mousetrappling | Recent Entries

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Debt of Honour", Tom Clancy - only read a tiny bit in the last two weeks (didn't take it away with me) so nothing new to say.

Read "Valour's Trial" and "The Truth of Valour", both by Tanya Huff & books 4 & 5 in the series respectively. Mil-SF. Book 5 sits a bit oddly, especially as I think it's the end of that series (there's another follow on one) as it's more of a coda than a continuation. Still liking them.

Read "The Delirium Brief", Charles Stross. Most recent of the Laundry Files series - Lovecraftian horror meets Civil Service bureaucracy in a world where magic is a branch of mathematics that's a close cousin of computer science. Here we have the perils of outsourcing your magical defence department ... The series is really changing as it goes on, it started reasonably light-hearted but now is definitely not. Still enjoying it.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - finished the chapter on relations with France in the second half of this period (with England gradually losing the ground she'd gained), and now about halfway through the chapter on domestic affairs in the same time frame. Henry V did well at that side of being a king as well, but his son was pretty much indifferent to the whole thing even after his minority (and before he went catatonic off & on).

Also read a bit of "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat", Samin Nosrat, which was one of my Xmas presents - a book about cooking as well as a cookery book, I'll read it properly as my next book when I'm finished with the history book.

Hidden Meanings: 1.1.27-1.8.1 - all of chapter 1 is about symbols of blessings, bats, butterflies, Buddha's Hand citron, the Fu character (the word for blessing), Fuxing (the God of Blessings), Tianguan (the Heavenly Official), lions and plum blossom. I like that one of The 5 Blessings is "a peaceful death", says a lot about the world these were originally from.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 1.D-2,5 of History of India - returned to the historical narrative, still concentrating on Pataliputra.

Music: while running I listened to "Lungs", Florence + The Machine; "The Dark Third", Pure Reason Revolution; "Vampire Weekend", Vampire Weekend; "LCD Soundsystem" LCD Soundsystem; "We Started Nothing", The Ting Tings; "A Certain Trigger" Maxïmo Park.

Watching

ep 6 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - still making us hungry. I now have the cookery book :)

U2 at the BBC - both the 1hr version and the 1.25hr version, songs & snippets of interview. I like U2 so I liked the programme.

ep 2 & 3 of Egypt's Golden Empire - only half watched this, it's something J's parents had recorded for us and I was reading my book at the same time as it was on the TV. Covered Amenhotep III/Akenaten in one episode & Ramesses II in the next. Reasonably good.

Egypt Unwrapped: The Scorpion King - as above I only half watched it. Seemed good, shame there didn't seem to be more of the series for them to record. Nice to see something about older & more obscure Egyptian history rather than just the few well known Pharaohs.

Great Egyptians: Cleopatra - again, only half watched it, bit less impressed tho.

Journey into the Valley of the Kings - half watched, again. Seemed good but a bit dated.

Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time - ( mild spoilers, maybe? )

Film: Dad's been telling me to watch The Godfather for ages, so on Xmas day we sat down after lunch & did so. Enjoyed it a lot.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Debt of Honour", Tom Clancy. The thing that's striking me about this one is that whilst the Russians were treated mostly as Noble Enemies in the books set pre-end of Cold War, the Japanese in this one are really not. Nor were the Vietnamese in Without Remorse. It's almost as if your skin colour affects how Clancy judges your motivations ...

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - now on to the relationship with France in the second half of the period covered. After Richard II's ignoring of France to concentrate on promoting the brand of his awesomeness and Henry IV's concentration on bolstering his domestic support, Henry V is ready to go kick some French arse with an emphasis on conquer rather than raid. He's pretty successful at it too, but then he dies.

Maps: 2010 CE - the end of the book. I'd recommend the book - "The New Atlas of World History: Global Events at a Glance", John Haywood - both as a reference to dip in to and as something to read through like I've done over the last few months, gave me a real feel for the ebb & flow of history.

Hidden Meanings: the next book I'm reading through one bite-sized chunk at a time is "Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art", Terese Tse Bartholomew. So far read the Introduction & sections 1.1->1.1.26, which concern the symbolism of bats. The word for bat is a pun for blessings and for riches, so motifs including bats are generally wishes for blessings.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 1.4-1.11,1.A-1.D of History of India - the historical narrative (numbered episodes) is through to Ashoka (and just after him to the collapse of his empire 53 years after his death). The podcaster is also doing a series of episodes with letters which explore more general topics from the same historical period as each narrative segment - including things like the little that is known about South Indian history during this time.

Sunday podcast: IOT episode about Feathered Dinosaurs - concentrating on the discoveries coming out of the vast fossil fields recently discovered in China which are re-writing a lot of what was "known" about dinosaurs. Full of "ooh, that's interesting" facts, like you can tell the colours the feathers were by the shapes of the melanosomes (? or melanocytes, I've forgotten which) preserved in the fossilised feathers.

Music: while running I listened to "Hands", Little Boots; the first Imagined Village album; "Cruel Sister", Rachel Unthank & the Winterset; "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy", Sarah McLachlan; and "The Greatest", Cat Power.

Live Music: we went to see Fish play at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, supported by Doris Brendel. The support act suffered from a poor sound mix I think - the vocals were very muddy sounding, and even when she was talking to the audience the words felt indistinct. Otherwise quite good with a strong steampunk aesthetic visually - didn't grab me enough to want to check out more of the music tho. Fish was good, as ever, but I think it's getting more noticeable how much he needs to alter the pitch of the older songs to fit his aging vocal range.

Watching

ep 5 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - still making us hungry.

The Farthest: Voyager's Interstellar Journey - Storyville documentary about the Voyager missions as it's the 40th anniversary of the launch of the two probes. And Voyager 1 is now in interstellar space, the first man-made object to leave our solar system. Good programme, tho rather focused on the human side as opposed to the science side.

Film: went to the cinema for the first time in a year (for me), to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I enjoyed it a lot, can't say much without spoilers tho.

Books

Fiction: Finally finished "Without Remorse", Tom Clancy ... "our hero" does indeed get saved by the love of a good woman, and is let off legal consequences for the string of murders because he's useful to the CIA (and as a quid pro quo he assassinates a traitor for them). What a ... delightful ... message. Now reading "Debt of Honour", also by Tom Clancy. This one is back to the "modern day" of the 90s, and there's a war with Japan brewing now that the USSR has gone pop.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - now reading about England's relationships with her (non-France) neighbours during this period. The section that references Scotland was actually more concerned with the border region - Scotland itself became more unified as a result of English aggression (unlike either Ireland or Wales) and so was too strong for the English to colonise. The lords on the English side of the border had their own fair share of bitter feuds, however, and it's the way these become entangled with royal & court politics (particularly during the time of Henry VI) that helps make the Wars of the Roses into as big a mess as they were.

Maps: 1962-1991 CE. Not just the Cold War and its end as the USSR falls apart, but also the end of significant European colonial holdings. Only one map left now! Moving on to a book about symbolism in Chinese art once I'm finished with the maps.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 84b-87 plus a bonus ep of the History of Egypt, which I'm now up to date with. These covered the accession of Tutmosis IV and the beginning of his reign, plus a review of the new Assassin's Creed game which is set in Ptolemaic Egypt (and they've done a good job of make it look & feel Egyptian as best as we know).

ep 1.0-1.4 of History of India - starting to listen to a new podcast, this one will cover the history of India from c.600 BCE mostly through the lens of looking at the history of Pataliputra (a city on the Ganges that is significant at many points). Only a few episodes in, but so far so good - the podcaster has an entertaining style with a mix of storytelling and discussion of what the solid facts are.

