Moving time

For no reason whatsoever, (mostly cos I like their templates and my friend has a really great blog with them) I've moved to here.

I think I've managed to import everything from this site to the new one too. Tech savvy...

I'll likely take this down at the end of the year.

end of an era

Today was my last day of work for the library. I'm kinda sad, I admit - I really did love working here. I don't think I've ever been in one job so consistently for so long.

And it feels like the end of an era in my life - and I hope it is. I'm trading the permanence and stability of my part-time library job for the (right now) only-promising world of academe. I guess the next year is up to me.

I wanted to write more about this, but I'm kinda down - watching the clock tick down my last 20 minutes...I must be getting soft in my old age.

The beetroot diaries

In an effort to actually do something with the 4-5 kilos of beets we harvested from the allotment on the weekend, I've decided to keep a record. Also, this should remind me next year of any failures - I really should have done the same thing with our courgettes, but we kinda fell into a habit of eating them grilled on whatever we were having. Tasty, if uninspiring - oh, except for the masses of zucchini bread we've made! So good... and it freezes. I'm not one for chutneys, otherwise I'd have it made as I understand you can 'chutney' pretty much all things.

Round 1:

Beetroot gnocchi (I didn't make the sauce that Gennaro Contaldo recommends - out of oranges)

I adore gnocchi. Between dying my kitchen counter pink and realising that I, with hands coated in mashed potato, pureed beetroot, and egg, needed more flour, I had a powerful sense of deja vu: I had reached this critical moment of frustration in pursuit of gnocchi before...possibly with pumpkin. And I was already disappointed that 'beetroot' gnocchi uses only 400g of beetroot to 1kg of potato...so in essence, we're talking about regular gnocchi with a lurid pinkish hue.

I also had a culinary epiphany: gnocchi are essentially my gran's potato noodles. Funnily enough, I would never think of asking gran to put beetroot or pumpkin in her dish, but 'beetroot gnocchi' had me hooked before I read the recipe.

Last night, in an effort to quickly use up yet more courgette and because we were out of pasta noodles (shockhorror), I made polenta. Generally, it's great comfort food: properly stodgy, warm, and requiring little by way of masticatory effort. I seem to be upping the stakes in the department of stodgy food - unintentionally. But I also always forget how dense and filling gnocchi are - definitely more appropriate for a starter than a main.

It was however, the most colourful thing I've ever put on the table in some ways: with grilled yellow courgette, it looked like the product of the play-doh kitchen set.

My friend G had an amazing beetroot curry at a lovely vegetarian Keralan place in Stoke Newington - and I hear tell of beetroot chocolate cake...

Beets remaining: 6lbs, 4oz

open day

Open Day on campus today - these happen every year at the same time and every year I forget about them until I get to campus where the quiet serenity of the summer is shattered prematurely by A-level students and their parents strolling confusedly around, clutching maps and the university prospectus. Luckily, I snagged a table outside in the blazing sunshine at my coffee spot and so wasn't embittered by having to sit on the steps.

I had a novel experience this morning: turning down teaching. It's a funny position to be in: I have a great schedule this year, loads of teaching and enough time to get research done, but I hate to turn anything down because I'm only secure until next July... So I end up sending very strange notes turning down teaching but asking to be kept in mind.

The weather has turned absolutely beautiful - from what I can see through the windows *sigh* Two more weeks of the library before turning directly into the teaching term: which I'm really looking foward to, in spite of the fact that due to scheduling, I will effectively be living alone for a semester - at least during the week. I've got everything from Renaissance lit to the Victorian 'sensation novel' - which is really revenge tragedy straight through to revenge tragedy... lovely! And no Hamlet! Joy of joys! Plus a conference on The Wire at the end of November. Good times ahead.

eating success

I am a mostly employed academic.

How lovely! Of course, 'mostly employed' is crucial here - but one of my two teaching posts does have prep and marking time built in, which is a nice evolution. Combined, they will leave precious little time for research. The painful fact in my postdoctoral life is that teaching pays the bills - but research is what employers want to see. I'm hoping that my schedule will leave one day free for research and hoping too that I won't be so shattered on that one day that I'll spend it in bed.

And I've quit my solid, rent-paying, dependable library job to venture forth on this academic gig. Which is scary. I'm only sure of employment until next July. Then - into the deep: summer: the long dull winter of the part-time lecturer's soul in which paycheques dry up and stress levels skyrocket.

But why anticipate such times? The recession is over apparently and I'm sure the demand for critical thinking skills is as high as ever and likely to rise, given the current trendy status of a satirical Weltanschung. So I'm having a celebratory dinner tonight, which I'm cooking - along with Allegra McEvedy. I went purposely (and purposefully) into town this morning, clutching my list of ingredients, and blew £20 on fresh fish.

