Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Greetings, traveller! Welcome to Highly's House of the Peculiar. Public posts are mostly bookish: regular reading updates (What are You Reading Wednesdays, only I normally do them on weekends), book reviews, and other bits and pieces.

Fandom-adjacent, but not a Fandom Blog. Links to fannish discussions occasionally, but would probably rather not end up on a fandom meta roundup. Don't mind if fandom accounts follow me, but probably won't follow back for fic or shipping centred accounts.

My photoblog crossposts to speculumannorum, and I also occasionally repost or unlock photo and poetry posts here.

Access locked posts tend to be personal navel-gazing: I do grant access, but usually only if I've interacted with you a bit first.

Apparently, I have not made one of these posts since June least year. I don’t know how 10 months have passed, I feel like I only recently finished The Woman In White.

I spent a lot of yesterday reading about 1970s far-left Japanese insurgent groups. ( I had no idea they even existed )

Currently Reading:
Fiction

Gregory McGuire, Wicked. Someone told me that this book was “not as good” as the musical, and I’ve definitely heard people say it’s Worse In The Queer Way. I am baffled. The ableism as applies to Nessa Rose is still there, but honestly, far less simplistic.

Edmund White, The Beautiful Room Is Empty. The front cover of this second-hand copy fell off shortly after I got it, and then the book (I’d guess 90s paperback?) fell behind the bed and the back cover has taken some weird damp damage as well. I have a new copy on the way, because… well, because.

Non-Fiction

Will Tosh, Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare, in fits and starts

Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth. I’ve had the USyd copy out for nearly a year now, revisiting (in fits and starts) legal details I did not particularly care about or didn’t internalise at any point 2008-2022, but the vague memories of which impede and frustrate my encounters with modern legal history. I have tried, on and off, since at least 2011, to buy a second-hand copy, and it has never been worth the $50 AUD + shipping given I had access to university copies. But I found a NEW copy for $40-ish dollars and domestic shipping, from an Aus/NZ online-only bookstore. I think it might be print-on-demand? Everything looks exactly the same (cover, pagination, publication details page) except for the tiny note on the final verso which, instead of “printed in the united states”, has the details of “Ingram Content Group Australia”.

And part-read on the backburner: (selected)

Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu

Bessel Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

Hannah Fry, The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus. Fun Christmas-themed maths/logic exercises.

and, for some reason, Enid Blyton More Adventures on Willow Tree Farm. I ploughed through both Cherry Tree and Willow Tree farms in audiobook then stalled out on this one. Unsure if its not for me or if I just lost whatever “inner seven year old is running the show” mood I was in; unsure whether to abandon it or file it for a future mood.

Recently Read:

The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken by The Secret Barrister

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was fascinating, and written with remarkable humour and wit for what is actually angry and depressing material.

Also I learned how the Magistrates Court works in the UK and who presides over them, and I am ... wow. What IS really striking is that the Secret Barrister doesn't seem to be aware that it's not just the Americans who don't do the "lay magistrate" thing - down here in Aus we started with those, thanks to colonialism, and decided to get rid of them!

Conversely, the Secret Barrister also doesn't seem to be aware of the aspects of the UK (/Eng-Wales) system which closely related jurisdictions in fact envy! "The UK has much greater availability of legal aid" is something I've heard plenty of commentators upon how NSW works remark upon.


Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I wonder what it says about me that read The Secret River, and came away with a fascination with the history of the Hawkesbuy but no real desire to keep reading Kate Grenville until this came across my path. And I loved it, and admired it much, much more than the literary-lush narrative style she wins awards for.

This is sparse - clearly fiction, in the way it invents incidents and individual conversations and scenes for a woman whom Grenville did not know well while she was alive - but sparse, hewing close to the documented outline of her grandmother's life. At times I could actually identify the context-providing sources that she would have needed to cite, if this was a biography.

And Dolly Maunder is such a well-drawn character, while growing progressively less and less likeable as she gets older. I liked the *book* more and more the less likeable she became. The points where the narrative dwelt sympathetically on her - when, for instance, she thinks over how she and her husband have been compatible and successful business partners despite their loveless marriage, she's still not a person that *I* would like (or who would like me, at all).

