Yes, I will concede that supermarkets and people throw away a lot of perfectly comestible food, and that there is probably an undue tyranny of best-before and use-by dates (though, you know, I would like to see some calibration against statistics of food-poisoning before and after these became standard practice, even if doubtless a lot of upsets from eating too-old food went unreported). Not to mention the thing about fruit and veg having to conform to rather strict and entirely pointless cosmetic standards, the sizing of packages of products, etc.

However, I really am not entirely sure how you could live the 'freegan' lifestyle of picking perfectly good stuff out of supermarket bins if there were no supermarkets - it's essentially a parasitic/scavenger lifestyle - though I see that its proponent does admit

solving the problem of food waste is not about us getting rid of supermarkets and all embracing freegan lifestyles. It is about taking a large number of waste-reducing steps right across the food system. "That is the thing I can't stress too much about food waste," he told me during our afternoon together. "It isn't about everyone giving up something, having to grow their own vegetables and do all their own preserving. It can be, but that isn't essential to the message. That message is, first of all, if you buy food, don't throw it away.

This resonates a bit for me with the whole 'eat up everything on your plate even if you're full and loathe overcooked cabbage', the starving-millions-in-China-would-be-glad-of-it moral pressure.

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Bluestockings the new black? Another book about another bluestocking, rah-rah - Anna Letitia Barbauld:

The reasons why some names stick and others disappear are complex - to do with fashion, gender, attracting a good biographer, and the bad luck of a house fire in which important sources go up in smoke. In Barbauld's case a mixture of several bad breaks means her name is virtually unknown. The most likely reason, thinks McCarthy, is that the younger generation of Romantic poets was extravagantly nasty to her. By the time Wordsworth and Coleridge were climbing to their prime they were desperate to shrug Barbauld off as a fussy old biddy whose rules about rhyme represented everything that needed to be blasted away. And yet, as these formerly angry young men swung to the right in the frightening years after the French revolution, her continuing engagement with progressive politics began to seem dangerously radical. She was simultaneously behind and ahead of her time - a tricky spot if you're hoping to go down in history.

Diana Athill asks the intriguing question what makes a person - me, for one - want to write while others don't?

And on writing, while one feels some sympathy for someone with major and long-enduring writers' block, I feel less for someone who sets out to Write The Great Novel and "unless he thought it was going to be better than Tolstoy, he wouldn't commit it to paper", because, really, is dick-sizing against any other writer at all really a helpful or wise strategy, and shouldn't it be, see Athill above, about the personal voice?

Wymmynz! ur playss, it b in teh RONG! How, I wonder, is it at all helpful for Oliver James to warn that Getting stressed or anxious during late pregnancy is not just bad for you, it's bad for your foetus - because now you can stress out and worry about being stressed out and worried, this is so not for the win. While Viv Groskop deplores the extent to which breastfeeding is seen as always the admirable and morally high ground choice (is this true? or is this one of those 'my colleagues and a few people I met in the wine-bar last week' factoids?). Oh yes, and Dr Luisa Dillner suggests that too much encouragement of self-esteem in offspring may be counter-productive.

Plus, included in the reprint from the New York Times supplement, Michael Chabon, The Wilderness of Childhood. I suppose I am just wondering a bit whether it is really, really true over more than fairly selective social groups that children are no longer roaming around their neighbourhoods and exploring their environment unsupervised, but are constantly surveilled and protected by parents? I see groups of kids around the streets here and in the local playing field.

Comrades, Bill Douglas's epic 1987 film about the Tolpuddle Martyrs, is being reissued to mark the 175th anniversary of their trial.

A piece of living history: New York police department still budgeting money for typewriters: Largest police force in US has spent more than $1m in recent years on the purchase and upkeep of the office machines

Also living history, and getting very fed-up it would seem with the exploitation of his name and image, 91-year-old Nelson Mandela.

Death of living history: Henry Allingham, British first world war veteran, dies at 113.

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I have wordage on the conference page which is approximately the amount I need to fill the allocated slot (did I mention, the absolute last one on the last day?). Which is *Good*.

However, I fear that the words may be utter waffle, and at the very least the whole thing Needs More Work. Which is *Bad*.

And I did manage a bit of work on the neglected STDs chapter, which is *Good*.

But there are still Huge Gaps to fill, not to mention putting in actual references in some passages. *Bad*.

