Two Lectures

No excuses.  I pick up where I left off.


On the 10th of May, Professor of Poetry Geoffrey Hill gave another lecture in the Examination Schools, entitled "Poetry and Disproportion." He was wearing a fantastic blue-backed waistcoat with a dark purple patterned front, and he looked quite robust, though he wilted somewhat as the evening wore on.  This lecture was a bit more difficult to follow than its predecessors, and indeed I got the impression that if I had not been present for all of the earlier lectures, I might have been entirely lost in this one.  Still, it was informative and entertaining, which I have come to expect from Hill, and as always, very well presented in that voice that one of his interviewers described as sounding 'the way I imagine God would sound.'  He began with the idea that the mortal desire for proportion and stability is rooted in our arguments.  At one point he misread something he had written, and stopped himself, but then with his characteristic sprezzatura he said, "Let it stand. Dissertations will do fine.  What I wrote was dissentions..."  He spoke of tyranny as a breaking of the balance of power, leaving it wholly in one scale--this he said was taken from Swift.  He went on to show that disproportion is therefore a most debilitating tyranny.  Later, while explaining a complicated concept related to this, he laughed at himself, saying, "if you could make sense of that sentence, you're better than I am."  He brought up Bertolt Brecht, who wrote about "the ingenuity of the oppressed" and the potentiality of mankind in regard to Shakespeare's Coriolanus and Eliot's unfinished Coriolan.  He went on, "I realise that in my dealings with you on the subject of English poetry, I may give you the impression that I don't overall enjoy it. So I'm trying to iron out some kinks in my reputation with the help of Brecht."

As always, I took careful notes throughout the lecture, but to repeat them in their entirety here would tax both my patience and yours, so I have noted some highlights below:

• The theme of a play or novel is not synopsis.
• Shakespeare is eminent in his own period, you see--which means he has an edge over the others.
• There is a Mad Meg element in Shakespeare (this refers to a painting by Peter Bruegel the Elder.  The painting shows the utter chaos of battle, and its name echoes the nickname of a large siege-cannon.)

Dulle Griet (Mad Meg) by Peter Breugel the Elder, c. 1562. Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp 

• "For everything of merit to go down the pipe with everything of trash is not justice--its a type of anarchy."
• Citing Rossiter on Ambivalence: "Shakespeare wrote in an inverted equilibrium."
• I wish I could describe modern poetry as one critic described Mad Meg: a mad stare ahead at nothing.
• "The role of Mad Meg seems to have devolved upon me, in my thrice-yearly appearance on this platform."  Perhaps it would be best if a comedian, or a rapper, were to take over this position.
• "As I often say when backing out of a cul-de-sac of my own making: I will watch development in that area with interest. ...No, I won't.  Not really."
• We could now do with an artist possessed of the virtues of Peter Breugel the Elder...Damian Hirst may believe that he is improving on Breugel for the modern age.  (See the Wikipedia entry on Hirst for some really weird modern art, and don't miss the link to Oak Tree by Michael Craig-Martin, which was the first 'work of art' I saw in the Tate Modern when I visited it in 2001.)

Beautiful revolving sphincter, oops brown painting by Damien Hirst (2003)

• "Why do I write sentences like that?" after describing how to understand misunderstanding.
• My lectures are tirades--Horatian tirades, which can be bogusly Christianised.
• There is disproportion in Sidney, but it occurs for him in history, because it deals in true matters: he finds it immoral, to be 'captive to the truth of a foolish world' (Defense of Poetry)
• "There has always been an element of unease in my appreciation of Sidney's definitions."
• Ezra Pound once said that 'all values ultimately come from our judicial sentences.'
• Aesthetic reading in an ethical context may have grown from the meditative prose of Boethius.

• [At 6:10 p.m., he knocked over the microphone and giggled like Ernie from Sesame Street!]

• Chaucer is writing something wholly commonplace, and wholly beautiful. "We could not have predicted this particular special ordinariness until Chaucer invented it for us."
• From the earliest classical times, it was the inevitability of social and natural chaos that prompted philosophers to come up with ideas of equality and the golden mean.  What we have now is a golden mediocrity.
• "Henry (VIII) was a political oxymoron."
• For the real poet, raw potentiality, language in the raw, always has [Mad Meg's face]...we have within ourselves the irresistible tug of anarchy, and it may lead to creative ideas of our own.
• Liner notes in CDs are sometimes more interesting than the music.  Poetry will always differ from music, but some of both give the impression of existing solely for their own euphony.
• Love of proportion grows from human distress at the disproportion in life.
• There is some ambiguity in my philosophy and critical standpoint--does my radicalism involve tearing up by the roots, or returning to and nurturing them?
• I think it is only a Ruskinian Tory these days who can be confused with an old-fashioned Marxist. Ezra Pound, whose poetry I'd better tell you here and now was some of the greatest of the last century, he was wickedly fascist.
• Oxford gives centrality to the marginalised--even myself.

Then on Friday, the 13th of May, Sir Tom Stoppard came to speak in the Sheldonian, and I took a break from dissertating to go and hear him.  I had adored his play, Arcadia, when an undergrad, and had finally read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead over the summer before coming to Oxford.  His talk was entitled, "A Pragmatic Art," and it concentrated on the purpose of an artist, with reflections from his own profession of writing plays.  He was introduced by the president of Trinity College, Sir Ivor Roberts, and I learned some things that I had not known about Stoppard, such as the fact that he came to Britain as a Czech refugee when he was a child, and that he had honorary degrees from Yale and Cambridge (I have always had a latent desire to be conferred an honorary degree...).  When he stood up, I took note of his longish silvery hair, his dark grey (almost black) suit and red tie over a white shirt, and his voice, when he began to speak, which was wonderfully hobbit-like, reminiscent of the voice of John Hurt.  He spoke very slowly, and enunciated each word clearly, like one long trained in elocution.  He began by reading some passages from works he had brought with him, including The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary (whose death in 1943 occasioned this annual lecture in memorial), and 'Epitaph for George Dillon' by Osborn & Creighton, as well as his own play, Travesties, and then asked, "Why do we value art?"


