Come closer my pretties...

Having left the cafe at Greyfriars I decided to attempt another flan so consulted a randomised Oblique Strategy card for inspiration and received "Bridges -build -burn". There are plenty of bridges in Worcester, over roads, railway, canal, and rivers. I've crossed many of them. But there's one newly built bridge over the River Severn that I hadn't visited and it has a cafe besides. Will I make it? Will I accidentally burn it down? Will I die en route and my viking-themed burning boat burial pass underneath as it carries me to my final destination? Spoiler: not that last one. XD

Walking along roads familiar from previous flanage, I was surprised to find an alley I'd never noticed before. Obviously I turned along it, which was lucky because my diverted route brought me to a mural of a GIANT raccoon:

( Bricks, box, waterworks, bridge )

- Pride: I have GAY Marmite! In the UK, branded goods claiming a tiny percentage of their profits go to charity fundraising aren't uncommon, and Christmas / Easter branded items happen but I don't generally see event themed goods in High Street shops. However, my supermarket delivery this week included rainbow, Elton John, anti-AIDS, rebranded Marmite! Need to know: the Elton John AIDS Foundation is banned in Russia, and the EJAF knows where Lesotho is. It takes me ages to eat my way through a whole jar so I'll have cheering GAY Marmite to increase my happiness every time I open my eye-level kitchen cupboard for a long time. :-)

- Habitat: I sorted out and re-dyed everything old that could be renewed. I love the moment when all my favourites look at their best again.

- Pop: f'Keith Starmer and Lisa Nandy's attempts at government censorship of pop music are going about as well as British government censorship of popular media usually does (see also Lady Chatterley's Lover, Spycatcher, &c). "It’s upsetting that the way this country is going keeps our music relevant!"

- Birb log: 15 June, Jackdaws still flying off with beaks full of food.
16 June, juvenile ? Song Thrush in front garden (these are ringed locally and I hear them sing occasionally but I rarely see them).
25 June, Jackdaws in semi-juvenile plumage and with behaviours such as frequent vocalising and begging for food (including begging each other, lol, which helps establish the wider flock's pecking order). Most of the parents are very unimpressed with being harassed for food at this stage, although they do still voluntarily feed the kids, and adults will cheerfully put the youngsters in their place if the kids are failing to copy adult foraging behaviour or are trying to steal food the adults have found. This morning's flock was about a dozen individuals.

Please note that when Yvette Cooper claims Palestine Action have committed "violence" she actually means vandalism to property not violence against people. Violence is harm to a person or people, e.g. genocide or supporting genocide is "violence". One of Cooper's fellow Labour Party MPs, Apsana Begum, said: "Proscribing Palestine Action as 'terrorists' while continuing to send arms to a state that is committing the gravest of crimes against humanity in Gaza is not just unjustifiable, it is chilling. The ongoing crackdown on the right to protest is a threat to us all." NGO Campaign Against Arms Trade demonstrated the UK government increased licences to export military equipment to Israel after a "temporary arms suspension" was falsely announced in September 2024.

Link to the following article at Sky news:

Palestine Action supporters defiant as group faces ban

By Jason Farrell, Monday 23 June 2025 20:57, UK

What's happening to Palestine Action?
Palestine Action faces being proscribed as a terror group after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and damaged two military aircraft.

"If they brand Palestine Action a terrorist group then - oh my goodness - I'm one of them too," said Eleanor, a mother from Rotherhithe, south London. "Whether I do something or not - I'm a terrorist," she said. Eleanor had come to support the group at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. She had just heard a statement from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who said Palestine Action will be banned following "a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action".

It means not just the core members, but anyone coming out to support them in protests such as this one would be committing an offence punishable of up to 14 years in prison.

Eleanor said she started supporting the group after the previous home secretary Suella Braverman dubbed the pro-Palestinian protests hate marches. Eleanor added that this latest move by the government won't stop her supporting Palestine Action, but she worries what would happen to her children if she was prosecuted.

