggle and would’ve been impossible without the week on Shetland. But here it is, and I’m glad I’ve written it.
Also, if you’re not familiar, I really think you could read this one as an original m/m short story, no canon required. The tiny bit of backstory goes like this( goes like this )
No spoilers for the show here.
slung from the mast, a lantern (6075 words) by raven Fandom: Shetland (TV) Relationships: Duncan Hunter/Jimmy Perez, Alison McIntosh & Jimmy Perez Characters: Jimmy Perez, Duncan Hunter, Sandy Wilson, Alison McIntosh, Cassie Perez (Shetland) Additional Tags: Slow Burn, why is "co-parents to lovers" not a canonical tag
Every few minutes Jimmy’s feet leave the ground, and it’s only Duncan’s weight that keeps him down. It’s terrifying, every time it happens. All of this, suddenly, is terrifying.
(Or––Jimmy grieves, Duncan loves him, things work out okay in the end)
Got an enormous bag of spinach at the farmer's market this morning, contemplated having popsicles for lunch, and after dinner went for a walk down to the cemetery, got ice cream, and wandered over to the garden. A perfect 1.5-mile stroll. The spinach will be turned into palak paneer, I will once again have an opportunity for popsicle meals later this week, and my evening routine for the next three months is sorted. (Well, in future I will try to make it to the cemetery before they close the gates, although I did glimpse squirrels joyously converging on the now-deserted road through the graves, so at least I have learned a lesson about what happens in the cemetery at dusk.)
We engaged in what is now our Brunch Date tradition, in that we visited the fancy bakery and then we bimbled around the aqueduct looking at baby birds while slowly consuming our spoils.
Baby birds the first were at coot nest #1; we spotted the mallard sitting merrily on top of it to start with, and then I went HOLD ON THAT'S A TINY FLUFFY DUCKLING. ... THREE DUCKLINGS. The coots (a) are not shy about chasing ducks off and (b) tend to move gradually down the not-exactly-a-river with successive clutches, so we are not too concerned about them.
There were also: another clutch of (rather larger) ducklings, with no supervising adult; some extremely teenage coots; some extremely baby coots going WHEEK WHEEK WHEEK at the tops of their tiny lungs; yet another coot nest containing one (1) adult, two (2) teenagers, and three (3) tiny fluffy cheeplets, the teenagers being actually in the nest and variously sitting on top of and preening the cheeplets. The Egyptian goslings meanwhile are very nearly all the way grown up, but continue to spend most of their time clustered together.
I am not entirely sure why I had decided baby season was probably over, but I think we can definitively say that It Is Not!
Recced Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire to a couple of people lately, picked up my copy again to refresh my memory of something, and now it has its teeth in me and won't let go until I reread the whole thing and I've already had to go to YouTube and listen to the Cry Cry Cry cover of "Cold Missouri Waters."
And then I found an amazing quote from the songwriter, James Keelaghan, which is one of the best descriptions of the book I've read:
And so just the story itself is compelling. But for Norman Maclean's writing of it, like, I don't know if you know the book, but Norman McLean was sort of, the fire was an area of specialty for him, for, you know, it was one of his little private obsessions. And he always meant to write a book about it. And he started to write the book, but he died before it was finished. And the book was then sort of completed by his editors and also by his son.
So you not only get the story of the fire and incredible amount of detail about how the smoke jumpers fit into the National Forest Service, how they were created as a unit, but also stuff about the mathematics of how fire spreads in various circumstances. But you also get this sense of MacLean being a writer who is running out of time to tell the story that he really wants to tell because he knows he's dying. He's in a great deal of pain, I think, when he's writing the book. And all that comes through this, this impatient, irascible old man, this voice actually comes through in the book. And then I felt like, yeah, you know, I really need to write a song about this.
Anyway Dodge just ordered them to drop the heavy tools so I have to get back to the book now.