It's also striking - given I then went on to read "One Life", which was written earlier than this one - how *unlikeable* Grenville's mother appears in this book, too. One sympathises with her, bounced from school to school and town to town and too aware that her mother does not love her: but it's hard to like her. In "One Life", she is likeable and Dolly is not; in "Restless Dolly Maunder" it's hard to like either of them, but one is invited to sympathise with Dolly's awareness of her own inability to bond with her daughter as much as with the daughter.



One Life: My Mother's Story by Kate Grenville

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Should this be shelved with fiction or biography? Restless Dolly Maunder is clearly fiction, but there has been fictionalising here, too - the scripting of scenes and conversations, at minimum.

The life of Isabella/Nance, who trained as a pharmacist in the years of the Great Depression - one of the few jobs, her mother was told, where a woman could keep working after marriage or even children (although, in Nance's several attempts to set up her own business, to support her family while her husband first pursued radical politics then the law, it became clear that being legally able to own and run a business did not overcome the practical barriers) - is in many ways more interesting to me than that of Dolly, but I believe I preferred Dolly's novel to this, perhaps because Restless Dolly Maunder stood just a little further over the fiction line.




I Can't Remember The Title But The Cover Is Blue by Elias Greig

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was extremely funny - little dialogue style "Me: ... Customer [Characteristic]: ..." scenes, brought to life by excellent caricatures.




Checkers by John Marsden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Found this in a box at home. I never ended up with a copy of So Much To Tell You but I had this.

Honestly not his greatest work - although good work on realistially and empathetically characterising an assortment of kids in inpatient psych. I'd completely forgotten there was a gay character here.

What brings it up from 3 starts to 4 is the sheer audacity of writing a Teenagers In Psych Ward novel which is also a mystery/thriller about, of all the fucking things, _insider trading_. It works though!



Backdated: The next bunch of books in my record after Detransition Baby and Stephanie Alexander’s Home are a bunch of Chaucer and/or 18th c texts, and then an eight-book re-read of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series and then Protector of the Small. This was, as you might guess, deep in the “this egg is now scrambled” phase. I… have a few actually load-bearing thoughts on Alana, which I ought to write up one day (in conversation with PTerry, and probably also Silence and also Butler and also fucking Pierre Bourdieu).

But I will also say that something which I struggle with - I remember turning this over and over in my head in my late teens and early twenties - is that… not only am I not like Alana, it’s a total toss-up whether Alana would like me. Kel, on the other hand? It’s pretty clear I have little in common with Kel, and I doubt she’d think I was ideal company - but I remember thinking somewhere in my late teens or early twenties “but I am, or I think I should be, someone Kel would respect”, which is a wholly different question.

Some short fiction, read at some point

Cislyn Smith, Tides that Bind, which is about Scylla and Charibdys.

Abra Staffin-Wiebe, Becks Pest Control and the Case of the Drag Show Downer. This was published in 2022, back when drag + kids was Topical, scary, but still more of a harbinger than the “just one part of all the Doom” situation we have now.

Michelle Lyn King, One-Hundred Percent Humidity, which Electric Lit pubished with the compelling tagline “The only thing more humiliating than virginity is sex”.

Guan Un, Re: Your Stone , in which Sisyphus encountered corporate email.

Recently Added To My To-Read List:
Fiction:

Leanna Renee Hieber, Strangely Beautiful, which looks like a fun lil steampunk adventure

Victor Heringer, trans James Young, The Love of Singular Men. If I’m on a gay lit dive, I definitely don’t read enough in translation, and this looks like my kind of thing.

Steve MinOn, First name, second name. Aus lit, Chinese myth/cosmology and immigrant intergenerational heritage, queer author, porous boundary between fiction and autobiography. Seems like fun to me.

Non-fiction

Moudhy Al-Rashid, Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History

Billy-Ray Belcourt, A history of my brief body

Esther Cuenca Liberman, The making of urban customary law in medieval Europe

Everything else: better for having time off, I guess, but I'm spending the time off going SPLAT rather than... doing.... things.

Except cookery.

