Well, the period between Christmas and New Year didn’t go quite as planned. On Thursday I went down with something that involved a screaming headache and extreme tiredness. I spent much of Thursday asleep and unable to do much at all. Friday was spent mostly reading. I seem to be fine now, but I lost about a day and a half, which is very irritating.

Thankfully the time spent reading was very productive. I am now deep in the rabbit hole of research for this year’s LGBT History academic paper, which is all about gender and sexuality in ancient Rome. My recent search engine activity has been very much Not Safe For Work. I hope the folks at GCHQ who have been on duty over the holidays have enjoyed monitoring it.

There’s not a lot I want to say right now, because I need to check stuff before coming to any conclusions, but I can say that Roman ideas about sex and gender were very different to our own. It’s not surprising that the Victorians were totally freaked out by what they found in Roman texts and archaeology. Nevertheless they, like us, had a problem with sexual harassment in the street (in their case boys as well as women were victims). I do love history: so much the same and so much very different.