It's possible I've bitten off more than I can chew... (oooh bad pun).

Results will follow.

new beds for old heads

Two posts in one week! I'm spoiling my readers...

After a strenuous evening of wrestling with Ikea furniture (seriously, it was almost a cliché), we have a new bed, courtesy of a friend who moved to France. It is so big that we've had to move into the larger room, temporarily displacing our office. We seem to have this urge at least once a year: the desire to turn our living space upside-down and reorganize. At least we're not moving house this year - the rent didn't change so neither did we.

Our friend Susan took this photo of Nas in Dublin - I'd forgotten in my last post about Guinness and oysters: a combination Nas assured us was not to be missed (we just watched in any case). Yes, August doesn't have an 'R' in it so we squashed that handy aide memoire but no harm seemed to come of it (at least not to Nas - the oysters likely felt differently...).

We've been watching The Shield to quell our ongoing sorrow that The Wire only went five seasons. It's interesting - no comparison with The Wire - but it's kept us watching nonetheless. I can't tell if it is being 'edgy' just for the hell of it, or if it is aware of its problematic representations of race and gender. And some of the writing is just so...so...Fox. Michael Chiklis turns out to be far more watchable than The Fantastic Four would suggest at any rate. In lieu of a The Wire Christmas special (which I don't really want to see...), I'll likely see it out.

This week we've eaten fewer courgettes than we should have, given the rate at which we're producing them at the allotment. Nas made some truly divine zucchini bread the other day. I wonder if I shredded courgette, would it freeze well enough to make such delicacies in the dead of winter? Worth a try? And I'm making 'fritto misto de mari' tomorrow night as a celebration dinner: I am a mostly employed academic. Nothing says woohoo like fried fish.

Dublin and ever after

Somehow, once again, the summer is nearly over - not quite though, I shouldn't be too pessimistic - still a month until the teaching term begins.

Dublin was fabulous - what a splendid city. And what better way to visit a city than in the company of great friends? And we kicked the whole vacation off with a fabulous wedding in the countryside. I would have to recommend the self-catering option; Dublin is ferociously expensive. Besides with the wonderful cooks amongst us, the food was better than our budget options in the city centre. Is it childish to visit the zoo in every city in which it's an option? Actually, I'm not particularly concerned - the Dublin zoo was a grand day out. It's small and remarkably compact and the animals were very obliging with antics: frolicking elephants, fighting rhinos, and a hilarious sea lion pup had us in stitches for the whole afternoon. Do you know how sea lions sleep? With their front flippers tucked into their back flippers. Watching a just-fed and clearly rather cranky pup try to get comfortable for his afternoon kip was the funniest thing I've ever seen. In all seriousness, the look of absolute frustration was very human. It was clearly a good year for the breeding program at Dublin as there was also a young gorilla and orang-utan, two sumatran tiger cubs, baby giraffes, a young rhino, and a little chimpanzee - oh and the elephants!

The wedding in Trim was gorgeous - weddings are much more fun when I'm not the involved party. And the wedding entertainment was a ceili - my first in 32 years of carrying this name. Alas, none of us were experienced ceili dancers - though some of our friend's family and family-friends were - but we gave it a go. The late-night disco was more our style and the even-later-night singing and whiskey drinking even more suited to our musical and thirsty group. My offering was a shakey rendition of 'Northwest Passage' ...

And then home and back to work with the rain and increasing numbers of students. Luckily we broke back into routine slowly with a weekend of watching The Shield.

carrying torches

Sushi last night from a place I found while trawling around the website for the Leeds Food Festival (which I missed completely) - Sesame. Lovely person who responded to my astonished email query over the promotional 50% discount on orders over 25quid was also the lovely person who turned up at my door last night, laden with fresh fishy goodness. Our (for us) huge platter (40 pieces) came to 17.50 - a steal - and was the freshest, most satisfying sushi we've had in England (I shan't speak for the rest of Britain - I reckon Scotland could do some fine fresh fish). And the crab in the california rolls was fresh from Whitby; none of this pollack-dressed-as-crab nonsense. It was a revelation. Namely, that pollack tastes nothing like crab. And wonderful thick slices of salmon, tuna, and seabass draped over the rice - not mean little strips of fish that could double as stained-glass pieces barely covering a too-big chunk of over-cooked rice (in my worst experience here, the rice had clearly been pre-rolled and cut to size by a machine...).

It was eaten with gusto while anticipating the final installment in the five-part, third series of Torchwood.