Things I have cooked since last I reported on my cookery:

- a sort of baked medley thing: roasted chicken quarters (seasoned with powdered garlic, sumac, oil), diced butternut (par cooked in the microwave then seasoned with the same minus the sumac and plus pepper and roasted), broccolini (added to pumpkin, tossed with more of the second season/dressing, roasted more). Once coooked, shred the chicken, toss everything, add pomegranate seeds and feta cheese.

- pomegranate jam, which is actually mostly apple jam: around 500g total composed of apple (including skin, but crack open the core and reserve the seeds), pomegranate seeds, juice of one small lime; 500 g of jam sugar (ie reinforced with pectin already - the skin & reserved seeds SHOULD do the job but I like to be sure); and in a tea infuser, the reserved apple seeds and the skin/flesh/seeds of the small lime. First blitz the apple/pomegranate combo, then add it to the lime juice and sugar in a saucepan. Add the tea infuser. Proceed with Making Jam. This will make you 3-400mls of jam, starting from two medium-small pomegranates. If you have more pomegranates, scale up according to the usual 1:1 fruit to sugar ratio.

I neither attended the funeral nor picked up Mum yesterday, but I did drive in to town to see her. I ended up going in later than I had planned because I needed to psych myself up to it (and eat lunch). You see, in this case, driving somewhere familiar was worse than driving somewhere new, because: ( “My fraught relationship with Roads )

And so it came to pass, and driving was not scary, etc.

Which brings us to: Pride

I left the hospital desiring to get my glasses fixed & make it home before Dad and co got back. Mum assured me they would feed themselves en route but I had said I’d have something easy to cook.

Destination: Jesmond. A suburb I have been to only a couple of times & I’ve certainly never driven to the shops there.

Problem: there’s no mobile reception in the hospital basement car park with which to prime Google maps.

Achievement: I successfully drove myself there using only road signage and my sense of direction! I strutted into Jesmond shops feeling like king of - well, not the world, just king of a small patch of Known Geography.

And then: Matters cascade

The vyvanse drained out of my brain like power from an iPhone battery in 0 degree weather. I wandered, increasingly stupid, around Jesmond looking for Specsavers. I decided to grocery shop there, so that I could buy a Coke & consume emergency dex.

And then! The city ganged up on me, starting with the fact that I had parked in the weirdest parking spot in Jesmond and to get out had to reverse UP the lane and then do a reverse six point turn under the amused gaze of the auto detailing guy. Then… I have complaints. ( Urban planning is my enemy )

And that is how I took a twilight tour of the suburb of Shortland, and ended up home a full hour later than the relatives who had traveled twice as far.

If you consider this screenshot map, reconstructing where I had proudly navigated myself to by memory, my prospective routes out of town (blue) and where I ended up (yellow), you will see that, in fact…

Pride goeth before Wallsend

1. Person, definitely queer, of potentially any or all genders, on the street in Ashfield. They were wearing pink leggings, and, over them, a mid-length handkerchief skirt made of patched-together butt panels of jeans (each with pocket intact - the panels were the seat surrounding the pocket). When I said unto them "Great skirt!", they joyfully lifted their top to show me the waistband and crowed, "I started TAFE today at 11 instead of 9, so I made this". Then they said "Thank you, darling," and, upon consideration, "I love your hair". I had just had my hair freshly cut short, and suspect that they were seeking to Note My Masculinity as a course-correct from the "darling", but perhaps they did specifically like my hair.

2. Person with glorious hair and admirable relaxed fashion sense - long cardigans and docs feature heavily - seen several times on a bus, and once engaged in enthusiastic conversation.

3. Bearded man in what was probably a Threadless shirt, at a council consultative meeting. He was rather annoyed with the general tone of "we love how diverse the Inner West is", because, as he rightly points out, the Inner West is LESS diverse than it used to be, because everyone has been priced out. I bounced over and introduced myself, "Hi, you're my new friend!", and we enthusiastically griped about the horrors of renting in the Inner West.

4. Tuxedo cat in a baby blue collar, in the pub.

5. The first member of the Shooters and Fishers I have had reason to respect, namely, person driving a dusty four-wheel-drive down Park Street in the CBD, their party-sticker-bearing vehicle at least a decade old, and looking modest and practical compared to the city-shiny yank tanks in the adjacent lanes.

