I was a little startled to see, quite so high up in the chart of UK's best and worst seaside towns, Dungeness. Which isn't really even a town (Wikipedia describes it as a hamlet), more a sandspit at the end of the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway, famed for lighthouses, shingle beaches, nature reserves, Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage, and a decommissioned nuclear power station ('Long journey ahead' for nuclear plant clean-up).

[A] barren and bewitching backdrop for a getaway. A vast swathe of this shingle headland is designated a National Nature Reserve, cradling around a third of all British plant species, with some 600 having been recorded, from rugged sea kale to delicate orchids. Exposed to the Channel and loomed over by twin nuclear power stations, Dungeness has, over recent decades, become an unlikely enclave for artists and a popular spot for day-trippers, horticulturalists and birders alike.

Looking at the criteria scored on, it really is rather weird: completely lacking in the hotels, shopping and seafront/pier categories and not much for tourist attractions but scores high on peace and quiet and scenery.

Perhaps there is a larger number of people looking for this kind of getaway experience, invoking a certain eerie folk-horror vibe, than one would suppose. Not really a Summer Skies and Golden Sands kind of experience, take it away, The Overlanders.

Surprised that somewhere like Margate didn't rate higher.

One in 32 births in 2023 [in the UK] were the result of in vitro fertilisation, up 34% from one in 43 in 2013, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)

I admit this sounds rather startling, but then, being a historian of reproductive health among other things, I think of the fact that though we sometimes think our poor ancestresses were popping out progeny pretty much nonstop until death or menopause arrived, in actuality, fertility and subfertility were A Thing, historically. (Let us consider certain famed historical examples and a plethora of folktales on this theme.)

I have remarked heretofore about the assumption that Wo Unto The Sperms of the Modern Man, They Are Weak and In Decline, when I cannot see that there is any sound baseline of what the average male's average sperm count was and whether the little swimmers were even in prime condition at that even a very few decades ago. One assumes that any samples preserved in sperm banks (if they are and supposing they have not themselves deteriorated over time) would have been prime stuff from healthy young specimens. (Though given some of the stories that have come out about dodgy fertility docs, perhaps not.)

So this is not necessarily a story of Wo Wo Fertility B Declining, with side-order of Wymmynz B selfishly waiting Too Long to progenate, but of a problem which used to exist and was at the very least Not At All Easy To Fix (hopes and prayers, mostly, and try to relax....) has some chance of being resolved.

Okay, some percentage is presumably LGBTQ+ couples/constellations forming families.

And some of it is Older Mothers though again, historically, women have gone on Havin Babbyz well into their 40s and (Journal of Anecdotes Told to Me By Committee Members of Reproductive Health Charities) these days a significant % of abortions in the UK involve women who have misleadingly supposed from media myth that At Their Advanced Age their ovaries have shrivelled up and their fertility fallen off a cliff.

Though this is interesting:

The number of women freezing their eggs also increased sharply, with cycles up from 4,700 in 2022 to 6,900 in 2023. Egg freezing increased most among women in their 30s, but the number using their stored frozen eggs remained low, the report said.

What I read

Finished Cluny Brown.

Defaulted to rereads of Agatha Christie, The Murder in the Mews, The Murder in the Vicarage, Towards Zero and Taken at the Flood.

Somebody on my reading list mentioned Meg Moseman, The Falling Tower (2025) - spooky goings on at Harvard involving the ghostly presence of Charles Williams among other things. May be just me but I found it all a bit rushed: then I realised that my bar for Weird Stuff Going On In Academic Setting was set very high indeed years ago by Pamela Dean's Tam Lin (I considered that there may also be issues around Times Have Changed).

Managed to find my copy of GB Stern's Summer's Play aka The Augs (1933/4) though couldn't lay my hands on The Woman in the Hall alas. Really very good. A problem for republishing may be a few casual allusions to blackface seaside entertainment of the period.

Because I've never actually read it though I've read other of her works, and it was being inaccurately discussed recently as lost, overlooked, neglected etc, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, The Homemaker (1924). This is what, like 40 or so years before The Feminine Mystique and 'the problem that has no name'?

On the go

Just recently republished (collation of two previous collections published in limited editions in 1994 and 1997), Simon Raven, The Islands of Sorrow and Other Macabre Tales. So Simon, very Raven.

I started John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In (2024) which I know has been widely admired but I'm somehow just not vibeing with it.

Also well on into first of books for essay review, v good.

Up next

Dunno. The new Barbara Hambly arrives pretty much just as (DV) I am off to a conference.

So, today I had a physio appointment at the far from eligible hour of 1 pm, what is this even, do these people not have lunch hours? also it was at the uphill all the way clinic.

Anyway, I got there in very good time, and was able to ascertain the bus stop that would actually take me in the right sort of direction for getting home.

(It was actually quite a nice walk past people's flowering gardens or council floral bits.)

And it was a very good and useful session, with a senior person as well as my usual physio, and I think we may be getting to some habit-changing things that might improve matters.

So after I had come out I went and caught the bus, which is one that goes across rather than up and down (so much of London Transport being designed on the principle of getting people into Central London and back out again) and it is a nice bus that goes past Highgate Cemetery, even if it is the newer bit, and the hospital, and okay, ends up at a slightly non-intuitive place behind Archway, but I was able eventually to locate the relevant stop for an onward bus.

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And in other news, I have whizzed off an application for the Fellowship I mentioned and have had several kind offers from FB friends to provide letters of recommendation.

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(I did not know about Gladys Knight and the Pips version of The Boy from Crosstown!)

This week's bread: a rather basic wheatgerm loaf, something like 70/30 wholemeal/strong white flour + wheatgerm, [ETA: small amount of Rayner's Malt Extract], splosh of oil, turned out quite well considering it was the last scrapings of the recent batch of yeast.

Friday night supper: sorta-nasi-goreng with chorizo.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls, approx 4:1 strong brown/Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour (end of bag), maple syrup, dried cherries. Tasty but a bit stodgy.

Today's lunch: bozbash, with red bell pepper, baby orange and yellow peppers, aubergine, okra, and baby courgettes, dried cherries, 5-pepper blend, dried basil, fresh green coriander (cilantro), and to finish, raspberry vinegar, served with couscous with toasted (slightly burnt) pinenuts.