Brian's Friends

Though I suspect it's more just 'did not bother to do any research'.

Two pieces in today's Guardian Saturday.

The one about blokes being (IMHO) totally scammed over testosterone doesn't appear to be online yet, but I, who have done my time in the noisome pits of sex-related quackery, was going: this is the latest round of what used to be rejuvenation operations of various kinds (HAI! WB Yeats!), the Blakoe energiser, electrical belts, devices to prevent the leakage of the precious manly fluids, pills to restore Lost Manhood, and I wouldn't be surprised if radium tonics had featured at some point.

The placebo reaction is a powerful thing.

And then we get The rise of the literary nepo baby? The children of famous novelists on following in their parents’ footsteps.

Well, maybe in these parlous times it does help getting an agent and one's foot in the door at a publisher? But it is hardly a new phenomenon that there is More Than One Writer In The Family.

Will concede that perhaps I am thinking of those literary families of an earlier era which were perhaps more into churning out more or less hackwork as a cottage industry (e.g. the Allinghams).

Then I bethought me that Angela Thirkell's son Colin MacInnes was also a writer, albeit, as one may see from that Wikipedia entry, a very different article from Mama, wot. (I seem to recall from the bios of her that I read that they were estranged and he was a hostile witness.)

There's also a bit of a reverse pattern in the Drabble family, whereby John Drabble took to novel-writing after his daughters. (Famous Sibling Literary Feuds....)

Story of enslaved boy featured in 1748 Joshua Reynolds portrait emerges in new study - I online attended a seminar the other week about black children in England from the C17th to C19th which leant fairly heavily on depictions in art (and also sounded a bit like the speaker had pulled out a bit at random examples from their 10 or was it more boxes of research materials) and implied that we could not know what happened to them once they were not more or less cute ornamental pets, so this article goes some way to show that sometimes the larger life story can be discovered.

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This is interesting, given that it is a phase of the parturition cycle that doesn't tend to get that much attention - okay, I have read More Than The Average Person on 'bringing on the menses' and further measures if they were not brought on, and a fair amount about actual childbirth in history: but this is a bit unusual: Anticipating Birth in Early Modern England:

Scholars have described the days leading up to birth in the early modern period as a time when women purchased linens, prepared bedchambers, and called upon the services of a midwife and their gossips. However, manuscript recipe collections reveal that preparations in anticipation of labour went beyond such measures and incorporated the consumption of specific medicines. This article studies remedies that were designed to be taken six weeks before birth to reveal, in new ways, the experiences of late pregnancy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

More exciting work from the good people at CamPop, this time circling out from the census records: By linking millions of census records across decades, researchers are turning static snapshots of Victorian Britain into dynamic life histories – revealing how people moved, worked and lived in ways never before possible.

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‘Live and let live’: Northern Ireland historian uncovers surprising era of tolerance of gay men:

Hulme said tacit ignorance and public silence enabled male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation or regulation, with a “live and let live” ethos especially prevalent in the working class.

Muttering that this information can be found in the household recipe books at much less elite social levels, still, it's useful work if it gets people aware of just how diverse British food at that period was: The King’s Dinner: Family, nation, and identity on the British table, 1760-1820.

Have not been sleeping terribly well lately, thus the blahs.

Not sure why this is, because it is not lower back kicking up etc (yay physio) but more that annoying thing of Morpheus seeming very skittish.

Possibly the whole life-admin stuff that going on at the moment? (2nd appt with our Person of Law next week, also appt to Register Our Intentions.)

Perchance the Even Tenor of Our Ways is just a leeetle disturbed.

Still, am doing my best to pull together Something Entertaining and Instructive on Condoms and related matters, which is largely remixing stuff which I do already have, but not entirely.

Am a bit annoyed that I was informed that I could anticipate proofs of a review today but so far no can haz, would have liked to get that out of the way.

Syphilis cases in expectant mothers have dramatically risen since the pandemic (in the USA) and there is consequently a rise in congenital syphilis:

can result in a range of negative outcomes, the most serious of which is miscarriage or stillbirth. If the fetus survives, long-term developmental delays, blindness, hearing loss, permanent teeth and bone malformation, heart defects and rashes can occur. Symptoms of congenital syphilis can happen immediately at birth, or they may not be recognized until the child is over 2 years old, when molars erupt, or as bones grow and the changes become more pronounced.
Congenital syphilis is treatable with antibiotics, which will stop progression of the disease but cannot reverse any negative outcomes that have already occurred.

And will this once more become a common tale? Telling abortion stories: The life of Florence P. Evans (1913–1935)

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This is well creepy: ‘It ruined my night’: photographers accused of targeting women at St Andrews May Dip: 'Students taking part in university’s annual ritual say images of them in swimwear are being published without consent in national newspapers':

In recent years this quirky ritual has become a target for agency and freelance photographers looking to cash in on images of students in bikinis, including some who camp out overnight on the East Sands dunes near the Fife coastal path.

Last week's bread held out remarkably.

Friday night supper: penne with Peppadew roasted red peppers in brine whooshed in the blender and heated.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla.

Today's lunch: diced lamb shoulder casseroled in white wine with baby carrots, chopped leeks, bay leaf, thyme, white peppercorns and salt, with a sliced potato topping (blanched in boiling water for 5 mins, brushed with melted butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper, put on for the final 45 mins or so), served with white-braised fine green beans and baby courgettes.