Free Education

Among the stranger things I've seen while stationed at the Reception desk of the library - a student protest for free education just passed by the steps. I'm not sure if they are intending to take their protest elsewhere - they're on their way now. There were about 50 of them - hopefully they will collect stronger numbers before appearing in front of the administration.

Free education. I'd be more interested (in a selfish way) if they could work in a grandfather clause so's I could get back my tuition...

But in a universal scheme - yes, free education would be nice. Even dropping tuition fees would be a gesture in the right direction. I don't know which is worse: students who demand grades reflecting the financial investment rather than any intellectual investment in their work, or students who don't care cause it was all free. But I've just had a dreadful two hours trying to get my students to ask questions and discuss the material we've supposedly been learning for 10 weeks... So I'm possibly not in a very positive frame of mind!

Which also makes me too tired to ponder for long.

Excessive laziness

I stole this meme from my friend's Facebook page...yes, that is just how lazy I am today. But I like answering questions about myself - hell, I think that might be a species-wide quality.

1. What is your natural hair colour? Brown

2. Where was your profile picture taken? This one doesn't make sense away from Facebook - What's your favourite picture of yourself? One of Nas and I taken on our wedding day - it's a candid snap and we're both laughing.

3. What's your middle name? Andrea

4. Your current relationship status? Married

5. Honestly, does your crush like you back? Um...unlikely...but I'll hold out hope on the basis that Mr Tennant's filming schedule keeps him pretty busy and we haven't actually met yet...

6. What is your current mood? Lazy

7. What color underwear are you wearing? Y'know, I wonder why all memes have something completely ridiculous in them? Let's change this one: What can you hear right now? The washing machine, the telly, and one of my cats chirping at her toys.

8. What is one thing that makes you happy? My cats.

9. Whats The Last Thing You Bought? Must be important, as all the words get a capital letter...12 tomatoes, 4 bananas, 6 eggs, 2 pints of milk...oh and some chocolate digestives.

10. If you could go back in time, and change something what would it be? Hmm...I'm too lazy to think of anything that might mean I'm not exactly where I am right now...

11. If you MUST be an animal for ONE day- what would you be? A house cat - specifically MY house cat...I don't know what they were in past lives but that is some powerful-good karma.

12. Ever had a near death experience? Likely, but you never hear the one that hits you.

13. Something you do a lot? Talk

14. What's the name of the song stuck in your head right now? honestly...damn; the Kingsmill bread jingle from telly...

15. Who did you copy and paste this from? An old friend from uni in Canada.

16. Name someone with the same birthday as you? Boring. I do know that the Diet of Worms ended with the Edict of Worms on my birthday in 1521; and that John T. Scopes was indicted for teaching evolution 52 years before I was born (1925); the Calgary Flames won the Stanley Cup for the first time on my birthday in 1989. And just to satisfy the question, I share my birthday with Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Beverley Sills. It's also the holy day of Saint Urban, Saint Bede, and Saint Augustine of Canterbury.

17. When was the last time you cried? I did get a bit choked up in last night's episode of Pushing Daisies.

18. Have you ever sung in front of a large audience? Yes.

19. If you could have one super power what would it be? I always go for flying here...yea - yea I'll stick with flying.

20. What's the first thing you notice about the opposite sex? Depends why I'm looking at them.

21. What do you usually order from Starbucks? I don't.

22. What’s your biggest secret? Idiotic. Who makes up these things? Change it again: How do you feel about secrets? Not a big fan really. They bore me.

23. What's your favorite color? I don't have one - but I like a warm palette

24. When was the last time you lied? Last seminar I taught - I always say that I'm really excited and interested in whatever text we're studying, regardless of my actual loathing... Funny thing though, by the end of the seminar, my students' interest gets to me and I come away actually being pretty into it...

25. Do you still watch kiddy movies or TV shows? ALL THE TIME - repeatedly. I plan to watch Powerpuff Girls later this afternoon.

26. WHAT HAPPENED TO 26? Got married, moved to England, started PhD.

27. What are you eating or drinking at the moment? See above - Tetley's tea and a hobnob.

28. Do you speak any other language? I speak Academic as well as Teacher. I can understand Lancashire and Yorkshire - and depending on who I'm talking to, apparently I do speak another language. And yes, I speak enough Quebecois to order a beer, ask for the bathroom, and get back to my hotel in Montreal.

29. What's your favorite smell? Too many - a sampling: mown grass, the garden, roasting veg, coffee, the house I grew up in, my grandparent's house, fresh sawdust, Algonquin park...

