Personal

Dear British Museum

~ Cheryl

I have had a Friends membership for several years now and have enjoyed many of your exhibitions. I have a keen interest in ancient history and am passionate about discovering and preserving knowledge about the past.

However, I am also involved in the publishing industry and have put considerable effort into promoting the work done by translators. There is much good work out there in modern fiction that is inaccessible to English-speaking readers without their help. The same is of course true of the ancient world, because no one wrote in English until comparatively recently in the history of language.

I was therefore deeply distressed at your shabby treatment of Yilin Wang in putting together the “China’s Hidden Century” exhibition. Translators should be acknowledged, and they should be paid fairly for their work.

I have given you some time to make things right, but all I have seen from you is a press release that is one of the worst examples of a corporate non-excuse I have ever seen. As someone who has been involved in diversity training, I’m astonished that a high profile organisation such as yours could be so bad at this.

Consequently I am resigning my membership of the British Museum Friends. I have cancelled my direct debit, and the money I would have paid for my next renewal has been donated to Ms. Wang’s crowdfunder.

Yours, deeply disappointed,

Cheryl Morgan

Two Requests

~ Cheryl

I have a couple of requests from friends that I’d like to bring to your attention.

The first is from Alistair Simms of Books on the Hill. As you may know, Alistair has made quite a splash by publishing a series of books that are dyslexic-friendly. As a result, he has been nominated for a couple of awards. If you’d like to vote for him, the ballot is here. The two awards he is up for are the Community Shining Star Award (20+) and the Entrepreneur Awards (18+).

The other is from Jo Hall. One of the farm dogs is very ill and needs some expensive tests before she can have treatment. You can donate at Jo’s Ko-Fi page.

Health Update

~ Cheryl

Still sick, still testing positive for COVID. Not the best way to spend a birthday, but at least I am able to have a fairly quiet day, which I very much need.

Looking forward, a few things are becoming obvious.

Firstly, attending any mass event such as a convention is going to require accepting a very high likelihood of contracting COVID. People have given up taking precautions, we have very little reliable public data, it is hard to protect yourself if you go.

Having said that, COVID no longer seems deadly. I’ve not had any difficulty breathing. My senses of taste and smell have been unaffected. Judging from the puzzle games I play regularly, I don’t seem to have suffered any congnitive impairment. Obviously things might be different if I had one of any number of high risk conditions, but I’m lucky.

But, and this is a big but, if you are going to risk getting COVID, you have to allow for at least two weeks, possibly three, of recovery time, and that creates scheduling issues.

Clearly my plan to go to LuxCon immediately after Eastercon was a recipe for disaster. I might make it to HistFest at the end of April, but I’m not certain.

May is just the Tolkien lecture, and there’s plenty of time to recover before Eurocon. I was going to see a couple of talks at Hay at the end of the month, but I doubt that I’ll have a new car by then.

Finncon and Pemmi-Con being close together is another potential disaster. I trust the Finns to run a safe con, but I’d be travelling through Heathrow to get there and that’s likely to be an infection hot-spot.

FantasyCon and BristolCon are sufficiently far apart to both be possible. But if I have no car I can’t bring books to sell, and that reduces the attraction of going.

All of which, I guess, will be good for my carbon footprint.

Health Update

~ Cheryl

Thus far I seem to have been very lucky. Least ways, I am much less ill than Juliet is reporting being. Of course that could all change. This is a new experience for me.

I’m not going to waste tests until the obvious flu-like symptoms go away. In any case, the NHS guidelines are to isolate for 6 days from a first positive test, so I’m isolating. Tesco delivered some groceries today.

There are now over 70 reported cases of COVID from people who were at Eastercon. I suspect that the true number is much higher. In contrast, last year’s Worldcon, which was a much larger event, had 64 cases. There are a whole bunch of reasons for this, which I will get to when I do my con report, but I don’t think I’m the only person seriously reconsidering in-person attendance at future Eastercons. Especially when this one did hybrid so well.

Life Happens

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well, yesterday was a bit shit. It was all going fine until I got to the turnoff for Cardiff Gate services (approximately two thirds of the way home and time for a rest). The short version is that in avoiding an idiot who thought he could treat a roundabout as a dual carriageway, I hit a traffic island. I’m fine, save for a torn nail. No one else was involved. But the car is probably a write-off.

The RAC got me home eventually, though they were very busy so I spent a few hours sat in the car reading, which was rather cold. This being Wales, several people dropped by to see if I was OK and needed anything.

