Common Insecurity in a Lady's Life

 Long time, no post. I know. Let's say that life has been highly entertaining in a weird way.

A few years ago, I was abandoned (with other passengers) in a remote station by the train company: the last train never came and the emergency contact we managed to reach didn't give a fig about us.

Fast forward to this week, same station. This time, the train is "only" late (half an hour late), but it will reach the station. What was the issue, then? Well, two country coppers were there because a man who wanted to leave at the prior stop fell asleep and was less than a gentleman with the lady conductor and the coppers were called to have a chat with him and - apparently - make sure he boarded the next train to reach his stop.

The cousin who drives me to the station usually stays with me so we can chat until my train arrives (and he doesn't want to tell me that he's just making sure that I'll board the train safely as that station is lost in the middle of fields and it's not entirely safe). This time, he couldn't stay, but he was relieved to see the coppers staying around to "protect" me and the other woman on the platform. We also had the pleasure of waiting with teens, who were borderline wannabe  thugs (insert a sarcastic "Splendid!" here).

It was rather windy and rain was in the air.

The two coppers talked with the unruly passenger, who turned out to be a(n ex-)druggie with highs and lows.

Two women... One unstable bloke in his late thirties and five strange teens... The two coppers got bored waiting and left about ten minutes before the train arrived. They left without ever saying a single word to any of us and this is pretty usual. Usual, but infuriating (the last time I called my police station's direct line, no one answered).

I'm fed up with the situation and a myriad of other unpleasant feelings (I wanted to be a copper when I was a wee gal). Insecurity is becoming "normal" and it angers me. I'm in a capital city, not a village with no coppers around, but the last times I interacted with coppers were frustrating: during a demonstration one prevented me from going home by my usual route and I had to detour (just because he had the authority to bully me as the actual demonstration was three blocks away and heading away from my position) and during the "ronacircus", one tried (operative word) to frighten me by telling me that I might be fined when I reached my destination (I was going to see Mother, who needed to go to the hospital) as I didn't have "enough" documentation to go with my Ausweiss/Gesundheitspass - I could see the glee in his eyes as he wanted to frighten me... for fun.

Insecurity isn't new, but there's something fishy brewing and I don't like it.

Women in History - The Hard Work behind Footnotes

I'm editing the book of a distant cousin and I have to add an awful lot of footnotes to explain who the people he mentions are.

There's one paragraph where he drops so many names that it generated a page and a half of footnotes.

I have a few mysteries that I needed to solve with detective skills; for example, at one point he writes about a noble lady who was the model of a sculptor (scandalous!!!) and so he only gives her initial and vaguely describes the completed statue. I had to check all the works of the sculptor and check which noble lady visited him when the statue was being created.

I think I've found statue and lady, but I'll have to check the sculptor's correspondence to make sure.

You just have to have an interest in genealogy to know that the lives of women were seldom recorded properly... which takes me to last night's footnote. I found a mention of a young woman (by chance, she was linked to the same sculptor who had the noble lady model) and a specialist of that sculptor had a mini biography about her in his book. Splendid! But when was she born and when did she die? Not a word - and that bugged me beyond words because it's unfair. So I put on my Sherlock cap and got to work, but it was bumpy...

Letters mentioned the age people thought she had, then I found her marriage briefly mentioned in archives (the registers burnt and we only have reconstituted data) and I knew she had at least one son because there are descendants.

I located the birth certificate of her son, which made me go looking for his marriage certificate. Once I found it, after checking all 20 districts of Paris over two decades, I knew that she was dead by the time he got married. Then, I checked three decades and I didn't find her, or her husband who was also dead by the time their son got married. I checked the town where the son was living - no luck.

I was ready to type that she was lost in History when I thought (because I've had the case in my family), 'What if she was registered with her birth name instead of her married name - as she should have?'. I checked the decade her son was born in the same district he was born and... bingo! There she was.

The age she was given in her death certificate wasn't consistent with the possible years of birth mentioned in the letters and I ended up with four possible years. The death certificate stated where she was born, so I went to check their registers and I finally found when she was born.

That took me about nine hours. Because I'm stubborn as hell and I didn't want her to be one of those "lost in History" women.

I have a lot more respect for footnotes now (some require a few minutes of work, but others send the historian on a quest that can take an awful lot of time).

Comment m'écorcher les oreilles

Certaines publicités peuvent être vraiment très bonnes.

Certaines publicités peuvent être très, très mauvaises.

Celle-ci m'énerve à cause de la prononciation pourrave du nom de la marque (parce que le français moyen ne pourrait pas comprendre qu'une marque anglo-saxonne a une prononciation spéciale ???).

Bon, d'un côté, ça assure que j'ai encore du boulot, mais sword, ça se dit /sɔːd/, pas /swɔːd/. C'est pas de la physique quantique non plus...