30. If you could describe life in one word what would it be? If I could describe life in one word, I would be very sad indeed.

31. When was the last time you gave/received a hug? I just aggressively cuddled Logan...

32. Have you ever been kissed in the rain? I suppose.

33. What are you thinking about right now? How trivial it is whether or not I've ever been kissed in the rain! And now how long that has occupied my mind...

34. What should you be doing? Re-reading the novel I have to teach this week; working on my conference paper, working on my job applications.

35. What was the last thing that made you upset? 'Upset' like hysterical? I don't get upset - I was mildly annoyed on Saturday night because we had a lovely time out with friends, disrupted only by the presence of one of the rudest and most tactless cocks I've ever met.

37. Do you like working in the yard? Yes and wish the weather would improve so as to spend more time there.

38. If you could have any last name in the world, what would you want? Something Dickensian... or Peakean (from Mervyn Peake).

39. Name 5 things in your closet: No closets in our current place - in my wardrobe: shoes, handbags, clothes, gardening jeans, coats.

40. Do you act different around your crush? I do occasionally get a bit over-excited during Doctor Who...and was willing to forgive his less than stellar performance in Bright Young Things.

exorcising fear

So I saw The Exorcist on the weekend.

Perhaps it was the sheer amount of food - mostly meat - that I consumed before watching; or perhaps the company while watching; or maybe I'm just mature enough to handle it - but it wasn't very scary. Perhaps it would have been more frightening if I had been expecting something less terrifying than more - or something completely different (as when I watched Dogville, expecting a rather silly gangster flick...). Okay, some of the images are disturbing - mostly cause Linda Blair is just so angelic looking in the opening scenes. Maybe its the fairly horrendous 70s fashion Ellen Burnstyn sports - or the questionable 'attractiveness' of the men - or just the truly surreal opening scenes set in Iraq.

It's just that the extreme campiness and over-determined sequences are a bit hard to take - at least from the perspective of this weary and desensitised viewer and critic of Gothic horrors. I only stayed awake and jumping at shadows for ONE night. Ha! Se7en kept me up for weeks. Is it just the sheer novelty of the film for its time that made it so terrifying? It is, after all, one of the most popular and highly-grossing horror movies of all time - its earnings, according to Wikipedia (take as you will), $400 million worldwide. It was up for 10 Academy Awards (take that as you will as well) and won 2 (Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay) and lost the Best Picture award to The Sting. Apparently, Jon Landau of Rolling Stone called it 'nothing more than a religious porn film'.

It does rather feel empty of plot - just a voyeuristic journey into the weirdness of Catholic rituals and rites (which even the learned Father Karras distances from the modern operation of the Catholic Church) - there is no reason why Regan MacNeil is possessed and the devil doesn't really seem to have a plan. The horrific medical tests are more disturbing than the exorcism - though the priests do rather casually burn Regan-as-the-devil with holy water and the like. It's kinda like the final lines of Judas's show-stopping number in Jesus Christ Superstar: 'If you'd [Jesus] have come today, you would have reached a whole nation/Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication'. If it is the DEVIL - why appear in the body of a 12-year old girl? Shock value alone? Darryl Jones suggests that The Exorcist be understood as part of a trilogy of 'Satan' films, appearing between Rosemary's Baby and The Omen. As a question of adaptability, Satan clearly comes to grips quickly with the details of privilege in 1970s America: by The Omen, Damien (the Antichrist) ends up as no less than the president's (surrogate) son. I suppose I'd also agree with his reading of the film as a discussion of the corruption of the flesh discourse in Catholicism - the devil really goes to town for that one soul, threatening to stay until Regan's body rots (which it clearly begins to do throughout her possession) in the ground. And little wonder that the body contested is a young woman. I like the (albeit) overdetermined scene in which Regan writes 'help me' on her own body from the inside. It's tortured but certainly evocative of life in a teenaged body.

Maybe I'm dismissing the things that are actually quite important if I twist them around and look at them awry.

So Regan is 12-going-on-13 - from Chris's (her mother's) perspective, she is a potentially terrifying little bundle of possibility. The picture Regan is looking at in bed is herself with her mother - which her mother dismisses as not a very good picture, saying that Regan looks 'so mature'. The lack of plot? Well, it is the DEVIL - maybe he doesn't really go by this self-justification rationale for showing up. Maybe a 12 year old girl is a really good place to be - perhaps, given the potentials unleashed by the popular uprisings of 1968, a young girl (particularly, notice, without a father) raised by a stong single woman was something to be feared: she might grow up to be a feminist. (gasp!) The ending, with the self-sacrifice of Father Karras, is interesting - Angelheart makes it more explicit, with the flash of green energy in the beautiful baby's eyes - but Regan's innocent unknowing is more interesting. Has she really forgotten? And how then, exactly, did mommydearest explain the abrasions and lacerations on her body (bruises still visible in the last shot as they drive away).