And in the Department of Things I Do Not Need, someone sending me a copy-edited draft of the essay review on women and madness asking me to do some light editorial emendation. *Bad*.

***

While giving two well-appreciated presentations to visiting groups at work is *Good*,

Two in one week is *Bad*, especially when the second one was a rush job for which I had two days notice and would have been within my rights not to step up for. And while the preparation and putting away is tiresome, the thing I really, really dislike is the idle hanging around bits.

***

Got moving on some personal administration stuff, which is *Good*.

But this involves having to organise a trip to a branch of my building society, since they won't do what I want by phone, and this is *Bad*.

***

But definitely *Good* was managing two lunches in congenial company with excellent conversation and South Indian veggie buffet - there is no *Bad* there.

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Interview with the outgoing director of the Fawcett Society, Katherine Rake (by someone whose grasp on the history of feminism and the topic at large I am not entirely impressed with):

While it's often assumed that the movement towards equality is one of constant progress,* there has actually been significant slippage, with the UK sliding down the World Economic Forum rankings on gender equality and "the pay gap widening last year", says Rake.

She is "a bit of an anorak at heart", naturally drawn to policy and research, and the evidence-based approaches to change that would send some people to sleep. But her tactics seem to work. In her years at Fawcett, the group has helped ensure significant political movement and raised the profile of issues as varied as women's pensions and, most recently, the licensing of lap dancing clubs.

I'm chuffed to see that she is thrilled to leave the Fawcett

in the hands of her other feminist icons – the young activists who work at the organisation. "They totally blow my socks off," she says. "They're full of passion and enthusiasm, and are all incredibly committed to the cause. And they give the lie to the idea that there is no new feminist generation."

Also, slightly cheering, the responses to an earlier article on women in art - apart from the first one, which makes me want to point out that once they started auditions behind screens, the number of women recruited to orchestras shot up, surprise, surprise, these seem largely sensible and on the ball and thinking about the reasons. But still, we have come some of the way, because even if some names still perhaps get over-invoked, there was surely a time within my lifespan when it was 'Artemisa Gentilleschi - who she?'

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Early C18th manuscript domestic recipe volume--

Yes, I'd anticipate 'Triffel' (which doesn't really conform to modern expectations for trifle, honestly) and assorted marmalades.

And if there were connections with the East India Company or at least the eastern trade generally, it's not wholly unlikely that you might get 'pillau' and 'kebobs'.

The one that beswozzled me was 'Fromage Fondu'. Shades of the 70s, what? But it is recognisably a cheese dip thing served with toasted bread.

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I recently saw a mailing from Pickering & Chatto via one of my listservs.

They publish a lot of collections of original documents on various subjects: among the current crop are British Travel Writing from China, 1798-1901 and Ghosts: A Social History.

They also seem to be moving into the realm of secondary scholarship: Mary Cholmondely is a late Victorian writer on my mean-to-read-sometime list, but look, look!
Reassessing John Buchan: Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps!
Bless.

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Monday morning: busker playing slow movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto - awwww, how lovely, what a nice start to the week.

Wednesday morning: same busker, playing slow movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto - thinks: is that the only tune that he can play?

Maybe that's just midweekiness, or maybe it is that thing whereby something that strikes one as charming the first time comes over as 'oh, that's a routine' the second time.

Remember paying visit to elderly doc about their papers, many years ago: o what a delightful and interesting person, what a charmer; paying second visit to collect the papers; almost exactly the same routine, same anecdotes in same order etc; sense of this being their performance.

Brighton C mentioned this when doing oral histories of women who had become eminent in their profession - they had their narratives well worked out, they were already used to being interviewed and had their act together.

Also, my grandmother's stories of her early struggles as a pupil teacher were fascinating and inspiring when I first heard them: when one had heard them repeatedly over the years and could practically do them oneself word for word, not so much.

This strikes me with a certain concern that at the very least I forget who I've told things to, and maybe they've already heard the one about the Plague-Pit Bones, or whatever.

***

And has anyone else been spammed (by someone not in my circle) with an invite to a new DW comm active?

Basically this community is for people struggling with weight loss, weight gain, or just people how want to maintain their weight & live a healthy lifestyle. There will be weekly tips, maybe games, etc.

To an open-air summer party held by an academic group with which I have some connection.

Have feeling that somewhere in one of the Provincial Lady books EM Delafield must have remarked that a garden-party will, even must, always be overshadowed by the possibility of rain.