Which was exhilerating - if melodramatic in places ('The Doctor must turn from this planet in shame...' from Gwen being the most notable: a nice attempt to explain why the Doctor didn't show up and save the day in, say, 1945, or during Stalin's purges, or the Khmer Rouge, or Rwanda - but did manage to get here in time to ensure that the population of the UK would be safe while watching the coronation of Elizabeth II. This is becoming far too long for a parenthetical aside but anyway this seems to highlight for me the problem of bringing fantasy/sci-fi/fiction and 'realism' too close together - it's like matter and anti-matter (or so my inner nerd seems to recall): everything goes kablooie. Suggesting that the Doctor 'turns away in shame' at the most horrendous events in human history tries to bridge that chasm too glibly. The Doctor can't stop genocide cos he doesn't exist. Now the mutual reinforcement of fiction and 'fact' is a plank in my research (it may be the plank actually); 'realism' relies on fiction as much as fiction relies on 'the real'. So why not wonder why Superman didn't do something more worthy than save his girlfriend (for which he had to alter the lives of every single thing on the planet - oh sure, 'harmlessly') - or ask why Dumbledore couldn't, in his heart of hearts, see a use for time-travel beyond helping a nerd pass more than the required number of exams? Yes yes - because the narrative demanded these things occur in this way. Maybe its just me, but that 'willing suspension of disbelife' is broken when a writer starts trying this particular brand of rhetorical manipulation. [For a truly tasteless example, see the opening of Love, Actually - a film so self-righteously smug and so unbelievably self-obsessed that it actually attempted to compare the relationship issues of upper-middle-class Londoners with the final calls made by victims of 9/11.] Isn't it enough that we turn away in shame? Does the Doctor or whatever substitute for centralised moral authority is being touted have to 'turn away' for us? Or isn't 'turning away in shame' a rather hackneyed posture, a scripted gesture, empty of any affect? When do you stop the 'turning away' bit and get back to it? Did the Doctor watch the Holocaust, get all embarrassed, go off for a skip round the galaxy, and come back when everything was rosier??

I nearly forgot the closing parentheses: )

While the script lacked a certain ... something ... I thought the visual impact a bit more interesting, though no less rhetorically manipulative: the military in schools - taking British children (*ahem* London's children, actually) from the place we put them to keep them out of our way for most of the day - and doing Unspeakable Things (mainlining them, apparently!). The Sacred Right of Children to Go To School without being picked up and stuffed into the alien equivalent of dime-bags, traded on the international black market just for those 'good feelings'. Nice to know the biggest threats to earth are interstellar junkies. Cue shots of improbably well-behaved kids quietly going with well-meaning strangers, angelic children being selected for alien nose-candy by faceless (well, at least interchangeably greying male) governments. Cue the slightly worn 'ethical dilemma' of which children should go - if you asked anyone in our neighbourhood this question, I'd reckon the aliens would have a supply for the next 10 years - and the rather soggy 'criticism' that the government has selected the 10% they wanted to get rid of anyways ... But why? In this program, these 'undesireables' have the gormless awkwardness of baby bears and the irritation factor of a box of kittens: only monsters could see these children as future ASBOs. Look at their empty eyes! Waiting to be filled with middle-class aspirations, respect for the system, and a gentle love of fell-walking or some other worthy hobby!

Result: I'm left feeling queasily guilty for not thinking this was much of an 'ethical dilemma'. I mean, it ends with the old bar game: is one life worth millions? How about millions for millions more? (The alien quota is 10% - it's not clear if they mean 10% of British children or the world's). What percent of the world's children die every day because we turn away in boredom? The righteous indignation felt a little false. Sure there is the brief, flickering, interest in who gets to make that decision - no Doctor here, folks. But the next-best-thing is there: Jack and his toothy smile, which is getting a bit strained 5 hours in, and I'm not sure he can see straight as he's been on the verge of tears for the last hour at least. I'm not posting a spoiler: but the future is safe for the middle-class aspirations of Gwen and Rhys's undoubtedly charming offspring.

I'm glad that Steven Moffat is taking over for the next Doctor Who.

We then played two games of UpWords in which I was soundly defeated.

1989

Three friends and I have been working on a conference about the concept of the '90s' since January or so. Since we started - out of little more than a desire to somehow work through what it meant to grow up in the final decade of the century and trace that experience back to other 'final decades' - I've been noticing a cultural fascination with 'end times'. That's not quite the right phrase - though eschatology is there too; we (and yes, I'm speaking a bit generally... we-the-Western-media) put so much significance into a system that we created, investing it with superhuman - extraordinary - power. Anyway, in the final year of the first decade of the new millenium there is certainly an apparent anxiety/interest in the last decade of the 20th century. 1989 is in the media constantly right now - I wonder if 1990 will be next year.