Sunday podcast: IOT episode about The Picts - the term "Pict" starts out as a vaguely derogatory term for non-Romanised Britons but gradually comes to mean a specific kingdom(s) in the north & east of Scotland which lasts from the late Roman period through to when the Vikings come & invade. There's recently been a lot of new archaeological work which is showing that the Picts were a much richer & more interesting culture than the 19th Century historians thought.

Music: while running I listened to "Brothers in Arms", Dire Straits; "Appetite for Destruction", Guns'n'Roses; "Cross Road", Bon Jovi; "Alas I Cannot Swim", Laura Marling; and "Hands", Little Boots.

Watching

ep 7 of Eight Days that Made Rome - the opening of the Colosseum by the second Emperor of the Flavian dynasty. Which gave Hughes a chance to talk about the Roman love of bloodsports.

ep 7 of Blue Planet II - this was the final episode of the series and was about the people who're working to save the oceans & the ocean flora & fauna from the effects of pollution & climate change. A good end to the series, but it made for depressing viewing.

ep 2 of Digging for Britain (Series 6) - this one covered "The East" and included some incredibly well preserved remains from early London, as well as other things included a couple of underwater excavations.

ep 3 of Army: Behind the New Frontlines - the series finished up with a look at the work the army is doing as a part of the UN humanitarian mission in South Sudan. As I think I said when I talked about the last episode - this series is an incredibly well done piece of pro-army propaganda.

ep 3 of Nile Rodgers: How to Make it in the Music Industry - wrapping up Nile's career with his more recent collaborations and exploring how sampling/digital manipulation of music changes how songs are written. I enjoyed this series, particularly interesting how much of the soundtrack of the last 40-odd years has actually been written by Nile Rodgers. There's a lot of instantly recognisable hits that I had no idea had anything to do with him.

ep 4 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - still making us hungry. I've asked for the companion cookery book for Xmas :)

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Without Remorse", Tom Clancy ... I'd forgotten the protagonist's mother was also fridged. He is, of course, being saved by the love of a good woman who has come to see that all of his murderings are for a good cause. Or something. As you can tell, I'm eye-rolling rather a lot reading this - 20-something yo me had poor taste in books at times ;)

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - now reading about England's relationships with her (non-France) neighbours during this period. I've read about the Irish & the Welsh so far, both subjected to English rule in this time. Both are effectively colonised by the English, but in Ireland you get a situation more like later colonisation (English officials in charge of everything, not much fraternisation) whereas in Wales there was a bit more intermarrying and later in the period the English rulers tended to be absentee landlords and it was the Welsh that actually ran things. Scotland is up next.

Maps: 1942-1950 CE. WW2 and the developing Cold War. The big surprise here for me is how long bits of British Empire are still kicking around.

Listening

Podcasts: ep B44-B48 of the Ancient World - caught up with him again, these episodes were mostly looking at Palmyra & the history of & context for Xenobia's conflict with Rome.

ep 149-157 of the History of Byzantium - up to date here too, mostly these episodes were about the long reign of Basil II, which was mostly spent fighting the Bulgarians (that war was 4 decades) combined with the occasional stomping of the Arabs in Syria to remind them who was boss.

ep 83-84b of the History of Egypt - these episodes wrap up the reign of Amenhotep II, who the podcaster wasn't fond of.

Sunday podcast: IOT episode about Constantine the Great. As always with figures from this far back in history there's a lot of vagueness about facts & dates, but the bit that reduced Melvyn Bragg to laughter was the Edict of Milan, which is not an edict, not issued in Milan and not written by Constantine the Great, despite being a significant part of the later story of Constantine's Christianisation of the Empire.

Music: while running I listened to Del Amitri's greatest hits, and "Brothers in Arms", Dire Straits.

Talk: "Artificial Light in Ancient Egyptian Ritual", Meghan Strong - about what we know about how the Egyptians used light in their rituals. Including what the light sources were, and video of some experimental archaeology to show how a painted coffin might look in "candle"light.

Watching

ep 6 of Eight Days that Made Rome - death of Nero, as not just the death of a poor emperor but the end of the dynasty and the first time an Emperor was "just" a military strongman rather than having some other legitimising claim. (Well, since Augustus established the Empire anyway).

ep 6 of Blue Planet II - the coasts, including lots of turtles, lots of penguins and lots of puffins. I don't think I knew that king penguins moulted all their feathers in one go every year.

Soup Cans and Superstars: How Pop Art Changed the World - Alastair Sooke failed to sell me on Pop Art, but interesting to see some of the British underpinnings rather than just focusing on the US side of it (like the exhibition we saw earlier in the year did).

The 21st Century Race for Space - Brian Cox talking to the entrepreneurs who are working on making space tourism & space industry an actual thing. An astonishingly optimistic programme, obviously it was also a piece of propaganda for the companies involved but they made the idea of mining asteroids & moving dirty industry into space sound like achievable mid-term goals.

ep 3 of Elizabeth I's Secret Agents - which actually covered the early years of James I & VI and the Gunpowder Plot, as Robert Cecil's career continued past Elizabeth's death. Over all a bit too much hyperbole and glossy graphics that didn't say much, but some interesting stuff in there.

ep 1 of Digging for Britain (Series 6) - Alice Roberts's annual roundup of archaeology during the last year in Britain. This was the West, and covered some stuff about finding houses near & in Avebury's stone circle amongst other things.

Venus Uncovered: Ancient Goddess of Love - Bettany Hughes looking at the development of Venus's mythology from her origins in the fusing of a Cretan goddess of fertility with Ishtar through to her turning into something more like a rich man's pin-up during Renaissance Europe.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Without Remorse", Tom Clancy ... manic pixie girlfriend is now fridged, and "our hero" is being drug dealer killing vigilante by day & uber competant special forces guy by night. Or perhaps vice versa.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - finished reading the chapter on domestic politics 1369-1413. The last few sections covered Richard's deposing and Henry IV's usurpation. Although the political elite in general weren't too sorry to be rid of Richard (at least after the first revolt was put down thoroughly), Henry IV struggled to feel secure on his throne. His first problem was legitimising his rule (after all, it wasn't legitimate), but he also struggled with not having enough adult aristocracy (particularly after putting down the rebellion) and not having enough money for his own expenses. He grudgingly accepted a council to help him rule, and as his health began to fail his son started to step in which didn't go down well with Henry IV and he ended his reign ruling alone.

Maps: 1938 CE - I've somehow only fitted in one map, the state of the world just before the outbreak of WW2.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 99-102 of The History of English - up to date with this one again, the time period he's got to is the beginning of Henry III's reign, and these episodes spent some time considering the new french words that were entering the language at the time.

ep 184-186 of the China History podcast - up to date with this one too, he's back after a hiatus & started a multipart series about Chinese philosophy.

Sunday podcast: ep 23-25 of Our Man in the Middle East - which finishes that off. I think our consensus is that we're glad we listened to it, it was interesting & informative - but also very depressing. His take home message was that the Middle East is in a bad state, which is partly the fault of various foreign powers who've been meddling and also partly the fault of the countries themselves. And the situation shows no signs of getting better in the near term.

Music: while running I listened to a 50s compilation called "Dreamboats & Petticoats Two", Spoon "They Want My Soul" and Counting Crows "August & Everything After" (which was an album I'd forgotten about).