There’s not a lot I can do about it all right now as I am stuck at home until the COVID passes. Thankfully I am well enough to be getting on with work, which takes my mind off things. But long term I am starting to question the utility of selling books at conventions. I’m not going to sell enough to pay for the trip. If it is an Eastercon these days, getting COVID seems inevitable. And it is a whole lot of effort in terms of driving, carting books around and so on. BristolCon might be an exception, but I need to decide whether getting a new car is a necessary thing to do.

Government by Ideology

~ Cheryl

Social media this week is full of discussion of a letter written by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to the Minister for Women & Equalities, Kemi Badenoch. For those of you unfamiliar with UK politics, one of the things that the current Tory government has done is fill “equalities” posts with people directly opposed to equality. Badenoch is an Evangelical Christian and Climate Change Sceptic. The Board of the EHRC has been filled with people who are openly transphobic. Nonsense is to be expected.

The first thing worth noting is that this letter has no legal force. Neither has there (yet) been any move to act on it. However, both Sunak and Starmer have muttered openly about “safeguarding woman’s rights”, which is a code pharse for removing the rights of trans people. If you feel minded to do so, and are a UK citizen, there is an old petition here that is suddenly getting a lot of traction and is worth signing. Sending a warning shot across the bows of Westminster is often quite effective.

Should they decide to move forward with this, the government will spin it as not removing any trans rights, but rather protecting the rights of women. The effect will be very different. The letter proposes amending the Equality Act to make it “clear” that “sex” means “biological sex” (whatever that means). The stated purpose of this will be to make it possible for any “single-sex” service to exclude anyone not of the correct “biological sex”. However, it has long been a claim of the anti-trans movement that allowing a trans woman into a supposed woman-only space is discrimination on the grounds of sex. If this change is made, we can expect to see a wave of prosecutions under the Equality Act where services have treated a trans woman as a woman, and are being sued for discrimination as a result. This will affect spaces such as toilets, changing rooms and sports clubs as well as rape crisis and domestic violence centres. Bizarrely the letter also references book clubs as an example of the sort of place that needs to be sex segregated.

Note that these new regulations are intended to apply to all trans people, regardless of their medical and current legal status. Somone like myself, who has been through a full surgical gender reassignment process and has a Gender Recognition Certificate, would still be regarded as “biologically male” under these proposals.

To government will claim that trans people can still change their gender using the Gender Recognition Act. However, because sex will have been defined as meaning biological sex, that change of gender will have no effect in law. The government will also claim that trans people are still protected by the Equality Act. They will be correct in saying that a company can still not fire someone for being trans, but that company will be legally obliged to treat trans employees as persons of their “biological sex”. It would not surprise me to see law suits complaining that allowing a trans woman to use female pronouns at work amounted to discrimination against cis women.

The letter talks airily about checks and balances, and about how these changes will be better for some and worse for others. Significantly it talks about trans women losing rights, and trans men gaining rights. But the rights that trans men would gain would be rights to be treated as women, which is the last thing that most trans men I know want. This is entirely in keeping with the anti-trans belief that trans men do not exist, and anyone claiming to be one is an innocent lesbian who has been duped by the Evil Trans Lobby.

Let’s now think about how this would work in practice. The anti-trans movement likes to claim that they can “always tell” who is trans, but they definitely cannot. Neither can anyone who runs a service that includes toilets or changing rooms. The only way that companies will be able to protect themselves is by requiring ID. There will be even more harassment of women whose appearance is not gender-conforming. And the government will have to revoke the existing passports and driving licences of trans people, issuing new ones with the sex marker being that they were assigned at birth. Goodness only knows how they will deal with foreign visitors who are trans.

There’s also this question of “biological sex”. What does it mean? The government probably thinks that’s just the sex you were assigned at birth. But the anti-trans lobby has been insistent that biological checks are necessary. For example, they insist that Caster Semenya is a “man”, despite her having been assigned female at birth and having lived all her life as a woman. Apparently she has higher than average levels of testosterone and that’s sufficient to disqualify her from womanhood.

The trouble is that we don’t routinely test for chromosomes or testosterone levels. No one has any idea how many women out there have a Y chromosome and androgen insensitivity. Given that there has been at least one well-documented case of a woman with a Y chromosome who gave birth to a healthy child, there’s no way we can know without testing. So what happens in the future if a woman has some routine checks by a doctor and it turns out she has a Y chromosome? Will she be legally required to live as a man from then on?