He went on to say that artists these days were not only honored, but validated, and that there was an increase in narcissism and egotism in writers and artists in general.  His reflections were not preachy, though he seemed to have formed opinions from long experience.  As with Hill, I took careful notes, and I have copied some highlights below.

• "Nowadays an artist is a man who makes art mean the things he does."
• "The artist and the priest emerged from the same shadows of the fire in the cave."
• "If the atheists don't mean God, they mean somebody very like him."
• An artist is not a separate category of human being.
• "When writing a play, the thing is as self-sufficient as a sonnet...You're not interested in any other thoughts but getting these words in the right order so that they make the noise you want them to make."
• The point about Shakespeare is the miracle of the collusion of sound and sense.
• I betray that principle the moment a play is in the theatre being prepared; your writing is handed over to other people to become a physical event, and event with changes of light and pace and sound effects and a hundred other things that can spoil it, and it becomes all technical and pragmatic...but at least you can change your mind about it.
• "I write plays in order to contradict myself in public."
• "intrepid uniped" is a phrase that is difficult to translate, because the sounds are lost
• "I really ought to desist, and I'd like to find a note to desist on...which I will do arbitrarily."
• All art has at its foundation a kind of moral duty--that is what makes a universe of the world of art and culture.
• "If you take away everything, you are left with a residue that you wouldn't want to die for, or live in."

The summation was given by Professor Hermione Lee, President of Wolfson College, who had a deep, nasal voice and was wearing a grey skirt, black tights, an oversized cardigan, and a scarf.  She amired Stoppard's 'opulence of intellect' and called him a 'very special human being.'


In all, the two lectures were neatly dovetailed and gave me much to ponder, though of course I was not at liberty to ponder much at the time, aside from my thesis.  I was (and still am) so glad to be living in Oxford, though, to be able to attend such fascinating lectures given by some of the most unusual and well-respected artistic minds of this era.  I hope that I will be able to stay in the lecture loop this year, and that I will be able to get back to Oxford after work in time to hear most of them...who knows, maybe I will be able to attend even more, as I won't feel that pressing panic of paper deadlines whenever I glance over the lecture list.

Excuses, and Highlights of Early May

(The real van is white, with far fewer windows)

So, my great plan for writing on the bus commute to and from work was thwarted in two significant ways.  The first was that my coworker, Daisy, and I began to drive the company van back and forth to Oxford for a week, because we had to pick up and drop off photographs that my boss was having printed and mounted for a photography exhibition (that is his hobby, a.k.a. his second career), and because Daisy had only recently passed her driving test and needed lots of practice.  It was good for me, too, because I am meant to learn how to drive a manual transmission so that I can transfer clients to and from the train station for our luncheons in the first week of August, so sitting in the front seat and paying attention to everything Daisy did was very helpful.  We also greatly enjoyed not having to pay for the bus, and we had a great time rocking out to Madonna and Michael Bublé thanks to the radio station, Heart, while bitching to each other about work things, especially a particularly obnoxious coworker.  We were both quite disappointed when someone else had to take the van to deliver equipment for the campaigns, and then when Daisy went off to run her own campaign, it was back to the lonely old bus for me.

The second reason that I have failed to blog during bus rides is that I have discovered that I get carsick when I try to read while in a moving vehicle--well, this is not really a new discovery, as I always used to get carsick when I was a child, but I had thought I might have grown out of it.  So, rather than blogging, I have been listening to audiobooks to pass the time, which I find quite delightful, as I get to take in the beautiful countryside while also reading something.  I always sit on the top of the double decker bus, and because I get on at the station in the morning and at one of the first stops in the evening, I can always claim the very front seat, so I have an enormous picture window through which to gaze as we rumble along, through Oxford, into Woodstock, past Blenheim palace, through some rolling fields, past some thatched-roofed cottages, and into Chipping Norton.  My books of choice at the moment are the Harry Potter series, mainly because my flatmate Jackie had them in her computer and passed them on to me, but also because I have not seen the final three films, and have no idea what everyone is buzzing about lately since the last installment came out.  My audiobook collection is rather small, but I am on the lookout for more.  If anyone has any interesting ones, please send them over!

To resume where I left off, May in Oxford was quite lovely, and I got to spend quite a lot of it outside despite having so much researching and writing to do, because of the intense training schedule for Summer Eights.  The W1 had water outings on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 6:30 a.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 1:15 and 12:45 p.m., respectively.  In addition, we had erg sessions every Tuesday and Thursday evening at 7:00.  As stroke, I felt obligated to give a lot more feedback to the coxswain and coach, and to keep everyone cheerful at erging sessions.  This was easy enough, as I tend to get a bit high on endorphins when exercising, and can be quite silly.  Our almost all-graduate boat (only Daisy, our cox, was an undergrad) was quite international: we had an Aussie, a New Zealander, two Germans, a Dutch girl, a Hungarian, two Brits, and an American.  We made for a diverse and fantastically interesting group, and as we saw each other so very frequently, it was a good thing we all really liked one another.  (I say this as if we don't anymore, but those of us who are still around this summer are still rowing together as often as possible, and we are getting together for dinner this Wednesday!)  With such good friends to keep me company, and some amazing music courtesy of Anne (including the Rocky theme, just for me!), five weeks of boot camp turned into a fun, healthy, sociable good time.  We worked very hard, but we encouraged each other, and learned to move as a unit.  We were even scouted and later headhunted for the Blues, which was a huge compliment--though when one coach called from the banks to ask us if we would trial for the lightweights, I was so surprised that I answered, "do we LOOK like lightweights??"  I guess we had all lost some weight because of the amount of training, but I would say that at least half of us would have quite a bit more to lose before we could be considered lightweights. (I'd need to drop almost twenty kilos, myself!)  And one of the best things about training that hard was that we could eat pretty much anything we wanted to eat--we went to breakfast in hall after almost every morning practice, and all had quite hearty helpings of cereal, eggs, sausage, bacon, stewed tomato, and toast, followed later in the day by anything from pizza or pasta to brownies and ice cream.  Once Bodo even took us all to G&D's to celebrate a particularly good practice, hehe.  Training would have been much less fun if we were restricting our diets, too.