I also do have to wonder how Burnstyn's character managed to stay in the house with Regan-as-the-devil... I mean, wow, ovaries of steel, that one has!

The long and short of it, it isn't scary - its actually pretty funny. But I can see how it is such an iconic film. And I'm glad I saw it.

Next, The Car. With steaks. Really rare steaks.

Migration

Maybe it's the flocks of birds returning with the spring but immigration has been in the news (read: The Guardian) quite a bit these days. I thought this was an interesting article - in that kind of snapshot way of reporting that purports to make no judgements on the information. But nonetheless, it is intriguing. I guess I am an immigrant right now. Huh. But I've never been referred to - or had cause to refer to myself as - an immigrant in this country. And I noticed that the people interviewed mostly fit the traditional, narrow construction of immigrant - though I'm interested in the comments from the Irish and Australian women. Whenever I think of immigration or even the university's apparent understanding of 'international' I remember a strange fellow I encountered while working at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. He was American, but without identification of any sort, so we directed him to Canadian immigration. Outraged, he pointed at the substantial queue outside the immigration office - made up that particular day of an extended family immigrating from India and another from Mexico - and insisted that he wasn't from 'another country'. Upon our patient explanation that the United States was, in fact, 'another country', he became more hysterical (wearing I should add a powder-blue leisure suit) and with the air of speaking to a very young child, said that 'well, he wasn't from another country like they (pointing at the queue) were from another country'.

Huh.

The sunshine has returned - albeit only in brief moments that ensure I am perpetually grateful for it. Running has returned as a firm part of my schedule. Teaching is nearly back for the final three weeks of term. May is very nearly upon us and I will then have cause to reflect on another year. Things keep moving and shifting and changing and I don't feel that I'm 'on top' of everything - nor to I feel dragged under; I just feel like going with the flow.

new things

We've had a 'new' week - new shoes, new flat, new bed-linens ... it's nice on the soul, if a bit painful on the paycheque! But at least I can say that nothing was an impulse buy and everything was needed - and kinda overdue. I still have buyer's remorse though - which is ridiculous. It's clearly the result of conflict between my excessively practical side and my fluttery spending side.

But I did need new shoes - my good old black boots haven't quite given up the ghost but they can't be my daily wear anymore. The seam broke on the leather so I've taken them to be restitched - again. The woman at the counter recognized me and my poor old boots. But they are comfy and otherwise okay, so I'll give them one more life: resoled, re-stitched, and cleaned up. And I bought a pair of shoes; I usually (always) wear boots but it's summer (well, will be someday) and they have rainbow stitching so I was hooked.

AND we found a new flat for July - which is so exciting that neither of us really want to stay in this place anymore... we always do that though: when we moved from our old place to here it was the same. But this new place is far far nicer. It's a lovely 2 bedroom flat with no carpets and closets - no stupid, space-wasting wardrobes - closets. And it is on an upper floor, has windows on two sides, has no smell of mold or damp, no spots on the walls... it is perfect. And has the added comedy value of the cats skidding around on the floors when they play!

Just to finish off the week as well we finally bought some new duvet covers - the cheapest we could find (yea...Ikea...which means that our bedroom now looks like everyone else's) but they are bright and colourful. They feel spring-y. And our last sheets were ready for the rubbish bin.

And still a week off of teaching - Easter break is four weeks - which works well in this instance as I still haven't finished marking...

March weekends

I'll withhold judgement on whether March is going out lion- or lamb-like. The 'earliest Easter since 1913' kinda threw me - I always use Easter as a first weekend of spring kind of date. Not so this year. On the Saturday of the long (yea!) weekend, we went up to the allotment to dig and were blown home by snow, sleet, and a bitterly cold wind. It being Yorkshire, of course, by the time we got five minutes from the allotment, the weather had changed to sunshine that was very nearly warm, so we sat outside and had a pint or two instead.