The Berlin Wall came down in 1989; I played tennis; Tiananmen Square and my birthday nearly coincided - I was 12; Khomeini announced the fatwa on Salman Rushdie; I worried about going to high school; I saw Batman and Ghostbusters 2 while staying near Penetanguishene; on December 6, Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal; I remember being afraid, and I remember not being afraid. That was my introduction to the '90s - my 1989; so very aware of me and growing into an awareness of the vastness of the world that was not-me but still me. The '90s were the first decade I remember being conscious of - I had calculated by the time I was about 13 that I would be old enough to celebrate New Year's eve, 1999, with champagne (the best use I could think of for my rudimentary maths skills). I remember 1988 with particular clarity because of the Calgary Olympics, Meech Lake, and the 'notwithstanding clause' - I had a teacher who thought these things (rightly) relevant for middle-school history lessons. I was primed by 1989 to be/come a citizen of the world that would be better, kinder, and friendlier (Bush I took office in 1989 too). The '90s were, in many ways, already and always going to be a conscious decade - a decade conscious of itself as a decade, a historical moment that was always ready with headlines, reactions, and responses to things that had, somehow, already happened. The century ended in 1989 - the '90s were another time, a time just out of time and we were always already out of time.


I'm writing about mourning and witnessing right now - in the 18th century. But I keep coming across these events and emotional/cultural states in newspapers, television, and the internet (cultural burial ground where nothing stays dead - or ever was dead): we are obsessed with mourning - with the act of memory and with the loss of memories. As though the promise of celluloid and photography and (now) digital recording - to preserve - to protect from decay - has become empty; what to do with these images that do not speak. How can we be responsible to the past that is only just the past? Can we historicize something without losing its singularity - without rendering it an event like other events? Does the process of remembering at a cultural or social level mean the negation of individual stories?

Are we beyond history as a 'post-postmodern' society (or are we 'post-postmodern'? I've come across that term in print for the first time recently - I'm not sure about it)?

All of this began in my head as I read this memoir of Tiananmen. I wonder if the British Academy reads my blog and if this will make them favour our bid - or just throw it out in despair of my horrible prose and sentimentalising... oh well.

Summer sunshine

I have the most aggravating sunburn: right over my bum where my shirt obviously rode up past my jeans while I was digging in the garden last weekend. It is turning to a tan - rather pointlessly since I don't make it a habit to wear mid-riff bearing tops - but is peeling and itchy right now. And of course, helpfully, it's positioned exactly where my waistband needs to be. The rest of my burn seems to have peeled off - yummy, I know. And the weather remains amazing - the best sunshine and temperature I've seen since we landed (so to speak).

We have a new LYS (Local Yarn Shop) in Leeds, which is very exciting. I spent last night finishing a scarf for Nas and starting a shawl with some lovely soft yarn I picked up in Scotland back in April. I have just figured out why it wasn't working so will be spending tonight unpicking it and starting again. I understand this is common - at least, for beginners!

Our allotment is prepared to burst into bloom as well - we spent the whole weekend digging, levelling, planning, and planting. Right now, I'm thinking fondly of the salad crops we should have in a few weeks. Yesterday, we also planted sweetcorn. Alas, no taters this year and hopefully by some judicious rotation, we will avoid the blight that claimed our tomato crops last year.

Good god, what a dull blog this has become!

really dull update

I should keep this updated more often ... I just looked and realised that I haven't posted anything at all since April. Which was nearly a month ago. How time flies... Teaching is finished for another academic year - I'm actually going to miss my students this year, bless 'em. In spite - or because - of the fact that I have been run off my feet this term, I managed to have a really good group of seminars. Maybe I overthink when I have too much time? Not that it worked all the time - I was too disorganised overall and had to throw out some ideas for lectures and seminars that I ran out of time to implement. I also accomplished nothing of my own research - including an article that was accepted for publication pending revisions that I've had to put off until now. I'm looking forward to a summer of research.

We made a coconut cream pie on the weekend from scratch.

Hey, it rained all weekend - this was indoor fun.

Today we spontaneously decided to go to York for lunch. There is something about spontaneous that made it more fun than visiting a city we've been to a million times. It was great. I'm still waiting for my marking to come through so at least I wasn't hanging about my email, waiting for the message to lug home 85 scripts! (I did get said email...alas).

Another day - another application: two in the works now for teaching fellowships. More hoping more wishing more trying to remember to be realistic. I'll never learn. But it's likely best to keep hope alive right now.

Half-full

I managed to begin today by dumping a latte down the front of my shirt - my white shirt - about an hour before seminars. Too late to rush home and change with any hope of getting to class on time, I discovered that my shirt was made of some magical (possibly radioactive) material that not only absorbed the coffee but also rendered it near impossible to spot.

Then I got to campus to find an email announcing that my chances of remunerative academic employment just dropped even further for the next academic year.

