Adventures in mansplaining

I am grateful to Past Me for buying a set of jump leads the last time (or possibly the time before that) she needed to get the RAC to come and start her car because the battery had gone flat in the garage.

I am grateful to our next-door neighbour, who was in her conservatory when I came back into the garden to tell T that the car wouldn't start and offered to come round and get her car out so we could jump-start mine (even if also a little weirded out by her saying to T that she hoped he knew what he was doing, as it was definitely a blue job rather than a pink job, as I was reading the instructions off the box the leads came in and working out what to attach where).

I am not grateful to our next-door neighbour's male partner, who then turned up and proceeded to try to tell everyone else what to do, despite his instructions contradicting the instructions on the jump leads, the instructions in the manual for my car and my memories of every time someone from a breakdown service has jump-started my car. Goodness knows what would actually have happened if I had attempted to start the car with the negative lead clamped to my battery instead of safely earthed, but fortunately I had the common sense not to do that, and eventually managed to persuade the neighbour that it would probably work better if she started her engine despite his insisting that she absolutely shouldn't do that. He had then managed to remove the leads before I even got out of the car again, even though all the instructions said to leave the leads on for a few minutes and then turn both engines off before removing them.

And after all that, by the time we'd driven to Witney it was clear that the weather was considerably showerier than the forecast had suggested, so instead of going for a walk we just went to Waitrose and then came home again, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a DPD van going through a long stretch of roadworks in Cassington.

Linkspam

An excellent Twitter thread on the history of lesbian literature in the early 20th century, from Robin Stevens (author of the Wells and Wong mysteries and, from what I can see, all-round Good Egg).

A map of fictional places in Britain. I live just outside Christminster, obviously, with Lark Rise and Candleford not far away, and apparently St Trinian's is fairly nearby too.

Paradox, by Naomi Kritzer. Time travel and why killing Hitler doesn't work.

What I want pattern companies to know about their fat, queer customers. There have been a lot of discussions recently about race in the knitting community, but I'm also starting to see calls for more diversity from the indie sewing pattern companies, in particular a more diverse range of sizes and clothing that isn't just vintage-inspired frocks for thin, cis white women in their 20s and 30s, of which this post is probably the most eloquent and detailed.

Benedict Cumberbatch failing to say "penguin". Because this is a thing of joy.

Investigating the physics of knitted fabrics.

Feargal Sharkey (yes, that Feargal Sharkey) is walking the rivers of South London and tweeting what he finds. This week it was the Beverley Brook, which may be of interest to Ben Aaronovitch fans as well as walkers and conservationists. (If you had told the me of 30 years ago, who loathed 'A Good Heart' as horrible soppy mush and hadn't actually managed to work out that Sharkey had also been in the Undertones, that she'd be keenly following his activities, I think she'd have been horrified.)