The library is dead these days - Easter break for my students is four weeks long. I've got next week off, which will be so lovely and undoubtedly entirely productive. That's the plan anyway. Plans plans plans - such a spring thing.

erratum

My mistake - the 'article' is actually an excerpt from a book about organized crime worldwide - McMafia, I believe is the trendy title...

heart-breakers and life-takers

At least it isn't the perenially adorable and always vulnerable harp seal pups this time - no Sir this-an-that to wax on about the barbaric disruption to nature by a bunch of barely civilized, provincial hacks - but my homeland 'strong-and-free' is in the Guardian again. And I kinda like how it's still stuck on some time-honoured phraseology of Canada - 'The Dope Rush'; all we need is a modern day Robert Service and a memorable poem or two about 'The Cremation of Dan the Dope-head' or the 'Ballad of the Border Guard' and were right back in those halycon days of yore.

Ah - "nice, peaceful, dull Canada" - excuse me while I get my true north rage on.

On second thought, never mind. I'm tired, at work, and there is too much pap in this article to be particularly bothered about it. In passing, I'm particularly interested in the depiction of British Columbia as populated entirely by loggers - I'm assuming that, for this reporter, these are the 'ordinary folk of western Canada'. Apparently, they talk little, are good with their hands, and fall naturally from felling trees to organized crime.

I've got to find another daily...

Sci-Fi Chic(k)

Is there a badge or possibly t-shirt out there with the text 'Original Nerd' on it? Cause I want one - just to establish my cred in this new world of 'geek is the new black' [on a side note, I'm intrigued by the seeming interchangeability of 'nerd', 'geek', 'dork' - given their original denotative functions - I don't really see that many Babylon 5 fans biting the heads off of chickens for example...]. I remember when John Wyndham's The Chrysalids was standard reading for the grade 10 curriculum (is it still?) - not to mention short stories by Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury - and they weren't taught as 'genre fiction', but in the same breath as 'quality' writing by Margaret Atwood, Sinclair Ross, and Hugh MacLennan. So it seemed natural to me to follow my interests and, being the inquisitive mind I am, I went ahead and read not only Fahrenheit 451 but also Something Wicked This Way Comes and Dandelion Wine; 'The Electric Ant' was followed quite naturally in my world with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and 'Through a Scanner Darkly'. I liked Greek myths, and Ojibway Nanabush stories, and watched The Last Unicorn until I knew every line - and that didn't go away with adolescence or even adulthood. Maybe my preference for playing alone and fairly uncontrolled imagination (which still leaves me often at the mercy of electric light and sound in the wee dark hours after watching, say, The X-Files or Watcher in the Woods...) made me comfortable with looking awry at the world and quite sure that it was looking awry at me in return.

Of course, sci-fi isn't only the new black, it's the new green: we just saw the premiere of the new Bionic Woman - which is hot on the heels of The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Heroes. Star Trek and its increasingly nauseating spin-offs have always been there; Battlestar Gallactica, Buck Rogers, Knight Rider, Quantum Leap, The Six-Million Dollar Man, Lost in Space, Stargate, Life on Mars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, The Hulk, Lois and Clark, Smallville, Roswell, Kyle XY, Jericho, Xena, Hercules, Doctor Who, Torchwood, The X-Files... However critics cut it, dissect it, rip it to pieces for being 'escapist', 'ephemeral', 'popular' - it appeals and it sells and it' s just damn slick and cool while doing so. It is reductive and, indeed, escapist in itself to maintain the critical perspective that genre writing (and I know I'm discussing television pretty much exclusively here) somehow doesn't matter - that it is junk, cultural trash; pointless at best, actually harmful at worst. It's popularity and disposability (though DVD culture has interferred significantly with television as an ephemeral experience) do not impact on its truthiness (I've always wanted to use that word) - to paraphrase Foucault, just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's not true; I would trust a genre that calls attention to its illusion and disjunction more than one which pretends to 'realism' without ever admitting to a fascistic agenda. Which is not to say that sci-fi or fantasy cannot be put to nefarious use - it's still (and perhaps poetry is ahead of it in this sense - though I use ahead cautiously) written by us and we are still nefarious critters - or at least, unknown and unknowable in a way that I sometimes think is glossed over by transparent cinema and writing.

['Nefarious', in passing, is a beautiful word for a negative (?) quality - like malevolent - I always liked Mellificent just on her name alone.]

I'm also currently fascinated by the gender debates in which shows like (at the moment, tho there are older examples) The Bionic Woman and The Sarah Connor Chronicles are participating. Nas pointed out that the 'evolution' of the terminator for example seems to be from the Mr. Universe-buff Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator to the apparently diminutive, slight, but leathally capable Summer Glau in The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I still have to read Donna Haraway, I confess, but I'm intrigued by the invigorated femininity of the cyborg in current media - in a world of either machines or magic, strength, to paraphrase Morpheus, has nothing to do with size - do we still think that's air we're breathing?