Also, these guys:

While professionally Hurring Up And Waiting, I have been reading my way through Richard Firth Green's A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England, a book I could have sworn I had read at least three times. But clearly I had skimmed the nitty-gritty of the first few chapters on "folklaw" and legal change in the high Middle Ages. Today, I learned about the last time a civil case in England was tried by combat.

It was, by all accounts, a bit of an odd occasion: Geoffrey Le Scrope, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, sat in Northhampton at an Eyre Court in 1320 (systematic Eyres had not been held some decades). The proceedings were between one Thomas Staunton and the Cluniac priory of Lenton over some sort of rights re a parish church. Staunton had summonsed the prior by writ, and each had appointed a champion (both named William).

Firth Green points out that the amount of detail in the record suggests that someone, or everyone, knew this was an old practice that might never be seen again. First up, before the champions even arrived, someone brought to Scrope's attention that traditionally, two oaths had been sworn: one at the bar and one at the fild of combat; some procedural discussion was had about whether that meant that one champion swore at the bar and one outside? Scrope eventually decided on uniformity.

The two Williams arrived, with attendants bearing symbolic items. The prior's champion, one hand on the bible and the other holding the other William by the hand, swore on oath that the priory had the rights to the church. Staunton's champion then reversed the pose and swore on oath that the prior's William had perjured himself vis a vis the church.

Scrope then appealed to the parties to compromise; and urged the two Williams to, if either of them should find himself in a position to kill the other, not to do so if the other William's master would intervene. Having second thoughts, perhaps, about this form of justice-seeking.

Nevertheless, the two Williams were escorted outside to make a second oath, which would have been to the effect of "I, William, have done nothing sinful lately, so if I lose it's not because God hates me, this is all a judgment of my master's rights or wrongs." However, Thomas Staunton lost his nerve, and offered to give up his claim to the church if the priory covered the court costs (a familiar situation, I'm sure, to many a civil lawyer).

At this point, you'd think Scrope would be relieved. But no! Here, perhaps, we discover why this antiquated proceeding was being conducted at all: he wanted to see some wrestling. He told off Staunton, and insisted on seeing the two Williams put on a display fight with staves, and then wrestling. Scrope generously awarded each William the staff he'd been fighting with, as a prize.

It seems like Firth Green is in the camp of "trial by combat as an incentive to negotiation and settlement" that the law textbook slightly sniffily mentions in its two-sentence coverage of the practice (either mediated trial by combat serves as an alternative to a society-wide constant brawl, or the formal prospect of trial by combat encourages confessions, negotiations, etc), but it's pretty clear Firth Green doesn't love that level of explanations-to-children, and disagrees with many people who the Law100 textbook would lump together. So I'm having fun with that.

The ancestor recipe for this is this one on taste.com.au. This version has been made more complex, but also explained in highly specific detail as it's intended for my father, a man who could cook two things when I was a teenager and has now *doubled* his repertoire and is considering advancing to Impossible Quiche. I have deleted the components explaining EXACTLY which of mum's cookware to use.

( Accessibility pros and cons )

( What you need and what you do with it )

Note: this works perfectly well with feta/goats cheese and spinach, for a vegetarian option.

Got harrassed as An Man yesterday. First time for everything, I guess. To be fair, the belligerent fellow trainsit passenger was VERY drunk, and also asked me if I was Black, so, not winning the perceptivity awards for the week.

Drunk Man, boarding train: "Aw yeah good afternoon mate, how are ya?"
Me, wedged in to the single seat beside the doors of an OSCAR motor carriage, with my suitcase in front of me: "Ah yeah not bad".

Drunk Man proceeded to various pronouncements, like asking me if I was Black (I am not only not Indigenous, nor of African or Islander descent, I am very pale, and was dressed for work in the CBD. And I don't have a shaved head any more. Not that people of colour don't wear blazers and ties, but there was nothing about me that might cause a drunk white guy to make an offensively stereotyped association based on clothes or hair, unlike, say, the time that a drunk African guy in Geneva cat-called me, in English, with "Hey lady, you look like African Queen!" based on, I assume, my shaven head). On the other hand, he also called me "big fella". He was loud and socially inappropriate, but did not seem to be initially aggressive.