In addition to rowing, I was still singing with the Oxford University Student Chorus.  We were having the concert much earlier this term, during Fifth Week (which, incidentally, was also the week of Summer Eights), so we had a much smaller repertoire and worked much more quickly to learn it.  We were also auditioning new choir directors, as Theo was stepping down after completing his year.  This was a fun process, as we got to observe many different styles and learned a bit more about what effects different leaders could have on a choir's sound.  We were performing Five Negro Spirituals, A Serenade to Music, and a song called Sleep, which was originally composed for Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," but had to be changed when the rights couldn't be secured.  The concert was much smaller in scope, held in a church instead of a theatre, and the proceeds were going to charity, so there was less pressure on this one, but it was still fun to perform, and I was complimented by the conductor yet again and encouraged to pursue singing in some capacity in the future.

Though Oxford is generally a well-insulated bubble, and I tend to move through life contentedly oblivious to the happenings in the rest of the world, I did learn in early May that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.  I had mixed feelings about it, as I was glad of the fact, but nervous about retaliation.  I was disgusted by the many comment-thread arguments ignited on Facebook, and refrained from joining any of them.  I also chose not to make any public declarations about it, as I didn't think I or the event merited comment.  I did, however, wear my American flag bandana while rowing that week.

I did a lot of baking in early May, largely as a result of having bought too much milk and needing to use it up. I made cheese muffins, peanut butter cookies, and sour milk biscuits, to name a few.  I also had some fun experimenting with a mini chocolate biscuit cake, thanks to Prince William, and with some savouries like asparagus soup and homemade parsnip-potato gnocchi.  I remembered to send my Mum a gardenia for Mother's Day, and I remembered to send my advisor a very rough outline of a thesis by our agreed deadline.  She really liked the idea, which was good, as it was the first one I had liked, too, and it was about time I had settled on something!  I had said I would be taking a look at Donne's own idea of his literary fame, and whether it was important to him or not.  This is an ongoing debate, so I didn't purport to have an answer, but I thought that by looking closely at some of his writings I could demonstrate a sort of recurring strain that suggested his own feelings.  That's about as far as I had gotten at that point, but it was a direction, and it gave a focus to my research.

In the meantime, I had also received word from the Relaxing Stories people that I had been selected as one of the finalists in their short story competition, which was being judged by Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass.  I was featured on their Facebook page, and my story was later released in their iPhone app. I was not the ultimate winner, but I was pleased to be recognised in that way.

I guess I will stop there for now, as I am considering taking my new bike (FreeCycle, I love you!) up to the Wolvercote Farmer's Market, where I hear there is a cycle workshop where I can get a cheap tune-up.  Hope everyone is having a lovely day, and hopefully you'll hear more from me soon!

Master? Mistress? Mastress?

Dissertation hand-in euphoria

I can't believe it's the end of June!  Once again, where did the time go?  Oh, right, it went down the dissertation drain with everything else, hehe.  So glad that's over!

Now that I am a Master (well, I guess it is not official until they pass me...I'll let you know in a couple of weeks), it would appear that a serious retro-blogging is in order, as I've only brought us through Easter, and that was ages ago.  I now have a job with an hour-long bus commute, so I will be using that time to write posts, and hopefully will get us all caught up within a few days.  I would say more about the dissertation and the job, but in true book-lover fashion, I rather want you to read the story in chronological order!

I suppose the next exciting thing to happen after Easter was the Royal Wedding of His Royal Highness, Prince William of Wales to Miss Catherine Middleton, which I'm certain I don't need to describe, as it was televised and talked about endlessly, hehe.  I had the opportunity to watch it on the big screen at the Phoenix Theatre in Jericho, as my classmate, Rachel, had some free tickets.  I donned a pretty dress and my blue bonnet, packed some cherry Bakewell tarts and biscuits in my purse, got a take-away tea, and joined Rachel and Liz at the theatre at 9:45 a.m.  Anne came later, and brought us some blueberries and chocolate, so we had quite a little feast! The theatre was mostly full of older ladies, and everyone was excited to coo over the dresses and hats and to comment on the music and decor. We watched 

The honeymoon suite

Top hat and tails

everything leading up to the wedding, the whole ceremony, and the journey back--of course we were waiting for the balcony kiss!--so we were there until about 1:30, after which we walked over to Anne's college, Corpus Christi, to see the tortoise wedding.  That's right.  Tortoises.  Getting married!  Apparently Oldham and Bishop Foxe, after having known each other for a very long time, had finally decided to tie the knot.  It was an elaborate affair, with bunting and top hats and important speeches, not to mention cupcakes and scones for everyone (and strawberries for the newlyweds).  We had eaten our fill of sweets at the theatre, so we decided after the ceremony to go grab some sandwiches at Taylor's and eat on Trinity College's lovely lawns.  We had some delightful chatter that only included a little bit of dissertation talk, and we parted ways in the mid-afternoon quite happily.

The next day I was rowing in the Oxford City Bumps Races, and because I was the stroke of the boat, I had to go to the coxes meeting at 8:30 a.m.  That would have been fine, except that it was held at the City of Oxford boathouse, which is a good 45-minute walk from Bear Lane.  I borrowed Sophie's bike to get there faster, but the tires were really flat, so it almost ended up being more effort than it was worth.  The day of racing was lots of fun, though.  It was my first time stroking a race, and we were in a four that we had thrown together the day before, so I rather expected a rough ride.  We raced five times, and each time it took us a bit longer to bump the crew in front of us...but we did bump them all!  Our prize for this feat?  A mini-blade that looks rather like an oversized pencil, hehe.  But it's a blade, nonetheless, and it was free, as opposed to the £200 blades we are ordering now, from our victory at Torpids.

Ignore the mannequin head on a stick...