So this is my badge: this ain't no bandwagon I'm jumping on here - I've got the cherry seat by the window in the back. I am the one you have to pass to use the loo, I know more than you do, and I've been here longer. So entertain me - don't make the mistake of underestimating me.

weather maps

I'm not sure where Leeds is in a whole mystical cartography - but it must be blessed somehow with being just beyond the reach of earthquakes, storms, floods, high winds ... perhaps that is why it never shows up on the BBC telly weather maps, which always seem to take perverse pleasure in showing York, Sheffield, Wakefield, Huddersfield but not Leeds, forcing us Leodeans to approximate the weather (not difficult - it'll likely be wet, best take a cardy and carry a brolly). We don't have any stone circles near us - that I'm aware of - indeed, if there is a candidate for a more prosaic, earth-bound spot in the whole of the UK, I'd like to see it.

lockdown

So Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, claims that the great benefit of ID cards is that people's identities would be 'locked to them'. Is that the ideal? People 'locked' into their identity? And it does beg the question - in my mind at least - what exactly is the identity that Smith feels people are so vulnerable in that need - nay, desire - to be 'locked' into? It is an interesting formulatio nof idenity as as bounded, limited space; something that can be locked: a closet, a box, a room - something, first and foremost, that can belong to one person and must be guarded from invasive fraudsters that would steal it (the 'lock' metaphor does connote the idea of value and thus the desireability of the thing to theives - the curious crime referred to glibbly as 'identity theft').

I've been discussing the concept of the sublime with two of my seminar groups this morning - and I, at least, have a ponderous headache (that is, caused by pondering). They tackled Shelley's Mont Blanc very well and I hope that I didn't add chaos to confusion. I was let down in my pedagogy today by the perverse machines - my friend who studies J.G. Ballard complimented me on the phrase - in the PG common room which refused to open the lovely and genius handout I had made for my seminars summarising the key points and terms of Longinus, Burke, Kant and Wordsworth. They were generous enough to look sincerely hopeful and interested when I promised to email it to them instead - bless ... I'm the doddering old prof already.

Completely lateral references today in seminar: BtVS (1), Star Trek (1), Minority Report (1) - to be fair, the last one came from a student first, I just ran with it...

Calling

I get it - or at least, I get it right now and I'll try to hang on to it for awhile - or I'll re-read this post occasionally: I get why I like teaching. I wrote a reference for a student back in January applying to law school. He was a very good student - quick to respond, willing to engage, and a nice cynicism and critical edge. How true is it that teachers respond best to students that remind them of themselves? Or at least, students that remind them of how they wished they could remember themselves. The point being, he just came up to me at work and told me he got two place offers!

I know I have little to nothing to do with his success - my reference certainly didn't make or break his application - but I'm so strangely proud! Not 'strangely' because I think I shouldn't be proud - but 'strangely' because I usually don't see my students after the last seminar. The way that teaching tends to work here I get them for one semester and might see them in the library thereafter. But I rarely notice when they graduate, and don't know them much beyond the faces they present in my classroom/consultation hour. This was the first reference I've written - the first student who has really sought my assistance after leaving my seminar behind. Maybe it's also cause the sun is shining and it was just a nice thing to hear - a bonus on an already alright day.

And I suppose it makes me aware - fleetingly - of how generous students can be - which is really a positive spin on how draining they can also be. It should be a privilege to teach and it is discouraging and depressing how rarely that is seen as the case. Equally, of course, it should be a privilege to learn - but that's not often in evidence either.

In short, I am really proud of my student who got into law school and I definitely plan on saying, when he is a famous lawyer (human rights or environmental preferably!), that I used to teach him back in the day ...

Lions and lambs

So I can't access my Facebook account right now - site maintenance - and ... um ... it's actually making me kinda anxious -- which in turn is making me kinda anxious about my mental stability. I'm mostly joking - mostly. It reminds me of being back at Queen's and using that ancient email system - I think it was run from the DOS shell - it regularly crashed and I couldn't check my emails which were rapidly becoming the only way to communicate - it was free and most everything else, as my tender young self was beginning to realise, was not.

I've just had a kind of memory flash: I am walking beside the Stauffer library towards the entrance (Stauffer's tomb), and the JDUC is on my left. It must be early spring - later than now - because the sun is shining and I can smell lunch from the Skylight cafeteria. I can picture perfectly the entrance foyer at Stauffer - granite and rich, red wood and steel - there are six email PCs to the right and always a queue for them. It's funny but I've never considered that there was no 'PC suite' in the library - and only about 6 catalogue/email PCs per floor. I loved spring in Kingston.