At some point, he came over to my side of the carriage, and loomed through the glass that divided me from the designated doorway egress zone. Then he lurched over to the same spot, opposite me. At this point, I was ignoring him entirely, and mostly still listening to my podcast with reasonable focus; but I made eye contact with the woman opposite me to make sure she knew I knew she was also in an uncomfortable position.

The woman opposite me, I realised, was a Virgin Australia flight attendant, still in uniform. After a few minutes, she got up and came over to stand next to me, taking up the hand-hold spot by the doors on my side of the carriage. Initially I had thought she might have felt threatened with him standing in that spot on *her* side, but, as became clear, she had gone into "work mode" and was looking out for me.

Mr Belligerant sat down in her seat. This was good, because I was starting to worry that he'd fall over as the train swayed, leaving us with a Medical Incident on our hands. Mr Belligerant was muttering and burping for a while, and I became very anxious - concerned he was going to puke right onto my suitcase.

I was so concerned about this iminient puking situation, and the alternative possibility that he'd pass out just as we entered the more remote streches of the line along the Central Coast, that I didn't really pay attention to what he was saying. I was comforted by the presence of Ms VirginAus, because one can assume that a flight attendant will keep her head if there's a medical emergency.

Roughly around Mooney Mooney, I realise Mr Belligerent is aggressively shouting "I'll blow ya", at either me or the general air. At this point, I suppose he might be having delusions (and perhaps he was). But if it was a proposition, to either me or the spectres in the air, it was made very aggressively. As a threat.

So baffled am I by what seems to be an aggressive threat of fellatio, that I make eye contact with Mr Belligerent. "What are you looking at cunt" was definitely aimed at me, and from there he escalated to various other insults and exhortations to me to get up (presumably to fight him, although with enough "I'll blow ya" that the possibility of incitement to public sex acts was still plausible).

Ms VirginAus mouths "are you okay?" at me, and I assure her I am. I am uncomfortable, but not scared. Aside from the baffling possibility of aggressive fellatory threats, and the one racial enquiry, nothing about this seems to be targeted or personal: he just doesn't like my face. Maybe he's mad because I answered him once and not again. Who knows. I have my suitcase between me and him, there's glass boxing me in, and I'm still more concerned that he might puke on my stuff than about physical violence.

I have too much baggage to get up and move, especially as the carriage is jam-packed. I now realise I should have asked Ms VirginAus to help me move my stuff to the other end of the carriage - make a perfectly reasonable announcement that I wish to use the lavatory, but my stuff is here, and the loo is in the other carriage. Or I could even have just given Ms VirginAus my seat to "mind my stuff" and gone on a loo expedition . But I still haven't processed that Ms VirginAus is protecting *me*, that she's gone into full Work Mode and she's simultaneously assessing the situation (not escalating) and looking after me.

My plan is that when we get to Woy Woy, I will get out, and just get into the next carriage. I can't go through to the next carriage while travelling, as we're in the fourth-from-rear carriage: Mr Belligerent and I, in opposite seats, are both jammed up against the wall of the driver's cabin. He's banging aggressively on his side of the wall, in fact. This does not lead to anything, because it's an 8 car train, and there's no one in the middle-of-train cabin.

Next Mr Belligerent gets up, further shouting at me to "get up you cunt". And now, it transpires, I should prepare to get out onto the platform at Woy Woy and fight him.

It is now extremely clear that I'm not being homophobically harrassed or threatened with gay-bashing, but invited to an Affray. In my time in private court transcription services, I typed enough local court hearings to know that "One or more drunk guys don't like the look of one or more other guys on a train, invite them to an Affray at the next station" is quite a common occurrence (often between white men and men of colour, sometimes between ethnically diverse groups of blokes on the basis of assumed gang territorial incursions, sometimes between white blokes for no good reason) and scripts out differently to your average gay-bashing.

This poses something of a problem for my "quietly exit the carriage at Woy Woy" plan. Mr Belligerent is now wavering in the middle of the carriage, rather than standing at the holding-on-pole opposite Ms VirginAus. Ms VirginAus is very tense. Later, she will say to another passenger that of course she's had self-defence training, and I belatedly realise she hadn't been alarmed in the same way I was, but preparing to defend me and/or intervene if I or another man got into it with this guy. I have no idea how she was gendering me, but hopefully if she WAS reading me as a man she'd realised I was not going to escalate.

