northern lights

This Blog Has Moved!

2008-08-01T18:54:00.003+01:00

I got annoyed that my blog title moved and wouldn't go back where it belongs. So from now on you'll find me here! I'm still working on importing links and that sort of thing. Hope to see you over there...

(And yes it's a bit sad to say goodbye to all the nice dots.)

Summer Baking, or: Why Sponge Rolls Make Me Happy

2008-07-30T13:59:00.009+01:00

One of the things I miss about Adelaide is not being able to make cakes for my friends. So when we were invited to a BBQ last night, I jumped at the opportunity, smiling with glee. The cake pictured above had already lost six fat slices (I was too excited by the prospect of eating it to remember to take a photo), but you get the gist. The remaining two and a half slices didn't last for long, either.

Yes there were six of us - I didn't eat it all by myself.

Sponge rolls are one of my Grandma's specialties. She makes two different sorts: one with passion-fruit mixed with the cream, and one with strawberries and cream. Strawberries and cream in a sponge roll are amazing. There's something about the slippery texture of the strawberries contrasting with the smooth cream and the cloud-like cake... Heaven. I was immensely proud of myself when I mastered the art of making these, and I'm sure in the old Adelaide days it secured me many invitations to dinner. But M doesn't really like strawberries, so devoted girlfriend that I am, I bought raspberries instead (and what fat juicy raspberries they were). I've used raspberries before, and it was good, but not as good. I was musing on this as I carried the ingredients back along the river to our flat, and I was suddenly inspired. I would squash half the raspberries and mix them with the cream! It would be amazing!

Now, because the recipe is so simple and so short, I'm going to share it with you. There are only three ingredients:

3 eggs
1/2 cup castor sugar (normal sugar works too; you just have to beat it for longer)
1/2 cup self-raising flour

Beat the eggs and sugar with an electric hand beater until the mixture goes light, creamy and fluffy and the sugar is dissolved, in my grandma's words: 'the mixture should be quite firm in that you can make a pattern with a stream of it if you hold the beaters up'. Nowhere near as thick as you'd get with meringue, but you'll notice a definite difference in colour and consistency. Then you stir the flour in very gently with a metal spoon. Pour into a sponge roll tin lined with greased baking paper, and cook in a moderate oven (that's about 180C) for twenty minutes. (I didn't have a sponge roll tin, but used a large baking tray.)

Tip out onto a tea-towel sprinkled with sugar, and roll up while it's hot. After leaving it for a minute or so, you can unroll it to let it cool down. When it's completely cool, spread with your desired combination of whipped cream and fruit, and roll it up again!

Here it is, cooling on the tea-towel.

So why does it make me happy? They are very quick and simple to make, but you have to pay attention and do each step properly - the whipping, the folding in the flour, the baking, because the joy of these things is that they're mainly air. If you make several in a row you can experiment with oven temperatures and baking times and get them just right... And you should have seen the glossy glowy mixture of the squashed raspberries before I stirred them into the cream along with a sprinking of vanilla sugar. I tried to show them to M but he laughed and said it was more fun watching me, and that if I smiled any more my head would explode. Here it is before I rolled it up. Just for you, I uploaded this picture in full resolution, so if you click on it, you'll get the most delicious close-up of the raspberries and cream. Go on. I know you want to.

Summer

2008-07-27T09:45:00.005+01:00

Despite the earnest sentiments expressed in my last post, this week I've been wondering if I should hand in my Australian passport. It's been HOT. And I haven't been coping. Not sleeping well, feeling faint and floppy. But when I say hot, I mean 28 degrees. Nothing.

Nevertheless, we went cycling yesterday evening. The sun baked down on us and the warm air brushed our skin. It was my eighth 30k ride since arriving two weeks ago, bringing my total to 240k. I want to see how long it takes to get to 1000. M's managed one more ride than me so far, so he's at 270. We cycle to a lake. Often there's a lone duck, preening her feathers. Sometimes there are ducklings, six of them, peeping and paddling. And a woodpecker, tap-tapping above us. Once last week it was over-run with picnicking families, reminding me of the scene at the end of Cloudstreet. The other day, on the way back, I saw a tiny red squirrel, scampering across the road (made a nice change to all the squashed ones).

Anyway, yesterday was the first time I could actually keep up! Usually M passes me on a hill and that's the end of it. But this time I kept him in sight. I floated up those hills, and flew down them.

But it was hot. So when we got to the lake...

Why I'm doing this

2008-07-25T18:14:00.008+01:00

Been thinking about Australian poetry. What it means to me. Why it called out to me, and drew me to study it. Why on earth I ended up devoting several years of my life to studying Australian poetry and the Middle Ages, together. It has something to do with being out of the limelight. And something to do with feeling at home. Not sure if that makes sense. I love all kinds of literature - Dostoevsky, Keats, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, but I'd never consider doing a PhD on them. (I wrote an honours thesis in Dostoevsky but that's different - I didn't have to learn Russian for that...)

Before I did the Masters in Medieval literature in York (which I did because it sounded amazingly fun, and it was), I came up with the PhD topic that I am now getting close to finishing - to look at representations of the Middle Ages in Australian literature. It helped me get funding for my Masters, which in turn helped me get funding for the PhD. While I was doing the Masters, I wondered if I would come up with a new topic, a 'proper medieval topic', and abandon my old one. My Masters dissertation was on the Pearl-poet and fourteenth-century mystics. I loved it. Pearl is still one of my favourite poems. Anyway, I agonized over potential PhD topics for months. But I remember walking along the river one afternoon, and it all suddenly becoming clear. Australian poetry. That was it. It had to be. It lit something up inside me. It made me smile. It was as certain as the grey light on the water, winding out a path.

