Night vision

Gosh those people with the archivists' sales team are persistent! I've heard again - okay, different name and email, exact same wordage - TWICE, second time with added 'Worth a chat?'

No, sir, not in the least.

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This week I got the Authors Licensing and Copyright Society payout, which was an agreeable sum, maybe it would not actually support me in My Old Age, but it is Better Than A Bat In The Eye With A Burnt Stick. Furthermore, as it is itemised - all the tiddly sums that get totted up - it is a Revelation of what works of mine are still being looked at, wow.

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Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses:

A report claiming the number of young people attending church in England and Wales had skyrocketed has been retracted, after the underlying data was found to be flawed.
The Bible Society's "Quiet Revival" report had been widely reported on since its publication last year and became an accepted part of discourse among many Christians.
Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were "fraudulent".
It has said that quality control measures, which usually remove such responses, were not applied due to human error.
....
But academics questioned the findings, pointing out that the results seemed out of step with other data. Results from the long-running British Social Attitudes Survey, and even the Church of England's own figures, show a long term decline in church attendance.
Experts said that YouGov's methodology - gathering data from volunteers who received cash rewards for their time - left it vulnerable to "bogus respondents" skewing the data.

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Pepys ‘curated’ letters to conceal being offered enslaved boy as bribe – research:

Howe wrote to Pepys to “crave your acceptance” of a “small” enslaved boy, which “I brought home on board for your honour … Hoping he is so well seasoned to endure the cold weather as to live in England.”
Pepys wrote back indignantly rejecting the offer. But Edwards argues this was not because of ethical concerns about slavery, but the optics of looking like a man who could be bribed.

This is quite resonant with discussion I was having this week apropos of my 1930s feminists and the less visible ways in which the work was happening, so much so that it's been supposed (it was being claimed at the time) that Feminism Woz Ded: The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Activism.

Bit of a flurry of Misguided Spam: this one is quite funny:

[W]e're working with other archivists that are offering historical resources.‍
I’m currently working with a few archivists on campaigns that are getting their sales teams meetings with warm leads every month. We’re targeting people who need historical resources using personalized email sequences.
If I could help you connect with potential clients like this, would that be helpful to you?‍

Another one of the usual 'Contribute your article/join our editorial board/reviewer team' from an international journal... offering a space for the exchange of powerful ideas among academics and experts which cannot distinguish between the title of a book I reviewed and anything I actually wrote my own self.

This one is frankly cheeky, if presumably being spammed at a vast array of people?

I am sure you're quite busy, but I would appreciate if you could take a moment to my below request.
Well, our Open Access Journal of Advances in Complementary & Alternative Medicine (ACAM) is scheduled to release its Volume 9 Issue 2 by 6thApril, but we are in deficit of one article. So, is it possible for you to support us with any of your manuscript to achieve this goal?
Appreciate if you could provide your acknowledgement within 24 hrs.

Am also being followed on Bluesky by very dubious looking 'Global' conferences within my fields of interest. Suspect these are a racket.

***

However, in realm of being A Real Nexpert, gave a presentation at Institution With Which I Am Now Affiliated yesterday and I think it went quite well, insofar as there was a certain amount of discussion and people coming up and asking questions afterwards.

Also got 2 compliments from much younger persons on hair (green streaks in) though as one was outside the Scientology HQ in Tottenham Court Road I fear this may be one of their recruitment strategies.

What I read

Finished High Stakes. I previously noted a pattern in Dick Francis of the conditional rather than utter win.

Antonia Hodgson, The Raven Scholar (Eternal Path Trilogy, #1) (2025) - think I picked this up as a Kobo deal, because people were mentioning it? I realise that I am no longer in the habit of reading fat multi-volume fantasies of this ilk. I found it all a bit much, really.

Then did some nibbling (what do Tiggers eat?) and then settled into a re-read of Barbara Hambly, The Nubian's Curse, not one of the top Benjamin Januarys perhaps but still pretty good. Possibly when I am in that sort of phase I should just go Hambly/Haddam/Paretsky/Cross?

Currently Reading

Dorothy Richardson, Honeycomb (Pilgrimage, #3) (1917) for online reading group.

Up next

Today's Kobo Deal was the latest Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware thriller, Jigsaw, so probably that.

Then possibly more Hambly.

At some point must read Adania Shibli, Minor Detail (2017) for the in-person reading group.

Anyway.

Partner and I are in need of a solicitor for a fairly routine and non-urgent matter, so, looked up who it was we went to last time we had a routine life admin thing requiring the services of a legal professional.

(This was actually a bit more time-consuming than I anticipated, have I mentioned that archivists are really Not All That at keeping on top of their own papers? The cobbler's children syndrome.)

But, I found the name of the practice and looked them up on The Internetz and they are there, as having gone out of business some few years ago, on Companies House website.

And they are by no means the first solicitors I have had dealings with, though I think the ones in Kentish Town saw me through the purchase of First Flat and present dwelling and possibly various other legal matters, but are now no longer operating more or less adjacent to the Tube station.

I suppose that these days one should not anticipate that you have Old Mr Thing the attorney-at law and Young Mr Thing his son who keeps up the practice and Even Younger Mr Thing who is being brought on in the family tradition -

- and that these things come and go like everything else and they are no longer quite the repository of folk memory like in mystery novels.

Way back when I was starting out as a Wee Babby Archivist, I remember that a big thing of the day, practically A Crisis, was solicitors' records. As I was never actually employed in a repository where I had any direct dealings with the problem, I'm not sure whether this was due to practices going defunct, or just somebody going down into the cellar and realising that they still had all the papers from Jarndyce v Jarndyce back to its origins along with tons of other stuff. But anyway, there were Massive Amounts of Very Misc Material (quite surprising what turned up) which looking back I suspect had all sorts of issues around ownership to complicate matters even further.

(If anyone has recs for N London solicitors would be glad to hear of them.)