As I do here - English springs come early - there is an apple tree on the grounds of the mosque next to us already in bloom; crocuses and daffodils are up in Hyde Park. I can't tell if March came in like a lion or a lamb though - last night was a most terrific storm with lashing rain and gusts so strong that walking was like swimming against the current of a river in full spate. The sound of the wind in the trees in Hyde Park was almost deafening - I love that sound. This morning, however, the sun was shining, the air is mild - and I'm waiting for the change. This is Yorkshire; if you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes - if you do like the weather, don't get comfy - and always pack yer brolly.

Luckily we spent the evening listening to the rain and wind while snug and warm, discussing garden plans with our fellow allotment-holders - nothing better for waiting out a storm.

work in progress

I know - another Guardian-inspired blog ... but I just couldn't help it! This is one of the greatest headlines I've ever seen:
The world is still organised to meet the wishes of men.

Um ... really? This does fit up there with 'binge drinking causes hangovers' and 'London not centre of universe as previously imagined'. No - seriously - REALLY? Huh. Gee, Guardian, just because you don't have a page 3 girl, did you think that balanced the scales?

I remain, world, as ever, your bewildered and adoring child.

how not to get in shape

1. Live in Leeds in February.

2. Look out window every morning and see: a) rain b) frozen fog c) regular fog d) have your eyes frozen shut and be frozen into the bed.

Okay, I can only come up with two things that don't point immediately to just being a lazy cow. But we did get back out there this morning and I already feel morally and physically superior to everyone who didn't. Especially the students we passed while running still clearly wearing their tribal gear from the night before - and/or clutching that last beer smuggled - ever the very crust of class - from the pub at closing time. Is this how Conservatives start? Is running a gate-way drug to right-leaning sanctimoniousness?

Hmm...well, possible feelings of moral and ethical superiority aside, it's more about not being the fat one at the wedding this summer! Ah it all comes down to fashion ... how shallow. Hey, the unexamined life isn't worth living, but the over-examined life -- well, that's just not living. It's all in the balance. And balance, as I just remarked this morning, is not my forte.

Tottenham is in the Carling Cup tomorrow. We're playing Chelsea but hey, "any given Sunday", right?

the white stuff

Woke up this morning to a snow-covered, rather urban idyll outside. It's mostly gone now but when I left for campus, the ground and the air were the same white. I like mornings like that - it's like pathetic fallacy: I feel like the whole outside world is coforming to the sticky, gauzy inside world of me before noon. Maybe it's the other way round - but it's Tuesday so I'll go with monomania. It's less stressful early in the week to believe I am the centre of everything. Doubt can seep in by Wednesday afternoon and by Thursday evening I'm awash with anxiety. But Tuesdays I shall keep holy for feeling on top of things - if only my little mole-hill.

It was another weekend of foodie-heaven: two meals, both unbelievably delicious and bringing together food, philosophy, laughter and the very best company. We had always heard longing, whispered tales of our friend's fried chicken - they didn't half do it justice. The trouble (or screaming bonus) with good food - good from living to killing to dressing to eating - is that it makes me keenly aware of the complete and utter scam played on diners by 95% of the food service industry. And, btw, that goes for vegetarian options as well - indeed, vegetarian 'alternatives' are generally the worst value-for-money on a menu. Luckily, Nas and I are surrounded by friends who are just as interested in (slightly manic about?) good food as we are - and, even better, are wonderful hosts of particularly discerning tables. I think often of Joseph Johnson's table in the 1790s, presided over by Fuseli's 'The Nightmare' hanging over the fire, and attended by the likes of John Thelwall, William Godwin, and Mary Wolstonecraft. We're that kind of smart. And pretty.


Does the world need my thoughts on eating meat? Not likely. I'm intrigued by the general discussions on the topic that I see and hear around me. Mostly I'm annoyed at the general assumption that someone who eats meat has done so without thought. I get stuck round this one - I agree in principle that the unexamined life is not worth living but gosh, what a pompous statement that is in some respects. And I'm justly (I think) irritated when anyone assumes that a choice that I make is not a choice but a habit. This is not to suggest that discussion cannot follow - I should be willing to defend my choices and to change my mind. That is, live a life constantly under examination.

That got away from me.