At various points over the past few years as I've studied Australian poetry at an English university, I've wondered what's special about it, to me. When I was tutoring on the introductory 'Reading Prose' module, I listened to lectures on Great Expectations and Mrs Dalloway (both novels I adore, especially the latter), and I suddenly realised - London's down the road for these students. It's not some mythical city on the other side of the world. 'English literature' happens here, it comes from here, here is the centre. And they probably don't even notice.

Which was probably the reason, as I got into poetry as a teenager and a young adult, that I felt especially connected to the Australian poems. Yes I loved T.S. Eliot and Hopkins and Dylan Thomas and for that matter Zbigniew Herbert, but there was something extraordinary about the fact that John Shaw Neilson wrote about lakes and trees not far from my home, and Les Murray wrote about Emus and possums 'skidding down the roof on little moonlit claws', and when Judith Wright described the 'delicate dry breasts' of a moon-glazed country seen from a train window, she spoke of a land I knew by heart.

There's also the weird pride that I come from the same place. I like it that Francis Webb was born in Adelaide, and Randolph Stow taught there. And I love it when I show someone a poem written in Australia and they are seriously impressed. I do feel proud. Like I have some strange national duty to share with the world what good stuff is going on down there.

So that's the personal baggage I'm bringing to this project (we'll have to do the 'why the Middle Ages' post another day, if anyone's interested). And it's what hums in the background as I consider rather tedious arguments about 'national traditions' and 'postcoloniality' and 'cultural autonomy'. Because with my thinking-hat on, I don't buy any of that whole-sale. Belonging is problematic in Australia, and I think 'cultural autonomy' is a myth (more on this another day, too). But - something about these poems belong to me - and I to them. And that makes me happy.

I am modelled on the sun

2008-07-22T08:27:00.006+01:00

I appear from the inner world, singular and many, I am
the animals of my tree, appointed to travel and be eaten
since animals are plants' genital extensions, I'm clothed in luscious
dung but designed to elicit yet richer, I am modelled on the sun,
dry shine shedding off mottled surface but having like it a crack seed. . .

. . . I am streamy inside, taut with sugar meats, circular,
my colours are those of the sun understood by leaf liquor cells
and cells of deep earth metal, I am dressed for eyes by the blind,
perfumed, flavoured by the mouthless, by insect-conductors who kill
and summon by turns, I'm to tell you there is a future and there are
consequences, and they are not the same, I emerge continually
from the inner world, which you can't mate with nor eat.

Les Murray, 'Stone Fruit'

I don't think anyone has imagined stone fruit as perfectly as Murray. I ate this peach, 'streamy inside, taut with sugar meats', yesterday. Two of them, in fact. I'm planning on eating more today. Peaches were always my favourite at a child, but I gave up on them years ago. They were never as I remembered - often floury, often small. But in the supermarket yesterday, I saw them, and I could tell. Sweet but bright. Its juice ran down my chin and my hands and squirted out over the wooden steps as I ate it. Liquid sunlight, all the way.

Rainy Weekend

2008-07-21T09:28:00.006+01:00

The boxes arrived on Thursday. Six weeks after I sent them. Long story.

We had to make space in the cupboards for all the stuff. Luckily it rained all weekend, which meant we had time to turn this:

into this:

and this:

Now it's Monday again, and, as always, the thesis...

Anglo-Saxon Identity?

2008-07-18T10:00:00.003+01:00

Just now I googled 'Anglo-Saxon identity', looking for a book I like but can't remember the title of, which talks about how Anglo-Saxon cultural myths of migration (coming over the sea to Britain) are encoded in the poetry, eg Exodus. I didn't find the book. The second and third top references are to another book by someone at Leeds, which I'm sure is also very good. But amid all this Old English stuff, reference no. 9 is to a statement by Howard, two and a half years ago, claiming that 'Australia's core set of values flowed from its Anglo-Saxon identity'. Eek.

Slide-show

2008-07-16T16:56:00.013+01:00

Thought I'd show you some snow photos to match fifi's. But this is summer snow! (From the week before last.) It was so thick on top of the mountains that we couldn't cross the stream to continue the hike. (Didn't trust the snow-bridge.) That's one of the glacier arms wriggling its way down into the valley.

And that's another shot of the glacier behind the stream and the snow-bridge. Underneath the snow were stepping stones, but we didn't fancy tumbling down towards the waterfall. We were staying in cabins on the valley floor, and that night we saw (and heard - it was like thunder) an avalanche of snow tumbling down and blocking one of the smaller waterfalls. The stream on the valley floor radiated cold. It stayed light all night. This is a strange and dynamic landscape. You can't imagine anything more beautiful, but neither can you quite relax.

Here we are half way up. Note my rosy cheeks - it was steep (M's still trying not to smile on camera - I think he looks very nineteenth century). You can just see the bright blue fjord in the background. We couldn't walk without pain for four days afterwards.

And that, my friends, is a farm. Yep, snuggled into the right hand side of the picture (small brown building with turf roof). Apparently they had to tether their children to stakes so they wouldn't fall down into the fjord below.