Over the last few weeks I've been listening to Les Misérables (the novel, rather than the musical), and having finished it last night I have a few observations. Firstly, it is very long, definitely the longest novel I've ever read, and arguably the longest book*, but I found it surprisingly easy going compared to other lengthy 19th century works I've tackled. It's possible that the audiobook format made a difference there, and I must admit that although I was paying pretty close attention when there was actual plot, my mind did wander a bit in some of the digressions.
My third, and perhaps least trivial observation is that Marius is an absolute cunt. In the musical he mostly comes across as a bit wet and lacking in personality, particularly compared to Valjean and Javert, whereas in the novel he is unsurprisingly a lot more fleshed out. But he is fleshed out as a ghastly, manipulative, self-centred, abusive stalker. To begin with, when he first encounters Cosette, he is in his early 20s and she is a plain gawky adolescent, and he completely fails to notice her. When he sees her again few months later she has turned fifteen and 'blossomed', he becomes obsessed, and for some time he stalks her, but without actually speaking to her. At some point during this period the wind blows her skirt up displaying her ankles to anyone who might be watching, and he spends the next fortnight in an angry jealous sulk with /a woman he has never spoken to/. Later, once they have actually met and declared their love for one another, Valjean, believing that Javert is once again on his tail, decides to leave Paris for England. When Cosette tells Marius this, and indicates that she has little choice but to go with him, he first accuses her of never having loved him, and then threatens to kill himself if she leaves. After they are married, he becomes financially controlling, not allowing Cosette to spend any of 'their' money (the vast majority of which was originally hers) on anything remotely luxurious. When he learns of Valjean's past, whilst he doesn't outright forbid him from visiting, because that might make him look like the bad guy, he makes it so unpleasant and embarrassingly clear that he is unwelcome that he eventually stops coming, and essentially dies of a broken heart.
The way he treats Éponine is if anything even worse. He is utterly disdainful and callous, but perfectly happy to take advantage of her when she is useful to him. One way this comes across is in their manner of address. When they first meet, he tutoies her, which is either done mutually within a very close and intimate relationship, by adults speaking to children, or when you want to draw attention to the fact that someone is your social inferior. She meekly accepts this, continuing to vouvoyer him, but obviously on some level kidding herself that it's an indication of intimacy rather than disdain. Some time later, after she had done him some major favours, he switches to vouvoiment. Not because he has begun to respect her or anything decent like that, but because he and Cosette are now tutoying mutually, and he feels the need to insert some clarifying distance with Éponine. She, reasonably enough, asks if she's offended him, which he ignores, and despite her feelings for him being blindingly obvious from this point, he continues to expect her to act as a gobetween and facilitator for his relationship with Cosette.
A final observation is that this interaction with Éponine is one of at least three or four in which the use of, or change between tutoiment and vouvoiment is significant in terms of plot and/or character development, and at some point I'm going to have to see how English translators handled these scenes, because it seems like it would be very difficult to preserve the social nuances without making it very clumsy.
*Other possible candidates being the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, but I don't think either of those really counts as one book.
I've been thinking for some time about pop songs featuring places in London - in the title, which lets out 'Dedicated Follower of Fashion' poncing around various parts to be admired, or 'Lola' down in Old Soho - and having a bit of a struggle (maybe one would do better with Ye Olde Music Hall numbers?) but anyway, came up with these:
This one is perhaps pushing it a bit, as it was actually spoofing 'Rock Island Line', a cover of which was a UK mega-hit for Lonnie Donegan:
Some years ago I advised a composer who was composing an opera about A Historical Figure about whom I am something of a Nexpert, and I am now on their mailing list and get info on their current activities and broadcasts and so on -
And I was invited to the Private View of this, taking place at a venue which is only a reasonable bus-ride and short walk away.
Also giving me the chance to see a small part of the nearish locality with which I am relatively unfamiliar, and which has its charms.