On the plus side, the weather has turned and it is absolutely gorgeous outside. I finally got a good night's sleep - most of my marking is done - and I'm planning to finish work at the library, get a coffee and a table at the local java joint, and read some Derrida.

Really it's not so bad - what I look like is never my biggest concern. Okay, generally I'm cleaner looking but I don't think it really had an effect on my teaching! The news about next year is gutting but hopefully will be motivation for getting some serious research done this summer. I'm all about the half-full today.

beautiful things

Easter hols are nearly over - this fact fills me with some remorse as I haven't managed to do much. I have, though, managed to get some quality relaxation time in, which is unusual in itself and worthy of some comment. And pictures. But I don't have my camera right now so words - though not thousands - will have to do. Scotland is beautiful. I want to live there in a white house by the sea with a wood-burning stove in the lounge and the sea crashing outside. I might never get sick of collecting shells and rocks - so a little garden with a fence would be necessary for holding them all. One of my favourite books is Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn; one of my favourite literary characters is King Haggard - not just for the dickensian name: the sea, he says, is the only thing he can look at forever - he tires of everything else. I love him because he is evil and horrid but so very human and like me, beautiful things pain him in a strange, pleasurable way, a catching in the throat and a fullness of breath that feels like an emptiness - though unlike me, he collects beautiful things and hides them away from everyone else. It's the having that satisfies Haggard and the sea is something he cannot have because it is never the same.

I also love being in places that people I love have loved.

And I got to drive. I had fun - though I could use more practice. I managed to get our little kia cee'd up to 60 mph with the handbrake on... which does beg the question: how effective was that handbrake?

And now I'm home alone while Nas plays in Paris.

Pictures will follow!

Real telly

We've caved to pressure and desire and installed broadband at home ... we did last almost 9 months without it - and it wasn't the desperate need to check Facebook every 30 minutes. I've just done the dishes - which sorely needed doing and in a fit of determination not to waste the lovely salmon we got from the fishmonger in the city market, I've put potatoes on the boil to make fishcakes - and realised that I've been listening to the telly in the background with possibly the most offensive program I've ever come across.

Coleen's Real Women. Yet another program about challenging body stereotypes that reinforces those same stereotypes with every word. I have no idea what Coleen does for a living (is a footballer's wife a 'profession' yet?) but, whatever it is, it clearly hasn't kept her busy enough.* Apparently, the seriously under-examined world of models and female fashion needs her particular views. It reminds me of another mission program I happened upon in which someone or other was determined to get to the bottom of hair extensions. Yes, hair extensions were set to be the next bleeding-heart issue - except that the women that our doughty celebrity investigator tracked down (to Eastern Europe) really didn't answer the apparent need for tragedy. It's hair. Hair. It grows back. It ended up being rather amusing as our increasingly desperate detective tried to twist every interview into a heart-wrenching story about forced haircuts, impovrished families relying on the little money each trip to the hairdresser earned, days spent lovingly brushing beautiful locks - locks that would ornament the heads of thoughtless wealthy (?) women in the West while the young girl - victim of the impatience of those cursed with slowly-growing hair (or indecision). Even when she travelled to India where she found women who sacrificed their hair for their religious beliefs, she just couldn't find that tear-jerking story of exploitation. Instead, she was met with outright sniggers of disbelief.

At any rate, Coleen's Real Women has pitched 'real women' - that is women larger than a size 4 - at an open call for a model to front a new cosmetics line - or something like that (does it matter?). 2 problems immediately spring to mind: firstly, that anyone smaller or larger than the 'curviest' contestant here (a size 16...) is somehow NOT a real woman; secondly, that this is something the viewer will find a) interesting or b) somehow worthy of attention.

The talking head bits between Coleen and whatever experts she has dragged into this fiasco are unbelievable - oh, cue behind me the 'back-room' discussions between the judges - who have had a 'very very tough time' making a decision; and gosh darn it haven't they wrestled (Jacob should take notes) with their choice - and the moment arrives -bestill my heart, one of Coleen's 'real woman' has made it to the semi-finals! Shock shock. But really? Why on earth does a modelling job need a semi-final? Anyway, from the kitchen, I was snorting into the soap bubbles over such comments as 'her boobs are just so big', 'we'll really have to work around the lack of body shape', 'these are the curviest girls we've ever had in here' (remember the 'curviest' - 'biggest' was never used - real women aren't 'big'; they're 'curvy' - was a stonking size 16). There was also the memorable 'she's been crying but she really has lovely skin'.

But the judges were actually the most forgiveable in some respects - not that I'm condoning any part of this idiocy - but they were doing a job and likely rather wearily included Coleen's 'real woman' just to reassure us that the fashion industry really cares about real women and what they think - or at least, where they might spend their money. All of this seems much more about Coleen - next week London, where Coleen will face the challenge of getting 'one of her girls' into a major modelling agency.