And here's the snow I promised you, on another mountain in Jotunheimen. Our shoes were pretty much like icy paddle-pools by this point. In other news, thesis introduction writing is going swimmingly. More on that next time I surface...

Last Week

2008-07-13T15:58:00.003+01:00

Last week I felt like I was five steps behind, scrambling to catch up all the way. But it was fun all the same. The Medieval Congress in Leeds was much more fun than last year because it was packed with clever Australian medievalists. ('Isn't that an oxymoron?' asked the London-born lass whose sofa I kipped on. No. And no.) There was also a whole day and a half devoted to medievalism of various times and forms, which was amazing, but I have to admit I skipped a couple on Tuesday and went to papers about medieval animals instead. According to an obscure Anglo-Saxon text, I learned during a paper on Anglo-Saxon whales in fact and fiction, at one point God became a Leviathan in order to fight the devil. Some of you might know why I think this is cool.

I also saw some lovely old friends, including Liz, who did the masters in York with me and I hadn't seen since graduation. And I cycled home in the unseasonable English rain, and got completely drenched, twice.

The paper I think went better the second time. Some interesting points were raised in the questions that will help me if I want to make anything more out of it. I wish I didn't stammer though. It wasn't that bad, but a couple of times I've given virtually flawless presentations, and I wish that would happen every time. I'm just so bored of dealing with it that I've stopped adequately preparing for it. (If I read through the paper over and over and over again before I give it it's usually smoother. Trouble with this one was I kept changing it so I didn't have a chance.) I talked about it with a couple of people from the audience afterwards, and one of them asked me if it was stage fright. No. Nothing like that. Of course giving a presentation is more stressful than having a chat to someone, but I don't get more nervous than anyone else. It's just that the slightest hint of nerves (or sometimes excitement) somehow manages to break my words into little pieces.

At school, if I ever had to give a presentation, I would dread it for weeks. It's not like that any more. I really don't mind. And it's not like people can't deal with listening to a minor stammer - I still get my point across. But - I do feel sort of raw and broken afterwards, as though I've cracked open and everyone can see inside.

Anyway, loads of people told me they liked the paper - and I don't think they were just being kind! The poems I was talking about are themselves pretty impressive, so it was fun to share them with people.

I'm back in Norway now, and looking forward to working full-pelt on my thesis tomorrow. After the conferences I feel refreshed, rejuvenated, awash with possibility.

Breakfast

2008-07-12T19:47:00.004+01:00

Back in Norway after a jam-packed week of conferences and train journeys. The week before, I had this for breakfast, amid the waterfalls and the glaciers. More on both soon...

Transit Blogging

2008-07-07T21:25:00.001+01:00

On the train from London to Leeds. You get free wireless these days. Cool. Should get in by 22:30. Looking forward to sleeping tonight, even on my friend's sofa. The last two nights didn't involve enough sleeping.

Last week we went to the mountains and the fjords with two old friends from Adelaide. The weather was perfect. The glaciers and the waterfalls glistened in the sun. It was all too beautiful for words. We climbed a very steep mountain, and then - even more painfully - climbed back down again. That was three days ago. My legs are only now slowly stopping aching. I've been hobbling about London with my suitcase, staggering up and down the tube station stairs.

I gave a paper today on medieval antipodean animals. There were some good ideas in there and lots of potential, but I think I was trying to squeeze too much in. I was comparing how Murray and Webb invoke different medieval genres in their depictions of Australian animals, and how their purposes are quite different despite obvious similarities. After ten minutes I realised it was far too long and I ad-libbed the second half. That was kind of fun though. Anyway, I'm giving the paper again on Wednesday - I think I'll streamline it and try to give it a clearer structure, and maybe plan to build in more talking rather than reading aloud. Non-humanities people are always horrified that most humanities people read aloud their conference papers.

I always reckon it's more important to be engaging and understandable in a conference paper than to be too clever or have too many examples. And with a topic like mine - I try to keep in mind what sort of audience I'm addressing (whether they've got a background in Australian stuff or medieval stuff, for example). But maybe I don't need to worry about that as much as I think I do - conference papers are very different to teaching, for example. I guess I'll strike the right balance at some point. Some papers go better than others, but it's always a learning experience. And then there's managing my stammer. I guess rehearsals will always be useful for that. Anyway, lots of people told me they liked it, and the rest of the conference was fascinating.

Very excited

2008-06-29T12:50:00.006+01:00

Summery things in bloom at the fortress.

This week, some old friends from Adelaide are visiting and we will take them up to the mountains. The same places we took the parents, but weeks have passed and seasons have shifted and it will be different.

Then I'm heading back to England, for two conferences. This in London, and this in Leeds. Here is my session. Very many wonderful people will be there. I can't wait.

(To clarify: as I told my Mum on skype about the prospect of listening to a day's worth of papers on Australian animals, M likened my enthusiasm to that of a child's excitement about going to the zoo. Ahem.)

Then it's straight back here for serious thesis writing, and unpacking of boxes which hopefully will have arrived by then.

Three people came for dinner last night. Between the five of us, we had strong connections to Norway, Germany, Australia, England, Poland, France, India and the USA. Fun. And we have been cycling, zooming past the lakes in the warm air. It is good to be here, good indeed.