And indeed, the weather today has been sufficiently uncertain and changeable that the organiser actually sent attendees an email saying that it might be best to check with departmental reception as to where event was actually happening.

But when I trotted down there I found that it was indeed happening in The Sunken Garden, one of the more hidden delights of Bloomsbury that I had not previously penetrated.

It did seem at moments that it might rain, with a few random droplets falling but failing to develop into a shower, but the rain did hold off, at least as at the time I left (somewhat later than planned due to being waylaid by Demographic Historian wishing to interrogate me.

Quite a good do: decent sandwiches, bearable wine, more people there that I knew than I had anticipated, some useful information exchanged, and although there was music, it was a solo cellist against whom it was possible to converse.

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The Centre for Dissenting Studies.

I'm sure that's a constant hurly-burly of people heckling the tutor and disagreeing with one another...

Not to mention the holes in the seminar room door from people nailing up their 95, plus or minus, theses at regular intervals.

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Seen recently, announcement relating to a Centre for Surrealism Studies.

Ideally, this would be as follows:

The Centre is situated within a several times life-size model of a giraffe; entrance is by way of the funicular under its tail.

As you step out of the car (which is shaped like a urinal) a large white rabbit hits you with a balloon and tells you to appreciate the exquisite copulation of an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating table, then pulls out a pocket watch, shrieks, 'I'm late!!' and rushes off.

A woman wearing a lobster on her head gives you a stuffed octopus.

The seminar room is reached via a labyrinth which combines images from the Capuchins vault in Rome with the effects from a really down-market seaside funfair ghost train.

The interior of the seminar room resembles a 1900 Prague insurance office dumped into a French 3rd Republic high-class bordello. Soft clocks drip from every surface, all telling different times and some going backwards.

You open the book on the desk in front of you. A jack in the box in the semblance of Salvador Dali pops up...

Following my Not Me, Squire response to the dubious publishing enterprise:

Dear [first name - hello, I was not under the impression that we had been introduced],

I am sorry for the inconvenience. However, everything happens for a
reason, since LAP does publish academic pieces in different fields.
Please let me know if you are interested in publishing your work with us
and I can send you further information on LAP. According to company
policy, we publish works, which are at least 52 pages long.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Though somehow the 'at least 52 pages long' amuses me somewhat. (Why 52?)

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In my email today, this really not very alluring offer under the subject line Request for publication at LAP:

Dear [my full name]

While researching publishable academic papers at the Library of [institution with which I have never ever been connected], I came across a reference to a work entitled {something that I have never written on and not in my field].

LAP Lambert Academic Publishing AG & Co. KG specializes in the publication of theses and dissertations.

I am therefore wondering if you would be interested in cooperating with us towards a worldwide marketed publication of your work.

Your reply including an e-mail address to which I could send an e-mail with further information in an attachment would be greatly appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Kind regards,
Nikraj Buron
Acquisition Editor
LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing AG & Co. KG
[address, phone, fax, board of directors, etc]

LAP publishes academic research worldwide - at no cost to our authors.

We are one of the leading publishing houses of academic research. We specialize in publishing theses, dissertations, and research projects.

From the large number of research papers that are continuously being completed in higher education, we identify those which - due to their quality and practical relevance - are suitable for publication. In this way, the latest research is conveyed quickly and tailored to the needs of the respective specialist audience.

All monographs, scripts, diploma theses, master theses, dissertations, postdoctoral theses, and lecture notes are published by LAP as a specialist book in a high-quality paperback fitting with an individual cover image, ISBN and barcode. Our titles are produced on-site in the USA, UK and Germany, and distributed worldwide via the leading retailers.

I have a suspicion, from the diversity of names quoted by those who have received these emails, as being 'Acquisitions Editor', that this organisation very likely employs 'Acquisitions Editors' to trawl university library catalogues and solicit interest on a commission basis, but I'm just guessing there.

***

On the other hand, I'm yay for Bibliolife, even if it is rather late in the day and past my actual need for it that they have provided a nicely put-together POD copy of Margaret Dalham's obscure feminist polemic Mere Man (1911). Which is a fascinating work of maternalist-eugenist argument about women's right to motherhood, and to select their mate(s). It's a bit ev-psych in its view of male sexuality, but believes that when the matriarchate has been restored things will all fall in place.

