spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
- "Terrorism": having difficulty comprehending that I live in a time when Labour leader Keir Starmer and his starmtroopers have decided to crimialise peaceful protest as "terrorism", including 100 or so people from across the UK arrested and facing 14 years in prison each as "terrorists" because they held up marker-pen-on-cardboard signs reading "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action."

People holding handwritten cardboard signs reading, "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action."

- Decided to celebrate something I love everyday.
9: The clouds I saw from a peak hour traffic jam were fabulously fluffy cumulus sky-sheep.
10: Wizo the Fleming. His name. And his son Walter fitzWizo. Both C12th. That is all. P.S. Pembrokeshire Council have wisely decreed the creation of a Wizo Trail for cyclists.
11: 7.30am tuneful recorder playing in an otherwise silent neighbourhood (no cars). I'm imagining an enchanting Good Neighbour of the faerie folk, but around here it was probably a bearded old hippie, lol.
11: a female Large (Cabbage) White butterfly, Pieris brassicae, flew across in front of my face then perched on the hedge next to my head so I could observe it about a hand length away, and note its wing patterns and antennae colours in detail.
11 bonus: my front lawn was suddenly full of happy, laughing, shrieking, playing people (mostly young). Get ON my lawn! Curtains were closed so I didn't twitch them to find out if anyone was in dress-up but there are usually one or two.
12: brief visitation in my home by a large patterned brown moth that was one of those "why aren't day-flying moths called butterflies?" beauties.
13: just laying in bed very early this morning, half-awake, and knowing I didn't have to get up. Mmm.

- Birb log: whenever I see the new taxonomy for Jackdaws I think about that redditor who people mocked for years for saying Jackdaws weren't crows / Corvus or whatever it was they said.

Birb log  )
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
The real Salt Path (link to The Observer): how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation.

The Salt Path-ological liar, The Wild Lies, and Landlies )

Most importantly, to me, disabled people suffer collateral damage from both aspects of her fraud: firstly by being told they could do x or y if only they had as much willpower as Walker's fictional character with CBS/CBD, then secondly from the assumption that many disabled people are frauds like Walker. I'm betting she'll continue to profit from her crimes while her victims, intended and indirect, suffer for her choices. (I also feel sympathy for the Walker children and hope they avoid being dragged into this.)

ETA 13 July 2025: Observer article about a further Walker scam I've quoted salient extracts in a comment below.
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
I've been trawling historical documents and caught some very fishy bait. Partly because I was asked about connections between the Greyfriars aka the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor and Greyfriars house aka no.9 Friar Street, Worcester. This tale of devilry, from 1535 in the reign of Henry VIII, is from two surviving fragments of correspondence that were brought to the personal attention of Thomas Cromwell - his handwriting is on the back.

A connection beyond probably being neighbours is that a witness claimed one of the Friars Minor, 'Dr' Hanedon, confessed to the attempted murder of his neighbour living at no.9, Thomas Twesell. The confession, possibly while drunk, was in front of innkeeper Nicholas Mokoke of the Cardinal's Hat inn / tavern in Worcester. Hanedon was being investigated by Cromwell's auditors for 'vicious living', and being 'to the evil example of all Christian people', when he attempted to murder wealthy local civic dignitary (and Cromwell's auditor?) Thomas Twesell by gathering a gang of fellow friars to accost Twesell in the street and stab him with a 'dagger' on the feast of the Conversion of St Paul (25 Jan). The friars reputedly cried off because Twesell was accompanied by his servant (i.e. an armed man and potential witness).

Anne Mokoke (Moorcock?), the daughter of the Cardinal's Hat innkeeper, testified that Hanedon ~neither feared God nor the shame of the world~, and there are two separately witnessed accounts of him trying to seduce unwilling women, including the partially successful abduction of a married woman to a brothel! The Friary itself is referred to by the letter's author as 'more like a house of vicious and incontinent living than a religious place.'

Note that all this evidence gathering was to a particular purpose as the Dissolution of the Monasteries happened 1536-41, however even the 'marshal' of the prior of Worcester seems to have been willing to testify (£?) against Hanedon for the abduction. All very suspect: trust nobody!!1!! Except goodwife Anne who was correct that the whole business is extremely unedifying from beginning to end.

/dispatches from C16th
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
- Quote: "When lions have historians, then hunters will cease to be heroes." - Zeinab Badawi's version of an African proverb first made famous in Europe by Chinua Achebe.

- My favourite Glasto quote was from Seun Kuti: "I know you want to free Palestine, free Congo, free Sudan, free Iran. It’s a new one every week. Free Europe. Free Europe from right-wing extremism, from fascism, from racism. Free Europe from imperialism."

- Hearing: earlier this week there was either a school sports day in the field out the back of my house or a fantastical battle between children and dogs. The next day there was either another sporting event further along the valley or an epic battle between cows and sheep. Or my hearing is going, or the valley has rly weird acoustics when the rocks are hot and the earth is dry.

- Secondhand bookmarker: a handwritten note, on an individually dyed sheet of paper, fell out of a used book I bought. It was from Grandma N to Dear Farly to thank the "very kind boy" for sharing his "special eggs" from his own chickens and "they must be very happy to be living in your garden now after their sad life before".

Birb, Health, blah blah )

(no subject)

Jul. 3rd, 2025 11:21 am
lotesse: (Default)
[personal profile] lotesse
Alas that stress also means need for dentist. I think the filling repair my dentist did last month already broke; it might not be the only bit of my dentistry crumbling under the current tension levels. And going to the dentist is so painful and scary :(