Well, this person does Know Who I Am, which was why they were looking 'very hard' for me 2 years ago -

- and failed to find me.

WTF BBQ

That is me, Dr oursin, that under my passport and BL user pass name has a website and blog that are the top hits when you search for that I will concede not uncommon name? Who is in a commonly used academic database as well as the increasing slop-filled academia-edu, and on Linked-In? (not that I use the latter much/at all but it would be a point of contact).

Where were they looking? were they using a Ouija board in case I'd passed over? Bloodhounds?

Okay, they are even older than cranky ol' hedjog, but since they still seem to be editing the journal they have been editing since Time Immemorial, and discovered I was currently active because I did reviews for it recently, and would like me back on the Editorial Board since I am still around, assume that most of the marbles are still there.

But honestly, JFGM?

Well, yesterday, besides achieving valid British Library reader pass, in case I ever decide to go and do research there (I think there are/were also some offsite advantages, or at least, I tried to avail myself of some facility on their site some while ago and was told 'not if you are not in possession of current pass'- I think recently enough that it was not something obliterated by cyberattack??) -

- anyway, the reason I actually got myself together with expired pass and acceptable ID was that my dental practice is almost opposite BL and I had a hygienist appointment.

And apart from a couple of small things where I could give them a bit more brush action, I am keeping the ol' toofypegs in pretty good nick, considering.

So those things were fairly on the okay side of the balance.

On another prickly paw, something about the physio exercises for my hips set off a lower-back flare - not as bad perhaps as the one in May but I am now proceeding with caution, and building up numbers rather than doing the full sets of repetitions.

In the realm of Internette Troublez, partner has been having Issues with a certain Rail Company booking tickets, where they are booked - y/n? - charged to card but not actually available to download - this is iterating. Sigh.

While Publishing Person and Web Manager for my fictional endeavours is having An Issue with FTP, and as they are the one I tend to turn to when having Techno Problems, uhhhhhh. Am now communicating with Internet Provider Support Team.

What I read

Kris Ripper, Runaway Road Trip: A Definitely-Not-Romantic Adventure (2019) - a certain predictability that goes with the genre, really but kept up a reasonable momentum.

Annick Trent, By Marsh and by Moor (Marsh and Moor, #1) (2025): felt a bit so-so about this, not perhaps as taken by it as others of hers I've read.

Miranda July, All Fours (2024) - this was a Kobo deal so I gave it a try and eventually gave up. Is this maybe a generational thing? Hear it is quite A Thing, but really. (Was having pervasive flashes of my 'is it time to do some Doris Lessing re-reading?')

Also marked The Kellerby Code as DNF.

John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which was a Kobo deal and which I had not read for something like 50 years - had forgotten how talky it is. Some points for having Village Lesbian Couple, but these were fairly frequent in crime novels of the time, weren't they?

LM Chilton, Everyone in the Group Chat Dies (2025). I found this did the suspense thing pretty well once it got going but I had some cavils over the tone and the general idea of 'hilarious serial-killer thriller involving true crime social media mavens'. I am not sure this is quite the same thing as Universal Horror movies cycling round to 'Abbott and Costello meet [Monster]' as franchise grows tired.

On the go

Back to Lanny Budd - have now started Presidential Agent (1944).

Up next

That's likely to keep me going for a while, but I've got my eye on Jessica Stanley, Consider Yourself Kissed, of which I have heard good report.

Some book reviews that have lately crossed my line of sight.

Andrea Ringer. Circus World: Roustabouts, Animals, and the Work of Putting on the Big Show:

Ringer is not interested in the perceived glitz and glamour of big top spectacles. Rather, she presents the golden age circus as a site of working-class labor, where both humans and beasts toiled from day till night under the near-constant gaze of thrill-seeking visitors.
....
_Circus World _is the sort of book that will captivate (and, in some cases, horrify) a great many readers. It's a
must-read for anyone interested in the history of the modern circus; the same is true for historians of animal entertainment and industry. Gender studies scholars will appreciate Ringer's fresh insights into the ways circuses amplified colonial and patriarchal notions of race, gender, and family. Plus, the book's short length and bite-sized
chapters make it ideal for classroom use. Above all, _Circus World _succeeds as a work of labor history, one that takes nontraditional work and nontraditional workers seriously.

Dominic Pettman. Telling The Bees: An interspecies Monologue. Possibly a bit twee/poncey?

Weary of the insistent demands and disappointments of online life in the early 2020s, Dominic Pettman turned to a very old practice: Rather than commenting on current events by posting for his followers on social media, he would tell the bees instead. The record of this experiment is _Telling the Bees: An Interspecies Monologue_ (2024). "Indeed, this time-honored activity--practiced in villages all over Europe, for centuries--seems much healthier to me than confessing things to the digital ether, the anonymous world via social media," he writes early in the journal (p. 2).
....
In Pettman's case, as a resident of New York City, he doesn't have much access to actual, in-the-flesh bees. The apartment co-op won't let him have a hive on the roof, for one thing. At the start he makes do by talking to "wild" bees he encounters on his walks in Central Park, but as the seasons change and the threats of COVID-19 force
ever smaller spaces of interaction, Pettman conjures and speaks to virtual bee--"the memory of bees," as he calls it, prompting a wry rejoinder from a waggish colleague: "These bees ... Are they in the room with us now?" (p. xi).
Readers seeking a journal of material human entanglement with physical bees will not find that here. Pettman's virtual bees are much more akin to the "virtual animal totem" [.]

This one does involve actual encounters with the beasts in question, it would appear: Leslie Patten. Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lion's Soul through Science and Story.

Patten then combats history and myth with a series of case and site studies in Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, and California, and interviews with mountain lion experts of every stripe--from trackers, hunters, and houndsmen (people who hunt with dogs) to wildlife biologists and conservation management specialists. Along
the way, Patten nimbly debunks so many myths about cougars--that they are isolate, cold-blooded killers who need to be managed to keep them from pets, livestock, and small children and that legal hunts are an effective way to manage and stabilize populations.

Hedgehogs in fact are ambiguously situated: Laura McLauchlan. Hedgehogs, Killing, and Kindness: The Contradictions of Care in Conservation Practice.

In the UK, hedgehog conservation is both necessary and supported by the public: Population numbers are in steady decline, while the animals themselves occupy a fond place in the British consciousness. The second section details her fieldwork in New Zealand at pest-control initiatives, including outreach events and community pest-control groups, conservation initiative Zealandia (a completely fenced ecosanctuary in Wellington dedicated to restoring
native flora and fauna), and her own "guerrilla" care for local hedgehogs. In New Zealand, hedgehogs are thriving despite their status as an invasive species, provoking widespread public animosity.