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The remains of the pheasant got turned into pheasant and lentil soup for Friday supper, which was okay but I wish I'd remembered an earlier thought of adding some lime leaves and ginger when making it up (as this was the ginger-lime pheasant).

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic white buttermilk with buckwheat flour.

Today's lunch: halibut steaks baked in foil with jerk seasoning (a bit overcooked - they were quite thick so I gave them longer than usual, possibly a bit too long, or too high a temperature, or something), served with minature new potatoes roasted in pumpkin seed oil with rosemary, organic asparagus brushed with walnut oil, healthy-grilled, and a little limejuice squeezed over before serving (this is such a nice way of doing asparagus that I am getting very slack about varying what I do with it), and little gem lettuces quartered, sprinkled with wild pomegranate vinegar, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

The bread I made during the week is still good, so far.

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Anxiety dream last night in which I was about to give a presentation to a visiting group at work and found myself desperately hunting for the memory stick which had the necessary on it (and, of course, time was pressing).

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I suppose that 'not a happy bunny' is a phrase that is going to recur in reviews of Alison Uttley's diaries. We have already recently been alerted that she was not a sweet cuddlesome old lady, and she does sound fairly toxic, but probably not particularly above the average for noted children's authors. (And being me and interested in women in science, I would really, really like to know what she did, if anything, with her BA in Physics, 1906, though it looks as though the diaries don't actually cover that period of her life.)

Also on children's literature, Philip Ardagh reviews the new Anne Fine which seems to be going against the trend and not being about gloom, doom, gross-outness and sexual shenanigans (not that there is anything wrong with that).

And this sounds charming, even if, for the reasons mentioned by Mangan in the column, it was not part of my own childhood: All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor.

And another note on children's literature: the 'Ten of the Best' this week is parrots (can't find on website) - shock, horror, no mention of the parrot Captain Flint gave to the Swallows. Also, no mention of the non-existent parrot that Flora Poste told the group seeing her off to Cold Comfort Farm not to forget to feed.

This was much more interesting than I expected it to be: David Edgar: apparently very different dramas can share an underlying architecture:

[P]lays are like the human body. What's distinctive and unique about us is on the surface: the skin, including the most particular thing of all, the human face. Although they differ a bit in shape and proportion, our skeletons are much less distinctive. But without our skeletons holding them up, what's unique about us would consist of indistinguishable heaps of blubber on the floor. So plays that no one else could possibly write (as no one else could look exactly like us) can nonetheless share an underlying structure. You could argue that one of the least interesting things about King Lear is that it shares a basic action with a fairytale. But without that fundamental geometry in place (there are two nasty sisters and one nice one, and their father judges them wrongly), the whole thing collapses.

Point thar - u hav misst it: Carol Ann Duffy's poem about Oxfam is her poem about Oxfam: if you think there is another poem that should be written (scroll down to 'Charity Shop Chic'), write it yourself.

Much as I adore Possession, I feel some sympathy for this particular reader-response: "As an archivist, can I just say that no matter how much I love the book, I cannot forgive the author for letting one of her characters steal a crucial document from a library at the beginning and go unpunished." There is a similar scene at the beginning of the 1991 Spanish film based on Henry James's The Aspern Papers, which had me and my librarian friend watching it horrified - though at least the guy in question was positioned as a creepy type.

And, talking of creepy, James Hall on the commissioning by elite men of the Renaissance of portraits of beautiful women who were married to other people:

What Titian offers us is a vision of angelic eros - a love that makes us reach for the sky.

When all is said and done, we may still feel this is all smoke and mirrors - an elaborate alibi for ogling and exploitation. Here we have the 60-year-old Gabriel Vendramin removing his timpani to gaze at pictures of women young enough to be his great-granddaughters. Pietro Bembo had said the "bridle of reason" is stronger in old men and restrains sensual desires - but it's hard not to fast forward to Berlusconi.

Such criticisms cannot be brushed aside, yet this was just about the first time in European history when women were appreciated for their brains, and not just for their beauty or chastity. In Italy, this moment of relative cultural freedom came to an end with the more misogynistic Catholic counter-reformation. Mariolatry reigned supreme, and the Virgin Mary, though still beautiful, didn't write poetry or host literary salons.

