The Inner Child Keeps on Growing

And surely that would include realising that things were not always the exact same way they are today?

For decades, publishers have swapped out cultural references in new editions of books to appeal to younger readers. Fans aren’t always thrilled.

This seems so weird to me. I grew up on reading books that had lingered for however long on the shelves of the children's dept of the local public library - which were all bound in that standard hard-wearing public library binding so one did not have any sense of shiny newness or otherwise - along with my mother's old books, some of which were works of a yet more previous generation which she had loved in her youth.

And that's before we get into the oddness of the Alice books and the talking animals and so forth.

Do they have no imaginations? Are they only supposed to identify with recognisable experiences?

Read somewhere about (in this case I think actually adult readers) who could not deal with subtext, foreshadowing, and other Litry Devices.

I was a bit beswozzled by this chap, too, though perhaps from a rather different direction. I devoured classic novels as a teenager. In a world of distractions, can I relearn how to read them?.

Sometimes books have their time and it is past. And sometimes they are just not the right thing at that moment.

And I also think of times in my past when I had fairly long commutes and other stretches of otherwise dead time that I could fill up with doing perhaps rather dutiful reading of those things One Ought To Read, and whether this is not only my experience. And then one's life shifts and these spaces go away.

Last week's bread held out pretty well, up until the point it became a dried out solid brick.

Friday night supper: sorta-nasi goreng with yellow bell pepper and Calabrian salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: grated apple, with Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour and maple syrup.

Today's lunch: baby carrots roasted in sunflower + toasted sesame oil, right at end sprinkled with sugar and mirin; baby courgettes white-braised with ginger rather than star anise, no sesame oil; green beans steamed with fennel seeds then tossed in olive oil + tarragon vinegar with a little chopped red onion; large flat mushrooms marinated for approx 30 mins in 50/50% tamari and mirin boiled with with a dash of sesame oil and star anise, then healthy-grilled for 5 minutes or so.

France overturns law classing people as property – 178 years after it abolished slavery

Have been for some considerable time casting sceptical glances at the whole liberte egalite fraternite thing, because that third element did seem rather to circumscribe the application....

(And also the historical tendency to consider that o-la-la, they were far more sorted in matters erotique - a good deal of this was surely the perception of gents Britannique en vacances, surely.)

I was a bit stunned by this: Argentina’s ‘European’ self-image under renewed scrutiny after racist incidents in Brazil, but agreeably surprised to find that Brazil (which was very late to abolish slavery) has a law of 'racial insult'. Although it has significant racial problems.