Given that the anti-trans lobby is very keen on genital surgery for intersex children who have ambiguous genitalia, this would not surprise me.

So that’s the world that these proposed changes would usher in. And all on the basis that a small number of fanatics have decided that they don’t want to live in a world that also contains trans people.

Cyborg R I

~ Cheryl

I spent most of today in Swansea. I got a bit of shopping done, including picking up a copy of the new Kate Heartfield book, The Valkyrie. But the main reason for going was to pick up a set of hearing aids. I can still hear fairly well most of the time, but if I need to pick out speech from a lot of background noise — for example if I am in a pub or a noisy restaurant — then I’m useless. Conventions are another problem location, especially somewhere like the dealers’ room. So if I want to get through Eastercon without seeming very rude, I need help.

I am utterly amazed at what a difference the hearing aids make. They cost an eye-watering amount of money, but the science involved is phenomenal. This evening I managed to watch the latest episode of Picard without needing headphones, which is a huge improvement. I will be interested to see what sort of differnece they make over the coming weeks when I have a lot of travel happening.

War With Scotland

~ Cheryl

Back when I was in school we learned all sorts of strange stuff in history. One of the things that caused much mirth in the class was the fact that there was a major war between Britain and Spain called The War of Jenkins’ Ear. It was a dispute over the American colonies. In 1731 a British ship called the Rebecca, captained by one Robert Jenkins, was boarded by Spanish coastguards off the coast of Florida (then Spanish territory). Captain Jenkins was accused of smuggling, and his left ear was cut off as a warning to other British sailors. Eight years later, Parliament used this incident as a pretext to declare a war that was fought mainly in the Caribbean.

Now we have something even sillier. The Westminster government has precipitated a major constiutional crisis over the issue of Scottish devolution, and their pretext for doing so is access to women’s toilets. Perhaps it will be called the War of Ladies’ Loos.

As you are probably aware, the Scottish parliament has passed a law simplifying the process of legal gender recognition in Scotland. What they have done is by no means unusual. Many countries around the world have already passed similar legislation. Ireland did it in 2015, and none of the terrible things that anti-trans camapigners have predicted for Scotland have come to pass there. But Westminster has chosen to make this issue one over which they will activate their nuclear option of a Section 35 Order. This is a part of the Scottish Devolution Act which allows Westminster to strike down any law passed by Holyrood if that law is deemed a signifcant danger to the Union (i.e., the political union of the component countries of the UK).

Yes, you read that right. The question as to where I am allowed to pee is so important as to pose a significant danger to the Union.

Westminister had earlier threated to simply refuse to recognise any Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs) issued by Scotland under the new law. It was pointed out to them that they already recognise certificates issued by many foreign countries under similar legislation. Their reaction to this was to say that they would withdraw recognition of GRCs issued by any country whose procedures they deemed to be insufficiently rigorous. This would include Ireland, Belgium, Norway, Portugal, Iceland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia. Practically speaking it would also include Australia, Canada, Mexico and the USA, where such legislation is devolved to state legislatures and it may be difficult to discern from someone’s ID where their GRC was issued.

The fact that Australia, Canada, the USA and Mexico all have different regulations for legal gender recognition in different parts of their country, without any apparent difficulty, has apparently not yet penetrated the thick skulls in Westminster.

The justification for triggering Section 35 is also so flimsy as to be practically transparent. Westminster claims that the Scottish law will negatively impact the UK’s Equality Act by making it too easy for someone to obtain a GRC. However, the protections afforded to trans people under the Equality Act are independent of whether we have a GRC or not. You acquire the Protected Characteristic of Gender Transition simply by declaring publicly that you are undergoing such a process. That is, you aquire it by self-identification, in a manner much less robust than the Scottish law which requires a Statutory Declaration, with heavy penalties should you make such a declaration fraudulently.

It is also worth noting that the entire process of medical gender transition is predicated on self-identification. Once you have been accepted as a patient at a gender clinic you are required to begin living full-time in your desired gender. To facilitiate this the doctors will give you letters allowing you to change ID such as your driving licence and passport to match your new gender. A Gender Recognition Certificate only affects your birth certificate, which is explicitly not acceptable as a form of ID.

In other words, the whole thing is a storm in a teacup into which Westminster has been backed by the combined efforts of the right wing media, the religious right elements within the Conservative Party, and probably substantial donations from a certain wealthy author.