I decide that actually, I do have to contact someone. I can't get up to call the driver via the help point, because if i get up, Mr Belligerent's script will start scripting. I don't think this is a "call 000" issue, and I'm at the wrong angle to read the info sticker to see if there's a "text transport police" number - and I can't see the carriage number either, because another passenger's head is in the way. I decide to tweet @ TrainLinkNorth, describing the service, carriage-from-rear, current location, and problem. We have not long crossed the Mooney Mooney bridge; there's a fair way to go until WoyWoy, someone will probably see the tweet and alert the driver or tell me what to do.

No sooner have I drafted this tweet than we hit the Hawkesbury black spot and the tweet won't send. Mr Belligerent gets louder and more sway-y.

A tall, middle-aged bloke comes up out of the downstairs half of the carriage, gets in between Mr Belligerent and me. I brace for Worse. Mr Tall says "Oy, mate, keep your voice down." Mr Belligerent yells something.

Mr Tall, to his credit, stays out of arm's reach, and does not raise his voice more than his first interjection. "Mate, this is the quiet carriage!"

To everyone's bafflement, Mr Belligerent breaks and runs, down into the downstairs of the carriage. Mr Tall follows, and those of us left in the front vestibule listen as a hullabaloo ripples through the downstairs and out of earshot.

At this point, the passenger who had been blocking the carriage number turns to me and Ms VirginAus and asks if we're ok. Ms VirginAus checks on me multiple times in rapid succession. Someone tells me that "we" have called the police (possibly fellow travellers of Mr Tall?), before the mobile reception dropped, and the situation will be sorted at Hornsby.

It becomes clear to me that everyone else is treating me as if I've been seriously threatened. I meanwhile have been quite sure that as long as I stayed with my suitcase in front of me, tucked into my one-seat nook, I'm not going to be hurt, although getting up would have been a risky idea. They all make sure I'm not leaving at Woy Woy (I am not).

At Woy Woy, the train is delayed a little (we were already late leaving Sydney) while Mr Belligerent is removed. Everyone asks if I have someone meeting me at Gosford, but I am in fact going through to Newcastle.

Over the trip from Woy Woy to Gosford, I talk a bit more with Ms VirginAus, and she talks to the remaining men in the vestibule. It slowly dawns on me that she's far more shaken up than I was. She doesn't sit down, but rides from Woy Woy to Gosford standing in front of her original seat, with one knee up on it. "I don't have any authority here," she says to the bloke who'd been on her other side through the Hawkesbury. "We get self-defence training, of course, but..."

She'd gone into Work Mode, with both emotional labour (looking after me) and threat assessment - but she didn't have any authority, so she couldn't take the early interventions she would have taken on a plane, and she had neither the back-up of colleagues nor of the legal authorities a flight attendant has when at work. And, depending on how she read me, she was either entirely surrounded by men, or by all men bar one intimidated dyke. Miscellaneous other men trying to deal with Problem Men on trains is one of many routes to Affray.

If I had fully processed how she was dealing with the situation, I would have said more during the ride through to Woy Woy - explicitly said (it's not like Mr Belligerent was listening) that I knew as long as I didn't get up and no one else got in his face, Mr Belligerent was the only person seriously unsafe here (risk of falling over on a moving train while drunk).

I ended up posting on Twitter, tagging in Virgin Aus, asking them to pass my thanks through. Then I've spent a chunk of time this morning trying to get through robot responses and seemingly-not-robot but the person hadn't read my tweets properly responses in order to convey *praise and thanks*, no this isn't a complaint. You should not be sorry to hear about this incident with [name], you should be proud of her and you should also get a message through to her manager and have someone check on her. And maybe advise your staff not to travel in uniform on their commutes! I'd hate to think that she was putting herself through stress, and at risk, because people would expect as much from a uniformed flight attendant.

When I finally got picked up by Dad and Ms15 from the bus stop out on the main road (I had left work early to catch the ultra-express train so that Dad could pick me up and still be in time to pick up Ms15 from her work - but then the train was delayed so I cooled my heels in Newcastle and caught the bus), I told them about it. The experience of Dad trying to indirectly figure out if I had been subjected to some kind of demographically targeted harrassment, without specifying which demographic, was quite entertaining (not that I blame him - I know perfectly well that the point in transition where I might start copping fag-directed homophobia, I'm ALSO the most stands-out-in-a-targetable-way dyke I've ever been, and Dad sure doesn't have the vocab for that).

