robot_mel

This was posted over at agonyaunt but I see the post is locked so not linking there. It's I was asked to provide proof that I wasn’t involved with my husband’s death" (second one down here at Ask A Manager):

I woke up next to my husband in May and found he was dead. I am a teacher in training and the university I go to is well aware of the situation. I have a tattoo on my neck which is the last message he wrote to me, and one day a colleague at work said, “Do you have your name on your neck?” I explained the situation.
Last Friday I was pulled into a room by myself with no warning and asked if I had a letter from the police clearing me of his death. I was told I had overshared at work, and due to the nature of the death (he was only 49 and died unexpectedly) they would like to see a letter from the police clearing me of any wrongdoing. I became extremely upset, and told her I wouldn’t go any further than this unless HR was there to document the conversation and take notes. She then followed me into the car park and asked me not to leave as she “didn’t want me to leave like this.” I told her I was too upset to talk and she still asked me to stay.
I’m only three weeks into my course and am terrified they will look for any reason to throw me off. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Why even mention the police? One assumes a doctor was involved and provided a certificate that it was a natural death. These happen. At much younger ages than 49.

(And ugh at the pursuing upset person.)

In a former former workplace the I think under 30 husband of a colleague died very unexpectedly of an asthma attack. Our sympathy was somewhat limited by the fact that she was having an affair with a colleague and was visibly ungriefstricken, but we didn't go around muttering 'she done 'im in' rather than making bitchy remarks about merry widows.

There was the famed fitness guru who dropped dead during a marathon.

There was some instance I think I commented on when scandalmongering tabloid journo was trying to drum up a case that some gay celeb had died in Sex Orgy because fit young men don't just drop dead, whereas in fact there are known syndromes that cause that.

But perish the thort that this should stop somebody who fancies themself - well, NOT Miss Marple, would Miss Marple have been anything like so crude if she had the slightest suspicion?

I observed over the weekend woezering about universities introducing courses teaching students how to read the books on their courses; that is, the courses in e.g. EngLit, that they signed up for and presumably knew would involve reading texts of various kinds? And instead of being Brigadier Disgusted-Hedjog of Tunbridge Wells, 'In my day we were doing C18th novels for A-levels [true]', I observed, when looking this up, that round about the same time last year there was the same round of woe unto this generation which do not rede ye bookz.

So my scepticism, she is considerable.

I suspect there have been allotropes of this one since Ye Classix were no longer the essentials for a degree/when EngLit became an actual degree subject/when philology and Anglo-Saxon were no longer compulsory/NOVELS! they are going to uni to read NOVELS!!! Sivilizashun B DED!!!!

Okay, possibly thick little Tarquin & Lucretia who got in through PULL may be astonished at having to read big fat books but in these days, and with the general attack on the humanities, I have to suppose that anyone who turns up with the intention of doing an English degree know what's in store.

***

So, we have had a woman Archbishop of Canterbury.

Has anyone - I haven't seen it anywhere yet - remarked on the SYMBOLISM, in the present parlous state of the Anglican communion over various abuse scandals, that her background is in A Healing Profession?

***

There are a lot of reasons why I am glad I am of the generation I am, and one of them is Having Missed Out on this sort of thing: risking our health in the name of beauty is totally normalised.

***

And today I got vaxxed.

Last week's bread had a mould episode, chiz, so I made a loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread Flour, crust sprung a bit while baking, I think due to age of yeast, but otherwise okay.

Friday night supper, penne with sauce of roasted red peppers in brine whizzed in blender + chopped Calabrian salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown grated apple, strong brown flour, maple syrup (also new batch of yeast): v nice.

Today's lunch: tempeh stirfried with sugar snap peas and a sauce of soy sauce, maple syrup, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, cornflour mixed in water, crushed garlic and minced ginger: am not sure the tempeh was supposed to crumble like that during cooking?? served with sticky rice with lime leaves and chicory quartered, healthygrilled in pumpkinseed oil and splashed with lemon and lime balsamic vinegar.