Exhibitions & Tour

Egypt Uncovered: Belzoni and the Tomb of Pharaoh Seti I - exhibition at the Sir John Soane Museum to mark 200 years since Belzoni discovered Seti's tomb. A small exhibition, but with some interesting watercolours of the way the tomb walls looked when discovered, and some bits of the sarcophagus lid that are not normally on display.

Behind the Scenes tour of the Egyptian department of the British Museum - this was with the EEG, and I'll be writing it up at some point (along with the exhibition above). We got to go look at some of the 95% of the collection that's not out on display, so it was pretty cool :)

Living With Gods - exhibition at the British Museum, more notes here.

Watching

ep 5 of Eight Days that Made Rome - Boudicca's revolt. Felt a bit more shallow than the previous ones, and definitely felt like Hughes is a big Boudicca fan-girl

ep 5 of Blue Planet II - the green seas, i.e. the big kelp forests. Included a rather horrifying bit of spider crabs congregating in order to moult in company (so each one had a lower personal risk of being eaten).

ep 3 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - into Baja California, still making us hungry.

ep 2 of Army: Behind the New Frontlines - this one about the troops being sent to Estonia (a NATO ally) to hopefully look imposing enough that the Russians don't invade like they did in the Crimea. This series really is a well done piece of propaganda.

Eden Revealed - one of Channel 5's Ancient Mysteries series. If voiceover man hadn't kept shoehorning in nonsense about the Garden of Eden then it'd've been a really good programme - about Göbekli Tepe, the archaeological site in Turkey that has evidence of sophisticated monumental structures from c.9000BCE, pre-dating the development of agriculture which changes the narrative of how human societies developed. And bugger all to do with the Garden of Eden other than to note that the story of the expulsion from the Garden makes a good allegory for the development of farming.

While in London on Friday we took the chance to go the British Museum's new exhibition - Living with Gods. This is not really a review of the exhibition, hence ending up here rather than on my blog, more thoughts arising from it.

It was a bit of an odd exhibition as I'd gone in to it expecting to agree with it, and come out of it not. This wasn't helped by it feeling rather incoherent in itself - the collection of disparate objects didn't quite gel into a greater whole. There were also weirdnesses in the labelling that made me wonder how much I could trust any of the labels. Like they'd present something as a universal facet of Christianity (e.g. crucifixes carried in procession always wear scarves) which would make me go "wait? what?" and then I'd look closer & see where the object in question came from (e.g. Ethiopia) and realise it was probably specific to that region's flavour of Christianity. And so how many other sweeping statements about religions I've less knowledge of (e.g. I've been the crucifer in a C of E church and the cross wasn't wearing a scarf) were also more specific than they first appeared.

So the premise was that religion satisfies some innate need of human beings - that we shouldn't consider ourselves H. sapiens (wise man) but should instead be H. religiosus (religious man). And as I said, I sort of expected to agree with it. I mean, pretty much every society there ever was has a religion or many religions. Even in our current more secular age where many people don't believe in a religion (I myself am not a believing member of any religion despite my religious upbringing) there still seems to be a need that requires answering. Like people believing fervently in atheism as their focal point, or all the myriad of literature about finding meaning in one's life.

Talking to J about the exhibition afterwards clarified my thoughts - my divergence with them is that the exhibition was presenting religion as the answer to a singular need that could only have that answer. Whereas I'd say religion is an answer to a collection of needs, that we can answer other ways.

Like there's the desire to understand the world and our place in it. Most religions (as far as I know) have some sort of creation myth(s), some sort of reason people are here, some sort of explanation for weather, disasters, death, things that happen and so on. But science can do that too. And for the vast majority of people any given explanation is really on a par with the religious version - I mean "God made the world in 7 days" and "the universe started with the Big Bang" contain exactly the same amount of information on the surface. They're statements that someone who knows these things tells us is true - it's just that in the first case it's priests who teach us this and in the second case it's physicists.

And there's a desire for community, and communal worship/festivals/whatever provide focal points that make you feel in (or out of) the community. But again, other things do that - I've thought before that parkrun fits in the "church" slot for people's lives. You show up most weeks, to be a part of a community that's come together to do something collectively. If you're a regular you get to know other regulars, there's an emphasis on volunteering to help the community itself, of giving back to the wider community of the place (our parkrun does a carol service at a local care home each year, and gives the residents gifts). And if you're in a strange town, you can go to parkrun there and feel a part of the wider parkrun community. Many of the social functions of a (Christian) church, just no god and an emphasis on health in this life rather than a blessed afterlife.

And I do think there's a need for something transcendent* in life, but unlike the exhibition I don't think it can only be answered by a sense of the divine. I think that's what Richard Clay was getting at in the third episode of his Utopia series on TV that we watched a little earlier this autumn - he was talking there about the search for inner utopias. And one of his examples was the rave scene & house music, which does rhyme with my experience of live gigs. Not always, not even often, but sometimes, there's just something about being part of this crowd who are all responding to the same music in the same way - you're part of a moment that's bigger & more emotionally fundamental than just sitting listening to the same music on your own and thinking "oh I rather like this song".

*I'm not sure this is the right word, but I can't think of a better one, I hope it conveys something of what I intend it to!

And I think this leads me back to my knee-jerk reaction when I went into the exhibition - the first item was the Ice Age lion man sculpture, which is a gorgeous piece & I'm glad I had the chance to see it again. But my reaction was to the label - which said that as it took ~400 hours to make and life was hard in the ice age (so this was time away from pure survival), then it must be religious in nature. Why can't it be art for art's sake? Why invoke the divine when it could be a different answer to the need for something transcendent?

Current Mood: thoughtful

Books

Fiction: Finished "Clear & Present Danger", Tom Clancy. Mission finally went pear-shaped - time honoured message of "politicians will sell you out for victory in an election year". Just started "Without Remorse", Tom Clancy ... this is the back story for one of the recurring characters & while I remember liking it when I first read it I'd forgotten the primary plot driver is the death of first his pregnant wife & then his subsequent manic-dream-pixie-girlfriend-who-pulls-him-out-of-his-grief-but-has-a-tragic-past (who's not dead yet in the bit I've got to but I've remembered what happens).

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - still reading the chapter on domestic politics 1369-1413. After Richard II reaches his majority & reasserts his intent to rule in his own name there's actually a 7 year period of uneasy peace in the elite of the country. Richard actually rules with a council, who manage to return the Crown finances to a more solvent state, and everyone steps carefully around each other. Sadly Richard's mostly using this period of peace to firm up his notions of the specialness of kings, so the fragile peace is not to last. Richard's also fairly unconcerned by his childlessness despite over a decade of marriage & after his wife dies he doesn't marry someone who might give him children soon. (Instead he marries the 6 year old daughter of the King of France, which seals a truce but isn't good for heir-getting.)

Maps: 1914-1923 CE. The First World War & it's aftermath. I was vaguely astonished that Germany & her allies held things to a stalemate for as long as they did, given the resources available to the other side. It was very clear on a map coloured mostly red for the one side with just this bit of central Europe coloured blue for Germany & co.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 88-92 plus supplementary episodes of Renaissance English History podcast. The last regular episode was basically an hour long plug for the tour she's running to Tudor Wales, which sounded like it'll visit some pretty good places. That's me up to date with this podcast, so next I'll be catching up with the others I listen to before starting on something new.

Sunday podcast: ep 21 & 22 of Our Man in the Middle East - the complexities of the war in Syria and how it's sucked in a lot of foreign powers on either side; the Saudi war against Yemen, which is actually all about Saudi conflict with Iran.

Music: while running I listened to the Beach Boys greatest hits album & also to The Raveonettes "In and Out of Control".