 This particular weekend was rubbish for getting work done on my dissertation, because the next day was May Morning, which is the occasion for one of those wonderful and weird Oxford traditions that are part of the charm of this place.  Always one to participate in such affairs, I duly arose at five o'clock in the morning and made my way down High Street, which had been specially barricaded off for this event, toward Magdalen College, where crowds were already gathering to hear their famous boys' choir (from Magdalen College School, across the way) greet the sun from atop the bell tower.  They were so cute in their little robes, peeking through the parapets and waving at the people down below!  It must have been cold up there; it was certainly chilly in the street.  They sang some lovely madrigals (including "My Bonny Lass She Smileth," which made me smileth, as I had sung it last year while teaching at Doane).  The sunrise cooperated perfectly, starting with a cool blue sky and warming into a pink and gold glow.  It all would have been extremely peaceful and beautiful, were it not for the unfortunate presence of hundreds of drunken idiots, many of them Oxford students, who had stayed out all night (many clubs and even restaurants had extended their hours to accommodate the tradition), rather than go to bed and get up early. I had never seen so many people out and about at that hour, and many were in quite dressy clothing, but had that sort of bleary, bedraggled, morning-after look.  I didn't like it at all; I am an early riser in general, and the mornings are my quiet time, my alone time, and here I was squashed up in a crowd of sloshed and smelly  students. I shouldn't 

I love the font: safety is FUN!

complain too much; I did still manage to find the performance quite moving, and there was a general hush while the singing was going on.  Apparently, it is common for students to jump off of Magdalen Bridge after the singing, which the police heavily discourage, but this year there had been so little rain in the days leading up to it that there was almost no water to jump into, and thankfully common sense prevailed with all who had been intending to take the plunge.  After it was all over, I made my way back to the MCR, where there was a warm croissant and pain-au-chocolat breakfast waiting, plus orange juice and champagne, and tea and coffee.

I gratefully partook of the repast (though no champagne for me--never did care for the bubbles), as I had an erg test later that morning, and needed some energy.  3:47 for a 1K is not my best, but considering how worn out I was from the previous day, and how little sleep I had had, I was happy with it.  And later that day...I got the email announcing that I would be the stroke of the W1 for Summer Eights.  Honestly, I have no idea how I managed to produce a dissertation amidst all of my other commitments.

Coming soon...May and June.  Also known as, "That Famous, Published Critic Totally Stole My Idea." Cheers for now, everyone!

Of Picnics and Parks

And suddenly it was the end of Fourth Week.  Who knew time could move so quickly?  Everyone says that Oxford has its own time zone, and the Master Timekeeper appears to speed it up and slow it down with capricious abandon.  Depending on which set of bells you and your tutors follow, you can be simultaneously five minutes late and three minutes early for a class or lecture!  Some people respond to this by being perpetually early to everything, while others consider their tardiness forgiven, even when it is more than a matter of minutes.  I wonder how the examiners deal with it?


Of course, examinations have begun, so any time I have left the house lately I have found myself wading through crowds of students in full sub fusc, all wearing carnations whose colours signify how far into exams they are (white for the first day, pink thereafter, red for the last one).  I am quite pleased to hear from various sources that recent governmental attempts to abolish the sub fusc tradition (citing it as a sign of outdated elitism) have been repeatedly met with opposition from the students, who always vote in favour of maintaining the dress code.  They have earned their elitism, dash-it-all!   And they look so dapper and respectable, especially the boys.  The girls apparently have a bit more leeway, and I have seen some pretty poor excuses for "skirts" walking down the street--thank goodness the gowns are generally long enough to cover their bums.  Though I have heard one or two people complain about having to dress up for exams, it is one of those traditions I really love, and I (almost) wish I had exams, myself, so that I might participate in it.


But then, I have my dissertation, which is consuming enough of my time and energy as it is.  Earlier in the term I tried as often as I could to do reading and research outside, but lately I have been more or less locked in my room when not rowing.  I suppose being outside was more distracting than anything else, but the weather had been so very beautiful!  One day toward the end of April (I think it was Good Friday) I was sitting on my picnic blanket in Christ Church meadows, and this lovely family came and sat next to me.  It began as a mum and dad and their three little blonde girls (Holly, the eldest, 'Tilda, who had major middle-child syndrome, and a little chubby one who looked like a Cabbage Patch doll, whose name I could never catch), eating some fruit (they really loved melon) and telling jokes, all beginning with "Why did Little Red Riding Hood..." and having very silly punch lines.  Sometimes they would substitute "poo" for random words, which made me wince with childhood memories of cracking up at "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells."  They kept saying, "I've got one, I've got one!"  Daddy finally tired of this and told them to stop because they had worn out the joke...so they moved on to knock knock jokes!  Children are so wonderfully easy to entertain sometimes--though as a friend once warned me, that means that if you do something with them once, you have to be prepared to do it a hundred times or more.  After a trip to the loo with Mummy (during which Daddy got some peace in which to read and sunbathe a bit, though we were all mostly under the trees) they were joined by another woman with her two girls (Claudia and "Anna-bana") and baby boy (Harris).

The older two girls took a walk, and as they left I could hear Claudia complaining that there was nothing to DO here, and other parks were so much better.  Holly, who had been fine before, chimed in, "I know! There's no climbing frames or water slides or anything! Just trees. And all we do it sit."  I had to suppress many a giggle, as I knew they would eventually find something to interest them.  When they came back, all the girls began to play a game that the dad called Rocky, the mum called "Mother's-something," and which more or less reminded me of Red Light-Green Light, where one stood facing a tree and the others moved forward and when she turned around they had to freeze like statues (which they adorably took literally and froze with one arm up in the air like a statue).  After this they played "What time is it, Mr. Wolf?" which was similar, except the wolf had to call out a time and they could take that many steps...but then when they got really close the wolf would say "DINNER TIME!" and chase them all over.  This was highly amusing to me, even when the little one got knocked over and started crying, or when Mathilda decided she wasn't playing anymore and sat down on the ground in a sulk (she did that frequently, whenever things weren't going her way or she wasn't getting enough attention).  The dad suggested they play hide-and-seek for a while, but that, too, ended in someone getting pouty, so then they all kicked a ball around for a while.  That stopped when the ball hit the baby in the face--though he hardly seemed to notice or care!  What a good little fellow; he was content to belly-squirm his way around the blanket and occasionally grab at the strawberries and shove them into his mouth.  Later, they held a gymnastics competition with Daddy as the judge, which had them doing headstands and handstands and cartwheels and roly-polys (somersaults) which I thought ingeniously designed to tire them out.  And then, in another brilliant move, they played a game called Sleeping Lions, in which they all had to pretend to be asleep!  Of course, Daddy came to "check" that the lions were asleep, and tickled them into hysterics.  It was so much fun to watch them, I obviously got very little reading done.  When they left they said goodbye, and I thanked them for entertaining me.