Interestingly, the Scottish law was backed by the Scottish Labour Party. The Welsh Government, which is a Labour government, has expressed support for the Scottish law. But the English Labour Party, or at least its leader, has expressed support for the Westminster line.

Goodness knows where this will end, but it appears that we are in for another year of Interesting Times in UK politics.

Gone Bananas – Day 6

~ Cheryl

Today was the last day of the GoBananas challange. I’m pleased to say that I reached my target of raising £350 for One25, but they can always do with more and the donation page will remain open for a few days if you are so inclined.

Here’s today’s menu.

Brunch – French Toast

One of the things I love about Canada is getting breakfast at Eggspectation. Here’s my version of their French Toast. Spread cream cheese on one side of your brioche. Make a sandwich with chopped strawberries and banana, with the cheese outside. Dip the sandwich into a mix of egg, cream, vanilla & cinnamon. Fry in butter. Top with remaining fruit, walnuts, whipped cream, maple syrup. It is fantastically yummy.

Smoothie – Banana & Blueberry

Banana, frozen blueberries, coconut milk, and surprisingly a little cocoa powder. Not sure why the cocoa is there, or whether it has any benefit. Lovely colour though.

Dinner – Nachos with Banana Guacamole

Somewhat to my surprise, avocado and banana go very well together. Also this was an excuse to end the challenge with something nice and spicy. Basically just substitute ripe banana for half of the avocado in your guacamole recipe. Enjoy, and thank you for staying with me though this.

Gone Bananas – Day 5

~ Cheryl

Almost there now. Just one day to go.

I’m currently up to 79% of my target for the One25 fundraiser. Hopefully I can make it to 100% by 5:00pm tomorrow. You can help.

Breakfast – Pancakes Revisited

This is a more traditional pancake dish: just topped with banana, caramel and cream. Why not maple syrup, I hear you ask? Well partly as I have a lot of caramel to use up after making the banoffee pie, and partly because I am saving the best to last. Tomorrow we pull out all the stops.

Smoothie – Banana & Orange Revisited

As I stuffed up the breakfast smoothie yesterday I decided to get an orange and try again. It didn’t change the taste much, and it definitely doesn’t produce the bright yellow colour in the recipe book. I suspect yellow food colouring.

Lunch – Bread Machine Banana Bread & Sweet Plantain Chips

Having done banana bread in my cake maker, I decided to try doing it in the bread machine instead. I found a recipe online that was supposedly for my make of machine. Reader, it did not work. I ended up with a crust full of liquid banana mash. Clearly an issue with the balance of ingredients. Still, can’t win ‘em all. I have plenty of banana-based food I can be eating up for lunch.

That included the sweet variety of the plantain chips. No salted, obviously, and actually sweet. Unusual. Maybe needs chili.

Smoothie – Banana & Cucumber

Cucumbers are just water in a green coat, right? Well maybe not. This smoothie has banana, cucumber, pineapple and lime, plus ice. It is the pineapple and cucumber tastes that are the most obvious. Surprisingly delicious, and green.

Dinner – Banana Peel Curry

It would be wrong to do this challenge without using a recipe by Nigella, and to my delight the Domestic Goddess came through spectacularly. Yes, you can eat banana peel. The recipe is in the Cook, Eat Repeat book. It uses cauliflower for bulk, and like all curries the paste makes a huge difference.

Verdict: absolutely amazing. Best meal I have cooked all week.

Banana Beer

Is there such a thing as banana beer? Yes! You can find it in Asda. It is nothing particularly spectacular as far as beer goes, but it is made with bananas and that does not stop it tasting of beer. And of bananas.

Banana Splits

Banana splits are dead easy, right? Just slice some bananas, top with ice cream, and slather with chocolate sauce and cream. But this is Eurovision night, so I needed to go a bit over the top. Hence this recipe, courtesy of the Hairy Bikers.

Bananas lightly fried in butter and brown sugar. Ice cream, whipped cream and hazelnuts toasted in sugar and butter to top, and a sauce made from chocolate, whipping cream, golden syrup and rum.

The presentation is harder. The bananas tend to break when being fried, and they brown a little, but the taste is so much better.

Gone Bananas – Day 4

~ Cheryl

Only two days to go now and I can stop eating bananas for a while. Today was a bit intense. Here’s the menu.