Watching

ep 4 of Eight Days that Made Rome - Octavian reading Mark Antony's will out to an appalled Senate (it showed he'd been seduced by the wiles of Cleopatra & Egypt into abandoning good Roman ways). So this was effectively the death knell for the Republic, even tho they didn't realise that yet.

ep 4 of Blue Planet II - the environment of the middle of the oceans, which is the ocean equivalent of a desert in terms of available resources to live on.

ep 2 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - bit further down through California, still full of a combination of food that makes us feel hungry and food with too many legs.

ep 2 of Nile Rodgers: How to Make it in the Music Industry - this was all about his career as a producer in the 80s after disco was dead. It was astonishing how many things I hadn't realised he'd been involved in, yet hearing it all back to back you can really hear the common sound.

Man U vs Newcastle - not the result we were hoping for ;)

ep 2 of Elizabeth II's Secret Agents - which actually took us up to the death of Elizabeth, as Robert Cecil who was her spymaster at the time goes on to work for James VI&I. Mostly covered the Earl of Essex thinking himself too pretty for Elizabeth to really get annoyed with, which didn't go well for him in the long term ;)

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Clear & Present Danger", Tom Clancy. Mission still hasn't gone pear-shaped, though it's still clear that's imminent.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - still reading the chapter on domestic politics 1369-1413. Relations between Richard II and his lords still tense, and when he starts to make plans to accuse those who had forced a council on him traitors three of the lords (who came to be known as the Appellants) make a pre-emptive strike. But they fall short of deposing the king, that's still almost unthinkable, and so store up trouble for themselves later.

Maps: 1871-1912 CE. The high water mark of European colonial dominance just before it all starts to unravel. By the end of this period Britain is still leader in everything but industry, but that's almost over.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 78-87 plus supplementary episodes of Renaissance English History podcast. She hosted an online "Tudor Summit" so there are several supplementary episodes of those talks/interviews.

Sunday podcast: ep 19 & 20 of Our Man in the Middle East - the revolutions in Libya & Syria, two more ways that could go wrong.

Music: I got a new phone, which takes a microSD card, so I have more music on my phone for running to now. I listened to Police "Every Breath You Take", LCD Soundsystem "LCD Soundsystem", The Pipettes "We Are the Pipettes" and the beginning of the Beach Boys' Greatest Hits.

Watching

ep 3 of Utopia: In Search of the Dream - looking at utopia as a way of life rather than as an attempt to make a new society. Included things like House Music in the 80s/90s, Sufi music & mysticism in general amongst may other things. Weakest episode of the series I think. Overall an interesting look at the human desire for utopia.

ep 3 of Eight Days that Made Rome - Caesar crossing the Rubicon, and the beginning of the end of the republic.

ep3 of Blue Planet II - coral reefs. Not quite as crushingly depressing as other programmes about coral reefs have been, he held out hope they could regenerate.

ep 1 of Army: Behind the New Frontlines - three part series about things the military does now when we're not actually at war. This ep was about training Iraqi & Kurdish troops in Iraq for an assault on Mosul against ISIS.

ep 1 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - it always surprises us that we like Rick Stein's shows, given neither of us are that fond of seafood. This time he's travelling from California to & across Mexico. Spent a lot of that evening feeling hungry ...

Babel: The Real Stairway to Heaven - part of Channel 5's Ancient Mystery series. As always voiceover man needed a new script - this one was heavily simplistic and outright wrong in places. But the academics were interesting. This was talking about the real building that was an inspiration for the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel - there's evidence from documents of the time (including drawings) and from archaeology of a large ziggurat in Babylon.

Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race - a look at Russia's space programme, including interviews from people actually involved. They got most of the firsts (first rocket launch, first satellite, first man in space etc) except the first man on the moon. Mostly because they took way more risks than the US space programme did.

I rolled on the canvas for my penguin frieze that I'm sewing, so figured it was time for an update :)

4 penguins in a row, plus the start of a rainbow.

Since my birthday two & a bit months ago I've stitched three of the penguins (not the leftmost one) plus the ice they're walking on and the start of the rainbow. There's two more penguins to the right to go, and I think four off to the left from the bit I'd done 20-ish years ago.

Beginning to see why I never really got very far with it before - I've spent about 44 hours on those three penguins, so when I wasn't putting in an hour most evenings then I never seemed to make any progress which was demoralising! My stitching has got better again, despite the middle-aged eyesight, which is pleasing. Tho the older bit is a bit grubbier, and the cloth is stretched oddly, so I suspect it'll turn out to be a piece of art only its mother could love, but I don't care :)

Current Mood: accomplished

Books

Fiction: Finished "The Cardinal of the Kremlin", Tom Clancy. Well, he managed to make up for the lack of sexism (due to few female characters) by introducing a lesbian character who allowed him to demonstrate his homophobia as well ;) The thing about these is that I still enjoy the plot but find the characters & info-dumps are grating somewhat. Started "Clear & Present Danger", Tom Clancy. Quite enjoying the foreshadowing of doom so far, particularly as I can't remember how or how badly it all goes pear-shaped for the mission.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - still reading the chapter on domestic politics 1369-1413. The first couple of years of Richard II's sole rule (starting when he was 17) quickly result in suspicion & paranoia building up and poisoning relations between the king & the nobility. Richard's keenness to assert his regality doesn't help, nor does the fact that he's rewarding & patronising younger non-great magnates.

Maps: 1783-1861 CE - European dominance & empire building, but also the rise of the USA. And also collapse for Spain. The rise of Nationalism as an ideology which fuels/is fuelled by the republican revolt in France and a series of other less successful uprisings across the continent. And of course the Industrial Revolution.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 68-78 of Renaissance English History podcast. As well as the regular joint episodes with Tudor Times about their person of the month she spent a while looking at the relations between the Tudors and France.

Sunday podcast: ep 17 & 18 of Our Man in the Middle East - a look at Iran over the last couple of decades, and then the Arab Spring with particular focus on Egypt. And on how the hope quickly soured and they are now under an even more repressive military regime than they were under Mubarak.

Music: while running I've finished off listening to the 100 Hits Rock compilation and also listened to a bit of the Travelling Wilburies.

Talk

"Delta Myths & Legends" Penny Wilson - an overview of what's known about the religious culture of the Egyptian Delta from predynastic times onwards & how it differs from the Nile Valley culture. Interestingly full of the ways there's not as much as known for sure as you'd think given how long Ancient Egypt has been being studied.

Watching

ep 2 of Utopia: In Search of the Dream - real world attempts to establish utopias. Most of which have failed, but he did find one long running hippy-ish commune (based initially on Skinner's Walden Two novel, but didn't keep all of that specific ethos for long). It wouldn't be utopia for me, and seemed to rely on the fact that turnover of population was possible, but nonetheless 50-ish years of a very different sort of society based on sharing everything.

ep 2 of The Legacy of Lawrence Arabia - the aftermath of the First World War & Lawrence's rather desperate attempts to get the promises he'd made to the Arabs kept in any form at all. Stewart made it clear that he believes this betrayal and refusal to let the Arabs form their own nation (rather than be divided between France & Britain) is the root cause of the modern situation in the Middle East.

ep 2 of Eight Days that Made Rome - Spartacus & his slave revolt. Having listened to an IOT on the subject at some point in the last couple of years I was more aware of the simplifications than I might've been. In particular the elision of earlier slave revolts.

eps 1 & 2 of Blue Planet II - the new David Attenborough series, ocean life. So far I've particularly liked seeing the creatures of the deep ocean as they're fascinatingly different.

ep 1 of Nile Rodgers: How to Make it in the Music Business - this'll be a three part (auto-)biography of Nile Rodgers, so this ep was mostly about his childhood & the 70s success of his band Chic. It feels weirdly like the sort of programme that's aired shortly after someone dies, only he's still alive & part of the programme.

ep 1 of Elizabeth I's Secret Agents - starting with the way that Cecil brought down Mary Queen of Scots, with a well organised sting. A bit wince-inducing as it rattled on about "first spy network" and other bits of hyperbole that were clearly bobbins. But still, we enjoyed it enough that we'll keep watching.