Victlit: possibly doing it right - radio dramatisation of Tennyson's Idylls of the King sounds rather effective, and probably doing it RONG: forthcoming TV drama-doc about the Pre-Raphaelites which makes my blood run cold (not so much Brotherhood as Laddish-lot, and - where da wymmynz???!!!) Come back Ken Russell and Dante's Inferno, orl iz 4givn.

Doctors gave Lady Campbell a year to live when she was born. Three years ago they put a 'do not resuscitate' notice on her medical records, as if her life was not worth living. This week she proved just how wrong they were. And on a related subject which may be of interest, spotted via one of my listservs: call for papers for anthology on Disability and Passing

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My beloved G B Stern was so very right in her apercu that 'Wednesday Fortnight always comes':

I had accepted by telephone an invitation to do something or other which I did not want to do, or go to some place where I did not want to go--I forget.... I had accepted because it was far enough ahead that it seemed the path of least resistance to say yes. 'Wednesday Fortnight? Yes, all right.' And to myself, lightly: 'Wednesday Fortnight never comes!' But Wednesday Fortnight came at a fast gallop, and I was seeking sympathy from Robin for tomorrow's ordeal.... for he too had been tricked often and often by the comfortable illusion that Wednesday Fortnight never comes. But we both vowed not to be caught like that again. Wednesday Fortnight always comes, said Robin.*

I'm perhaps not quite in the exact same position, but a year ago I agreed to give a conference paper on a topic that I didn't feel any enormous enthusiasm for, and no particular inspiration, to oblige colleagues who were running a conference and needed a paper on just that particular area to fill a yawning gap in coverage.

And I blithely thought that, well, maybe inspiration would strike, or I would be able to reread the relevant literature, and generally place myself on a rather sounder footing than I feel with the conference rushing towards me at the end of the month.

It is not as though this hasn't happened before, that I take on some commitment and find that in the event it has to struggle with a pile of other commitments also demanding my attention at the period in question.

I also wonder why I thought I would be likely to undertake a rereading even of the major works in the recent historiography of Victorian sexuality, several of which I find immensely irritating. If I'd even had the time to do that I can think of things I'd rather do with it.

So perceive me engaged in the tapdance of not having all that much to say but having to say something anyway and trying to get a paper written saying it.

*Another Part of the Forest (1941)

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I am utterly delighted to be able to announce that Helen S Wright's A Matter of Oaths (1988) is now available for download from her website.

I look (so far fruitlessly) for secondhand copies whenever I go into a likely bookshop so that I might have them available to press into the hands of friends who may not have read it.

Now I can point them there.

Helen is also on Dreamwidth as arkessian.

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Recently reread Margery Allingham's The Beckoning Lady, which is relatively late (early 1950s) and a bit weird even by the really not very exacting standards set by her work.

But that's not what the problem is.

Okay, Campion is still an awful cipher compared to Wimsey, even if he is going around in a state of grouch because his bezzie cop buddy, Inspector Charlie Luke, has fallen for an unsuitable woman. There is the usual assemblage of eccentrics and 'characters'.

But this book really made me think about the Problem of Amanda.

Because the initial concept of (Lady) Amanda Fitton, later Campion, was really promising. They meet in Sweet Danger in which she is still more or less a schoolgirl, becomes his plucky sidekick, fond of mucking about with engines and generally mechanically minded, and clearly has her sights set on Campion as future mate (go figure).

She turns up again in The Fashion in Shrouds, working in a crack aeronautical engineering firm - appointed well before the owner of the firm becomes Campion's brother-in-law. The demands the plot makes on her are largely to pose as being engaged to Campion and then to break this off with maximum publicity (oh, go on, you can tell how this one ends, can't you?).

So we have here a woman who is massively competent in a non-traditional for women area, who is employed and respected by a man whose views on women are sickmakingly expressed in his 'marry-me' speech to Valentine at the end of The Fashion in Shrouds, which is essentially about giving up her successful career and being his helpmate.

In Traitor's Purse, set shortly after the outbreak of war, Amanda and Campion are engaged but show no sign of proceeding to actual wedlock. This is the one in which even Allingham seemed to be finding him annoying, as she bops him on the head, gives him amnesia, and has someone else putting amorous-type moves on Amanda, in the context of a major threat to national security. However, to the best of my recollection Amanda doesn't really do much, doesn't twig about the amnesia (and Campion is desperate that she not find out), although she does quite quickly get disillusioned by alternate suitor.

