Why This Is Hell

What I read

Finished The Islands of Sorrow and it is a bit slight, definitely one for the Simon Raven completist I would say - a number of the tales feel like outtakes from the later novels.

Decided not for me: Someone You Can Build a Nest In.

Started Val McDermid, The Grave Tattoo (2006), a non-series mystery. Alas, I was not grabbed - in terms of present-day people encounter Historical Mystery, this did not ping my buttons - a) could not quite believe that a woman studying at a somewhat grotty-sounding post-92 uni in an unglam part of London would have even considered doing a PhD on Wordsworth (do people anywhere even do this anymore) let alone be publishing a book on him b)a histmyst involving Daffodil Boy and a not so much entirely lost but *concealed unpublished in The Archives* manuscript of Epic Poem, cannot be doing with. (Suspect foul libel upon generations of archivists at Dove Cottage, just saying.) Gave up.

Read in anticipation of book group next week, Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones (1962).

Margery Sharp, Britannia Mews (1946) (query, was there around then a subgenre of books doing Victoria to now via single person or family?). Not a top Sharp, and I am not sure whether she is doing an early instance of Ace Representation, or just a Stunning Example of Victorian Womanhood (who is, credit is due, no mimsy).

Because I discovered it was Quite A Long Time since I had last read it, Helen Wright, A Matter of Oaths (1988).

Also finished first book for essay review, v good.

Finally came down to a price I consider eligible, JD Robb, Bonded in Death (In Death #60) (2025). (We think there were points where she could have done with a Brit-picker.)

On the go

Barbara Hambly, Murder in the Trembling Lands (Benjamin January #21) (2025). (Am now earwormed by 'The Battle of New Orleans' which was in the pop charts in my youth.)

Up next

Very probably, Zen Cho, Behind Frenemy Lines, which I had forgotten was just about due.

***

O Peter Bradshaw, nevairr evairr change:

David Cronenberg’s new film is a contorted sphinx without a secret, an eroticised necrophiliac meditation on grief, longing and loss that returns this director to his now very familiar Ballardian fetishes.

Well, in further conferencing misadventures, woke up around 5 am with what I came to realise was a crashing migraine - it is so long since I have had one of these as opposed to 'headache from lying orkard' - took medication, and after some little while must have gone to sleep, because I woke up to discover it was nearly 9.30, and I had slept well past the alarm I had set in anticipation of the 9.00 first conference session. But feeling a lot better.

I was only just in time to grab some breakfast before they started clearing it up.

The day's papers were perhaps a bit less geared towards my own specific interests - and I was sorry to miss the ones I did - but still that there Dr oursin managed the occasional intervention. There were also some good conversations had.

So the conference, as a conference, was generally judged a success, if somewhat exhausting.

I managed to get the train from the University to Birmingham New Street with no great difficulty.

However, the train I was booked on was somewhat delayed (though not greatly, not cancelled, and no issues of taking buses as in various announcements) and I initially positioned myself at the wrong bit of the platform and had to scurry along through densely packed waiting passengers.

Journey okay, with free snacks, though onboard wifi somewhat recalcitrant.

At Euston, the taxi rank was closed!!!!

Fortunately one can usually grab a cab in the Euston Road very expeditious, and I did.

So I am now home and more or less unpacked.

Given that Mercury is, I recollect, the deity of travellers, is Mercury in retrograde?

For hedjog is going floppp.

Travel troubles today: being unable to see where the hell the alleged railway station near hotel was, and taking a taxi instead; railway out of order this evening, Ubers were summoned to take participants to hotel.

Yr hedjog was Living Bit of History in opening roundtable.

And in later sessions, there was a certain amount of That There Dr oursin going on in the questions/comments....

Some good conversation - even if hearing aids not too helpful in crowded rooms - but have noped out from evening meal, feeling too tired, will go for light meal here and early night (I hope).

Wot a saga, eh, wot a saga, first time I have ventured significantly forth these many years -

And to start with, MAJOR HEAT EVENT.

In anticipation, I had - or so I thought - prudently booked a taxi via taxiapp, with a certain amount of leeway, just in case -

- which turned out very prudent, as when I went to check the booking this morning the app was showing 'network error' and this was clearly on their end rather than mine, and a little looking about suggests that this is not their first rodeo server problem.

So when, at designated time, taxi cameth not, I set out towards the Tube, not without some hope that a black cab might pass me on my way, but that Was Not To Be -

And on reflection, I should perhaps have waited for a Bank train, because getting out on Charing X platforms at Euston involves rather too many stairs.

However, Avanti kindly texted me the approx time my train would be boarding, and this all seemed set - although my (1st class) seat was aisle, backwards, there was nobody in the other 3 seats so I switched -

HAH.

When we reached Coventry, choochoo sighed and gave up, and we had to debouch and take the next Birmingham bound train - which was delayed....