Books

Fiction: Started "The Cardinal of the Kremlin", Tom Clancy. I remember little about this one, at least the almost total absence of women so far has meant rather less gratingly sexist attitudes from the protagonist so far ;) It feels much more info-dumpy than Patriot Games, I've just suffered through a great long thing about Soviet attitudes to nuclear war that has me wondering what an actual Russian would think of it (given some of the eye-rolling stuff about Brits in the other one ...).

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - still reading the chapter on domestic politics 1369-1413. Just covered the Peasant Revolt & how the main message Richard II took away from that was not to trust the peasants and a need to assert his regal authority.

Maps: 1650-1763 CE - the Europeans beginning to carve up the New World between them and to muscle in on Asia. The steppe nomads are getting squeezed out between Qing China and the Russian Empire. The balance of world trade has now shifted with the Middle East no longer the centre, instead it's all about the west of Europe & transatlantic trade routes. Slave trade in full swing & destabilising West Africa.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 56-68 of Renaissance English History podcast. A bit of a look at literature, plus more interviews with authors & historians. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Melita Thomas of Tudor Times where they talked about Bess Hardwick in terms of how her life tells us about inheritance of property, property in marriage etc. And the episode where she had the two presenters of the Reconsider podcast on, whose thing is to look at current affairs with an intent to encourage critical thinking. So they were showing how they would apply scepticism & detachment as principles when thinking about historical narratives (like Anne Boleyn as either husband-stealing whore or saintly Protestant proto-feminist, and how the evidence when you actually think about it shows she's more complex). For me there wasn't anything new in what they said, but they said it entertainingly, and I might check out their podcast some time. Might be a good grounder in US politics.

Sunday podcast: ep 15 & 16 of Our Man in the Middle East - Gaza & the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for the first ep, then an overview of the history of the sectarian divisions in the Middle East & why they matter. Continues to be utterly depressing but worth learning about.

Music: while running I've mostly listened to the 100 Hits Rock compilation (just like last week!).

Games

Engare - a puzzle game based on geometry & Islamic geometric art. It also has a drawing mode, but I've barely looked at that. The puzzles so far have been fun, although on the entertaining diversion level not the compulsively compelling level. I'm about 2/3 of the way through I think - in less than 2 hours - so it's as well it's rather cheap. I'm enjoying it.

Watching

ep 1 of Utopia: In Search of the Dream - this'll be a three part series (presented by Richard Clay) about utopias in literature & attempts to implement said ideas in the real world. This ep was mostly about what the concept was & some of ways we've imagined utopias.

Pedalling Dreams: The Raleigh Story - hagiography about the bike company from start as a small workshop in Nottingham to eventual sale to a foreign company. A bit "rar-rar they were the best" but still quite interesting.

ep 1 of The Legacy of Lawrence Arabia - series presented by Rory Stewart about both Lawrence of Arabia's life & the current (as of 2010) state of Iraq. Both threads are essentially about how we (the West, and Britain more specifically) fucked it all up. I rather suspect I'd not get on with Rory Stewart's domestic politics (he's the rather upper class Tory MP for Cumbria) but his opinions on the Middle East seem shaped by actual experience (he's worked for the Foreign Office and walked through the region) and make a lot of sense. He's also rather clearly a bit of a Lawrence fanboy.

ep 1 of Eight Days that Made Rome - Bettany Hughes on Channel 5 looking at eight specific turning points in Roman history. This one was the defeat of Hannibal, tho obviously the episode set us up with an overview of Roman & Carthaginian history to get us to understand why it mattered.

Harry Potter: A History of Magic - a look at the real life history of magic and how J K Rowling used or didn't use this in her world building for the Harry Potter universe. Ties in with the upcoming(?) British Library exhibition. Not sure what I thought of this - I think it was intended as fun fluff for fans, but I don't really rate Harry Potter as much as it seems the rest of the world does. I mean - I think it's a well done example of the type (well, mashup - boarding school stories, orphan is chosen one, magic is real & it's just that it's hidden) and if I'd found it when I was 10 & reading Chalet School books & Diana Wynne Jones & David Eddings I'd've loved it. Or possibly even in my late teens/early 20s when I was clearly still reading a lot of stuff with "finding one's tribe" narratives (judging by my re-reading of my fiction shelves I was a lot bigger on this back in the day than I am now). But discovering it in my 30s I wasn't hooked at all.

Books

Fiction: Finished "Patriot Games", Tom Clancy. Still not sure what I think - I was rolling my eyes more at it than I remember in the past, so how much of the enjoyment I did get out of reading it is the nostalgia?

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - reading the chapter on domestic politics 1369-1413 now. Which starts off a golden era, providing you're one of the elite. Edward III & his high ranking nobles are taking advantage of the peace to use their spoils of war to rebuild or freshly build their estates. Not so good if you're lower down the social scale, as the long term impact of a third of the population dying in the 1340s is starting to become apparent, definitely not the same sense of stability if you're a peasant.

Maps: 1530-1600 CE - the beginning of European expansion across the globe. The Pope divides the world between the Spanish & the Portuguese. The latter think they have the better deal, then the Spanish find & conquer first the Aztecs then the Incas and the gold & silver come flooding into Spain. The bits of the Americas that don't get conquered catch diseases like small pox from the Europeans (even when they haven't met a European) and die in droves.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 52-56 of Renaissance English History podcast. These episodes included more rebellions, plus bios of Thomas More and Bessie Blount amongst others.

Sunday podcast: ep 13 & 14 of Our Man in the Middle East - the immediate aftermath of the Second Iraq War, where the US & UK seemed to think that you can just sack an entire government & army without replacing them and somehow magically the incantation "democracy" will prevent a collapse of law & order. Also a look at Yasser Arafat and his influence in Palestine & the wider Middle East.

Music: while running I've mostly listened to the 100 Hits Rock compilation.

Exhibitions

Bagpuss, Clangers & Co. Exhibition at the Ipswich Art Gallery - this was cool, with some of the original puppets and drawings. I'd not realised that it was the same team that did Ivor the Engine so that was an unexpected treat.

Watching

ep 3 of Russia with Simon Reeve - the west of Russia, including both Moscow & St. Petersburg. And the rural bits in between that have been left behind. And Crimea - I hadn't realised how much of a humanitarian disaster waiting to happen this is, not just the political/war aspects, but the knock on effects of the Ukraine fighting back by cutting off the water supply for the region. Good series, I always like Simon Reeve's programmes.

ep 1 & 2 of Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots - presented by Ben Garrod & Danielle George. Good series, interesting look at the history of building robots plus the modern state of the art. Shame they forced a heavy-handed "evolution" metaphor on the narrative.

The Search for a New Earth - Stephen Hawkings thinks we need to've colonised another planet outside our Solar System within the next 100 years in order to survive as a species, so this programme was Danielle George & Christophe Galfard looking at what the problems/obstacles are and how we're doing on solving them. Rather liked this, tho I think they were more optimistic than I am about the likelihood of it actually happening.

