You were fabulous -- bravissima!

Next task: getting that gondola for a champagne-laden trip down the Avon!

(Image from theshakespeareblog.com/2013/04/mari...)

Meanwhile, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Truly delighted to see the wise and wonderful @lindakhughes.bsky.social Hughes cited in today's Guardian 's article announcing the opening of Amy Levy's archive - an important event for everyone interested in #literary and #journalism #history, #LGBTQ+ history, #women's history.

lnkd.in/emB7EnMd

Incredible but true - I have just had a tour of #Ouida’s house in Florence by a wonderful nun, sorella Rosa.
I am very moved, of course, but learnt more.
A bit of a change from where she was born in Bury St Edmunds.

I love having a pretty common name. It makes me feel so productive and polymathic (though I'm not sure friends & colleagues would be convinced that all of these really were mine).

Thanks @theatlantic.com for an unexpected chuckle over an enraging extraction.

A suitably gnomic cake for the 2nd class on #liucixin Three Body Problem. At the core the 3 layered [chocolate] blackness of space.

I'd forgotten this - for class 2 of Octavia Butler's Dawn, a truly horrific pandan tres leches dessert inspired by a Filipino recipe (tasted great though). Very alien and organic!

Let's kick off with one of those cakes then. Now how does this represent ideas from Octavia Butler's *Dawn*? No prizes for answers.