Come closer my pretties...

Aurora Australis readalong 1 / 10, The Ascent of Mount Erebus, post for comment, reaction, discussion, fanworks, links, and whatever obliquely related matters your heart desires. You can join the readalong at any time or skip sections or go back to earlier posts. It's all good. :-)

Text: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus

Readalong intro: https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

Reminder for next week: Midwinter Night, a short poem by Ernest Shackleton:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Midwinter_Night

The Ascent of Mount Erebus, written by Tannatt William Edgeworth David, who also wrote the later published Narrative of the Magnetic Pole Journey about the same Nimrod Expedition's successful first visit to the magnetic South Pole (which was also the world's longest unsupported sled journey until the mid-1980s).

This is a ripping yarn of exploration and adventure with detailed descriptions of mountain walking through snow and ice, much specialised vocabulary about frozen landscapes and volcanic geology, and outbreaks of self-deprecating humour. Very much in the tradition of travel writing about extreme exploration (later perfected by Shipton and Tilman).

( Info and links )

( Quotes )

Hurrah! Champagne all round! :D

A tale of medieval women crossing the gender line LITERALLY: in 1417 the Bishop of Durham ordered two Newcastle women to dress as drag kings and parade around two churches on six separate days, because he thought it was an appropriate act of penance, and if the Bishop of Durham thinks parading around a church in drag improves one's chance of getting into Heaven then who am I to argue?

Matilda Burgh and Margaret Ushar were ordered to do this penance after they dressed as men to visit the shrine of Cuthbert, one of England's most popular saints (defo Top Five), because the Bishops of Durham had literally built a misogynist blue line of exclusion into the ground around the shrine and only men were supposed to enter. There's more. The women's employer's wife, Mrs Baxter, who was accused of aiding and abetting the "crime" of female pilgrimage to a saint's shrine, disobeyed the Bishop's order to attend his ecclesiastical court and also disobeyed his order for her to attend the drag king parades because she claimed having twins to look after made her too tired ("& uxor prædicti Petri fic eſt fatigata cum duobus gemellis quod honeſte non poteſt comparere"). Clearly I love this entire escapade, although I did feel mild sympathy for the parish chaplain who had to deal with these three ungovernable women and an out-of-touch Bishop, lol.

( Sources in English and Latin. )

- Readalong Wednesday's ancient mar-reminder stoppeth one of three, "Until the thrilling tale is told, this link within me burns..." :D
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus

- Happy dyed potato day to everyone who celebrates! And for all my neighbours voting in the next couple of weeks, for all our sakes please choose a ticky box as unlike Badenoch / Sunak / Truss / Johnson as possible, thank you. P.S. remember that the potatoes who dyed for our sins are edible unless fertilized when they become treyf. Dark chocolate eggs are safer as they're always both unfertilised and unleavened! ;-)

- Birb log: when I put food out this week I only got half the numbers of birbs feeding at any moment because half of each pair is now on the nest until shift change, so even those birbs who are paired for the rest of the year are temporarily eating alone.

- Potentially improving everybody's habitat: honestly don't know where this last week went.... 13-19. Biologging. Deleting spree on mobile to clear storage. (And keeping up with regular household tasks but not improvements, lol.)

- Writing: I did commit a few prompt acts of versification.

( Lakes, bananas, laboured rhymes, and lock keys. )

- This Is Just To Say I have read the account that was in the ice book, of the ascent of Mount Erebus, and which you were probably saving for next week. Forgive me, it was a ripping yarn, so adventurous and so cold:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus

- Friday's Five is loving and giving.

I. Who was your first crush?

I don't think I've ever had a "crush" in the conventional sense, not even on a fictional character, so my first crushing love was probably London Underground, lol. I've never had to commute by tube and have therefore preserved my first love, which I encountered before crushes at gigs. I love the cooperative behaviours of regular tube travellers, and the architecture + art of the stations (and Poems on the Underground), and the well-planned convenience of routes and ticketing, and THAT map, and so much more. Of course, it helps that my first love was a 20th century phenomenon - I might not be so enamoured after decades of intentional Conservative dismantling of public transport. And, let's be honest, wooden escalators were a mind-bending trip into past history even in when I was young. Mornington Crescent!

II. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Yes, both, and neither. I have more love for people than energy for companionable behaviours, but I also enjoy my own company.

III. What is your favourite non-sexual thing you like to do with the love of your life?

Eat, with everyone I love or even like. Almost all human relationships benefit from shared preparation and consumption of sustenance ime (which is an additional reason why health problems impacting on that can be socially and personally devastating).

IV. What is one quirky habit your partner does that either annoys you or makes you grin?

"your partner" o_O

V. Do you believe in monogamous relationships?

I mean, I believe some people choose to make them exist although even then serial monogamy seems to be more common than actual monogamy. I also believe polyandrous relationships exist &c. The whole idea of confining oneself to one all-important relationship at the expense of all others is not a psychologically healthy development imo and smacks of isolation from community to me. I think it's a good idea to raise children in stable environments but it takes a village to raise a child.

VI. So, are y'all crushed introverts/extroverts who like non-sexual things with quirks and believe in only one wife?

- Readalong reminder: Aurora Australis, this week The Ascent of Mount Erubus:
Text: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus
Readalong intro: https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

- I got a printed "Loans summary" from a library, with a concerning final item, lol....

"Outstanding charges: 0.00 GBP
Overdue: 0
Reservation(s) to collect: 0
Total item(s) on loan: 3
Name: Bad influence"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- Reading: 45 books to 16 April 2025.

43. 2024 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing winner Late Light, The Secret Wonders of a Disappearing World, by Michael Malay, which is mostly four extended essays about four species of animal found in the UK (eel, moth, mussel, cricket) with more general top and tail chapters at each end. The writing is meditative and expansive but also melancholy and inevitably downbeat as it's tracking declining populations in reducing habitats. It deserved the award wins for both the prose and the content imo.

44. Between Britain by Alastair Moffat, which is a book of popular historical and cultural anecdotes strung on the thread of walks along the Scottish / English border from coast to coast. The author's easy going attitude and readable prose seems to have overcome my reading ennui, which is funny because I only chose this as it needs to return to the library. I've ordered another book by Moffat, of Arthuriana, and put a third on my library list for maybe later, about the Roman Walls in what is now Scotland.

pg175: "[...] on the Scottish side the Duke of Roxburgh showed how powerful and influential he could be. The area of Wark Common he claimed lay on the English side of the border. So he had the border moved. And the deep ditch was dug for the avoidance of any doubt."

pg185: "I could find no visible trace of St Ethelreda's Chapel, not one stone left standing upon another. All that remained was a change in vegetation in one place, a large patch of nettles and other weeds instead of grass. Perhaps that was all there was, the ghost of a church of an ancient, half-forgotten saint, lost in the windswept hills."

I've decided to read Aurora Australis, 1908, the first book written and published in Antarctica, during the 1907-09 Nimrod Expedition of a 15 man shore party to the Antarctic, lead by Ernest Shackleton, and "printed at the sign of 'the penguins'" by Ernest Joyce and Frank Wild who kept their ink liquid in winter cold by burning candles under the equipment. Each of the hundred or so copies was bound by Bernard Day into wooden boards made from supply crates that still include the logos of their contents. The text is easily available free online through multiple digitised copies or wikisource &c. I haven't read it yet but general warnings for period attitudes, personal hardships, many mentions of food, and the fact all the expedition's 15 ponies and most of the 9 dogs died.

Text: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis

Description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis_(book)

Nimrod: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod_Expedition

I'm planning to read at a rate of one text from the anthology each week for ten weeks and y'all are welcome to join me (with weekly reminders and discussion / links to any ensuing fanworks / whatever occurs the following week). First reminder to read The Ascent of Mount Erubus will be posted in my Wednesday reading post tomorrow and an invitation to discussion a week later (not expecting m/any joiners for the readalong tbh). The anthology includes a variety of amateur writing by nine different members of the expedition:

( List of the contents of Aurora Australis. )

I'm reading a book about the border between Scotland and England, current and historical, which has caused me to search out portraits of various posh medieval women and obviously I need to share the bestest hats with y'all because who doesn't love over the top hattitude?!