England's Reformation: Three Books That Changed A Nation - Janina Ramirez joining in the commemorations of the beginning of the Reformation. The three books were Wycliffe's Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and Fox's Book of Martyrs. I didn't find much new in the segments of the first two, but I knew next to nothing about Fox's Book of Martyrs so that was particularly interesting.

BBC Introducing: 10 Years of Finding the Next Big Thing - part footage from a concert in Brixton Academy of some of these "Next Big Thing" bands, part a look at how said bands & others were helped by the BBC's Introducing scheme. The actual big names (e.g. Ed Sheeran, Florence & the Machine) weren't at the concert but did feature in the documentary half of it. Sadly a lot of the performances felt really bland, but I did sort of like Slaves who were anything but bland, but I'd want to read their lyrics before I decided whether or not I actually liked them.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Patriot Games", Tom Clancy which has rather been visited by both the sexism fairy & the racism fairy in the 15 or so years since I last read it. Not enough to make me stop reading it but enough to make me wonder if they maybe don't deserve a space in the house any more. See how the rest of them go.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - I've now finished the chapter on England's relationship with France & with wider Christendom from 1360-1413. The war with France in this period sort of dribbled on with Richard II getting less & less interested (too keen on establishing authority at home) but with neither side decisively winning enough to enforce their own view of what peace should look like. Finally a truce (more of a stalemate) signed when Richard married Isabella of France, which came to an end after the French were scandalised by Henry IV deposing an anointed king. But they were too busy with their own civil war to really do anything about this - in fact both sides even invited Henry IV in to support their side, which reignited a sense in the English that they could make gains in France.

Maps: 1300-1492 CE - in this period it's the Mongols whose meteoric rise & conquest reshapes the world even after their political collapse & fragmentation. In the Americas the first two substantial empires have risen - the Aztecs & the Incas. As the world is on the cusp of European expansion there were also a couple of spreads about themes related to this - the trade networks pre-1492 and also the spread of writing systems across the world. Notable in both cases that Eurasia was all linked together, but the Americas seemed to be small enclaves with fewer lines of contact. Also, I hadn't really realised that the Incas are the only empire which didn't have writing.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 43-52 of Renaissance English History podcast. She's really hit her stride by now - and is interleaving solo episodes with interviews with someone from the Tudor Times website so there's two different sets of perspectives. Currently she's looking at rebellions during the Tudor period.

Sunday podcast: ep 11 & 12 of Our Man in the Middle East - 9/11 & the beginning of the Second Iraq War. So we got the bits of GWB's speech that made me annoyed at the time and the bits of Blair's various speeches that annoy me in retrospect as we now know he was lying.

Music: while running I've mostly listened to Voice of the Beehive and the 100 Hits Rock compilation. While J was out last night at the cinema I listened to more Belle & Sebastien, plus an album by Bellowhead (which I'd completely forgotten we had, and also forgotten that I enjoyed it). And now moved on to Belly, listening to several EPs and a compilation that has Feed the Tree on it (Ladykillers). I just listen to the albums (discs, folders, however you want to think of them given it's on the computer) in the order the computer presents them to me so I think I get actual Belly albums after the compilation.

Live music: Marillion at the Royal Albert Hall. Which was great - first set was F.E.A.R (their most recent album) and then after the interval they played a selection from their back catalogue.

Exhibitions

Visited the Scythians Exhibition at the British Museum - liked it a lot, they're steppe nomads from the 1st millennium BCE, and because of the conditions where they buried their dead (cold) they've not only found the obvious things like gold ornaments but also some well preserved textiles so we know what they actually wore.

Watching

ep 2 of Russia with Simon Reeve - the middle of Russia, which felt like it included a lot of the places that feel left behind by the growth that bits of Russia are seeing. And areas that had suffered particularly when the Soviet Union collapsed & the mafia took over.

ep 3 of Dangerous Borders - the end of this series, with the two journalists travelling the easternmost section of the India/Pakistan border. Perhaps the most distressing of the series too, there were places they visited in this one where it seems the violence sparked by Partition never stopped.

ep 2 of The Yorkshire Wolds - watched as a lightweight half hour antidote to the one above. Paul Rose walking the Yorkshire Wolds, which is a short enough path that it only took 2 half hour episodes to cover it. Rather odd series tbh, but fluffy & fun.

Glam Rock at the BBC - the BBC trawling their archives again to give us a selection of glam rock performances. Fluff, but fun.

Marc Bolan: Cosmic Dancer - a biography of Marc Bolan (i.e. the guy in T-Rex) who would've been 70 this year if he'd not died at the age of 29. Unlike many similar programmes about rock stars from the BBC this wasn't a hagiography. I didn't know much about Bolan going in (and I only really know a couple of T-Rex songs) but my goodness he came across as a bit of a dick.

This includes my holiday reading (some of which was thematically appropriate for Palermo).

Books

Fiction: finished Neil Stephenson's "REAMDE". In the end I was a bit ambivalent about it, on the one hand I liked most of the characters and the plot pulled me along as I read, but on the other hand when I finished it felt like just a sequence of events or an attempt to see how many plot twists he could put in one book and still have people keep going with it.

Read "The Godfather", Mario Puzio as the first of my thematically appropriate novels for Palermo. I don't think I've ever seen the film but I have enough of a sense of the genre/style/plot from cultural osmosis that I knew I was going to like the book. Tho I was surprised that the horse's head showed up that early in the story, given how iconic an image it seems to be! I liked this a lot - it's a tragedy in the classical sense, you see the flaws & circumstances of the protagonists bring them to their doom, and the slow motion inevitability of it all is well done & compelling.

Read "The Leopard", Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa - this was the other thematically appropriate novel, a tale of the late 19th Century as Italy (including Sicily) is united as seen through the eyes of a middle-aged aristocrat whose world is slowly & inevitably vanishing. I'm glad I read it, and it was neat to read references to places I'd been to (like the street our hotel was on, and the Capuccini Catacombs, as just two examples). But I'm not sure I'd say I enjoyed it, and had it not been thematically relevant I probably wouldn't've persevered - in part this is because it was heavy on mood & evocative description and rather slow moving because of it. And in part because I didn't find any of the characters sympathetic at all.

Read both "The Better Part of Valour" and "The Heart of Valour", Tanya Huff - complete change of pace, fairly lightweight military science fiction, books 2 & 3 in a series of which I read the first one earlier in the year. A lot of fun, and in book 3 the series arc starts to properly blossom. They're also relatively unusual in having a female protagonist whose femaleness feels real but irrelevant to the plot.

Read "Provenance", Ann Leckie - new, standalone novel in the same universe as the Ancillary trilogy, but the whole story takes place in different cultures. I found it lighter weight than Leckie's previous work, it didn't give me as much to think about tho I did wonder if I perhaps just don't have quite the right cultural touchstones for the story to get under my skin in the same way. Still good tho, just not superlative (if that makes sense).

Currently reading "Patriot Games", Tom Clancy as part of my re-read through all the fiction we own. I bought this after seeing the film something like 25 years ago, and I enjoyed it enough then as candyfloss reading material to pick up another half a dozen of his books over the next 15 years (mostly when I finished a book in the morning on my way to work and was hanging about in the train station wondering what to read on the way home) and I probably haven't read any of them since I stopped commuting. My book reading criteria have changed somewhat in the meantime, so it feels a bit like listening to a cheesy pop song that was a hit when I was a kid so I know all the words - big nostalgia hit, but I'm not sure that if I'd come to it cold that I'd keep reading. Can't remember if these get better or worse as the series continues ...