A stitch in time

2008-06-26T08:23:00.006+01:00

The lovely Nancy drifted over here a while ago and fell in love with my Henry. So much so, that she decided to have a go herself! She's working a slightly different pattern, but it's just as wonderful. Go and have a look! I promised to show her my progress, which isn't a lot given the time that has passed, but it's slow going and there are many other things which demand my attention. I remember so clearly starting Henry's left sleeve (well, his right, our left) in our lounge room in York. This cross-stitch has accompanied me through many houses! I stitched some more last night, stitching myself into this new life, here.

(M, last night: 'That's a real labour of love. What do you think about when you're stitching it, how nice I am?'
me: 'I'm more concentrating on not making a mistake...')

We got back to Norway on Tuesday. It is good to be here, though most of my stuff is still stuck in 'uncontrollable customs delays'. Why oh why won't Norway join the EU? There's a sign at the airport: 'Who needs the EU when you have Norwegian?' (That's the name of the airline). Hmmmm.

Well, I have a conference paper to finish and a thesis to contemplate. See you!

Midsummer's Day

2008-06-22T22:42:00.001+01:00

Rain and low clouds, from London to Leeds.

The day after midsummer's day.

Gale force winds.

Good thing I'm leaving.

Packing

2008-06-20T11:09:00.003+01:00

And posting things, and finding homes for random stuff, and giving away books (sniff), and gathering library books, and saying goodbye to people and places. And cleaning the house. And getting parking fines with my bicycle (what's all that about?). Back soon...

Cities

2008-06-15T23:32:00.012+01:00

Yeah, er, felt a bit flat on Friday. Better now. Had an awesome weekend with my parents, who have now sadly left. I feel refreshed. We took a car load of stuff to the tip, and three boxes of books to the second hand shop. The house is feeling emptier. Some friends came to claim my lovely bookcase, and I felt sad when it left. It was the 'nice thing' we bought to cheer us up when we moved to Leeds. And it did. It made this room more than perfect, and this room pretty good as well. It's hardly irreplaceable, and in Halden, other bookcases await me.

When I wasn't stressed to the point of tears last week, I had some wonderful conversations with quite a variety of people, and made some surprising connections. I've discovered that my research interests overlap with those of some other students I know, which is quite exciting. We'll be able to help each other! And build new things! And although it feels slightly strange to be leaving when so many things are finally coming together, I know I'll be able to carry these connections with me. They're like seeds. I hope they grow. (These friendships can last! Today on the way to Manchester I met up with an old MA friend, who lives right next to those green green fields, and it was lovely.)

I went to York (sigh - best place on earth) with my parents on Saturday afternoon, and tonight we had dinner in Manchester (they're flying out of Manchester early tomorrow). Manchester is a much nicer city than Leeds - it's sturdy and expansive (Leeds is just confused). There's a Manchester wheel now, and we soared high above the city.

They're off to New York, now. I'll miss them.

Visions

2008-06-13T19:37:00.003+01:00

Sitting in this room, all my books in place, all my photocopied articles within arm's reach, the printer nestled on the trestle beneath the desk, my thoughts clear, calm, interested, alive. Connections buzzing. The rest of my thesis slotting together like lego, like a fantastic castle.

Cycling past the long lake that flashes between the birch trees in the strong evening light. Cycling fast, feeling the smoothness of the road between my hands, the air in my throat.

Standing at the top of the fortress, at the top of the world.

Stretching out on the futon in the lounge, watching dvds on the projector screen. Not wanting to be anywhere else.

Hold onto these thoughts.

Any sort of leaving is hard. The objects imprinted with use. The small fragments of kindness I can't bear to let go of. Everything in chaos. My parents are leaving in a couple of days and I've been too stressed to even spend proper time with them this week. My Nanna unwell, and too far away. But... Lists. Lables. Strong tape. An itinerary including the last detail so I don't even need to think any more.

And... Moments of grace. Phone conversations with my brother and my cousin. And yesterday, coffee with a girl I hardly knew but we suddenly realised our worlds touched. Unplanned, unforced connections. Quiet, and alive.

Hold onto these thoughts.

Exploding Brain

2008-06-11T09:42:00.006+01:00

One month from now, Friday July 11, I will be sitting in Manchester airport, waiting to be called for boarding. All I will need to do is take one flight and two train rides to get home. It will be great.

My parents are here till Sunday. One lot of boxes went off yesterday, but I need to send another lot next week. This weekend, they'll help me take some boxes of books to the second hand shop, and some stuff I don't need to the tip. This is good. I'm not sure what to do with my desk and my office chair, don't think they'll fit in the car. The weekend after, with my housemate, I have to empty and clean this house completely as we are all moving out. M's arriving on Saturday, and he'll help me carry some stuff back to Norway on Tuesday. I then have one week in Halden. I'll have to unpack everything. But I don't suppose it will take all week. Then we are going back up north with some old friends of mine from Adelaide. I was so, so excited when I worked out I would be able to see them, but right now, it's feeling like one thing too many. Five days later, on the way back, M will drop me off at the airport, and I fly back to London. I have a one day conference in London, and then a three day conference in Leeds. And then - bliss - an easy train ride to Manchester airport, and I'll be on my way home.

And all this on top of the hectic month I've just had.

In between, I have to sort out five million other things: I need to review an article for a journal (why are they trusting me with this anyway?), find documentation to prove M and I lived together for two years before he moved to Norway, work out how to renew my Australian driver's license, find accommodation for the London/Leeds trip I mentioned above, finish conference paper for said conferences (luckily I'm giving the same one at both), sort out funding and flights for another conference in September, work out what happened to my pay for teaching last semester, all that packing and cleaning, say goodbye to the lovely Leeds people... Oh, and what was the last thing? That's right - THESIS. The one thing that's causing all the little fuses in my brain to snap.