I've just bumped into a friend passing through the library who told me the most interesting thing of my day: the 'snow' this morning was not, indeed, the white stuff, but frozen fog. How bloody cool is that??

putting things in order

I have just finished clearing out old paperwork. There is nothing so depressing a old forms, notices, slips, receipts, letters, cards ... they create such a lot of MESS. Last year I had the bright idea of buying a hanging file-folder - as with most objects we buy to put what we already own in, it rapidly filled up and, by hiding what we already had, allowed us to accumulate more. Dastardly. It is those moments when - to paraphrase a childhood heroine - I am convinced of the depravity of inanimate objects. Our bank here insists on sending us a veritable novel each month - not just one, but one for each bloody account. Regardless of the fact that usually there is absolutely minimal movement from the accounts, each is detailed over a minimum of three pages. Over a year, that amounts to -- well, a whole bag of paper that has to be dragged to the office to go into the incinerator cause they've thoughtfully put my account number, sort code, and name on each piece. Then I remind myself that this is the same bank that sends out activated debit and credit cards - as our good friend discovered to her disadvantage. Honestly.

But the point is - it's all gone. Or at least displaced. Or deferred. Anyway, the box feels like a sanctified, organized space. Why on earth does clearing rubbish and achieving some small measure of order provide such psychological balm?

We're going for dinner at our good friends' place tonight - it occurs to me that I tend to refer to everyone I blog about as a 'good' friend. It's either a redundant phrase or a pleonasm. Anyone I think of as a friend is 'good' by definition. I mean, I can't really see my self describing someone a a 'so-so' friend. But then describing someone as an acquaintance sounds odd and 'colleague' sounds ridiculous outside of a professional context. But then, I don't consider the people I work with at the library 'colleagues' - likely, cause it's not my profession. And qualifying friends as 'work friends' just fragments my life too much. Then I have to start keeping columns and worrying about boundaries. I remember a friend back home saying jokingly, the first or second time I called to arrange to have a drink, that we were now 'phone buddies'. But were I to go out to the pub with the whole gang, there would be acquaintances and friends there - but I would relate the evening as a night out with friends, and include people I didn't know as well in that. I suppose because of shared space in both a physical and psychological/emotional space. I've just been reading about Judith Butler on kinship/family and remembering my own research into 18th century constructions of the term (via Naomi Tadmor and Ruth Perry and Jane Spencer) - and considering all that in terms of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which is to say, sorry for the digression....!

Dinner yes - to celebrate strange vegetables and our shared passion for cookbooks and food. I have a lovely collection of veg: squash, beetroot, rocket - and damn, just realised I'm out of cornmeal for the polenta I had invisaged. Back to shop.

Oh yes, and I have the OFFICIAL LETTER - I'm officially now Dr Kaley Kramer (PhD - Leeds). Damn ham. That sounds nice.

food blogging ...

I nearly forgot that last weekend was so great - and it's already this weekend. It makes me reflect, y'know, on the passing of time and, like, how it's so ... um ... fast ... Yea. That's it. Or something like.

The weeks are a bit packed - and I meant to post about last weekend but Monday got eaten up by Tuesday and so forth. So I find myself at Friday again, on the cusp of another weekend, having passed unreflectingly through five whole days.

Last weekend I finally had lunch at Anthony's - a gustatory ambition from a-way back. And it really did live up - for the most part. It was a celebratory lunch: the end of a promise between a good friend and I to treat ourselves if we ever finished the PhD. I had pork belly - it's my new thing - I had it in London at Bistroteque as well. For starters, we both had cauliflower veloute with Wensleydale and hazelnut oil. To be completely honest, it was caulifrower cheese redux. But hey, my usual dictum when dining out is to eat things that I wouldn't/couldn't make at home. Pretty much anything on Anthony's menus fulfill that! The pork belly was lean and the crackling crackling. To be honest, the crackling could have been improved - I'm not sure how - but then surely that is why I pay them the largish amounts of money for: to figure these things out. Wonderful stuff, crackling - but difficult, particularly in a formal setting, to eat without getting down-home about it all and using fingers and teeth. And I could have done with more than a smear of the lovely pureed sweet potato - though on a side-note pureeing is a bit naff in general. I mean, I have teeth. But hey, they are (as mentioned) clearly doing something right as I was willing to part with my (very very very) hard earned moneys ... Dessert: raspberry and basil sorbet - amazing. And, properly, left me wanting more but very pleasantly full. Ooh and we did splash on the wine: a deeeelightful and deeeeelucious chablis ...

But food bereft of company is a cold meal indeed - and the company was exactly the sort such a meal needed to keep it from being overly-formal and uncomfortably stuffy.