When I turned on my clock radio - which I do on Saturdays to ensure that the time is co-ordinating with the radio time-signal - Radio 3 was playing the finale to Brahms Violin Concerto.

Joy!

Well, this has been an up and downy year as ever, but I am beginning to poke my nose out of my hole. I am still Doing Stuff, even if various projects seem to have got bogged down (not just on my side ahem ahem).

Anyway, in accordance with tradition, I pass round virtual rich dark gingerbread (and also gluten-free, diabetic-friendly, etc, versions), sanitive madeira (eschewing Duke of Clarence jokes) and other beverages of choice, and lift a glass to dr rdrz.

What I read

Finished The Literary Life of Rebecca West, felt a bit meh about it.

Also finished The Military Philosophers, which is more of Nick Jenkins being in the backwaters of the War while other people die in theatres of war or he remembers dead people. Isobel (wife) actually got to be on stage and have a few lines.

Then, largely because there had been some discussion on troisoiseaux's DW about his works, picked up Dick Francis, Longshot (1990), as it happened to be in a conveniently accessible spot on my shelves; and then went straight on to Come To Grief (this features Sid Halley, who is I think the nearest Francis came to a series protag) (1995); To the Hilt (1996); and 10lb Penalty (1997), which were adjacent. This kind of back to back read really shows up an author's recurrent tropes (quite apart from the hosses and the hero getting painfully done over), like, the mostly quasi-father-son relationships, the quietly competent women minor characters etc etc. The last of this run was the weakest - it's a bit odd, to say the least, to have a plot which is all about politics and Parliamentary ambitions which is rather, um, coy, about actual political allegiances. Francis is very more-ish, though. Interesting that these do not all of them bring things to a tidy conclusion. (I wonder if this is the sort of thing that disappoints the once-a-year on the beach reader?)

Preordered and turned up yesterday, JA Jance, The Girl from Devil's Lake (Joanna Brady, #21) (2025), which, alas, does one of my least favourite crime novel tropes: serial killer with substantial portions of narrative being in their POV.

On the go

Have just picked up, because I felt like it, okay? Rebecca West, This Real Night (1984)

Up next

No idea.

I do feel, Lee Child, that this categorisation is a bit simple:

But I think it’s nuts that people think genre is easier than reaching a very small and reliable audience. Some good, middle-class Julian Barnes or Martin Amis reader, they don’t expect to be 100% satisfied with a book. They put it down and start the next one. When you’re a bestseller, you’ve got to satisfy the person that reads one book a year on the beach. If you leave him disappointed, he may never read another book.

Okay, I read a lot and I very very seldom expect to be 100% satisfied with a book, but the ones that ring the bell are all over the place. I won't say I expect to be satisfied by a book but you know, Middlemarch exists, Tam Lin exists, The Fountain Overflows exists, etc etc, I can always hope.

And what do we mean by being satisfied by a book anyway? I was in Slow Motion Trainwreck Relationship with a person who had some very weird stuff going on about reading and what they would or would not read and somehow being afraid of investing time in reading a book that might not be Right. It was not about satisfaction precisely, it was about having some internal template a book had to match.

Actually I suppose this rather went with making the occasional askance expressions and noises at the kind of things that I was reading, because I may not be entirely indiscriminate in what I read but I do have to be reading something and I will give quite a lot of things A Go.

I also wonder how one fits into the above paradigm people who do read a lot but want the exact same thing with just slight changes, which is also a market that bestsellers aim at, surely?

Also, are there literally people who only read one book a year when they're on holiday (and probably on the plane rather than the beach)?

On another paw (how many have I got up to?) there is Uncle Matthew in The Pursuit of Love who would never read anything (except for Country Life, presumably, if he found the chub-fuddler there) after the transcendant experience that was White Fang.