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - read the chapter on religion as experienced by the lay people (following on from the chapter on the institutional Church). In many ways the experience of a lay person was of being excluded from the mystery, and this was a deliberate choice on the part of the Church. You can see the seeds of the Reformation being sown in this era (most notably by Wycliff, but also by an increasing desire on the part of the culture to merge the secular and spiritual life & stop it from being a dichotomy where either you were a cleric/monk or you were a lay person - the writings of mystics like Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe are a manifestation of this). Now into the final third of the book, about the events & the people, starting with "losing the peace" in the 1360s.

Maps: 650-1206 CE - the meteoric rise of Islam & the Caliphate reshaping the world before fragmenting politically. The Vikings come & go (or rather raid then settle). New Zealand finally inhabited c.1200 CE.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 33-43 of Renaissance English History podcast. Quite a few interviews with historians, interesting for different perspectives.

Sunday podcast: ep 9 & 10 of Our Man in the Middle East - the effects of sanctions on civilians in Iraq, plus tragedy as Bowen was reporting from Lebanon about the Israeli withdrawal in the same time span (they stopped to film a segment in what they thought was a safe place, but an Israeli tank shelled the car & killed the driver).

Music: while running I've mostly listened to Maxïmo Park & Voice of the Beehive.

Live music: a variety of Palermo bands playing on the street as part of the gelato festival happening hear our hotel, some quite good, none terrible.

Games

Bit of Diablo 3, but mostly watching J playing The Witness and helping figure out the puzzles. I thought the end was rather anticlimactic, and the game itself gave me motion sickness if I watched while J was moving the character around, but I enjoyed it. It's in essence a series of puzzles and in each one you have to trace a route through a maze fulfilling the conditions imposed by the symbols/cues on/nearby the maze - you start knowing nothing about any of the symbols & figure out the rules & possibilities as you go on. The key is to experiment, observe your surroundings and use the data you get to deduce the rules.

Watching

ep 3 & 4 of The World's Busiest Cities - Moscow & Delhi respectively. It was a bit of an odd series, Dan Snow and Anita Rani were clearly filmed on location at the same time, but the third presenter almost certainly wasn't and it felt a bit like he'd been added later and I'm not sure why. I did enjoy watching it, but it did feel a bit shallow.

Goodbye Cassini, Hello Saturn - a brief history of the Cassini mission, with highlights of the findings and filming the final moments as the probe dives into Saturn (I mean, filming the people on Earth watching the data & instruments that told them what it was doing, not filming the actual event of course!). Programmes like this are part of why I wanted to be a scientist as a kid, even tho I ended up wanting to be a biologist.

Egypt's Great Pyramid: The New Evidence - new documentary on Channel 4 that's one of the better Ancient Egypt things I've seen. Looking at how the large outer casing blocks for Khufu's pyramid were transported to the pyramid site. Close to no sensationalism yet still telling a compelling story about what they've discovered, what the evidence is and how they found it. I think J & I had actually found out about everything that was in this previously but we're no longer quite the target audience for this sort of thing, and it was nice to see it tied together coherently.

Letters from Baghdad - biography of Gertrude Bell who was a contemporary of Lawrence of Arabia & worked for the Foreign Office in the Middle East in the early 20th Century. Told mostly through her own letters, and those of her contemporaries. Very good.

ep 1 of Russia with Simon Reeve - Russia getting the Simon Reeve treatment, so far travelled across the easternmost parts of the country, looking at Chinese gamblers in Vladivostock, reindeer herders in the far north east, melting permafrost due to global warming in Siberia (amongst other things).

Reformation: Europe's Holy War - David Starkey telling the story of the Reformation, with lots of modern cultural references. He was focused mostly on the immediate story of Luther and then the effects on England, so could skip a lot of the complexity. Good, tho I didn't really learn anything (again, see not quite the target audience).

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Ipswich

Great East Run today! :D It was a lot warmer than I'd expected after the weather this week, and I've not been training as much as I wanted (half-pulled a muscle in my right calf a few weeks ago so I've been nursing that along). So I'm pretty damn pleased to've got my second fastest half marathon ever, 13.1 miles in 2:23:55 :D Still dunno how I managed 7 mins faster in Cambridge last year!

Stats from Garmin (it measured a little short on the GPS)

Distance: 13:07mi
Pace: 11:01min/mi
Time: 2:24:03

Me & J after we got home from the Great East Run.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Ipswich

Books

Fiction: still reading Neal Stephenson's "Reamde", a bit over halfway now. I think there's a vague feeling that it's pulling back together rather than opening out now, but nowhere near the endgame yet.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - more about the church (as institution) and monasteries in particular this time. Which never quite recovered from the Black Death to their previous levels of population, might almost say that the monastic way of life was in decline.

Maps: 200BCE-500AD - the rise of Christianity and the decline of Rome. China also falls to pieces over this period. And the first empires in South America arise (Tiwanaku & Wari). Madagascar got settled by Indonesians, which I hadn't realised, and New Zealand is still uninhabited.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 28-33 of Renaissance English History podcast. Mostly been bios of this person or that who was significant during the period, still interesting, but still the least favourite of the ones I'm keeping listening to (so OK but not great).

Sunday podcast: ep 7 & 8 of Our Man in the Middle East - build up to 9/11, the previous career of Osama bin Laden and the buildup of reasons for the US & UK to invade Iraq a second time.

Music: while running I've mostly listened to 80s compilations.

Watching

ep 3 of Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the South - Mississippi & Louisiana. A good series overall, kept the tone light but didn't feel shallow.

ep 2 of The World's Busiest Cities - Mexico City this time, most of the sprawl is self-built by people just arriving and putting up a house where they found space.

ep 1 & 2 of Dangerous Borders: A Journey Across India & Pakistan - two British journalists, whose families are from the Punjab, making parallel journeys along the border region. Different tone to the other stuff I recorded about Partition, this has a focus on what the countries are like now, what life is like now, and so it rather more upbeat overall. Without sugarcoating the realities of both present & past.

Best Album 2017: Meet the Mercury Prize Shortlist & Mercury Music Prize: Best Album of the Year 2017 - I wasn't that keen on the shortlist, a lot felt bland or if not bland then not interesting enough to investigate further. The interview snippets put me off some of the bands too. For me the stand out act was Kate Tempest, tho I also quite liked the performance from Stormzy. But it was Sampha who won it and he was in the bland category.

Indie Classics at the BBC - one of the Beebs music programmes that strings together various bits of live footage they have in a theme, with facts subtitled over them. The theme here was earlier indie music, it ended with Happy Mondays & the Stone Roses, and was fun to watch. Wasn't just the obvious bands or tracks.

Books

Fiction: still reading Neal Stephenson's "Reamde", and will be for a while yet - I think I'm only about a third of the way through. Still enjoying it, still not sure I know where the story is going yet, the introduction of complicating factors to the plot is still continuing.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - finished off the chapter on urban life and started the one on the institutional Church (as opposed to religion which is the next chapter). Read about bishops, and was surprised to discover it was to large extent a meritocracy. Eventual bishops rose through the ranks in court administration (generally) before promotion to a see, most had a university education and over this period more & more had higher degrees. Generally educated in law rather than theology, except during Henry VI's reign when theologians were more promoted.

Maps: 800-200BCE - waves of empires in the Middle East (the Persians come & go, Alexander ditto). China fragments, and then re-coalesces (via the conquest of the First Emperor). India also comes together as an almost single unit briefly under Ashoka. Iron working spreads from niche tech to in use across Eurasia. And several of the great religions/philosophies are founded - Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 2-28 of Renaissance English History podcast. Somewhat patchy to start off with, but it feels like she's beginning to hit her stride (and the dates on the episodes are getting closer together). It does feel like the most amateur of the podcasts I've listened to so far but still interesting.