At Birmingham New Street had considerable faff trying to discover a Way Out that would take me to a taxi rank.

When I finally arrived at hotel booked by conference organisers there was an immense performance trying to find the right group booking, as it was not under any title that I might have thought of but that of some hireling booking agency.

However, I am now in nice cool room and have had tasty room service snack. Even if I have had to wrestle with getting my laptop to talk to the free wifi...

But this is just plain bizarre: reading the AI summaries rather than watching the series or presumably, reading books.

What is even gained thereby?

It's so massively Point Thahr Misst about why one consumes story-telling that I can't even.

Why not just go straight to: this work manifests [whichever of the whatever the allegedly number it is of standard plots it is] tout court?

I guess these are the people that live on Soylent and pride themselves on 'rawdogging' airflights?

Have they completely eliminated enjoyment and fun from their lives, and if so, WHY????

Conversely, and in the interests of pleasure, there has recently opened a bookshop entirely dedicated to romance, in Notting Hill. (I do cringe a bit at calling it 'Saucy Books'.)

Back in the day, in Charing Cross Road, there used to be a dedicated Romance section alongside Murder One and the SFF section in the basement, all in one bookshop, but that has long been one with the dodo.

I was a little startled to see, quite so high up in the chart of UK's best and worst seaside towns, Dungeness. Which isn't really even a town (Wikipedia describes it as a hamlet), more a sandspit at the end of the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway, famed for lighthouses, shingle beaches, nature reserves, Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage, and a decommissioned nuclear power station ('Long journey ahead' for nuclear plant clean-up).

[A] barren and bewitching backdrop for a getaway. A vast swathe of this shingle headland is designated a National Nature Reserve, cradling around a third of all British plant species, with some 600 having been recorded, from rugged sea kale to delicate orchids. Exposed to the Channel and loomed over by twin nuclear power stations, Dungeness has, over recent decades, become an unlikely enclave for artists and a popular spot for day-trippers, horticulturalists and birders alike.

Looking at the criteria scored on, it really is rather weird: completely lacking in the hotels, shopping and seafront/pier categories and not much for tourist attractions but scores high on peace and quiet and scenery.

Perhaps there is a larger number of people looking for this kind of getaway experience, invoking a certain eerie folk-horror vibe, than one would suppose. Not really a Summer Skies and Golden Sands kind of experience, take it away, The Overlanders.

Surprised that somewhere like Margate didn't rate higher.

What I read

Finished Cluny Brown.

Defaulted to rereads of Agatha Christie, The Murder in the Mews, The Murder in the Vicarage, Towards Zero and Taken at the Flood.

Somebody on my reading list mentioned Meg Moseman, The Falling Tower (2025) - spooky goings on at Harvard involving the ghostly presence of Charles Williams among other things. May be just me but I found it all a bit rushed: then I realised that my bar for Weird Stuff Going On In Academic Setting was set very high indeed years ago by Pamela Dean's Tam Lin (I considered that there may also be issues around Times Have Changed).

Managed to find my copy of GB Stern's Summer's Play aka The Augs (1933/4) though couldn't lay my hands on The Woman in the Hall alas. Really very good. A problem for republishing may be a few casual allusions to blackface seaside entertainment of the period.

Because I've never actually read it though I've read other of her works, and it was being inaccurately discussed recently as lost, overlooked, neglected etc, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, The Homemaker (1924). This is what, like 40 or so years before The Feminine Mystique and 'the problem that has no name'?

On the go

Just recently republished (collation of two previous collections published in limited editions in 1994 and 1997), Simon Raven, The Islands of Sorrow and Other Macabre Tales. So Simon, very Raven.

I started John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In (2024) which I know has been widely admired but I'm somehow just not vibeing with it.

Also well on into first of books for essay review, v good.

Up next

Dunno. The new Barbara Hambly arrives pretty much just as (DV) I am off to a conference.

On the possible academic library etc access thing, somebody has kindly pointed me at the Institute of Historical Research Non-Stipendiary Fellowships, which look fairly much the thing -

- except that the window for application closes on Friday, and besides getting an application together I need a letter of support testifying to my 'interest in research, good faith and behaviour' (at least, unlike the Bodleian, there is no cavil about naked flames).

So there's that.

In other, is this good or bad, had an email from person on committee of Society with which I have had associations in the past and published in their organ (hurhhurh) saying a) they have come across a piece I published in that organ and might I like to give a paper at their upcoming conference?

Well, I could possibly throw something together -

And b) the archives of this Society and a precursor organisation in which I am particularly interested have been deaccessioned by the Academic Institution where they were held (which has, I remark, form in this matter), and returned them to the Society.

I have, in what I hope was a reasonable tone, exhorted them to put them in another repository pronto, I recommend X, where they will be with archives of related org, also the vast and important collection previously unhomed by the Institution in question.

(*MUTED ARCHIVIST SCREAMING*)