There are other, legal, pro-Palestinian groups that people can support, but those at Monday's rally believe their group was the one having the biggest impact. "They are scared of us," said another protester, Frieda. "Now they will make our lives hell and I don't know how anyone in this country can stand for that."

She was carrying a banner that read "Free Political Prisoners" and said several of her friends had been arrested for activities related to Palestine Action (PA). She added: "We won't be intimidated by this, and we will come out in bigger numbers now."

( Full text of article for archiving purposes. )

I feel as if I haven't been inflicting enough questionable moments from history on y'all recently so... to the art mobile!

One of my favourite aspects of art is that even if one broadly shares many cultural influences with an artist it remains possible to be completely mystified by wth they were thinking when they painted THAT... ?! Anyway, meet Dosso (nickname for Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri) whose patrons, male and female, liked him to paint cryptic allegories, i.e. even if you know the stories that inspired them you won't necessarily be able to decipher the message... if there is a message and the artist wasn't just messing with viewers... or drunk... or whatevz. All links to wikimedia, obv.

An allegory of Fortune, 1530-ish, in which a naked woman with only one sandal blows a giant bubble and a gravity defying gold cloth out of her... self, apparently, while staring at a handful of scratch-cards being waved by a man with slightly more dignified drapery.

An allegory of Music, 1522-ish, in which a partially naked woman (two sandals tho) stares at another naked woman's breasts, while a guy with the worst mankini in recorded history is distracted from retuning stringed instruments WITH A HAMMER by an angry arsonist toddler.

1535-ish, Hercules playing with a desk toy while a woman with her naked breasts in a fruit bowl stares at a goat... or possibly the head of the woman next to her who is sporting a marginally more fancy hat. IDK. Post your own explanation in comments plz. P.S. Beware of the baby magpie cos its got a knife... and some... I want to guess cheese? Cute dog tho.

( Don't go yet... I have four more.... )

Seven seems like enough bogglement for one day, or one bogglement for every day of the next week and then if you're good I might share a few portraits from my collection of unlikely nuns.

- Reading: 72 books to 19 June 2025. Finished 70 + 2 in progress.

Quote: "Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes! Didn't they use anything else in Ancient Greece?"

66. Bland generic novel with fish knives joke.

67. Intermittently mildly amusing novel, with a clunky attempted fish forks joke, admiring references to the father's fascism ("senatorial" gold "Roman" armbands = fascist brassards), and a whole shoal of red salted codfish.

68. Casual authorial antisemitism (not as characterisation or a plot point). :-(

69. Aurora Australis, by members of the Nimrod Expedition to Antarctica, 1908, anthology, 3.5/5
Variable quality but worth reading the whole to give context for the best. Readalong ongoing:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

70. Book published in the 1920s, read for a reading challenge. Not a great choice for me, apart from the fact it's short, but I've read most of the usual suspects from that decade. I probably should've asked for recs of less well-known books, or re-read something I already know I like.

71. When the Earth was Green, by Riley Black, 2025, non-fiction popular palaeontology, ?/5
Numerical typos are very fashionable in 2025, example the first: "425 million years ago [...] during human history more than 440 million years after our beachside scene" [so 15 million years in the future... yeah, no. Also humans gonna be extinct by then, bb ;-P ].

72. Inventing the Renaissance, by Ada Palmer, 2025, non-fiction history historiography, ?/5
Numerical typos are very fashionable in 2025, example the second: "Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1987)" [No, but needs more fanfic, lol]. Palmer does produce the bestest quotes though, and if you're not prepared for 650 pages of historiography then there are shorter fun posts on her blog, or just read this:
"Lorenzo de Medici had Marsilio Ficino, the first true Platonist in Europe since antiquity, but he also had the first giraffe in Europe since antiquity (a gift from the Sultan of Egypt), and both of them wandered the streets of Florence making people smile and advertising Medici wealth and power (though only the giraffe used to stick its head through people's second-floor windows to get snacks; the Platonist came inside). Which of these two living novelties did Lorenzo value more?" [I mean, joking aside, Ficino because his works could be left to and benefit Medici heirs....]