I guess the most important thing is to have a clear plan, and make sure I bring back to Halden with me everything I need. Do some thorough writing preparation, rather than writing as such. I miss the writing. I miss seeing progress. Can't be helped. I have a whole clear day now, to begin to make a dent in this scary list. Lets go!

One month from now...

Bolton Abbey

2008-06-10T23:11:00.014+01:00

Welcome to Bolton Abbey, one of the best places in the world. Every man and his dog were there on Sunday (hmmm, is that meant to be 'were' or 'was'?). And wives, and children, and young adventurers.

Watching them cross the stepping-stones was hilarious.

I've crossed several times, in the good old days when there was a stone missing in the middle, which made everything a lot more interesting.

Once you surmount this obstacle, you can go for a stroll in the woods by the river. You can trudge through the Valley of Desolation, onwards and upwards until you hit the dales. And then, you might see this:

Or this:

(Don't know this man, apart from that he helped us with directions on the way and was sitting in a cool spot.) Or this:

It's one of the best walks in the book (round trip around nine miles), and we loved it, even if our bones ached afterwards. And even if, despite my joy at being the one in charge of the map for a change, I took us back the long way round...

More thoughts on 29

2008-06-08T08:43:00.009+01:00

(And another gratuitous cake photo.)

I was going to write a long reflective post last night, but found I was completely exhausted, and went to sleep instead. So.

1. Birthday conversations.

M (on skype): happy birthday!
me: Thanks! My housemate made me a cake.
M: I made you a cake too.
me: oh did you? What kind is it?
M: um, it's a very nice cake. A chocolate cake. Very light and delicate, filled with - er - cloud-cream. Yep, cloud-cream. And it's transparent, too.

Grandma (on the phone): happy birthday!
me: thanks! and thanks for the present - I got it early. I haven't spent any of the money yet, but I've eaten all the chocolates [completely amazing Swiss Glory truffles].
Grandma: oh, Granddad knew you would have eaten all the chocolates.

My brother (on email): happy birthday mel. i have to go to bed now. working at a book sale tomorrow. if only i had read as many books as you. love j.

2. The day.

My parents are here at the moment, and they completely spoiled me. We went to the David Hockney gallery in Salt Aire (something Dad has been dreaming of doing for years), and had dinner at Betty's in Harrogate (brought back memories of last year, G&G!). I had rosti with smoked salmon, a glass of pimm's, a glass of raspberry lemonade, rose-petal tea and a vanilla slice. And the icecream and chocolate sauce from Mum's dessert. Yum yum yum yum yum. And then we went for a walk by the river in Knaresborough. Mum remembered taking me for evening walks in an English pram in Birmingham when I was a few weeks old.

My parents gave me aeroplane earings made by my cousin's boyfriend and a green walking shirt. Because I got these early (a technique I recommend) they gave me more presents on the day - a veggie cookbook, socks that don't match, and a green spoon with a hole in it. M's giving me the best present ever - a new reserve parachute. Cool.

3. Thoughts.

Usually, on a birthday, I think back over the past year. But as 29 is so close to 30, in the way that, in marking undergraduate essays, a 69 is practically a 70, I've been thinking more about the decade. The past year has been a wonderful blur of travel, work and play. So, I suppose, has the last decade. Ten years is quite a long time. I've spent half of it in England. I've spent most of it at university. I've changed a lot. I have a feeling the next ten years might be very different. Bring it on!

Today, despite growing panic about my neglected thesis, I'm off to do one of my favourite walks with Mum and Dad. Then I'm going to get hold of some new scales (because my old ones broke and I need to weigh the boxes) and finish packing the boxes to send to Norway. And next week, I'm going to squeeze all the stuff I need to organize to the edges of the day, and I'm going to make some progress on this thesis.

29

2008-06-07T23:12:00.004+01:00

And the best cake ever (thanks Heather!).

Chapters, sunlight, flowers

2008-06-05T23:25:00.005+01:00

Not sure what's happening with my blog header. Messy. Don't like it. Hope it sorts itself out. Anyway...

As may be apparent, it's been a bit hard to concentrate on my phd lately. I managed to read through the whole thing two weeks ago. Barring one chapter, it's actually not all that bad. The Webb chapter still needs an illuminating spark, but I can almost touch it. The Murray chapter, which opens the thing, is packed with interesting ideas, and is definitely the right place to begin. The other writers I look at refuse to use medievalism to create an Australian identity in quite the way he does. My Randolph Stow chapter, which was such a joy to write, is still my favourite, but at 24,000 words it needs to lose 5000. It will do this quite happily, as the second half is a little drawn out. The dreaded Webb chapter is third in line. And Kevin Hart is a good way to finish, though - again - the last third of this chapter also needs some smoothing, straightening, redefining.

Overall, the experience of reading the thesis was like listening to an orchestra tuning up. All the instruments are crying out, and there is exciting potential, but they need to be brought together, tuned, made to sing. And then there will be music indeed.

