Suspects.

This was one of those weeks when several things come along making demands upon one's time and energies and while some of this might be considered to be what one has let oneself in for -

- really could have done without all of it having expectations of me Doing Something with a fair degree of expedition, even if some of this was pressure I was putting on myself.

It was really just as well that I found that the rescheduled postponed seminar - which I learnt about very late in the day - was already booked up so I couldn't get to it.

Not the week to have been smitten with a little story idea that I'd like to work on.

What I read

Well, mostly it was that book on the Huxleys, which was heavily weighted towards TH ('Darwin's bulldog', though Bashford massively nuances his relationship with Charlie and his ideas) and Julian, with supporting intermittent appearances by other members of the family. It was thematic, and did a lot of chronological back and forthing, and maybe I would have liked a bit more about relationships, including with people outside the kinship group, I was frankly boggling at certain archives which had not been consulted wot wot wot and characters who did not feature. Also I'm not sure the Penguin p/b was the ideal physical reading experience....

Then I took a break by reading Robert B Parker, Painted Ladies (Spenser, #38) (2010)

On the go

And then I moved on to Sarah B Rodriguez, The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation (2020). She touched on this very gruesome and depressing episode towards the end of her earlier work on Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment (2014). While Burt did accept the role of the clitoris in female sexual pleasure, he thought there was a design flaw in the female genitalia and performed surgery on the vulval area (often without the woman's knowledge in the course of other operations) (as well as vaginal tightening procedures). He thought this would promote sexual harmony in marriage (in a very male-dominated model) and in fact it caused massive suffering.

I am having to take breaks - between the accounts of his activities and the women's experiences, the state of the medical profession's inability/reluctance to do anything is cringe-making, though, historian of medicine remarks, the professional omerta of code of silence and cover-up, not exactly unprecedented and unknown.

So I have been going back to Points of Departure.

Up next

Really must get to Dawn's Left Hand. And the latest Literary Review is not going to read itself.

Skulls for sale: Inside Britain’s macabre trade in human remains.

Not actually about this, but bone-related anecdotes from my former working life.

I have recounted the tale of the plague-pit bones received as part of an accession of archives that we finally managed to dispose to a good appropriate home (and nobody came down with plague, I may add, while they were sitting around various offices in the plastic shopping bag in which they were received).

Archives do tend to contain certain bits and bobs of human detritus but this is usually more along the lines of baby's curls lovingly kept after they were finally cut off (though the toenail is still unforgettable).

I was working in some adjacency to a museum which contained remains - which were ethically deaccessioned/transferred at some point.

I am not quite sure - it was in the very early days when things were seriously informal - whether it was just that a certain elderly pathologist had been given space to examine a collection of skulls quite near my office, the effect was definitely Gothick, under some Old Boys' Act.

On the baby-teeth necklace thing mentioned, I can remember a story I read in some book for children - ?on the shelves at my primary school? - in which a brother and sister were trying to collect their teeth as they lost them, they being at the age when second teeth were coming in, in order to make a tasteful piece of jewellery for Mother Dearest. And it was quite devastating when one of them went to the dentist and the dentist just chucked the extracted tooth into the gurgly-fountain-thing WOE. Other times, wot.

Last week's bread appeared to be holding out but then developed mould spots - didn't seem worth making bread at that point in the week and there were still rolls left over.

Friday night supper: penne with Peppadew Roasted Red Peppers whizzed in the blender and heated while the penne were cooking.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft roll recipe, light spelt flour, maple syrup, cranberries, turned out quite nicely.

Today's lunch: venison haunch steaks, beaten out a little and rubbed with cut garlic clove and crushed 5-pepper blend, coriander seeds and juniper berries (this was perhaps a bit coarse), panfried in olive and butter and deglazed with madeira, served with La Ratte potatoes roasted in goosefat, slowcooked tenderstem broccoli (this turned out rather better than sometimes) and a rather small salad of some leftover pomadoro tomatoes halved and sprinkled with a little salt, sugar and Amonia berry balsamic vinegar.