Actually, that weekend was pretty work-free all around, as there was Easter baking to do and an Easter picnic to attend!  My classmate Rachel was having people over for an Easter brunch, so I baked a honey-vanilla pound cake, which was a huge hit.  Rachel had made two types of quiche and a homemade bread and a fruit tart, and we got to wear pretty Easter dresses and sit outside in the glorious sunshine.  I also got to wear my bonnet, which Daddy had bought for me at the open market, and which I had been just dying to find an excuse to wear!  It was a lovely morning, and afterward Rachel came back to help me bake some more.


That morning I had made, for the first time all by myself, a batch of my grandmother's taralle (variously spelled toralli), which are these sort of fish-shaped (or cancer-ribbon-shaped) biscuits.  We made three more batches together in a quite toasty kitchen, and then Rachel went home with some in a baggie as her reward.  Later that night I video-chatted with my family while they ate Easter dinner, and it was a very happy holiday indeed.


Sigh, I may have to pause here, as I allowed myself only 30 minutes' break from dissertation work for this post, and it has been 45.  I look forward to writing about the City Bumps races, the Royal Wedding fun, and May morning festivities, which are only part of what I did at the start of this term.  Fifth week is not likely to afford me much blogging time, as the concert is on Monday and then Summer Eights racing goes Wednesday through Saturday...but I will try!

Banyoles and Beyond!

Because it is now Second Week of Trinity term, and I have not managed to catch up the blog yet, I thought I would do a sort of rush-job covering only the major highlights of April.  The first week is easy enough, because from the 3rd to the 9th I was in Banyoles, Spain (near the French border, about 90 mins outside of Barcelona by bus) with the rowing club at a training camp.  We stayed at a hostel next to a former Olympics course on a gorgeous natural lake, in a valley overlooked by mountains.  We had lovely weather for the entire week, and the water the natural lake was so clear, you could see straight to the bottom (though there were bits of green algae floating here and there, but rather beautifully, like semi-clear gelatinous bulbs. I even touched one once, just to see if it felt like a jelly fish. It did.).  The mountains surrounding the lake were covered in trees, and there were two in the distance that were snow-capped.


The hostel was nicer than most: the room and bunk beds were comfortable, and there was a pretty little balcony from which we could see part of the lake--and there were two sheep with BELLS around their necks that grazed around in the back yard and stared at us when we were eating breakfast, as well as a few roosters, one of which liked to crow at ten second intervals from 5 a.m. till 7 a.m...which was pretty annoying.  I was rooming with my boatmates, Sophie, Anne, and Kirsten, and we had a great time chatting and giggling and singing songs and watching "Mama Mia" and "Juno" and about three-quarters of "Seventeen Again."  (I had never seen any of these films before.  They were all better than I had expected!)


When we weren't being silly girls, we were rowing 2-3 outings per day, and doing core exercises and watching video of ourselves to improve our strokes.  Oh, and eating: they fed us at least two platefuls of food at every meal, and we supplemented with stores of snacks in our rooms and occasional ice creams from the café by the lake.  And of course, there was the hand taping... 


With the sudden change to warm temperatures, plus increased humidity and harder rowing, plus alternating between wooden and plastic oar handles, everyone formed serious blisters, even after just the first day.  So each morning we would go through a complex ritual of cleaning, drying, bandaging, and taping these holes in our hands in the misguided hope that extra layers between our skin and the handle would somehow protect them.  But sweat and friction generally rendered our efforts futile, and we just learned to row through the pain. Because we are just that hard core.  Or something.  On the last day our practice was cut short by a fire going on in a nearby town.  We were told to clear the lake because the water planes would be coming through to pick up water.  Of course, as we couldn't row, we all decided to go swimming (close to the docks, so not near the planes).  It was a wonderful end to a long, hard week.


Because there was really no opportunity to work on my dissertation while I was at the rowing camp, I knew I had to get into work mode when I came home.  I still had no idea what my actual thesis would be, so I decided to begin by reading more or less the entire works of John Donne.  The sun shone in Oxford for weeks after I got back, and as this was so very uncharacteristic of the place I took advantage of it by doing as much dissertation reading as possible outside, on a picnic blanket (a.k.a. an old white sheet that had been sitting in the laundry room since September and has now been appropriated by me) in Christ Church Meadows.  This served the twofold purpose of getting me out of my room and getting me away from the internet, which is my favourite distraction.  (For example, right now I ought to be in bed, fast asleep, as it is nearly midnight and I have been up since six, but I am not only blogging and occasionally checking emails, but I am also watching a clip of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle on BBC iPlayer.  Now that's multitasking.)


I have now finished my preliminary reading, and am moving on to criticism this week.  I even have a thesis...sort of!  (I'll share it when it is a bit more clear.)  There were not any more events of note going on until Easter, which brings us officially into Trinity Term, so I will cover that in another post, as it is definitely bed time.  Ciao for now, folks!

Retro-Blog #5: A Visit From Mum and Dad, Part II

The morning after our Quod dinner my parents came with me to Santander, where I was FINALLY able to close my account (after dealing with this all year, as those of you who have been following along will remember).  Then we went to Costa Coffee on Queen Street for some breakfast.  My parents had discovered Costa Coffee at the airport, and since it is our last name, they were tickled by it.  Daddy especially enjoyed stealing the napkins with our name on them!  From there we walked over to the Bodleian, and I tried to take them into the Shelley exhibit, but apparently they had closed it that very day.  The lady at the desk said, "well, it has been open for four months!"  I told her that I had been there, but I wanted to show my parents.  Showing some sympathy, she said that if I had my Bod card I could show them the Divinity School, so I did that instead.  The Divinity School is most famous for its elaborate ceiling--and for having been used as the infirmary in the first Harry Potter film.  The back room of it (which is not open to the general public) is the Convocation House, used to host Charles I's parliament when he stayed there during the English Civil war.  It was also the room where I had my first swearing-in as a user of the Bodleian Library, back in the summer of 2008.  Inside, the Divinity School feels sort of light and airy, as the huge windows and high ceiling give the impression of a church.  You can see Thomas Bodley's private chest on display, with its intricate system of locks, and you can put donations into it if you wish.  Daddy enjoyed reading the info signs and looking up at the magnificent ceiling--and talking to a random man from New Jersey who happened to be in there, and who was involved in township zoning and knew a lot of people my father knew.  They chatted for a long time, and Mom and I talked to the man's wife, who said they were on their way to Blenheim palace, her third visit there, and she kept gushing about how we had to go, as it was just so amazing, and had we been to this castle or that garden or this town and blah, blah, blah.  After a much longer time in the School than we meant to stay, we finally escaped into the gift shop, and browsed for a bit just to make sure we would not bump into them again on our way out!