At the end of Coroner's Pidgin when Campion finally gets home to her he finds her with a young infant, whom she (who has surely been making new and improved Spitfires for the duration) refers to as 'my war-work'.

At the end of The Beckoning Lady, during which she does do a fair amount of displaying her extreme technical and practical competence in odd corners of the narrative, as well some laidback mothering, she and Campion talk about having moar baybees.

In The Tiger in the Smoke, as I recall, she does nothing but sit on the sofa sewing (or possibly knitting - anyway, doing something of that nature when one thinks it far more likely she would have been taking engines to bits or constructing a computer or whatever) more or less in silence (is she pregnant in this one? it's so long since I read it).

It really does make me go hey for Sayers and Harriet Vane and Wimsey realising that chivalry is just an excuse to have all the fun. I seem to recall that Agatha Troy Alleyne had a bit more going on as well, but it's years since I read any Marsh.

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Five words from ase - you know the game by now, surely, if you would like five words that I associate with you, either as a stimulus to posting or for private meditation, comments with 'Words'.

( Blogging Identity Travel Byatt Coffee )

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To Cambridge to give paper I was pressured into ages ago in connection with Big Event taking place there.

My track record with travel involving Cambridge is not good: however, the train there was not derailed or slowed down by high winds and arrived on time. (Was amused at the cheeky notice under the station name 'Home of Anglia Ruskin University'. This is, of course, entirely true.) Since the map for speakers had no indication of scale I had no idea of whether location was walkable - took taxi. This was probably a good idea, especially as it came on to rain.

Found registration place and got my pack.

Found place my session was happening at.

Time to spare, sat and read.

Session went well, I think: however, my piece was last, and was sufficiently appreciated that questions ran into overrun time.

(My topic, roughly speaking, dear readers, was 'Yujenix B orl moar komplik8ed'* - one of the other speakers also invoked this particular historian's privilege. Was somewhat stunned that I didn't get the usual Marie Stopes question.)

At this point, the travel jinx kicked in: I set off walking and then came across a taxi rank when, to my mind, I still had a fair way to go, and thought I'd take one, except we ran into heavy traffic and driver took a massive detour, getting me to station just after the fast train had departed. Woez.

On the up side, I had managed to acquire two different, but rather nice, conference bags.

*I had actually managed to come up with what I thought was a neat formulation of the diverse agendas it could serve: certain kinds of reactionary saw it as a reset button to go back to some state of primitive purity, certain kinds of progressive saw it as part of the armoury of scientific modernity as we all marched forward into the shiny hygienic future.

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This has been one of those days which, although there have been no major disasters or problems, has been a tiresome saga of niggly things going wrong.

And none of them were things that couldn't somehow be fixed - I did remember I hadn't combed my hair, before actually going out into the wider world; although I discovered that I'd left my purse at home the man at the newspaper kiosk trusted me for the price of my morning Guardian and I was able to get some cash out of one of the ATMs at Euston (but because one of the exits from the Tube station was closed, had to go the long inconvenient way round); the bread which (o the irony after this morning's post about A Fleming) had developed mould I was able to cut two uncontaminated slices off, and I had time to get the quick Belgian wholemeal loaf going... but all rather wearing.

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West's annoyance flared up after he took the role of the Australian scientist Professor Howard Florey in Breaking the Mould, a forthcoming BBC4 drama about the discovery of penicillin.

"Florey got the Nobel Prize with Alexander Fleming but was basically lost to history, except in Australia where he was recently voted the greatest Australian of all time," West said.

"I'd never heard of this guy and I just thought it would be interesting to play this unknown guy and then they said he's the biggest guy in Australia.

Okay, perhaps I am in an unusual position in that I know who got the Nobel for penicillin (Chain, Fleming and Florey), who was shamefully excluded (Norman Heatley, the lab tech whose adept abilities were key in the development of pencillin as a viable drug), and that the whole story is a lot more complicated than
Alexander Fleming sees something odd in petri dish: whoooo, first antibiotic?

Because that happened in 1928, and penicillin was not synthesised in a form that could be produced on a large scale until 1942. As a result of a lot of hard graft at the lab bench rather than lightbulb moment (Qu: - with energy efficient bulbs, is this metaphor no longer valid?).

But Fleming and his petri dish captured the narrative here, didn't they?

Talking of narratives in science, while one has the greatest respect for Mme Curie, it's still a bit sad that she's the only female scientist that people have heard of or think about when asked to name one.

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