No! That's the weirdest thing about it all! In fact, it's finally dawned on me that Mr Belligerent may have been shouting "I'll go ya", not "I'll blow ya", meaning I have been subjected to 100% demographic-neutral bloke-on-bloke aggression (unless he did think I was Black, I suppose). Truly, we live in a Society.

Musically: currently catching up what I missed from Hozier. Big fan of this one:



Assorted, non-exhaustive podcasts and such:

A Rebel on the Bench: ABC Conversations interview with David Heilpern, former magistrate and law reform advocate in a range of areas. Prior to appointment as a magistrate, he wrote a book - THE book, the only systemic survey - on sexual assault of young prisoners. He's very well known for his openness about his workplace PTSD, and for work in drug law reform and alternative sentencing.

The Callover's NAIDOC week episode with Justice Lincoln Crawley, the first Indigenous person appointed to a superior court in Australia. I particularly enjoyed Crawley's description of why he left his post-undergrad public service job within a year: he was bored out of his mind (same, pal), and he wanted to be "a specialist, putting specialist knowledge to work". That really resonated with me.

Jolene's podcast "When a guy has a really f*cked gender", particularly this episode with Alexis, "Femboys in the Factory". The incitating topic is Alexis' article "Femboys in the factory: trans labour beyond abjection", which I have yet to read, but there's a lot of back and forth discussion of Alexis' overall marxist approach to concepts like transmisogyny and who is subject to it. Engages interestingly with Jules Gill-Petersen's history of transmisogyny - including diverging in a few interesting ways.

ABC Listen's "What the Duck", especially this episode on tomato virus history. Featuring government jobs being decided by a boxing match, and pioneering biological research before anyone had seen a virus with a microscope.

Emily Anderson's podcast "Unfinishing", interview with Lorraine Topper about the history of bras, and why Lori abandoned writing a book on bra history.

Kate Lister's Betwixt the Sheets, but particularly one on The origins of the patriarchy and The History of Monogamy. Notably, although the two guests clearly don't share the exact same set of key dates / assumptions, Helen Fisher puts the origins of monogamy *long* before the development of agrarianism; and Saini doesn't fix the origins of the patriarchy with agrarianism at all but with the rise of *cities*. I need to update my feminist anthropology, clearly.

Will Tosh on Bad Gays re Christopher Marlowe. Tosh makes a compelling argument back toward using an author's queer narratives as as good a reason as any to suppose them queer: not because art MUST follow from life, but because the ways Marlowe's texts show a deep investment in thinking around and through problems of gender role and homoeroticism as problems, neither absent from nor unquestioningly accepted in his cultural context. I immediately ordered Tosh' book on Shakespeare on the basis of how he talks about Marlowe.

Gone Medieval, How the Plantaganets Built England

ABC If You're Listening's entire series Who Broke Britain, the first episode of which dropped as the UK election campaign began, and which ended the week after the election itself.

Lena Matteis' Queer Lit, especially This episode "Gendered Bodies and Narrative Form" with Chiara Pellegrini. Having recently finished "Confessions of the Fox", I'm once again particularly annoyed by what seems to be a collective agreement in trans literature that "describing bodies and sex without specifying anything about genitals" is not only tasteful but radical and affirming - knowing that it's not just me having weird luck in books, it's an actual Trend Worth Studying, is useful.

Forgotten Australia, The Birth of the Bodgies: in which Bodgies and Widgies are much more complex (gender-wise, social panic-wise) than a few sentences and a picture in the y 9/10 history book had led me to believe.

And, last and most unexpectedly fascinating, After Dark, The Hidden History of Garden Gnomes

This has been a non-comprehensive list of things I have listened to.

There is no way that I am going to catch up the Things I Have Listened To since July 2023 (and that was after a long absence).