Next we headed toward the  English Faculty Library, so I could return some books from the paper-writing adventure, and while there I showed them the silliness of the structure (like an Escher drawing, with staircases going up and down and no single path to walk across the building).  Then we went through the beautiful Holywell Cemetery, and Mom and I had a fun time (though it took ages) searching for Walter Pater's grave, which I remembered as a round stone, but ended up being a cross.  We saw a really cool red and black quail-type creature in there, and got some photos of him on mom's camera.

Then we walked back into town on our way to Christ Church park, and as we were passing by the Golden Cross I suggested we lunch at Pizza Express, so we did that, which was lovely.  Daddy enjoyed seeing the back rooms, where they have wall paintings preserved from the 1500s.  They are actually quite ugly, but interesting as remnants of the past.  After a leisurely lunch, we took a walk through Christ Church meadow, waving at the cows, on our way to Boathouse Island.  I got to show them inside Lincoln's boathouse because someone had unlocked it to take a boat out, so they got to see the blades hanging on the wall, and are now convinced I should get one, hehe.  We took the twisty path back, and saw punters and paddle-boaters and kayakers and all sorts of people walking, and we took some photos of each other in front of trees and fields.  We came out by the Botanic Gardens, and I had to explain to Daddy for the umpteenth time that Magdalen Tower is NOT a church.  Then we walked over to Shepard and Woodward so he could buy coloured handkerchiefs, which he has had trouble locating in the States.  After a short rest, we went to dinner at the Turf, which was much less crowded on a Monday night, and made plans to go to Woodstock the next day.


Of course, we had a late start the next morning (well, they did; I was rowing at 6:30 a.m.!) and so we had brunch at Brown's Cafe in the covered market--which is much more like a diner than the fancy Brown's Restaurant we went to after church on Sunday, but is wonderfully inexpensive and simple and delicious.  Stopping by Lincoln to use the loos, I took my parents into the chapel and dining hall so they could enjoy them, and one of my favourite servers, Sue, asked if they wanted to come for lunch one day.  They would have to eat in the Buttery, since the Hall was being used for a conference, but it would be a nice way for them to experience what meals are like.  She told me to go ask Richard, who was in his tiny office just off the kitchens, and he said it would probably be possible to fit us in the next day--and then he offered us a tour of the kitchens!  I had never been into them, so we all wandered down, and were shown what Richard says is one of the oldest still-functioning kitchens in England, from the 1400s.  There were enormous copper pots--he let me heft one of the small ones, and it nearly took my arm off!--and alcoves for storage and an old wood-burning oven, plus a number of modern upgrades to make it function.  Richard was very proud of it, and it was adorable to see him show it off.  He is hoping to get the head chef job when Chef Jim retires this year, and I think he deserves it, though it is required by law that they advertise the position rather than just promoting him, so there is a chance he won't.  Here's hoping for him!

We spent the rest of the day in Woodstock at Blenheim Palace, which you may have seen as Elsinore in the Kenneth Branagh film version of Hamlet.  It is also famous for being the birthplace of Winston Churchill, and is still home to the 11th Duke and Duchess of Marlborough.  The gardens were designed by Capability Brown, and are definitely a highlight. (We had a lot of fun imitating the statues there!)  The state rooms you can see on the tour inside are just what you would expect from a palace, with rich furnishings, gilded ceilings, and lots of paintings and tapestries depicting former residents.  On the second floor they have an exhibit called 'Blenheim Palace: The Untold Story," which was a really strange and semi-creepy animatronic affair with robots and video clips and a ghost as your host.  It walks you through the history of the palace, from its construction as a victory memorial given by Queen Anne to the First Duke, to its present residents, and a video of the current Duke concludes the presentation, which spits you out into the gift shop.  It felt really discordant with the stateliness of the rest of the house, and I really wished they had thought of a more respectable way to fundraise--as, like most stately mansions, the palace is outrageously expensive to maintain.  We had tea in the Water Terrace Café, and then explored the terraces for a bit before returning to Oxford.  We had dinner at the Mitre, and then fell, exhausted, into bed.

The next day was grey--surprisingly the only grey day while my parents were here!--and we spent it largely in the Ashmolean Museum, which I had never visited.  I would like to go back, as there is so much I did not see.  Daddy, of course, liked the Roman stuff best; I swear he only tolerates England because it was once part of the Roman Empire!  Mom liked the china room, and had me take a photo of her in it.  I liked looking at the different types of jewelry worn in different eras and cultures, and hoped to find some nice replicas in the gift shop, but was disappointed.  We had a cream tea in the café there (my parents learned to love teatime!) and did a little shopping before an afternoon nap.  Later we dined at Quod again, because my parents like to reward good service with repeated patronage, and because it is a nice place.  We had a different server this time--a girl whose name I forget--but Joe came over to say hello, and Will sent us a minty creation from the bar.


Then suddenly it was my parents' last full day in Oxford, and they planned to use it to purchase souvenirs for themselves and my siblings back home.  We began the day at the Grand Café, known as the first coffee house in England (according to Samuel Pepys' Diary), on High Street, and then went next door into an antiques store that despite having a small storefront seemed to go on and on in room after room of treasures.  We spent at least an hour there, though we didn't eventually purchase anything, and then, because it was Thursday, I took my parents to the open market at Gloucester Green.  Such a great place!  Vendors selling everything from housewares and furniture to clothing and jewelry to books and toys, most of it used and/or very old, but generally of better workmanship than modern stuff, and all at very reasonable prices.  I got a lovely 50's era turquoise hat made of felt ribbon, covered with a brown netting, for £5.  While we were browsing, Daddy got a headache, so Mom and I sent him to Café Nero to get a drink and get out of the sun while we wandered the market.  He made friends with a large family sitting nearby, so he was happy to be left there. After the market we went into Ecco, where Dad bought me some comfortable shoes to wear with skirts and dresses.  He had been trying to buy me things all week, and this was the only expensive item that I needed and would never have bought for myself, so it was wonderful all around.