Also the usual reminder that I am raising money for One25, by using bananas in all my meals until Sunday. I’m delighted to see that I’m up to 76% of my target, but there’s still a way to go. You can donate here.

Breakfast – Banana Yoghurt

Yoghurt is a regular part of many people’s breakfasts, but I make my own. I have an EasiYo yoghurt maker, which makes the process very simple. Just add water to the packet mix, follow the instructions, and leave overnight. A 1 kg batch lasts me about a week. They have loads of flavours, including banana.

Smoothie – Banana & Orange

You are getting two smoothies today, because this one is very much a breakfast drink. The recipe calls it “Top o’ the morning”. It contains banana, an orange, almond milk, cinnamon and ice. Except that I mis-read the recipe and don’t have an orange to hand so I used orange juice, which makes it rather more liquid.

Lunch – Plantain Chips

One thing I wanted to do this week was feature the banana’s lesser-known cousin, the plantain. However, I couldn’t manage to find any in the local shops, so I’ve had to settle for chips. Sadly, once they have been fried and salted, they don’t taste much different to bananas.

Smoothie – Banana & Mocha

This one has banana, chilled coffee, almond milk, almond butter, cocoa powder, ice and agave nectar. I was disappointed to discover that having agave in it did not involve actual tequila.

I’m not a big fan of iced tea/coffee, but the cocoa powder makes this. Yum.

Dinner – Orange Pecan Shrimp

We’ve done risotto, we’ve done Latin American, we’ve done curry, now it is time for something with an Asian theme to it. There’s a sauce made from orange juice, rice vinegar, soy sauce and cornflour, plus orange marmalade and ginger. Cook some frozen peas separately (I put them in with the rice part way through). Fry the shrimp until just pink, then reduce the heat, add the sauce, cover and cook for a few minutes. Then add the peas and banana pieces. Serve with rice and toasted chopped pecans.

Cocktail – Banana Daiquiri

Fortuitously today is International Cocktail Day. And it is Friday, so a little alcohol won’t go amiss. The classic banana cocktail is, of course, the banana daiquiri. This is made with ice, banana, rum, an orange liqueur, lime juice and sugar. Mine got made with what I had in the cupboard, which meant Kraken rum (obviously) and Cointreau Blood Orange.

Dessert – Banoffee Pie

The great thing about banoffee pie is that you can make it without cooking. The base is crushed digestive biscuits and melted butter, which needs a few hours in the fridge to set. Then cover the base with caramel, set the banana pieces into it, and cover with whipped double cream. I added some grated chocolate on the top.

It’s not the greatest looking slice in the world, but that was amazing.

Gone Bananas – Day 3

~ Cheryl

I’m back with another day’s worth of banana-themed food.

As a reminder, I am raising money for One25, by using bananas in all my meals until Sunday. I’m only at 57% of my target, so I would appreciate some donations.

Breakfast – Pancakes with Banana Butter

I promised you something different with the pancakes. There are all sorts of things you can put on them, but browsing recipe sites I found mention of banana butter. I’m not a big fan of peanut butter, but surely it can be improved upon. And perhaps banana and cinnamon are just the tools I need.

So, one banana, 4 tbsps of peanut butter, and cinnamon to takes. Whiz, and stick in the fridge overnight for the flavours to develop.

Reader, my blender did not want to whiz. I guess I should have used more ripe bananas. I ended up adding a little almond milk to loosen things up.

Lunch – Banana & Mango Fruit Bar

Since the pandemic I’ve been paying more attention to the dried fruit section in Tesco because I’ve been shopping less often and don’t want to run out of fruit. This lead me to notice their fruit bars, which are something like Nakd bars. They do one in mango & banana. They also do banana bites in a yoghurt coating. Both are yummy, and very good for packed lunches. Not just for kids either.

Smoothie – Banana, Mango, Pineapple & Spinach

Here I am using up the rest of the mango from last night’s dinner, a banana, and some pineapple chunks, plus water and ice. There is a smoothie recipe in my book. It also suggests WHAT? Yes, spinach. The recipe also suggested Kale, but there are depths of hipsterness that I will not plumb.

It tastes fine, and the spinach gives it a lovely colour.

Dinner – Banana & Coconut Curry

As curries go, this is dead easy. Fry some (red) onion and garlic until brown. Add your favourite curry paste (the recipe recommended using chili, cumin, coriander, cardamon and turmeric) and fry a little more. Add cubed potato and banana chunks. Coat them in the spice mix, then add coconut milk. Cover and simmer until the potato is soft (15-20 mins). I topped it off with some desiccated coconut for effect.