* On the ITV website, Coleen reveals that her childhood ambition was to be a journalist. Why bother with schooling? Leave it long enough and I'm sure ITV will host a 'who wants to be a newsanchor'.

I've just made my fishcakes (lovely they were too) and conducted an entire rant in my head about how the line between wanting and having seems to be very thin these days ... but in all honesty, I just can't be bothered... and Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason is one ... I can feel another rant coming on. I should go...

Tocsin of reason

I got the title from Olympe de Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, which we looked at in my French Revolution seminar. But I put it there purely to be able to post this under it.

Read.

Charlie Brooker and the summer of fear.

Unsolved Mysteries

...actually used to terrify me when I was young.

But we've had our own unsolved mystery at ours involving a mobile phone full of water (thus broken) without any clues as to where the water came from... We woke up on Monday morning to the alarm of said mobile but when Nas reached over to turn it off, he picked it up, and water came pouring out. I'm making it more dramatic for rhetorical purposes - it didn't really pour out I suppose, but given that there shouldn't be any water in a mobile, it may as well have. The mobile had spent the night on the shelf by the bed - that is at least 2 feet off the floor. We don't keep unopened water beside the bed cos Laila and Logan see water in cups/glasses as a special treat that (presumedly) tastes much better than their water dish water. So that isn't the solution. The shelf is slatted but there was no water above - or below for that matter. It hadn't fallen into a puddle as there was no water on the floor.

Eliminating the impossible then leaves us with a scenario in which I, or Nas, turned - for one night only and without precedent - into a sonambulist, decided to wash the phone, and had the presence of mind to dry off the outside ...

In other news, we've given in - sort of - and will shortly have the interwebs at home. And Nas replaced his phone. The mystery remains unsolved.

Fat Tuesday

We realised yesterday morning that we had nearly stumbled through Mardi Gras without noticing - fortunately, the day was rescued in time. Unfortunately, we found ourselves without maple syrup ... disaster: pancakes (proper pancakes - none of these silly crepe things) must be eaten with maple syrup in our house. To do otherwise is anathema. But Mardi Gras demands pancakes! What to do?

That evening, being in high good humour for unknown reasons (I do not question these things), I set about creating dinner for Pancake Tuesday that would not draw unnecessary attention to our deplorable state of maple-syrup-less-ness. So we had savory crepes with salmon, leek, and mushroom in a white wine sauce. I made it up. And it was really really good...

And fortunately, there were crepes left over for breakfast - a very ersatz crepes suzette.

I'm not giving anything up for the next 40 days. I would inevitably fail and thus cause myself even more stress.

Catching up

Keeping up on this blog has proven darn near impossible with my new 'working academic' lifestyle - actually, I've given up on keeping up with anything beyond scraping by week-to-week with my classes. Today my very very reticent class finally admitted - well, one brave or fed-up student admitted that they weren't following my seminars. When I opened the next seminar with a discussion of how the module was going, they responded positively to the seminar structure. I have to admit that the idea of designing four different seminars - one for each group in the module - is rather daunting, especially as just writing a lecture and staying on top of the reading takes up most of my free time.

Other things that are interesting: the snow is gone. It's actually gone quite mild and the first crocuses are coming up in the park. I've never noticed crocuses in Canada - I love them here. On the last really snowy weekend, Logan, Laila, and I watched our neighbourhood fox play in the garden next door. I love our flat - I still love our flat: I love the view over the school and across the valley on nice evenings. The fox must have been as confused as most of the population at the snow but seemed to be having a good day of it.

I've now been rejected - ever so nicely - from three Canadian universities. And one UK university.

I tink it is all the fault of the internet: more specifically, Facebook. History repeating: I seem to remember the same 'concerns' and anxiety directed at television, comic books, the internet in general, fashion magazines, 'entertainment' news, tabloids, ... ... I wonder if Lady Greenfield has read this? Lack of narrative indeed!

A colleague in America found this - it just has to be posted - and every time I remember it, I remember how much I love this business...

Surprises!

1. Snow! Loads and loads of it - well, for Leeds anyway. Canadian friends may snigger but this is the biggest snowfall I've seen in 5 years (apart from Christmases back in the true-north-strong-and-free). I walked to work in a whole new world. It's been snowing off and on all day but this morning, bright and early, before 8am - it was perfect. The library is closing early tonight and generally, the country is descending into chaos. But I walked to work and I'll walk safely back home. As a change from the rain and greyness of a Leeds February, it's nice. I even spent a good 10 minutes watching some spontaneous snow-sculpture making outside my office window - okay, it was yr standard snowman but still! Granted, being British, they were poorly dressed for the occassion but there was something very fresh and re-freshing about it. I also walked past some students who I can only assume were international from the excitement and photo-snapping.