I got back to Leeds on Tuesday, and exactly three weeks from then I will be moving to Norway. Yes I'll be back two weeks later for the Medieval Congress, but that doesn't change the fact that in the next two and a half weeks I have to empty my room and my house, post all the important things to Norway, and dispose or donate the rest of them. So. One box at a time. And next week I will think hard about my thesis and my introduction, and scour the library shelves for anything I've missed, and check my folders of resources for missing pages and mistakes. And all will be well.

In Halden right now everything is in bloom. Suddenly. In the week we were gone, pink and purple flowers swarmed the hill to the fortress. Now lupins crowd the roadsides like birthday candles. And what are they called - those round things that you blow on and the seeds float away - there are flocks of them glowing like moons, waving all their wishes in the evening light. My head is still full of mountains and green fjords and endless sun. Yes, all will be well.

Houses

2008-06-04T18:13:00.005+01:00

For the past year or so, I've had recurring dreams of houses. They are houses I'm moving into in Leeds. They are perfect. I always have an improbably enormous bedroom. Or two rooms, linked together. But then my subconscious kicks into overdrive, adding extra rooms and features until the houses become weird: chandeliers, cobwebs, medieval chapels. The last house I dreamed of had a dark lounge room stuffed with bricabrac - ten foot medieval tapestries, and a near life-size statue of a knight on a horse. As the house grows, I get confused. Sometimes I am lost and I can't find the house.

The last house I dreamed of had a garden and a lemon tree. It was shiny in the sun. I wanted it so badly.

Tagged!

2008-06-03T19:09:00.007+01:00

Some facts about me! meme

Tagged by Elsewhere. So here we go:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning

2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.

3. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their name, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

Half way through my second year at university (BA majoring in English). Moving house. Getting a bad dose of the flu. Making friends. Writing poetry. Stressing. Reading the bible a lot. About to turn 19, about which I have no memory whatsoever.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

1. Freia milk chocolate.

2. Freia easter eggs (they come with a spoon, you eat the top off and they're filled with yummy white stuff).

3. Freia dark chocolate with roasted sesame seeds (a new obsession).

4. Cherry ripes.

5. Fruchocs.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world (erm, all of the above, when I can get my hands on them. But now for some non-chocolate alternatives...):

6. kneip brod with brown cheese

7. cashew nuts

8. raspberries

9. brownies (ok, i was trying to be non-chocolate, really I was...)

10. waffles

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Buy houses in my favourite places. But I'm not sure more than one place would really work. I'd have to decide...

2. Travel the world with a camera, a notebook and a paraglider. Maybe we can also hire some little people to carry the paragliders up the mountains.

3. Let Michael buy lots of gadgets (and he can come along, too).

4. Help nice people out with their mortgages (yeah a little house obsessed right now).

5. Pretty much exactly what I'm doing at the moment, I think. That's how I ended up here in the first place. I thought: if I could do anything in the world, if there were no restrictions, what would I do?

Five jobs that I have had:

1. Homecare worker (shower/dressing/toilet assistant, hair dryer, cook, house cleaner, spider catcher, clothes-washer, wheel-chair pusher, gardener, untrained hydro-therapist, masseuse, driver, shopper, film-watcher, motivator, listener, companion).

2. Pear picker.

3. Tutor for undergraduate English students.

4. Person who puts forms in alphabetical order and sorts through and discards obsolete scholarship applications.

5. Standing in a train station waving a poster for five hours, giving directions to confused medievalists.

Three of my habits:

1. Drinking tea.

2. Biting fingernails.

3. Forgetting things.

Five places I have lived:

1. York

2. Leeds

3. Halden

4. Mt Gambier

5. Adelaide (Hawthorndene, Belair, Torrens Park, Kensington Gardens)

Five people I want to get to know better: (A nice way of saying TAG!)

Troppo, but she doesn't have a blog. Sigh.

Liz, but she doesn't have a blog either (hint hint).

The Baker and the Curry Maker (yeah I know you're a food blog, but this is half about food, right?)

Doctor S (Not sure if these memes are really your style, but you never know...)

Librarian Idol (a meme is as good a way as any to delurk I suppose)

Galaxy

Thirdcat (yeah I know that's seven not five but the first two don't count unless they really decide to do something about it!)

The Great Parent Adventure

2008-06-01T08:58:00.018+01:00

We all look happy, right? I must admit, I was slightly apprehensive about spending a week with all four parents in the Norwegian mountains, especially as my parents don't speak a word of German, and M's parents don't speak more than two or three phrases of English. And then there's the different backgrounds, the different ways of doing things, the stress involved in spending time in such close quarters with family you only see once or twice a year. (With my parents it's usually only once a year, but this year it's twice.) But when one family lives in Australia, one in Germany, and we live in Norway/England - how else can you do it? Anyway, it turned out great. As Moni put it: 'wir haben uns gut unterhalten'. Which means they understood each other. And they liked each other. And it was fun.

We saw some amazing fjords, and passed through Jotunheimen, the home of the giants. And there were reindeer, with their babies, grazing on one of the mountain passes. They are funny things, with their blunt faces and shaggy coats.

We passed glaciers, and plateaus of snow, and speckled mountains, and great lakes melting in jagged slabs. Rainbows bloomed in waterfalls, and orchards perched on the slopes of fjords. We weren't quite north enough for the midnight sun, but even here it didn't get dark - the sky was pale at midnight, and the sun surged through the curtains at three a.m., blazing all day on the snow and the rock and the green.