This is cheap, fast and delicious. It is also, I think, vegan. I feel like I’m channelling my inner Jack Munroe here.

Dessert – Banana Fritters

Having made a very easy main course, I decided to experiment with dessert. I had to try banana fritters, right? But I don’t have a deep-far fryer, and my air fryer is not ideal for the job.

The recipe I used recommended chopping the banana and dipping the pieces consecutively into bowls containing flour, whisked egg, and a mixture of sugar, cinnamon and coconut. This quickly gets very messy. Then you fry.

My air fryer slowly moves the food around during cooking. This makes for amazing chips, but for the fritters it tended to shake off the coating.

Ah well, it tasted good, and I added some cream for effect.

Gone Bananas – Day 2

~ Cheryl

Once again, here’s the full list of today’s banana-themed menu for easy digestion.

As a reminder, I am raising money for One25, by using bananas in all my meals until Sunday. They are a very wonderful charity, and I very much hope that some of you can spare some cash to help me reach my target.

Breakfast – Banana Pancakes

Pancakes are an obvious thing to have with some fruit for breakfast, but while I was gazing at the shelves in Tesco I noticed that they had banana pancakes. Clearly I had to get some. They do taste of banana, but they are a bit bland on their own so I’ll be spicing them up a bit over the week.

Lunch – Banana Chips

Who needs potatoes when you can have bananas? Yes, fried banana chips are a thing, especially in the Caribbean. You can get all sorts of flavours. I should probably have gone for the chili variety, but for today we’re doing good old ready salted.

I’m assuming that they use green bananas because they are less sweet.

Smoothie – Apple and Almond

Something a little off the wall today. This one has a banana, a green apple (peeled), almond butter (tbsp), almond milk (250 ml), and ice. Very different. Not sure I’d recommend this one, but that’s not the fault of the banana.

Dinner – Fried Fish with Mango & Banana Salsa

We’re going a little Latin American tonight. The salsa contains mango, banana, red pepper, red chili, red onion, coriander and lime juice. Maybe a little salt. The recipe was for tilapia, but I couldn’t get one so I’m making do with sea bass and hoping it is from Chile. Dust it with flour and pan fry until done. Serve with lime wedges.

Dessert – Banoffee Ice Cream

I’ll be trying my hand at a proper banoffee pie later in the week. In the meantime, whet your appetites on Ben & Jerry’s Oh My Banoffee Pie ice cream.

Gone Bananas – Day 1

~ Cheryl

I wasn’t planning on blogging about the Go Bananas! fundraiser, but it turns out that individual updates on the JustGiving site are limited to 550 characters, which will be a pain when I want to get into detail about recipes, so here I am.

As a reminder, I am raising money for One25, by using bananas in all my meals until Sunday, and I would be very grateful if you could chip in a few quid.

So, day 1, and the fundraiser officially started at Noon. What have I been eating?

Lunch – Banana Bread

One of the limitations that I have in this project is that I don’t have a functional oven. I do, however, have a ridiculous collection of kitchen gadgets, including a Tefal Cake Factory. It has a recipe for Chocolate Chip Banana Bread, so I gave it a try.

There’s not a lot of point giving you a detailed recipe as it will only work with the machine in question. And if you have one, you’ll already have the recipe. I will note that it is made with buckwheat flour, presumably for the slightly nutty taste.

But wait, Cheryl, why are you making bread in a cake machine? Well, because what we call banana bread isn’t really bread. At least not in the recipes I have been looking at. One of the ways in which people distinguish bread and cake is that bread is leavened with yeast, whereas cake uses baking powder. Having said that, my bread machine has a “cake” programme, so I’ll be trying a different banana bread recipe later in the week.

The Cake Factory makes cute little finger cakes as per the photo. And they have chocolate in them, which is a fine start to the week.

Smoothie – Banana & Raspberry

Bananas are a regular feature of smoothies, and now that the weather is improving I’ll be making a lot of them. Yes, of course I have a smoothie maker. Did you have to ask? It is a Nutri Ninja, for those who are interested in such things.

Normally I just throw stuff in and see how the mixture works, and that’s how I’m going to start. Banana, some frozen raspberries, plain yoghurt, and some milk, and perhaps a little honey as the raspberries can be quite tart. Blitz and drink. Yum.