But let us note some things:

1. Pursuant to some readings for my current undergrad credits, I had the question, generally, "wtf happened to the English legal system between the 13th century and 1788", and also some minor qualms about my understanding of wtf happened between the 10th and 13th centuries (because what I am seeing in Australian law textbooks does not match up with what I thought was the important throughlines of medieval law) and wtf happened between 1788 and, oh, at least 2012 (when I first worked in a legal adjacent job).

2. I have not answered all of these questions, yet. Some of them have been SOMEWHAT answered by further adventures in law textbooks. Some have been only further aggravated.

With that in mind, consider:

Law, Order and Murder from a podcast by an American entitled History of English. It was published in 2016, but even so, the terminology choices seem a bit out of date (not just the use of "anglo-saxon" but "tribal"???). Upon investigation the host is an attorney, which explains why the history of law bits seem pretty solid, to an undergraduate level, while the social history is... not the best I would hope for undergrads, let's say. BUT, bear in mind that my undergrad English training was hyperfocused on pre-1066 (with a couple of begrudging - but lifechanging - later Middle English units), while my history components were very continental. I have a lot of legal histoy knowledge but all the post 1066 stuff is about sex law, and hence focused on the canon vs secular law divide. This is NOT the binary that one is asked about in Law100. This particular podcast doesn't even address the common : equity law divide but DOES fill in a lot of gaps that the textbook does not (but which I have enough knowledge to see and be itched by) about Angevin adminstrative reform and the development of canon law.

I cannot find any good podcast on the early courts of equity, because if I search of "chanxery court" or "history of law equity" I get all AMERICAN results. Boo hiss. So let's just skip over the 15th to early 17th c, I guess, like the worst of textbooks. And onward to my next point of interest:

Preuludes to the English Civil War, but with emphasis on, a) the Inns of Court and b) high church Anglicans. My two favourite kinds of pedants: lawyers and anglo-catholics. Behold, A whole podcast about that. I'm still not sure who Arminius is, but I can definitely use "Arminian" in a sentence. I'm also using this podcast for its Facts with my greatest Paranoid Reading haton, because podcasts that begin with a homage to QEII are to be commended for their accessible Facts and presumed conservative in their analysis.

Now, I had another question: why did I think that I knew a different name for "the basis of law in continental europe" compared to what the law textbooks keep giving me. They say civil law, I say, yes, but there's a more History word... the word is Salic Law. I have bookmarked some podcasts on the 14th century developments of the Salic Law, which may make me a, a better historian (too late) and b, better placed to nitpick my intro law readings.

Keane J's lecture for the Selden Society (2015) on >Sir Edward Coke. I am 1/4 of the way through it. My only comment so far is : per Keane J, Coke (pron cook), had a deeply Protestant resentment of all things continental, and especially the Courts of Equity.

Two questions arising, which I suspect the podcast will not answer because those contextual notes were tossed off as into as if everyone would understand:

1. What is the continental influence in the Courts of Equity? If significant enough for Coke to care, why do the Law100 textbooks not care?
2. Protestants. There were lots of them in Europe. SURELY one cannot do ultra-protestantism without getting big into some kinds of continental influence?

I suspect Keane J of using "continental" and "European" as a shorthand for "Catholic", but if so, that makes q 1 much more fascinating..

---

Meanwhile: please accept a musical recommendation



Let's not try to psychoanalyse the details of my parasocial vibing with Beth McCarthy, okay.

Let us also not try to pschoanalyse my strong enthusiasm for the song "Women and Sandwiches", from Freaky Friday The Musical (for schools). TBH the version on YouTube is not as compelling - I think I liked the y 10 kid from my sister's school's voice better, and the director & costume designers had gone for (apparently) a big "Taylor Swift Eras" vibe. My impression of this character, when he's wearing a spiky-but-sparkly vest, is quite different to the Miscellaneous Guy In Flannel in this smoothly-produced-and-uploaded version:



Also, in Freaky Friday the Musical, when the mom character asks her catering offsider to un-resign, the offsider says, fervently, "I wish I could quit you". I asked Ms15 if that wasin the original script. Ms15 says yes. I says: "well I know what age group THAT script writer was in and they're probably gay".

I then had to try to explain to both Mum and Ms15 (the worst combo audience) why that was funny.

I was the only person in the audience cackling at that line. And the gen z actors didn't even know to expect it.

Such are my burdens.