I am not sure I was entirely enthused by the artworks - there was one installation of ceramics where I wished I had someone there to whom I could murmur that they had an urgent phallic look -
My main problem with the venue, however, was the acoustics - I think it was the kind of space where once you got a certain mass of people conversing it would always have been a bit trying for me and my hearing aids, but combined with the ambient music coming out of the various speakers, not optimal at all. (Though maybe its own soundscape....)
I don't think there was anyone there I knew besides The Composer - mostly of a younger generation and art/music people rather than groves of academe - and I didn't really get into much chat, but I did get 2 admiring comments on the green hair streaks and 1 compliment to my pendant (which I think I got at Wiscon, unless it was 4th St?).
However, I have had a sweet email from The Composer thanking me for coming.
Whodunnit: The lone trumper adjacent to my vicinity recently explained that she's not entirely 100% with his current direction, but apparently that's not his fault as she believes he's being effected by satanists, although she didn't manage to explain why this acceptance of satanism isn't his fault. Anyway, more importantly, I've now recreated this bullshit as a running in-joke to mock people who believe conspiracy nonsense. Shortly after The Satanism Explanation was aired, I was in an overlapping group of history fans. We were discussing ancient Macedonia and how Alexander destroyed all Philip II's work and left the Macedonians in a mess, so I said it wasn't Alexander's fault... it was satanists! And now every time somebody in our in-joke circles mentions one of our historical hate-figures someone will respond that his failings weren't his fault because he was being controlled by satanists. Possibly you have to be there to understand how funny the delivery of this running gag is, but I'm so lucky to know so many smart and witty women who make my world a better place.
Earworm danger: I accidentally ended up sharing transport with a group having a 1980s weekend complete with a best [worst] of the 80s soundtrack that I can only hope was intended ironically. Within a few minutes I was in danger of being earwormed by China in Your Hah-yah-yand, and Klingons on the Starboard Bow, warded off by the only marginally better Footloose.
Ferroequinology: I had a chat with the usual bunch of white, male, middle-aged "railway enthusiasts" who told me I shouldn't call myself a trainspotter. I replied that I am definitively a trainspotter because I like seeing specific types of locomotives (and signalling) and nobody should be shamed for innocent interests and enthusiasms. And the delightful upshot of this conversation was that I was invited to a 1980s themed disco that evening (yes, I do have a black belt in the art of talking with strangers on public transport). I was expecting a nostalgic school-disco sort of affair but the "railway enthusiasts" had actually organised a very good live band and a very drinkable bar run by a local micro brewery. My new besties for the evening all proved to be good dancers due to having grown up in the era of Northern Soul and Ska revival music. Although I did garner further evidence for my hypothesis that nobody, however skilled, can dance to Footloose without looking like a white boy from the mid-west at best and a spider on ketamine at worst. And the moral of this story is always to take a polite interest in other people's innocent enthusiasms because dancing the night away with a bunch of ageing gricers in a nice airy marquee is better than sitting alone in an overheated hotel room with the only ventilation being windows that open onto a very climbable roof.
Birbs 02-06 Double the winter maximum number of Jackdaws feeding on my lawn, from 12 to 24. 03-06 Two adorable, learner flyer, juvenile yellow-tinted Blue Tits following their busily generous parent around begging for food.
I’ve been making overnight oats in jars for the bloke and me since the start of the year, and have experimented with varying ingredients and quantities. I think I’ve finally found the balance I like best, so I’ve carefully documented this below in case I ever stop making them regularly.
Base layer is 3 medium-sized strawberries, chopped into 1cm pieces. For the bloke, 4 tablespoons of oats, for me, 3 tablespoons.
Shake the jar to mix oats and strawberries. This is especially important if using the jumbo oats (as shown here), otherwise I end up adding too much milk.
Add milk to just below the top layer of oats. For him, whole milk, for me, oat milk.