Dinner – Banana Risotto

When I went looking for main course recipes I expected to find curries. I did not expect to find risottos. But Banana Risotto is apparently a thing. The recipe is standard risotto stuff. Fry some onion (or in this case shallots are better) until golden. Add some arborio rice and fry for a few more minutes. Then slowly add liquid while simmering until the rice is soft, which takes about half an hour. The liquid in this case is white wine and vegetable stock.

The recipe I used suggested adding one mashed banana half way through, and one near the end. Also added at the end was grated parmesan, which surprised me a little. Some recipes also suggested peas or mange tout, which I went for because it added much needed colour.

The banana makes the risotto quite sweet, but I was very pleased with how well it worked, especially as I’d been a bit nervous about the parmesan.

Dessert – Foam Bananas & Monkeys

I can remember from when I was much younger, that you could get weird banana-shaped and flavoured sweets. We’ll be going a bit mad with banana desserts later in the week, but for now I’m keeping it simple. Marks & Spencer provided a decent facsimile of my childhood memory. I have no idea why they are called “foam”. Farah suggested on Twitter that is is because they have the consistency of foam cushions, which I find distinctly unappetising. Thankfully the sweets did not taste of that sort of foam.

Going Bananas in May

~ Cheryl

Regular readers will remember that each May I do something stupid to raise money for the wonderful folks at One25, a Bristol-based charity that helps women so badly down on their luck that they feel they have no option but to go on the street. The challnege this year is to “go bananas”, which is a reference to something lovely that Meghan Markle did when she visited the One25 HQ a few years back.

Most of the folks at One25 are dressing as bananas for a week. It sure gets people’s attention when you are on your way to work. However, I don’t get out much. Once a week to Tesco is usually my limit. So I’m doing something different. I’m going to be cooking and eating bananas for the duration of the fund-raiser, which is May 10-15.

There will be banana splits, banana smoothies, banana yoghurt, banana bread, banana curry, banoffee pie, banana chips and anything else banana based that I can think of. I will try to get bananas into every mealtime. If you have ideas for weird banana-based food that you would like me to try, do let me know. This is supposed to be a challenge, after all.

And of course the whole point is raising money. Which means I’m hoping that some of you folks will donate. You can do so here.

Farewell to Twitter?

~ Cheryl

As most of you will know, Twitter has been sold to a private investor for an eye-popping amount of money. Again for most of you this will make very little difference, at least in the short term. However, the new owner, Elon Musk, has made it clear that one of his priorities is to restore “free speech” to the platform. This is, of course, the Libertarian version of free speech which is defined as, “I have the right to say whatever I want, you are obliged to listen to me, and you are not allowed to answer back.”

Again, in most cases, this will not affect you, because you are not in one of the minority groups to which Musk takes exception. I, however, am. Notorious transphobes have been rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of being let back onto Twitter, and the moderation system, which is already heavily biased against trans folk, will become more so. I need to have somewhere to go, because Twitter is going to become deeply hostile to the likes of me.

I note also that Musk is not the sort of person who should be in charge of a popular social media network. He likes to think that he’s Tony Stark, but actually he’s what Lex Luthor would be if Lex had to employ other people to do all the thinking for him. I think it behooves us all to make Musk’s time in charge of Twitter as unpleasant as possible. Making his purchase worthless would help a lot with that.

I won’t be going immediately because I want to download all of my tweets and delete them. That will take a while, especially as so many other people are trying to do the same thing. But I have stopped posting, and this will be the last blog post that cross-posts.

I’m not sure where I will end up. I do have a Tumblr account, but I never use it. I’ve signed up for Mastodon (same @CherylMorgan) user name, but it is horribly slow right now because the service has been deluged with new users and needs time to adapt. I am in several Discord servers, but they are all very niche. I loathe Farcebook. Instagram is owned by them, and is very much for visual people whereas I’m a words person.

I will, of course, still be here. Also not spending so much time on social media will probably be good for me.

Thank You, BSFA

~ Cheryl

The BSFA Awards were given out at Eastercon this evening. The winners are as follows:

  • Best Novel: Shards of Earth, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor
  • Best Shorter Fiction: Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard, Tor.com
  • Best Book for Younger Readers: Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao, Rock the Boat
  • Best Non-Fiction: Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T. Barbini, Luna Press Publishing
  • Best Artwork: Glasgow Green Woman, by Iain Clark, Glasgow2024

As you may recall, The Green Man’s Challenge by Juliet McKenna was a finalist in Best Novel. We are not disappointed. It was an incredibly strong field and we both loved Adrian’s book. Seeing the cover of one of my books up there on the screen list of best novels was a tremendous buzz.

