‘Ruined the experience for me’: mother’s story of breastfeeding voyeurism: When Julia Cooper had her first child, she decided to breastfeed so that she could take her out on long walks through nature, one of her favourite hobbies. But that suddenly changed when she spotted a man pointing a long lens camera towards her as she breastfed her baby ( Read more... )

I’m Bridget Christie, a comedian, but I don’t just see comedy. Last weekend I went to a spellbinding exhibition of British folk art called Ritual Britain, set perfectly in London’s atmospheric Crypt Gallery in the bowels of St Pancras New Church in London.
And one might feel a leeeetle boggled at all this rather pagan remnant stuff in the crypt of ( Read more... )

Okay, I can see that with What A Year It's Been people want something that is What It Has Ever Been, and that this gets tagged to the Solsticial Rites as they are celebrated in a historically culturally Christian country even if they are largely secularised -
Except I was thinking, are they unchanging over, lo, these many years, and not just in ( Read more... )

Having knocked off a substantial amount of life admin this pm, I was just flipping through AITA, and I came across an absolute GEM, where a family have apparently suddenly made up a tradition that the first women in the generation to marry passes on the wedding dress to her sisters/cousins when they marry -
- and OP, who is eldest of the ( Read more... )

But we have recently learnt that a certain Highly Placed Personage has tested positive for the coronavirus.
A Personage who has been, shall we say, noted among other things for having woo-wooey notions on matters medical and scientific?
We fancy that with social distancing, the Thaumaturgic Touch is off the menu, no? (The last reigning monarch to ( Read more... )

- Lo, this thing is the next thing.
[T]he joy of divorce parties.
Okay, rites de passages, they are a thing, and the article cites cultural traditions which have rituals to mark the transition from married life to singledom. In Judaism, a divorce document called a get is presented from husband to wife, in the presence of rabbis and witnesses, to ( Read more... )

Today to the funeral/memorial service of a former colleague at the West London Crematorium at Kensal Green Cemetery, which, alas, I did not have time to explore - it was the first large commercial cemetery set up in London at a time of pressing need for burial reform. Numerous notables are interred therein but I only noticed the gravestone of the ( Read more... )

I was going to remark that that is not so remarkable these days but given the runaround I had connecting to LNER wifi, perhaps not.
There was actually bread made during the week: the Collister/Blake My Favourite Loaf, wholemeal & white spelt + einkorn flour, turned out v nice.
Yesterday afternoon while we were taking tea and and a short break in ( Read more... )

When stag nights go wrong: Now, stag dos are a ritual of male friendship. “The stag passes from unmarried man to married man. The cultural urge to mark that transition causes all the hedonistic and ostentatious behaviour you see on stag weekends.
I would find this a more compelling argument if I didn't suspect that in many cases, the intending groom ( Read more... )

I.e. yesterday.
Travel went okay - in fact we were so concerned about possibly missing the best train we were massively early.
The committal at the crematorium was just a brief, family and very close friends only, affair, followed by a thanksgiving service at the church my father attended until his health meant he couldn't, after which a tea was ( Read more... )