Add full-fat Greek yoghurt. For him, 3 heaping tablespoons, for me, 2. This helps to moisten the top layer of oats, and also gives a smooth layer between the oats and the crunchy bits at the top.
Add Linwoods Milled Flaxseed, Sunflower, Pumpkin & Chia Seeds & Goji Berries. Two teaspoons for both of us. I used chia seeds on their own for a while, but I found that I didn’t much care for their crunchy texture and tendency to get stuck in my teeth even after soaking them briefly in water to activate their mucilaginous properties. This mixture is much nicer.
Add 3-4 teaspoons of pomegranate seeds. These have the right balance of juice and crunch after the yoghurt layer.
Finish with granola. I prefer the stuff that has freeze-dried strawberries mixed in. For him, 2 tablespoons, for me, one.
Put lids on jars, store in fridge until morning. I find these fill me up sufficiently that I’m rarely hungry before lunch, although I often eat a banana around coffee time just to give myself a little boost.
I am going to lead, moderately emphatically, with: this is not a recommendation for this book (which in any case I haven't finished). The strapline is "how successful couples turn conflict into connection"; it was published in 2024. As recessional has pointed out to me, some of what's going on is that their target audience is specifically people who are treating each other shittily but don't want to break up/divorce/etc, and do want to learn to do better, but don't have the tools for how.
I, however, am very much coming from a perspective of being much more inclined to push for, if not breakups, the idea that there exists unacceptable behaviour one gets to just nope out over, and also of the tradition of DBT workbooks where there is a heavy emphasis on explicitly acknowledging, out loud, with your words, that the shit you just did is not okay.
All of this having been said, there are two things about this book (so far) that I Must Share.
The first is about a tool the (Schwarz) Gottmans' research group uses. Their research group, for context, is called the Love Lab.
Much of the data and observations about couples in conflict in this book comes from our decades of work in the Love Lab and from other important and groundbreaking observational studies by ourselves and other researchers. But now we are getting even more sophisticated and granular information from the AI we trained with John's emotional coding system, called SPAFF, short for Specific Affect Coding System.
... the second, I say, moving swiftly on, is that a little further on in the book I have encountered a genuinely new-to-me evopsych argument: that because of evolutionary pressures it is men who get Extremely Emotional very quickly, and take a long time to calm back down and reach a point where they can engage rationally again!
... At this point: He's flooded. She's flooded. Both hearts are hammering hard; adrenaline is zinging through their veins. Stan's physiological response has ratcheted up and overwhelmed him even faster than Susan's, and he'll take a lot longer to come down from it.
Here's why: For evolutionary reasons having to do with protecting the tribe and hunting dangerous animals for food, our prehistoric male ancestors gained a survival advantage by being able to quickly mount and sustain an adrenaline-packed response to danger. Those with this rapid response were better able to fight off enemies and hunt for food, and because they were better survivors, their genes were more likely to get passed down and eventually inherited by our men today. That kind of enduring fight-or-flight response might have helped Stan's distant ancestors survive, but it isn't doing him any favors now.
tl;dr for all that I regularly kind of want to throw it across the room there are some amazing moments in this thing. I'm only about halfway through! WHO KNOWS what wonders await me!!!
I've been nearly constantly sick and/or overwhelemed for the last two weeks, but I did read some things!
The Cartoonists Club by Raina Telgemeier, Scott McCloud, et al.— A story about a group of kids forming a cartoonists club and making comics that’s also an intro to basic comics making and concepts. I’ve been wanting to read a bit more comics theory. (I’ve read Understanding Comics, but that was a while ago) Anyways this was cute and fun, but didn’t really scratch my comics theory itch. Would probably be good to give to a kid who is interested in comics though.
Supergirl's Family Vacation written by Brandon T. Snider, art by Sarah Leuver— This is so charming! It’s one of those graphic novels that’s its own little continuity – Supergirl is 13 and lives with her cousin Superman and his family and feels overlooked as a superhero. Anyway she convinces them all to go on vacation and then adventure happens! They go on a space road trip! Natasha Irons is there (she’s Supergirl’s best friend) Lois gets to be awesome but doesn’t steal the scene. There's a short scene of Batman and Wonder Woman getting instructions to take care of the stuff while they are away!