2. I'm kind of sorry I missed this.

Running on pride

My amazing husband is running the Paris marathon this year - in April, which is just two months away. A mutual friend dared him to do it the Sunday after New Year: what better goal for the new year? He's been thinking of doing one for ages and this was exactly the kick he needed. So he's been running since then - surpassing everything he thought he could do, coming home with new enthusiasm, new aches, new pains, new highs, new reasons to stay out there.

He's running for 'Get Kids Going' and training with our friend who has run this marathon (and others!) before - invaluable experience to have out there on the training days.

This is a not-so-subtle call for donations - please donate! Anything would be amazing. You can even follow his training and likely beyond at his new blog: nas can't stop. Messages of support and sharing your experience of doing anything like this would be more than welcome.

PS. Tell all your friends about the philanthropic gesture of the year!

And thanks all... please visit Nas over there and tell him how cool he is.

Foodie blogs

Foodie I am - well, I'd like to be anyway - but even I, who can rhapsodize about the possibilities of supper at breakfast, am getting fed up with the incessant moralising of taste going on in various forums. Okay, that's just one example - hardly 'incessant'; I'd have a snarky comment if a student tried that in an essay.

I'm not a vegetarian and in the world of carniverous delights, I'm fairly conservative. I don't like the taste or texture of most offal - except, bizarrely, mushed up or chunked up as pate (I'll eat anything as pate) and I'm not rushing to prove my gastronomic worth by eating lamb brains or sweetbreads (or oysters - nope nope nope). I'd like to say I'll try anything once, but the fact is, I won't. I'm not vegetarian and I have little patience for the kind of moral absolutism that gets spouted in the name of vegetarianism and veganism. I'm afraid I don't believe that meat is murder - indeed, a more ridiculous comment I can't imagine. While I fully understand that what I consider edible - on practical or sentimental grounds - is largely prejudicial and based in culture, upbringing, and habit, I'm afraid that I don't really think that's worth any more than an interesting comparison. I'm not going to eat a dog simply because someone somewhere in the world does - what a ridiculous idea. While I am facinated by the connexions we draw between what people eat and who they are, I'm interested less in those connexions than in what they suggest about how we classify and create value in our societies. That's not to say that what we choose to eat doesn't have some kind of effect on our world, but to insist on evidence of 'fairness' in eating habits is just silly.

Hungry enough and sure, I'll likely eat just about anything. I've never been there - I'm not keen to get there, and I'm afraid that I think it is ludicrous to assume some kind of superiority of experience or personal moral worth for either A) having been in that situation or B) castigating people based on the supposition that because they haven't been starving and thus, have never been in the position of having to eat something they otherwise would find distasteful, they are somehow lacking. There isn't a reason why 'rat, dog, cat, or horse should not be perfectly acceptable and delicious' - I'm sure they are - but that doesn't mean I have to eat them. Eat less meat and eat better meat, definitely. When rat appears at the farmer's market I might give it a try but I sincerely hope that the apocalyptic tone of articles like this lightens. We are not in the siege of Vienna and the kind of rabid moralising it suggests is bizarre. We should be very aware of what we eat, but I refuse to believe that because I don't eat the plentiful supply of rats in my neighbourhood that I am guilty of behaviour that, in the words of Lady Bracknell 'lead to the worst excesses of the French Revolution'.

Recommended reading: The Raw and the Cooked - Claude Levi-Strauss; The Civilizing Process - Norbert Elias.

Writing tales

Dead Poet's Society was on telly last night. This used to be one of my favourite films as an angsty teen; I watched it with more cynical eyes this time round. Oh for the pedagogical heaven of Welton ('Hellton') prep school! Nonetheless, it still got me right there and I was suitably moved by the struggles of those pretty boys.

A friend passed on The Writer's Tale, which is a book entirely composed of emails regarding the writing, rewriting, and production of Doctor Who, series 4 (and some of series 3). It's a delicious feast for a fan - and like the true geeky fangirl that I am, I loved it. It's difficult to read in one go and retains a lot of the sporadic and disconnected feel of email and text messaging but it also captures the magic of successful and good writing and the sense of accomplishment and passion that Davies (and the cast and crew) have (had!) for the show. All of which, of course, shows in the product. Reading the drafting process was really interesting - I wish I could work it into a module somehow. It would be such a lesson to students on the value of RE-writing, drafting, failing, and starting over.