Anyway, here is what appears to be an attempt at a relatively realistic portrait of Eleanor Stewart aka Eleanor of Scotland by birth and Archduchess of Austria by marriage, painted for Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria who commissioned a gallery full of miniature paintings of his Habsburg predecessors:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eleanor_stewart_1458_80_daugh_hi.jpg

It was painted in or after 1579 by Anton Boys aka Anthoni Waiss, from an older original portrait (I found one from 1497 but that might also be a copy - Eleanor died in 1480), who is my new fave medieval portrait painter by appointment to the posh because he clearly felt no obligation to portray his subjects in an excessively flattering light, lmao. Here is his amazing wikimedia commons page:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_by_Antoni_Boys_in_the_Kunsthistorisches_Museum

Anyway, after Eleanor died her husband married the equally hattitudinous Katharina of Saxony

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KatharinaSaxony.jpg

In other news, I feel like I could rock this hat modelled by Matilda of Austria:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matilda_of_Austria_Duchess_of_Bavaria.jpg

Award for most unlikely hat to Catherine, duchess of Calabria:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Catherine,_duchess_of_Calabria.jpg

Crowns don't work (t)hat way prize to Anna of Austria:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anna_of_Austria,_wife_of_Henry_XV_of_Bavaria.jpg

Can't recall seeing Margaret of Babenberg as a facepalm icon yet:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Margaret_of_Babenberg.jpg

And lastly, special award for Most Princess Leia goes to Joan of England:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joan_of_England_(1335–1348).jpg

- Potentially improving everyone's habitat, 6-12 April 25: biologging. Deleting sprees on mobile to clear storage. My blood pressure is mostly too low to do much else except write a few short amuse-bouche. Even my "daily" walk is down to once or twice a week and that's exhausting.

- Moon: watched a beautiful full moon rising in daylight for the first time this year.

- Birb log: there has been Wood Pigeon cock-blocking on my lawn, with much eyeballing and aggressive wing-fluttering and display-ballet jettés, but the dance-off didn't degenerate into a handbags at dawn situation which shows pigeons are probably better than humans under similar circumstances.

- Walk: found an antique clay pipe stem, with no bowl, sticking out from the roots of a tree that had fallen during the winter. The pipe stem was an odd shape with what looked like two small spur rests, so two lower halves put together (instead of a lower and upper), and the surface was burnished. The tree wasn't especially old. I also found a fossil sea shell along the path but, oddly, not a local fossil so possibly shipped in with gravel.

- My curtain wall breached: accosted in my own garden by a Tory, then the next day by Jehovah's Witnesses! What happened to an Englishwoman's home is her castle?! /installing remote-controlled vats of boiling oil

- Reading: 43 books to 9 April 2025.

To Read shelves 1 January 2025: 90
To Read shelves 2 April 2025: 73

- A century of reading: as of book 41 of 2025, I've read a book from every decade for the last 100 years from the 1930s onward. \o/

- A stranger, from far off goodreads, bringing the gift of non sequitur: "I can understand that after living for years in the wreckage of World War II London, with death whistling through the air at every moment, one might adopt a scorched-earth worldview and an impatience with the forms of society. But some of those forms remind people of grace and help them cling to their humanity, and are therefore important. And the puppet thing was just weird."

- Current reading quote: "Season by season, and walk by walk, I was learning that the fields were full of words and that the words were full of fields, and that, if you wanted a small part of this abundance, all you had to do was look."

- DNF: my second this year, which is fine, but I didn't stop until I was a quarter of the way through and, woe is me, I resent the day of sunk costs! Now I have to fret about whether those 75 pages, which are longer than some whole poetry books or novellas, belong in my book stats or not, bah! :D

- Q: Where are you reading? Not "what" but where are you when you read and where are you reading about?