You may not be aware that I had an essay in the Luna Press book that won the Non-Fiction catergory. I was one of only two contribuitors present at the ceremony (the other was Allen Stroud) so Francesca kindly made a fuss of us in her speech. All of the other contributors are awesome too, and we are sad that you could not be there. My essay was the one on queer animals, which grew out of my keynote address at the University Of Graz worldbuilding conference back in 2019. So in addition to thanking Francesca, my fellow contributors, and the voters, I should also thank the folks in Graz who first inspired me to do this work.

Here is my tip for the day. If you are going to win an award, do so in the company of someone who gets as excited about it as Francesa. She’s wonderful, and thoroughly deserves all of the success that her litle company is getting.

Officially SFWA

~ Cheryl

I have done a thing and signed up for SFWA. That may seem weird given that I am banned from entering the USA, but the organisation is looking to become more international. They’ve also made significant changes to their eligibility requirements of late. Technically I’m eligible for full membership, but most of that income happened decades ago under my deadname and I have no proof of how much I was paid. I might also be eligible for Associate, except a significant part of my fiction income has come from Wizard’s Tower anthologies and I’m not going to count that even though I am sure Jo & Roz would have told me if my stories were not good enough. Non-fiction sales don’t count. But with one or two more fiction sales I’ll be able to upgrade to Associate and then you can all pester me to vote for you in the Nebulas.

A Weekend in Wales

~ Cheryl

Last weekend I finally managed to attend one of the writing retreats run by Jo Hall and Roz Clarke. It was held on what is basically a large farm near where Roz & Jo have their own farm. Details here.

The format of these retreats is very flexible, depending on who attends. Jo & Roz are very happy to do workshop type things if people want them, or they can do individual tuition, or they can just let us get on and write. This time turned out to be mostly the latter.

My own situation was that I had several story ideas that just needed time to turn into prose. I ended up writing two short stories, or at least producing first drafts thereof. Other attendees also seemed very busy and produced lots of words. I think we all went away happy.

I would have got more done had I not needed to spend part of Saturday in Carmarthen, but that was worthwhile too. That included a lovely run along the B4300 which follows the course of the River Tywi for much of its length. Sadly there are not many places to stop, and the one I did find had the view obscured by trees. (Sorry, Nicola).

The farm didn’t intrude much on us, though I will note that geese are indeed horrible (to everyone, but especially to large cats). Also the call of a peacock sounds very much like that of a cat in extreme pain.

Anyway, it was fun. Hopefully I can go again soon. Being away from the world for 4 days (wifi is very limited at the farm) was great.

Coronavirus – Day #642

~ Cheryl

Hello again from Plague Island. This is your latest report on the campaign of the Tory Party kill off all of the poor, unfit, brown, queer, old and otherwise undesirable elements of the population. How are they doing?

Well, the infection rate has taken a sharp tumble from the dizzy heights of early January, but it appears to have stabilised at around 1% of the population being infected at any one time, which would have been a record at any time prior to the arrival of Omicron.

Meanwhile the government has been busy. Yesterday four of Bozo’s senior aides resigned. One more followed this morning. Also yesterday the First Minister for Northern Ireland announced his resignation in despair at the mess Brexit has made of his country. Bozo announced that he had actually fired all of these people and that he was “taking back control”.

Also today there was a report that staff are leaving the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission in significant numbers. “It was as if Baroness Falkner and the Board wanted people who actually cared about human rights to leave,” said one ex-staff member. Falkner was appointed to head the organisation by Liz Truss, apparently with a specific mission to take away trans people’s civil rights, and to rubbish the idea that things such as racism and Islamophobia could exist.

Truss, when she is not busy campaigning to take over Bozo’s job while professing total loyalty to him, is planning to host a major LGBT+ Rights conference in London this summer. Business leaders believe that she is hoping to close some major trade deals for exporting the majority of the UK’s LGBT+ population to other countries.

Fear not, though, dear readers, all is not lost. Bozo has come up with a brilliant plan for defeating the Coronavirus. He is going to stop publishing data on cases. That way no one will ever contract the disease in the UK again, let alone die of it. He is understandably proud of his genius.