For all I didn't start out as a fan of Catherine Tate's Donna Noble at the beginning of the series - mostly cos I was a huge fan of Freema Agyeman's Martha Jones - reading Davies' scripts and impressions of the character-in-development I have reconsidered. The ending of the series is tear-jerkingly good both as evidence of talented writing and television production: it's Flowers for Algernon redux. The scene is so brief and so packed - much more so than the previous rather problematic scene between the Doctor(s) and Rose Tyler. Though it does implicitly illustrate the Doctor's tendency to tyranny - for the good, of course, always for the 'good'. I know I have read something on a similar problem arising with the Doctor's actions in Planet of the Ood - something about the problematics of ethics and authority in Doctor Who. The doctor knows best but it is difficult to watch Donna writhe and plead without being offered the choice - does she want to return to the way she was before she turned left? The doctor's implicit maxim - that all life (and any life, apparently) is better than none - seems to negate Donna's control over her own destiny. While I am not taking away from the emotional register of the series, it does place Donna (though very unusual for a doctor's companion in many ways) squarely back in a dangerously gendered role: the self-sacrificing woman. The series already demanded that Donna sacrifice herself once (in Turn Left) in order to save the Doctor - and thereby the entire planet - so I find it a bit difficult to completely accept the ending that sees her power and development curtailed by the Doctor.

Reader, review!

I've just watched a girl wearing fashionably tight - I think they go by the euphemistic name of 'skinny' - jeans try to pick up a pen she'd dropped on the floor. I'm afraid, as the catalyst for humour was fashion, that it was terribly funny. She managed a dip not entirely lacking in grace, had she been born a flamingo.

Speaking of fashion, I am wearing the crummiest old jumper - the library, bereft of heating (or patrons) for two weeks, is taking its time getting back to comfortable temperatures.

After Christmas, I picked up Labyrinth by Kate Mosse purely because she is speaking at a conference I am going to in June. The conference is (very briefly) on women writing history/writing women's history/the history of writing women, etc etc etc - Labyrinth is supposed to be an adventure involving 13th century Cathar France, the true grail, and some spunky heroines. The inside back cover indicates that if the prospective reader enjoyed The DaVinci Code, the Boudicca series by Manda Scott, or The Alchemist by Coelho, they were sure to love this one. It's a lesson, I reckon, in reading the inside back cover before making a purchase: I hated two of these and the other I just haven't read.

It's not that Labyrinth is so awful; it's just that it's boring, conventional, and without much interest in the characters beyond their plot function. The setting and history are fascinating but peopled by these characters, I'm just not interested. Alas. Kate Mosse is the co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize for fiction. I'm now quite curious to know why she was invited to the conference and what she'll say.

In the same bookstore run, I also picked up Gombrich's A Little History of the World. It has all the flaws and failings - or at least expected biases - of a history written before the second world war. But it is really rather charming and it does evince a great deal of respect for some peoples and cultures left of out of 'histories of the world' even now. It tends to treat the bible as an authoritative historical document and it's descriptions of the peoples of far east Asia would be struck from texts today as Orientalist at best, racist at worst. Interestingly, it was burned during WWII for being too pacifist.

Nasser read: James Morrow, The Philosopher's Apprentice.
Decision: crap - yet somehow compelling enough to finish. But crap. Which is too bad as I really rather enjoyed his earlier novels. Ah well. Luckily, it was £2 at a remainder bookshop in Skipton.

2009

I like the number - mostly even and a little odd. Though I suppose odd where it counts.

Christmas without my family is odd too. And 2008 particularly so since I couldn't even picture everyone gathered around the tree at my parent's house, eloquently expressing how much they missed me. We were all spread about. And yet, we had a cosy and lovely Christms with very good friends - Nasser cooked Christmas lunch to a 'T'. Our turkey's name was Bob - he just looked like a Bob sitting there in the fridge. He was a white, free-range, organic turkey from some lovely people at the farmer's market in town. Roasted for many hours, dressed with herbs from our allotment and a generous massage of butter - he would have made Dickens rewrite A Christmas Carol to give the Cratchits a turkey rather than a goose. Logan and Laila thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas scraps - and their celebratory tin of tuna.

I didn't make it to mass this Christmas, but I did read the Christmas story - and A Christmas Carol just to cover all bases. Oh, and I did listen to the carol and 'lesson' service from Oxbridge - I can't remember which it was. Nas even got into it and proposed a sympathetic reading of ol' Scrooge as a man soured by grief more than avarice. Nothing like taking apart the classics for Christmas eve!

What I did in 2008
1. Finished my PhD
2. personal growth...blah blah blah

2009
1. Find employment that does not contain the words 'customer' or 'service' anywhere in the title
2. personal growth blah blah

Personal growth seems to be the topic of a lot of these blog thingies. I'm not one for 'Personal Development Plans (PDPs)'.

2009: C'mon!!
2009: Get it yerself!
2009: with a vengeance.
2009: ...