Lee Jackson, Palaces of Pleasure, a mini-review

The book deserves a longer review. If you're interested in the Victorian period, and like social history that doesn't just present but analyzes --why were some pleasure gardens acceptable and others not? Class-- read this book. It has lots of little satisfying things I didn't know. The precursor to the music hall was "free-and-easies" (men only) and "cock-and-hens" (coed), which were group singing sessions held in pubs, and later in large extensions to pubs, led by a chairman who called for group and individual songs, and (of course) for toasts. These were suppressed, and reborn as 'saloon-theatres', which were suppressed, which were reborn as music halls, which survived.

The subtitle is "From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How The Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment". I'm just to the seaside, and am having a very good time.

This morning I unpacked one large box of kitchen stuff and am wiped out for the day. This is why the unpacking is going so slowly. On the other hand, the good big roasting pan and the pretty Polish casserole dishes have surfaced. To the trash, a well-made Swiss kitchen gadget that both slices and grates garlic. We have knives.

Someday I will find the beaters to the Kitchenaids, dammit. There will be baking.