More photos here. It was amazing how quickly the landscape changed - in some places dry, others lush, others icy. Sometimes the mountains were spiky cathedrals, and other times they were rounded like whales. Bright streams gurgled through the valleys. The air was clear and the colours were pure, and it all felt so old, even as it flushed with spring. Yep. We like it here. And it's fun to share it.

Meli's house

2008-05-28T21:36:00.005+01:00

Come in!

Here I am, practicing not grinning like a cheesecake every time a camera points my way.

Trouble is, I'm grinning like a cheesecake most of the time

especially at the one behind the camera.

Back from the mountains

2008-05-26T06:56:00.003+01:00

If I'd had my camera downloader, I could have given you a daily record of the level on the mist on the mountains - higher and higher to non-existent. Oh well. We got back late on Friday, and my parents arrived on Saturday. Today we're driving back up to the mountains with them, and picking up M's parents from the airport on the way. Agh - better go pack!! If you want me, I'll be here.

Don't rain on my parade

2008-05-17T20:21:00.008+01:00

It's the seventeenth of May. Very important if you're Norwegian. Here they all are, despite the weather. M says God must be a Swede. They get to dress up in their best Norwegian costumes (apparently the dresses are different depending on which region of Norway you come from), and all the school children do a parade, singing songs and waving flags. The little girls had glowy smiles. I'm sure I would have, too.

We staggered out of bed just in time to catch the end of it, then scurried back home to escape the weather.

In other news, if you ever plan to go traveling with a broken arm, make sure you have a certificate of authenticity for your plaster. They wouldn't let my mum get on her flight to Tallinn today, because her plaster posed a security risk. ?!?!?!?! Unbelievable. (The doctor faxed a note across and they'll be on their way tomorrow, but still...)

M and I are off to Loen tomorrow. He's got a conference and I'm going to work on my introduction in between swanning around the hotel, the fjord and the mountains. Nice. Oh, and here's the creature we spotted the other night.

He didn't mind us being there - he was too busy eating his supper. I bet the leaves taste best this time of year.

A weekend of decadence

2008-05-16T09:24:00.011+01:00

Just for the record... Afternoon tea in Betty's stretched for two hours: sundaes, berries and rose-petal tea, followed by smoked salmon sandwiches and vanilla slices. Mmmmmmm...

After that, we sampled the respective glories of York and Leeds: the minster, the corn-exchange, the angels playing bagpipes, the red-brick canal, and opera - 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', in the refurbished Leeds Grand Opera House.

I'd never walked so far along the canal before, but all these other places are dear to my heart - from music, from countless visits, from the people I've met there, from the things that have changed. Places like this don't disappear when you leave, you carry them with you, like some sort of silent, internal architecture. And - yep - it's nice to visit them with Mum too. Who told me, the first time I mentioned York - that's a good idea.

Did you know...

2008-05-15T13:28:00.003+01:00

that the governor of South Australia between 1899 and 1902, and the Governor General of Australia between 1902 and 1903, was the son of celebrated poet Alfred Tennyson?

Me neither. But it's kinda cool (and kinda creepy - British imperialism, and all that...).

I discovered this whilst poking around at fodder to use for my introduction. Tennyson, you know, beloved medievalist poet, well-read even in the colonies, UK poet Laureate.

Australian history never appealed to me when I was at school, and I think now that's because it's so messy and so fragile. Who can say when Australia begins - when was it invented? (Of course, it is still invented, daily.) When did the English cease being 'us' and become 'them'? Pretty early on, I suppose, but it's messy. (As I now know, 'English' and 'British' are also contested categories with tangled pasts, reinvented daily.)

Well, I'm back

2008-05-14T08:57:00.007+01:00

I am in Halden. I am seriously happy to be here.

The customary stress of the day-I-leave was compounded by a few things... I didn't start planning early enough as I was out gallivanting around York and Leeds with Mum (as well I should have been, and very nice it was too). But on Sunday night when I was going put all our pictures in a blog-post and then pack my bags, we had a power failure. It came on again around 11:30, and I woke with a start as my bedside light glared into my face and all the house alarms in the district jumped into action. They gradually quietened, except the one across the street, directly opposite my window. It kept going all night and most of the next day, till about 2pm. This was more than horrible.

Anyway, we made it. On Monday night I had dinner with my parents and my cousin and his new girlfriend in London, and headed towards Stansted bright and early Tuesday morning. My Dad seemed to have had a great weekend in London - he was dressed for a safari with a water-backpack (you know the ones with the little tube you suck the water from) and a compass dangling over his shoulder. He said it had proved necessary on several occasions. Only the backpack had leaked all over a couple of bus seats... They've got a few more days in London, and then a week in Finland and Sweden, before meeting up with us here in a week and a half. I can't wait to show them our little world here. Mum says she's looking forward to climbing the legendary fortress!

In the confusion I forgot the little usb thingy I need to upload photos to my computer. This seriously annoyed me all the way down to London. Apparently there's something at M's work I can use, but after working hours...

I cried my eyes out in Stansted airport as I read the end of The Book Thief, and now I've started Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, which I'm in love with already. Reading it makes you feel independent and brave.

Here the birds are happy and the trees are bright and gleaming. We climbed up the fortress last night to see their new dresses, and a spirit of the forest was there to greet us. When I can upload the pictures, I'll show you. My thesis is at a point where I need to start thinking about the introduction, which is exciting. Spring is everywhere, and best of all, I'm here.

Good things

2008-05-09T22:22:00.007+01:00

Mum's here - hurrah! For someone who's just flown across the globe with two broken arms she's in astoundingly good shape.