Then, that very night, we went over to our good friends' for food and cards (oh, and more wine!) ... And Sunday, with the help of new allotment mates, we got started on the garden - pictures will follow!

I'm pretty sure I had more to say. And it all sounded much more exciting in my head than written out like this ... Huh.

Sexy things

I am hungry and tired; not good things to be when dealing with THE PUBLIC.


I worked on my (very first!) lecture for two hours this morning. I'm not sure about it - I've never used PowerPoint and I can see how the temptation to but too much information up is there. I think I may already have seccumbed actually ... But it's all so fascinating. I need a snappier title; right now, I've just got: Revolution and Reaction: Treason and Plot in the 1790s - which is to-the-point but not very sexy at all. Perhaps I should replace some of the text with pictures? Maybe some maps. Maps are pretty and sexy - with all there 'ooh come and explore me' manner. It's a thought.


And Torchwood to look forward to tonight - it's like a massive train-wreck of a show: I just cannot look away regardless of how cringe-worthy it becomes. What will become of Cap'n Jack and his band of wandering supernatural vigilantes? Well, thankfully (or specifically, thanks to The Guardian's 'What to watch' section - nanny state! Ha!), I don't have to leave you in suspense, even if you live far far away and have to wait to watch:


Torchwood 9pm, BBC2

"Amid the snarling, shouting and awful, contrived sexual tension between Captain Pratt and the team, there's an interesting idea here - the consequences of leading a double life. Gwen, the moral centre of the show, considers said issue when her nice-but-dim boyfriend, Rhys, apparently one of the few Cardiff residents unaware of Torchwood's existence, discovers she's a member of the world's least secret top-secret organisation. That a giant telepathic alien manatee is involved should by no means discourage viewing."


I, for one, am not discouraged. I welcome such diversion after the intellectually draining day of trying to divine what library patrons actually want from out their garbled expressions of desire - or, even more fun, their sullen silence. If you aren't sure where you sit with the crazy Torchwood team and their time-hopping, alien-seducing behaviour - this review of a season 2 episode made me want to keep watching ...

Sundays are for rest

You would never think that Logan is covered, as most cats are, in fur: as soon as it gets the teeniest bit cold in the house, he parks his fur-covered self under the radiator in the bathroom and stays there the entire day. Nas put a bathmat there a couple days ago - Logan, as far as I can tell, will soon be demanding his meals upstairs. Laila, on the other hand, clearly has some residual memories of living outside and is much more properly gracious to her humans for her timely delivery from the elements. Thus, she prefers to be no fewer than three feet from one of us (preferably both) at any given time. Except her naps - though she does tend to wake up and come running down the stairs to check that someone is still around.

I'm baking bread this afternoon and putting off the last of my first batch of marking. For the record, I'm also currently procrastinating on finishing my 'supporting statement' for job applications, researching for an article due in April, turning my thesis into articles, reading for tomorrow's seminar on Romanticism, the laundry, and ... um ... dinner. In the success column for today, however, we have: slept in with minimal guilt resulting, ate cake for breakfast without increasing guilt, washed dishes including pots and cutlery, thought seriously about attack-strategy for CV while washing dishes, and caught up with news (okay, on FB ... but still ...). Oh I also looked outside and got so annoyed with the greyness that I spent about half an hour searching the interwebs for a cheap flight out of here. For the record, I need to update my understanding of 'cheap' when considering 'international travel'.

There is a massive difference, I've discovered, between teaching 8 students and teaching 30. I can see how that observation ranks up there with finally understanding the difference between swimming in a pool and swimming in a lake - and I mean a black water kind of lake. I guess my seminars at Queen's were nearing 30 students, but the best ones only had about 13-17. Or do I only remember 17 people? How horrible. I'm sure the very best seminar ever only had about 12-13 of us. Every seminar I teach is an attempt to recapture Dr Pat Rae's 1997/8 Modernism seminar at Queen's University. Runner up is Dr Asha Varadharajan's post-modern North America seminar (must have been 1997/8 as well) - but less for the overall experience than her teaching, which I loved. And, of course, I was spoiled (and ignorant of the privilege at the time) in taking American lit from Prof. Jed Rasula. But I think it is a good thing that I haven't managed to come near those experiences of superior pedagogues: I've only been teaching for three years. Surely it would be a very bad sign to hit my apex three years into my career! Anyway, I've been assured that I'll never have all 30 show up again - which is a strange consolation.

But I've put off everything long enough for today ... and I'm hungry.