Come on, Dover...come on...

We were just around the corner from Costa Coffee, so we went there again for some afternoon refreshment--and the girl at the counter, who had now seen my parents four times and had gotten to know them, gave them her email address!  So cute.  Then we went over to Marks and Spencer's, where Mom and I had way more fun than two grown women should trying on hats and fascinators, and later we did the same in Debenham's.  I wanted to stay and try on all the pretty dresses, but we really weren't there to shop for me.  We stopped downstairs in the fragrance department to try to get Dad's Pi spray deodorant, but they didn't carry it (which is contrary to what they told me at Christmastime, which was that they did carry it but were out of it at the moment), and then my parents spent some time sifting through perfumed and colognes.  This got a bit overwhelming for me, so I moved away to a place where I could breathe comfortably till they were finished!  They came away from the register with some fun free samples, most of which they gave to me, so now I have perfumes for those rare occasions when I want some, hehe.

  That night we had dinner at the Chequer's, a pub which is located down an alleyway off of High Street.  In my ongoing attempt to drink things that look like beer but aren't, I tried a pear cider, which I greatly enjoyed and will have again (can't seem to remember the name of it, though...).


We met the next morning for brunch at The High Table...and then learned that they don't do brunch, so we wandered a bit looking for a new place to eat.  Near the Westgate Centre, Dad saw a sign for a 99p brunch, in a department store!  We decided we had to learn what that was all about, and went in.  Up two floors there was a cafeteria-style dining area, and if you bought a hot drink you really could get 5 breakfast items for 99p.  This resulted in an excellent breakfast of eggs, hash browns, mushrooms, bubble & squeak (look it up if you don't know!), and sausage, plus a hot tea.  We even got a lovely corner-window seat that overlooked the square, and a cute little boy at the table next to us amused us by giggling at the pigeons landing on the ledge.  Daddy was quite pleased with himself, and Mum and I were very happily fed.  We moved on from there to one of the Oxford University shops, where we got two shirts each for my sisters, Christina and Corinne (and a maroon sweatshirt for me, just in time for the nice weather, hehe! But sweatshirts are infinitely useful, and this one is a large, so it fits nice and loosely over anything).  I think they had already bought shirts for themselves earlier in the week, when I was at the concert, and I don't know if they got something for my brother, but I was sending them home with his belated birthday card and gift of (mostly) woolen socks, which he had requested, so hopefully he will be pleased with that.

It was almost checkout time by then, so we went back to the hotel to finish packing them up, and then I accompanied them to the bus stop and kissed them goodbye.  It had been a very full trip, and I think everyone was a little tired, but it had been so much fun--a holiday for all of us, and a chance to see what this little town has to offer.  Hopefully they will come back to Oxford some day, but at least now they more fully understand why I love it here--as my mother said, "Now I know why she may never come back home!"


As soon as their bus pulled away, I went back to the print shop to do the collating and binding of the book we had made, and then went back home to begin packing, myself, as I had only one day before the Lincoln College Boat Club left for its Spring Rowing Camp in Banyoles, Spain!

Retro-Blog #4: A Visit From Mum and Dad, Part I

On the night of C-essay submission I met with my M.St. strand-mates for celebratory dinner at Zizzi on George Street, a colourful, relaxed Italian restaurant that had a giant purple wood-burning oven in the back. I ordered an antipasto siciliano (roasted peppers, aubergine, artichoke, olives, mozzarella di buffalo and two chewy bread sticks) and a small bowl of gnocchi gorgonzola (both appetizers, as my meal), and followed it with a torta cioccolato, which had hazelnuts in the crust and an amaretto mascarpone on top. Uh-mazing. And, thanks to Seirian, who had printed a discount coupon, it was all for about £13 each. We had a lot of fun discussions, ranging from literature ("prose before hoes") to politics ("Obama's a puppet, but he's usually pretty good at hiding the strings") to film and dramatic performances ("the old knife-in-the-vag thing") to clothing ("The lady who runs the Unicorn makes up prices on the spot, and they're entirely random. She's called Eva." "Like in WALL-E???") to racism ("My nan is afraid to say 'coloured' in public, so she replaces it with 'darkies'--as if that's a more acceptable term!") to unusual jobs ("I think I would make a great personal escort") to inappropriate sexual activities ("I popped into the loo in there [the Four Candles] last week, and there were two people shagging in the next stall.") to past times ("Those lovely Victorian houses used to be where the dons kept their mistresses." "I was so born in the wrong era...I would have made a great don's mistress!"). To protect the innocent I won't reveal who said what, but in all it was a delightful way to detox from paper writing.

The next day, my wonderful parents arrived for a week-long visit. They got off the bus, and I immediately made them walk across the city to their hotel with all their luggage, which in retrospect wasn't very thoughtful of me, but it was only 15 mins away, and I am so used to walking everywhere! Once they had settled in, we went over to the New Bodleian print workshop, where they got to experience type-dissing, hand-pressing, and label making. They also got to meet Paul Nash, whom they adored, as I do. After that I showed them around Lincoln--though for some reason the chapel and hall were locked, so we planned to go back another time--and then took them to my flat, where they met Jackie. We had an early dinner in the Bear, because Daddy looked like he was about to pass out and he wanted to eat and go to bed early (as you can probably tell from the photo!). He got the lamb special, Mom got fish & chips, and I had a mushroom and goat cheese burger, which was very messy, but tasty. Mommy and I had Pimm's, too,

which I recommended because I knew they weren't going to make her an appletini, hehe. She liked it! Then I took them back to their hotel, where they gave me a bag of goodies from home: TWO packages of chocolate chips, and Peanut Butter M&Ms (!), plus a few random personal items I had requested from my room. I didn't stay long, because they were tired and I had to prepare for the Editing Donne conference I was attending the next day--my first Oxford conference! It was run by Peter McCullough and Sebastiaan Verweij, both of whom I have worked with (read: pestered with emails or in person) before, and I got to meet some important Donne critics like Janel Mueller, who was sitting next to me for most of the day, and Kattrin Ettinhuber and David Colclough. It was wonderfully informative, and I got some good suggestions for my dissertation. I met my parents for dinner after the conference. They had had a nice day of wandering and sight-seeing and shopping and people-watching (my mother thinks the short-shorts-with-tights trend is ridiculous, as I do!), and we tried to go to the Turf, because some shopkeeper had recommended it to them, but it was really crowded, so we went around to the King's Arms instead. I got a venison burger, Mommy got the goat's cheese and spinach tart, and Daddy just HAD to try the "faggots," which turned out to be lamb meatballs in a dark sauce. Such odd names the British have for relatively normal things...