Sunday podcast: ep 5 & 6 of Our Man in the Middle East - more Jerusalem/Israel in the 90s, the assassination of their Prime Minister which also killed the peace process.

Music: while running I've listened Prince, Scissor Sisters, Roxette and an 80s compilation.

Games

Diablo - bumped up the difficulty level a notch, and died loads as we're still adjusting to that ;)

Watching

ep 4 of From Russia to Iran - Armenia & finally Iran. This last episode felt a little padded, partly because there were big jumps in distance so they felt we needed more orientation. A good series, and a part of the world I knew nothing about before.

ep 2 of Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the South - Alabama and Georgia (where he was born but left). Delved rather more into the racial tensions of the South along with the music (Confederate flags at Lynyrd Skynyrd concerts for instance), but somehow remained upbeat in tone.

Seven Days in Summer: Countdown to Partition - more about Partition. This focused on the absolute clusterfuck of the handover & division process. Perhaps the violence would've happened anyway, but I don't think the British Government of the time helped the situation one bit (like, some dude who'd never been to India before was flown in to draw the boundaries between India & Pakistan and the line wasn't even finalised till after the handover so people were in limbo & relying on rumour).

ep 3 of The Sweet Makers - our intrepid confectioners were pretending to be Victorians, and were perhaps a little more competent with this level of tech than the older tech. Fun series, but not as high quality as other living history type documentaries we've watched.

ep 1 of The World's Busiest Cities - Dan Snow, Anita Rani & Ade Adepitan visiting some of the busiest cities. This episode was Hong Kong, which has a massive gulf between the winners of capitalism and the losers (people living in cubicles no bigger than their beds, Filipino domestic servants whose days off are spent camped out in public spaces because they have no place of their own).

After enjoying doing embroidery on my birthday I worked out that I could sit & stitch while we were watching TV, so I've actually made some progress on the penguin I'm stitching over the last couple of weeks!

My stitches aren't as neat as they once were. Primarily because I'm out of practice - they're still OK so I'm keeping going and they'll get better over time. But some of it's also because my eyesight isn't as good as it was even 10 years ago, seems there's nothing quite as good as embroidery to show up the deficiencies in one's close up vision.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Ipswich

Books

Fiction: still reading Neal Stephenson's "Reamde", which is feeling very early Stephenson at the moment and also reminding me a bit of the Stephen Bury ones (which are him under a pseudonym iirc) that I read last year. Which in some ways is a shame as I loved "Anathem" which was very different, but then again it's sucking me into the story so I'll see where it goes.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - continuing his discussion of towns with a section on whether the townsfolk identified as being part of their town (more their craft/class, I think) and the tensions between the classes within a town.

Maps: 2000-1000BCE - the rise of urbanised societies, the Bronze Age collapse in the Middle East (although he doesn't call it that), the Shang in China, the rise of urbanised societies on the western edge of Middle & South America, the beginning of iron working & the spread of writing. Also in the last timeline the founding of the Hebrew state & Jerusalem becoming the capital, which at the time seemed a minor footnote but now has much more relevance.

Listening

Podcasts: a week of catching up with podcasts - the History of Rome had a special episode plugging the host Mike Duncan's upcoming book. ep 79-82 of the History of Egypt podcast, covering more of Amenhotep II's reign plus looking at the Book of the Dead & the Amduat both of which were beginning to be used around that time. ep 144-148 of the History of Byzantium podcast - a look at the state of Byzantium in 976 just as Basil II is taking the throne.

Just started a new podcast - ep 1-2 of Renaissance English History podcast. Not, I think, to be a chronological trot through the period, but focussing on subjects of interest from roughly speaking 1500-1600 CE in England. So far so good, tho she did make me wince a bit by buying completely into the Dark Ages narrative of the Medieval period in Europe in her intro/set up episode.

Sunday podcast: ep 3 & 4 of Our Man in the Middle East - the Kurds after the first Iraq War, and conflict over Jerusalem.

Music: while running I've listened Prince - I have "The Hits/B-sides", which is 3 discs on CD but the mp3s I got with my CDs weren't split into discs so I normally just listen to the whole lot once I start.

Games

Diablo - still hitting monsters till the loot comes out, trying to level up enough to start getting Greater Rift keys to drop at the moment.

Watching

ep 1 of Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the South - 3-part series of Hunter doing a road trip around the southern US seeing where the music came from. This ep was Kentucky & Tennessee. Fairly shallow, tho there is a fair amount of offhand remarks that make the underlying tensions of the region obvious (he's black and originally from Georgia, this was very much the white South).

How to Be a Surrealist with Phillipa Perry - rather good look at what the Surrealist movement was actually about, not just the imagery of Dali and Magritte that's stuck in popular consciousness.

ep 2 of My Family, Partition & Me - possibly some of the most difficult TV we've watched. In this final episode three descendants of families caught up in the chaos of Partition traced the journeys their families made and the horrors they saw. As it's 70 years ago there aren't many left who saw it, but the programme did find several people who were willing give accounts of what they saw as children. All of it awful. Worth having watched though.

In Search of Arcadia - Janina Ramirez talking about the English Englightenment's attempt to build Arcadia in their gardens along the Thames. More waffle about gardens & less art history than we'd expected. But a nice piece of fluff to offset the Partition episode.

ep 3 of From Russia to Iran - Lev travels from Azerbaijan to Georgia, referencing a few times the war between Azerbaijan & Armenia which has apparently been going on for much of my adult life but I don't think I knew about it.

Talks

"Ancient Egyptian Justice" Alexandre Loktionov - he's a PhD student at Cambridge interested in how the justice system of Ancient Egypt actually functioned. It was a talk heavy on texts, demonstrating both how legal jargon has always been impenetrably dense but also about what you can glean from the documents that the authors didn't even realise they were telling you.

For our anniversary we decided to go to one of the Turkish restaurants in Ipswich - Alaturka is our favourite of the ones we've been to even though we've only been there twice. And it didn't disappoint :)

(Photos not the best quality, my phone struggled in the low light)

We shared the mixed meze starters rather than pick our favourites, so that we'd get some things we might usually overlook. This time that'd be the grilled haloumi, which I don't think either of us would've ordered but we both enjoyed. The dips included a beetroot one & a caramelised carrot one neither of which we'd tried before. We did think it could've done with a bit more bread (but not enough more that we asked for another basket) - I think we must just eat more bread than restaurants expect, as we often think that.

For main courses we stuck to lamb as we'd chosen to have a Turkish red wine to drink. J had Kofte Guvec (meatballs in a tomato-y sauce) and I had Ali Nazik (minced lamb cooked on a skewer with veg served on top of pureed aubergine, in a tomato-y sauce). They sound a bit similar but actually tasted quite different - both good.

For pudding, I went off-theme as the only dessert I really fancied was the chocolate cake, whereas J went with the Sutlac (a sort of rice pudding) which he enjoyed. We got a bit of Lokum (Turkish delight) when we got the bill, and I should've gone with that for my dessert - I have childhood memories of not liking Turkish delight but this was actually rather nice. Perhaps because it was pistachio flavoured rather than rose flavoured, and more firm in texture than I remember.

We finished our meal with coffees, and a small glass of Hare, Turkish liqueur - I had mint flavour and J had raspberry. Another time I should have the Raki, which sounds like it's related to Ouzo & I know I like that.

A good evening out :D