Autrement, elle est mignonne cette pub.

[Recipe] Sautéed Vegetables à la "dijonnaise"

Right.

Sorry about the title, I didn't know what to name the dish (if it has a name, do tell me!).

So... I was visiting my freezer when I found Brussels sprouts and decided to cook them, but not alone.

You'll need:

* 500 gr of Brussels sprouts

* 4 or 5 potatoes

* 2 onions

* salt

* Dijon mustard

* oil

* some kind of meat (minced meat, bits of chicken, bacon...)

1 - Slice the onions and put them in a big frying pan.

2 - Add the meat you chose to the pan.

3 - In a pot of salted, boiling water, add the Brussels sprouts and peeled and diced potatoes. Cook for about ten minutes.

4 - Drain the sprouts and potatoes. Cut the Brussels sprouts in four (it takes time, but it's worth it) and add them and the potatoes to the frying pan.

5 - Add some oil in the frying pan and sauté the meat and vegetables (I tend to turn the heat to high to have a crispy result).

6 - Add some salt and then some mustard (I added three dessert spoons of Dijon mustard).

7 - Enjoy!

Legacy Twitter 2020

Because of the time difference between me and Twitter HQ, I briefly hoped that my lovely Pale Moon might help me keep the look of my Legacy Twitter... I was wrong... Sort of because when I log in, it shows my usual background for a second, before Twitter forces its ugly UI on me.

I can't work with their horrid interface. It literally hurts my eyes.

I don't know how long it's going to work, but with Firefox, you can somehow restore Legacy Twitter thanks to the instructions there. And you can add some Stylus for good measure.

I'll stay around as long as I can protect my eyes, but I'll log off when some arrogant sociopath at Twitter decides to counter-code the tweak I just found. Merlin! This really feels like an abusive relationship: 'I know what you need, you're going to do as I say, and I'm right. Shut up and roll over.'.

Sheesh!

Botanical Mystery [Solved]

After strimming the garden and mowing the lawn, I discovered several patches of a strange plant around our lime tree.

I did some Sherlocking and it's seeds of cyclamen.

You'll understand that I briefly thought they were weird mushrooms when I show you this:

Meet My Sci-Fi Planet

I'm working on two books that focus on History, but the footnotes can be hellish, so I edit bits of my Sci-Fi story, too.
In my fourth book, I have an appendix with maps of my different continents. The main map of the planet originally had the continents in white and a somewhat blue ocean...
Yesterday, I decided to have some more fun and I worked to make the "planet" look real.
Thanks to this lovely site, I could do this (the stars are from Guille Pozzi on Unsplash):

The Utter Joy of Having an Incompetent Landlady

It's official, from now on, I'll deal with the council estate in a "baka yoke" spirit as if they were the village idiots .

Last year, there was a mistake with my water meter (no one came to read it, but they sent data to the council estate nonetheless).

I contacted the landlady, but she told me I'd have to pay (about half my wages!) and I'd get my money back later. In fact, what I paid them, when I didn't owe them that money, was used to pay the rent the  following months - not the same as "getting my money back".

A plumber came to change my meter so it could be read remotely. 

The kid didn't manage to do it.

I was the one who told the caretaker that the job wasn't done.

No news since.

Comes January and I invite my caretaker to take a picture of my meter so she sends it to the landlady (and she just confirmed me that she did).

Comes today, and they want me to pay for 140 m3 when I only used 30 m3! "Incidentally", that's about  three quarters of my wages that they want this time.

The plonkerish landlady has two months to have the mistake corrected. I swear to Zeus I'm going to rip her a new one if she doesn't do her job - again.

If I have to do her job by telling her what to do (apparently, I should have checked in January that she'd do what she was supposed to do with the photo of my meter), I'm going to start sending her invoices.

Bloody idiot.

Chivalry?... What Chivalry?

Even before we were stuck at home, I work a lot at night (it's quiet and I can focus on plot bunnies and research).

Since the weather's a tad nicer these days, when I do go to bed (between 5 and 7 am), I open my blackout curtains, open the window and listen to the birds (the seagulls make me believe that I'm by the sea - I'm not).

Sometimes, I see people going to work this early.

Last night, there was this young woman walking uphill (either she works at the nearby hospital - or somewhere - or she was going to catch a bus or the tube). Walking downhill was this young bloke.

The pavement there is very, very narrow. Now, guess who moved to walk on the road...? Yup! The young lady.

Of course, the traffic so early and with so few cars around was not really an issue, but the boy did not even try to do anything. He just kept walking as if he owned the pavement.

It's not that chivalry's dead. I think it was mostly ever only in books to make a few blokes look good - and yes, I'm tired and angry. Why?