We decided to go to church the next morning at the Catholic Oratory, where they had Latin mass at 8 a.m., and regular parish mass at 9:30. Daddy always prefers Latin, but they didn't think they would get up in time (they were still a little jet-lagged), so he was extra excited when they had the Latin prayerbook for him to follow along with even though the mass was in English. He wore his three-piece suit all day (his "uniform," as Mom calls it; and truly, I can hardly remember a day of my youth when he was not wearing one), even though the front desk had forgotten their wake-up call, and they got up only an hour before we were supposed to leave (this is not enough time for either of them, especially Daddy, who takes great care with his appearance). Mom had thrown on clothes really quickly, but she decided in the cab (the cab driver, by the way, was a really sweet and amusing Albanian guy who was talking about the crazy driving rules in this town, and joked that driving in Oxford with your wife in the car was a good way to cause marital problems!) that her shirt was too low-cut for church, and it was really funny when the priest got up in the pulpit to give the homily, because we were sitting right below it, and she was mortified to think that he could see down her shirt. Then when Daddy went up with me to take communion, he wasn't sure if they dispensed it on the tongue here, as in most churches, because he saw everyone holding out their hands, so he held out both hands (usually you put the left on top of the right, so you receive in the left and then use your right to put it in your mouth). The priest got all confused, and said, "which hand?" and Daddy didn't know what he meant, so the priest finally just gave it to him, but he looked uncomfortable, and they were both so discombobulated that Daddy forgot to say "Amen," and instead said, "What? What did I do wrong?" Poor thing! I could hardly stop myself from giggling; it was highly entertaining.

After church we had a lovely breakfast at Brown's, where both mom and dad were very pleased with the excellent tea, which they got to pour through strainers and enjoy with lumps of brown sugar. The plan had been to walk across to the parks after that, but it was still a bit chilly and Mom and I weren't dressed warmly enough, so we went over to the Natural History Museum. Outside there was an exhibit on EDIBLE INSECTS. There was a banquet set for some food critics and other important people, and they were selling crispy crickets and chocolate-covered ants...I took photos, but didn't taste! Then we went inside, and my parents became children again while looking at all the animals and skeletons with excitement and curiosity. They haven't been to museums like that since their own children were very little. I think they had more fun there than in the Pitt-Rivers, my favourite museum, which we also visited--though Daddy really liked the weapons on the top floor.

It was quarter to three by the time we left there, so we walked back toward town thinking we would have high tea somewhere, but then I decided I wanted to take them to the G&D's on St. Aldate's, so we had ice cream sundaes instead! (Yes, I brought my Daddy in his three-piece suit into G&D's, hehe.) It's certainly not an every-day thing to do, but they were on holiday, and really, so was I. I got a banana split with pistachio and chocolate ice cream. Daddy got one, too, but with banana and crème anglaise, and Mom had a brownie sundae with banana ice cream. They wanted to walk after that, so I tried to take them into Christ Church meadow, but we got about twelve steps in and Dad complained that his nice shoes were getting covered with dirt, so we left by the Merton Street gate, saying we'd come back when he was in trainers. They had these huge white pavilion tents erected all along the back wall, and more set up in the garden, which I later learned were for the Oxford Literary Festival, but that was happening the week after they left.

We walked up to High Street and crossed over to St. Mary's Church and paid to climb up to the top--but we did NOT read the teeny-tiny sign that warns you not to go if you have claustrophobia! Mommy and I were both hyperventilating and crying by the time we got out of that extremely narrow spiral staircase...and out onto the extremely narrow (and crowded!) balcony. Neither Daddy nor I had known Mommy was claustrophobic, too--I guess that is where I get it. She said she felt like hurling herself from the top, or like staying up there forever rather than going back down that same way. But there really is no choice, and after we had spent some time taking photos and deep breaths, and calming down, we steeled ourselves for the descent. I counted the steps to give myself something to focus on...there are fifty from the top to the first landing. I didn't count after that, because the lower staircases were much wider and more comfortable. We did mention to the girls at the desk that they might want to make the warning notice more clear and obvious!

Dinner that night at Quod on High Street was delicious, and the service fantastic--best I've ever had in Oxford. Not only are there real English people working there (not Russians or Romanians or any other background that one finds often in the service industry, trying to learn English), but they are charming, friendly, knowledgeable, and eager to please. The bartender, Will, actually went into the kitchen and got some apples and tried his hardest to make my mother an appletini. He also helped me settle on a drink by asking what flavours I did and didn't like, and he came up with something a lot like an amaretto sour that was quite tasty. Our server, Joe, is an aspiring screenwriter (under the awesome pirate name J.P. Blackbond (!!) because Joe O'Connor is too common a name) and actor who did a law degree at Keble

(he knew Diane Purkiss) and then decided he hated lawyers, hehe. He was very enthusiastic about the food, and could accurately describe everything we asked him about. I had a goat-cheese-and-spinach risotto starter, then duck confit with artichoke mash and greens, followed by treacle tart (which was very different from the one I remembered having in Devon, but still tasty). We also had some great table-neighbors, an older couple from Yorkshire who were on their way to the Isle of Wight. They chatted with us quite pleasantly, and encouraged my parents to go explore the world, as they had done (the woman had recently gone to Peru with her daughter to take a textile class, for an example!). It was a really pleasant night, and everyone was very happy.