The whole thing is just very warm. I love the manga influenced art, the expressions are great, the colors are great! At one point there are magical girl-esqe transformation scenes. It’s very cute and sweet!
Batman & Robin Eternal by James Tynion IV et al— This did a much better job than Batman Eternal at being a story about legacy, and was just more cohesive in general. Only being half as long probably helped some. I read this when I was sick and bit out of it so I feel like some bits of it went over my head.
Laid-Back Camp Vol. 15-17 by Afro— While I’m on my slice-of-life manga kick I thought it would be nice to get caught up with this series.. It’s still one of my favorites of the genre, it's got food, female friendship, and great landscapes. It does make me sad that I am too disabled to go camping though.
Lightfall books 2-4 by Tim Probert— I was going to read these a bit slower, but they were due at the library so I had to hurry up a bit. This series is really good! I love the art, it's evocative, plus there are great landscapes! Also I didn’t say last time but there is a very good cat! The story went in some unexpected directions and I want to know what happens next! Too bad it's going to be a while before the next book is out.
A new season of my beloved wacky Chinese reality show The Truth has started airing and I'm excited for it! It's been a while since I watched anything.
What I don't understand is why I booked off a million days of annual leave and yet I have to work every day for months somehow. So unfair!!!
Last week was a full-on disaster, just could not do anything at all ever, brain in absolute non-cooperation mode. This week hasn't been so bad, but I'm very tired - yesterday I was tearing up at every vaguely moving scene in the radio drama I was listening to, which is always a Sign - despite doing my best to go to bed at reasonable hours, and I'm out tonight with choir and the rest of the week with church, including the whole of Saturday. Not feeling excited about it, tbh.
However, the heatwave is over; the rain has been occasionally exciting, but so far only when I'm indoors and when I've had to go out it's been relatively light; and the days are so long now. It might still be light when we come out of rehearsal tonight! I don't mind long nights in the winter, generally, but I do love the long summer days.
(Might not be next rehearsal, though, because they've unilaterally declared that they're going to keep us half-an-hour longer for each rehearsal for the rest of the other project. I was absolutely blazingly furious when I read the email; have now calmed down but I'm still 100% not into it, and I'm very tempted just to arrive and leave at the usual times instead... but I think that just ends up looking like petulance, and if I have a lift I'd have to wait around for that anyway...)
But I'm not going to worry about that now, because I like my blood pressure in the normal range, so I shall try and enjoy the blue sky and sunlight outside instead.
Finished Persuasion - but felt a bit out of sync with the online reading.
Then I went on to something Entirely Different: my interest was aroused by rydra_wong posting about Rachel Rosen's Cascade (2022) and Blight (2025) (The Sleep of Reason, #1 and #2), so I went and discovered that the ebooks could be obtained directly from the small Canadian press in question. Got stuck into Cascade and while I would not have thought I was up for grim eco/magical dystopia with festering political intrigue before everything goes to hell, I was absolutely gripped.
Pretty much the only reason I then read LM Chilton, I Think We Should Kill Other People (2026) was I had finished that and had not yet downloaded Blight. This was a not entirely happy mashup of rom-com (this part I thought worked least well), serial killer, and version of 'cut-off country-house' mystery (small airport shut down in middle of snowstorm trapping relevant characters), with added 'reality tv show that includes AI setting' and 'comic intentions'.
On the go
Have now gone on to Blight and may be some time (these are not your slender novellas).
Up next
Alexis Hall, Father Material arrived this week; also KJ Charles, How To Fake It In Society is currently a Kobo deal so have also got that on the ereader.
Still have not yet got to Slightly Foxed, and the latest Literary Review recently arrived.
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