themis1

Welsh farmer pleads guilty to stealing more than 70 sheep from neighbour.

The term 'rustled' is invoked: 'At least 73 ewes in lamb were rustled in March'.

Alas, this does not sound at all like the Old West of the movies of my youth:

[He] told the court he had acted because of financial pressure but understood his actions were “unacceptable”, BBC Wales reported. Williams added that he “deeply” regretted stealing the sheep and “feels ashamed”.

Woman who calls herself ‘UK’s poshest thief’ fined for stealing Le Creuset cookware:

A former criminology lecturer who calls herself the “UK’s poshest thief” has been fined for stealing more than £1,000-worth of Le Creuset cookware, steaks, wine and gin.
Pauline Al Said and her husband, Mark Wheatcroft, have been fined £2,500 between them after the thefts from a garden centre and a branch of Marks & Spencer.
....
Representing themselves, the couple, from Southsea in Hampshire, told Portsmouth crown court their actions were on the “lower end”.

I also think it is tacky to call yourself 'UK's poshest thief' and a pretty sure sign that you are a very long way from being the C21st equivalent of Raffles the Amateur Cracksman.

My attention was recently drawn, as we say, to an early C20th composer, and I thought, that name sounds familiar, so I pottered off to look at my database of notes, and yes, they were hanging out in sex reform circles, interesting, no, especially as they seem generally to be described as 'reclusive' -

So anyway, I went to look up their entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and it is all about The Music (they were also apparently a top-level performer as well as prolific composer) and nothing about this other aspect.

And some while ago I perchanced to look up the ODNB entry for an early C20th lawyer whom I had come across in those same circles, and he was all about anti-censorship, and reforming the divorce laws (and we suspect also handling these sensitive matters for his mates in his professional capacity, no doubt) -

Very worthy.

He was also, I have come across indications in correspondence and biographies, rather a Not Safe In Taxis kinda guy, or at least, the handsy menace of the 1917 Club.

I don't actually know if there's a procedure for saying to editors of ODNB 'Hi, I have Further Info', let alone 'by the way, it's dishing the dirt'.

What I read

Vivian Shaw, Strange New World (Dr Greta Helsing, #4) (2025): somehow did not like this as much as the preceding volumes in the series.

Anthony Powell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (A Dance to the Music of Time #5) (1960).

Latest Literary Review.

Discovered entirely by happenstance that Robert Rodi's scathingly irreverent comedies of manners set largely in Chicago’s gay demimonde' are now available as ebooks at exceedingly eligible prices (I read them in the 90s/early 00s from the local library) so have downloaded all those and also:

Bitch In a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen from the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps (vol 1) (2014), which collects and expands on his blogposts on Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. which was quite addictive, the sort of thing I thought I'd be dipping into and in fact read end to end, even while dissenting from his take on Fanny Price and muttering that he was not exactly au fait with the discourse on JA's views on the slavery question.

On the go

This was perhaps at least partly motivated by coming to the point in Dragon's Teeth where we get the Reichstag Fire and its consequences, and Lanny is caught in the middle of a whole mass of cross-currents while trying to save those of his friends who think that they will surely be all right....

Bitch In a Bonnet vol 2 (2014): covers Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Up next

Well, KJ Charles, Copper Script is allegedly due to drop tomorrow....

Do we think this trip is doomed already???

My best friend Kady and I are planning a backpacking trip around south-east Asia in a few months and I have proposed the idea of us getting matching tattoos:

We’re both 20, and I think we’ll look back on them when we’re older and remember what a fun life we’ve lived. Tattoos are a reminder of a particular time, and I want to cherish our youth. I’ve found a cool tattoo parlour in northern Thailand, where we’ll be staying. I’ve seen videos of people having great experiences there and the tattoo artist is really talented.... It’s not like I want to get a random tattoo. I’m quite creative and have already started sketching ideas that represent who Kady and I are.

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In other gruesome news, okay, it is not one bloke spreading his seed to 100s, but I'm not actually sure that 'a worldwide limit of 75 families for each sperm donor' as applied by the European Sperm Bank isn't somewhat on the high side, even when it doesn't turn out further down the line with more sophisticated testing that a donor has a rare cancer-causing mutation.

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And this is sad, rather than gruesome, and makes me wonder about the whole marketing of the 'freezing eggs' thing as 'a groundbreaking act of empowerment', especially as it hasn't turned out like that:

I did not anticipate the emotional landscape that I would face a decade later, as a scientific intervention became a personal meditation on time, money, and unfulfilled dreams.