What I read

Finished Dragon Harvest.

Read the latest Literary Review.

Read Angela Thirkell, What Did It Mean? (The Barsetshire Novels Book 23) (1954), which, I depose, is the one where Ange, sighing and groaning, realised that she was going to have to write The One About The Coronation, like what everybody else was doing. (The title alludes to a cryptic prophecy by one of the local peasantry.) So there is a fair amount of phoning it in, but on the other hand, some Better Stuff than one might expect for that period of her output.

On the go

And it's back to Lanny: Upton Sinclair, A World to Win (Lanny Budd #7) (1946), in which WW2 is raging but so far, USA is not in it and Our Hero can still pootle about Europe under the guise of being an art expert while mingling in very elevated company indeed.

Up next

Once that is done, I should probably turn my attention to the very different WW2 experience of Nick Jenkins in the next one up for the Dance to the Music of Time book group, The Soldier's Art.

This week's bread(as last week's developed mould): Len Deighton's Mixed Wholemeal from the Sunday Times Book of Real Bread, 4:1:1 wholemeal flour/strong white flour/mix of wheatgerm, bran, and pinhead oatmeal, splosh of sunflower oil rather than melted butter, rather nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown grated apple, started out as 70/30% wholemeal spelt/einkorn flour but ended up more like 50/50%, maple syrup, ground ginger, quite good.

Today's lunch: diced casserole beef slow-cooked in soy sauce, rice wine, and water with star anise, served with sticky rice with lime leaves, cauliflower florets roasted in pumpkin seed oil with cumin seeds, and sugar snap peas stirfried with garlic

Passed by my skimming eye yesterday somebody commenting on how people are still unclear on the concepts of the Dark Ages/Medieval Times/Renaissance and what/when they were -

- and I was muttering to myself, huh, those were after all a longish time ago, people are unclear on THE VICTORIANS AND THEIR ERA which is really not that long ago -

- and then I thought, hang on, we do not even need to go that far back, have I not expatiated upon people going on about that lovely healthy food grandma used to cook -

That would be grandma living in the heyday of tinned food/convenience food etc etc, what is this pastoral myth you are propagating?

And then we get people trying to make excuses for living persons having Certain Opinions or Phrasing Things in Certain Ways and saying 'oh well, they were brung up in a different era'.

So was I, bozo, so was I, that era was the 60s/70s/80s and unless they were being brought up in entire seclusion as part of a mad scientist's experiment, I doubt they could have completely missed what was going on.

I'm boggling a little at this article about nostalgia for parenting and childhood in the 90s, because I bet in the 90s they were looking back to Some Earlier Era, and there were panics about Modern Childhood, and Meedja, and so on.

In my post about manners yesterday, conuly brought up in the comments a couple of posts to Ask A Manager from An Awful Young Man, who, on the evidence given, probably knows all the intricacies of cutlery and which way to pass the port, but is unfit for release into general society:

First post:

I was travelling home on a packed train with my bike. Suddently, I was approached by a lady who asked me, rather rudely, to give my seat to a man, her father, who was travelling with her. Since I was sitting on a regular seat (not a seat designated for disabled passangers) and had to read some materials to prepare for my interview, I ignored her. Unfortunately, when I was getting off the train, I accidentally moved my bike in a way that it caught and left dirty stains on her coat. I did not think much of this till the next day when I ran into the same woman and one of directors in the lift in my office building. It transpired that she is the CEO’s wife. She said nothing and did not acknowledge me, but it was very clear to me that she recognised me.

Second post:

I wish I had been told the receptionist/janitor/security guard story by career services at my university, which is one of those prestigious English ones. (Note from Alison: This is a reference to advice that you should be polite to receptionists/janitors/security guards when interviewing.) We get a lot of tips about how to write our resume and cover letter and how we should conduct ourselves during interviews, but not this type of real life recommendation.

But, my dearios, is this not a positively archetypal morality tale? At least one of the commenters pointed out its resemblance to Folktale Motif of Young Man on Quest who Fails to Help Old Woman, Bad Luck Eventuates/His Despised Younger Brother Does Help Her, Go Him, Wealth and Princess Are His Lot.

So there's that one.

It could also make a 'Sliding Doors' tale where the different outcomes of doing the wrong and right thing change destiny.

Or maybe he's condemned to repeat that journey and interview over and over again, Groundhog Day style, until he Learns His Lesson.

Or, maybe this is one of those novels that takes An Incident and does it from different viewpoints and that while to Mr I Am The Main Character here, this is all terribly important, there are other people who are going about their lives and barely noticing him unless they have to, and even then they have their own concerns.

I was madly irked yesterday to come across this in a report in The Times on classism at Oxbridge (surprise surprise NOT, surely, that is where one would expect to find it in its native haunts?):

'being offered “lessons in manners” after picking up the wrong spoon at a formal college dinner.'

a) I do not think deployment of cutlery comes under the heading of 'manners', unless, as in, was it The Lion in Winter or some forgotten Arthurian epic, somebody takes these here newfangled forks to be instruments of assassination. Or maybe starts flicking soup across the table with improvised spoon trebuchets. Providing that we're at the Norbert Elias Civilising Process stage of using cutlery rather than our fingers, anyway.

Wot do they even teach them at Oxbridge these days, eh?

b) Okay, people do weaponise manners, but essentially, manners are supposed to be about making people feel comfortable and at ease, and if you're picking on somebody for not knowing some niche culturally-specific rule relating to spoons, that is Bad Manners and RUDE.

Cite here to Cardinal Newman on The Gentleman:

The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast — all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at his ease and at home.

So I am pretty sure this is Totally Apocryphal, or else it was actually done by somebody who Was Not Queen V or even royal, but it is a story about Proper Behaviour.

GB Stern - not sure whether this is in her 'rag-bag chronicles' or one of the novels or maybe even both - mentions Mittel-European landowner lady who, when dining her tenants, deliberately spills glass of wine on the tablecloth herself, right at the beginning of the meal, to set them at ease.