opusculus

This week's bread: the Country Oatmeal aka Monastery Loaf from Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread (2:1:1 wholemeal/strong white/pinhead oatmeal), turned out nicely if perhaps a little coarser than the recipe anticipates (medium oatmeal has been for some reason a bit hard to come by).

Friday night supper: ven pongal (South Indian khichchari), v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, texture seemed a bit off, possibly the dough could have been a bit slacker?

Today's lunch: the roasted Mediterranean vegetable thing - whole garlic cloves, red onion, fennel, red bell pepper, baby peppers, baby courgettes and aubergine (v good), served with couscous + raisins.

Seem to have been seeing a cluster of things about litter, and picking it up, lately, what with this one Lake District: Family shouted at for picking up litter, and the thing I posted recently about the young woman who was snarking on the Canals and Rovers Trust about what she perceived as her singlehanded mission to declutter the local canal bank: "Elena might feel alone in tackling London's litter waste", and then this week's 'You Be The Judge' in the weekend Guardian is on a related theme:

Should my girlfriend stop picking up other people’s litter?

(She is at least throwing it away in a responsible fashion: I worry about the couple whose flat is being cluttered up with culinary appliances where one feels maybe the ones that aren't actually being used anymore could be rehomed via charity shops before they are buried under an avalanche of redundant ricecookers etc).

As far as litter and clutter goes, National Trust tears down Union flag from 180-year-old monument. Actually, carefully removed, and we think there are probably conservation issues involved: quote from NT 'We will assess whether any damage has been caused to the monument'. See also White horse checked for any damage caused by flag. We do not think respect and care for heritage is uppermost in the minds of people who do these jelly-bellied flagflapping gestures.

Okay, my dearios, I am sure all dear rdrs are with me that tradwives are not trad, they are deploying an aesthetic loosely based on vague memories of the 1950s - and meedja representations at that - and some very creepy cultish behaviour - they are not returning to some lovely Nachral State -

And that as I bang on about a lot, women have been engaged in all kinds of economic activity THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE OF HISTORY since economic activity became A Thing.

Why tradwives aren’t trad: The housewife is a Victorian invention. History shows us women’s true economic power

I have a spot of nitpickery to apply - it rather skips over and elides the move from the household economy into factories e.g., leading to 'separate spheres' with wife stuck at home (and even that was a very blurry distinction, I mutter); and also the amount of exploitative homeworking undertaken by women of the lower classes (often to the detriment of any kind of 'good housekeeping').(Not saying middle-class women didn't also find ways of making a spot of moolah to eke out household budget.)

And of course a lot of tradwives are actually performing as economically productive influencers: TikTok tradwives: femininity, reproduction, and social media - in a tradition of women who made a very nice living out of telling other women how to be domestic goddesses, ahem ahem.

For some reason, concatenation of open tabs on this theme.

Sociability was intrinsic to British politics in the eighteenth-century:

Although women were prevented by custom from voting, holding most patronage appointments or taking seats in the Lords (even if they were peeresses in their own rights), politics ran through the lives of women from politically active families — and their political activities largely took place through the social arena, whether it was in London or in the provinces. Like their male counterparts, they used social situations to gather and disseminate political news and gossip, discuss men and measures, facilitate networking and build or maintain factional allegiances, or seek patronage for themselves or their clients.

This Is What Being in Your Twenties Was Like in 18th-Century London:

Browne wrote that he needed money to pay rent—and to purchase stockings, breeches, wigs and other items he deemed necessary for his life in London. “Cloaths which [I] have now are but mean in Comparison [with] what they wear here,” he wrote in one letter.
Financial worries didn’t stop Browne from enjoying his time in the city. “Despite telling his father how short of cash he was, Browne maintained a lively social life, meeting friends and eating and drinking around Fleet Street, close to the Inns of Court,” per the Guardian.
According to the National Trust, Browne’s descriptions of his social life evoke the scenes captured by William Hogarth.

The Friendship Book of Anne Wagner (1795-1834):

What is a friendship book? As Dr Lynley Anne Herbert relates in her post for us on a seventeenth-century specimen, it is a lot like an early version of social media, a place to record friendships and social connections.

This one is actually Victorian (and I think I may have mentioned before?): Peter McLagan (1823-1900): Scotland’s first Black MP - notes that he was not even the first Black MP to sit in the Commons.

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And this is actually a bit random: apparently the Niels Bohr Library & Archives 'is a repository and hub for information in the history of physics, astronomy, geophysics, and allied fields' rather than exclusively Bohring. Anyway, an interview with the staff there about what they do.