Marking is done and dusted.

I ate at my favourite vegetarian Indian restaurant two nights in a row. Yum yum yum. It's official - shrikhand is better than chocolate.

My wonderful and never tiring supervisor has told me that September is the month. We shall see... Secretly, my money's on November. But either way, it's coming together - hip hip, hooray.

It's still warm, if not sunshiny. The new leaves put on quite a show.

I got lots of early birthday presents (thanks Mum & Dad! thanks G&G!), without even having to turn 29. I approve of that.

Colours

2008-05-07T22:53:00.007+01:00

All I can offer is more green, I'm afraid. Here it is, illumined by the setting sun, just after eight this evening. I wish I could send you the birdsong. Waking up at the moment is a joy. My window is open to the sweet morning air and the birds. Now, I like the bird-calls in Australia, the cawing of the magpies. My soul feels at home in that sound, and as I try right now, with partial success, to remember what it sounds like, I can smell the Australian morning too, that dusty openness, the tang of eucalypts, the light spreading over the gum trees. But - I can understand why Europeans are non-plussed or unsettled by it. Here, the birdsong is pure as the voices of choir boys. It swells and folds with such sweetness, such clarity, for hours and hours. Francis Webb was on to something.

And then, just when you are used to the green, it all goes white.

Green Mist

2008-05-04T21:46:00.008+01:00

After a spectacularly unproductive weekend, I'm going to pretend it's not a bank holiday tomorrow and get all my marking done. After my great revelation on Friday my mind was in no fit state to do anything with it. So I've sent off the chapter, ragged ends and all, pretty confident that one more rewrite will get it in order. Agh! This thing is never ending.

Also proved to myself again that it doesn't work to try to work every weekend. I've been doing that recently to make up for all the weekends I won't be working in the near future, but that only succeeds up to a point. At least I've achieved temporary closure on Webb, and can get stuck into my next-worst chapter in a couple of days time. Marking first though. Have to get this off my back.

It stopped raining for long enough this afternoon for me to go out and check on the progress of all the little leaves. But oh how I long for summer. My bed-time reading at the moment is Willa Cather's My Antonia, and her descriptions of sunshine on the red grass of the prairie are exactly what I need. But good things are on the horizon. Good things indeed.

Encounters and epiphanies

2008-05-02T17:46:00.009+01:00

Sometimes a latte and a very chocolaty muffin really do solve the world's problems. Well, maybe not the world's problems, but definitely my own stubborn writerly problems. After slogging away at my chapter all day (with, admittedly, fluctuating levels of concentration), by half past three I couldn't bear another moment at my desk. I trecked up to Headingley with my notebook and my printed draft, but without Webb's Collected Poems. I have more than enough textual analysis, and always fall into the trap of doing more and more. Anyway, after ten minutes browsing in the second hand bookshop (without buying anything, phew), I settled down with aforementioned treat.

I made some lists. I ate some muffin. I wrote down some questions. I smiled at the babbie on the next table. I wrote a short paragraph comparing Webb with the writer I talk about in my previous chapter. I stirred my coffee. I was looking for something to tie this chapter together. I first wrote it two years ago, and my work on it over the past six weeks has involved chopping out vast portions of it, writing at least 8000 words of new stuff, and condensing four rambly pages into one rather nice paragraph. It was coming together, but it wasn't there yet. I needed something else, something new, something that would bind the different sections into a coherent whole. Something that would enable me to engage in a productive way with the very good work that's already been done on this poet. I wrote down my key words and looked at them sideways.

And then I realised. ENCOUNTER. It had been there all along, but I just hadn't been able to see it. Hiding within my ghastly old conclusion (that one of my supervisors had been kind enough to describe as possessing a 'certain eloquence') were the words: 'above all, they are moments of encounter...' My other supervisor had already mentioned that this term might become more important, but it just hadn't clicked.

My old chapter title was 'Difficult Epiphanies: Francis Webb's Middle Ages', and I quite liked this. In fact, I was inordinately proud of it. What a lovely term, I thought. It gave me shivers. But this old title caused all sorts of problems. What has annoyed me most in my attempts to rework this chapter is the naive way I wrote about temporality, epiphany, revelation. Yes the poems do strain towards epiphanies, but they more often than not don't get there. (And sometimes, when they do, they're not quite convincing.) This was why I'd called them difficult epiphanies. But encounter is so much better because it encompasses so much more. And as soon as I'd latched on to it, I realised it works for every single section. Because he writes about all sorts of encounters: temporal, spatial, cultural, religious.... And there's some really good stuff that's been written about 'encounter' in an Australian context. I read it a couple of years back but it didn't sink it. 'Difficult encounters', here I come.

I made some more lists. Happy, springy lists that refused to stay put on the lines. I drew smiley faces in my margins. I finished my coffee. And grinned like a Cheshire cat, all the way home.

Progress

2008-05-01T18:54:00.011+01:00

Yesterday, after my supervision meeting, the tulips in the courtyard were nearly as happy as me.

School's out

2008-04-29T18:49:00.004+01:00

I felt a bit sad after my class today. It really has been lovely being involved with these students in this way. The relationship between teachers and students is a unique one. I have been a student for most of my life (eek - eight years of university education), so it is nice to see the other side of the coin. It's been such a privilege to watch them thinking, and to see them bring their own unique thought patterns and experiences to the classes. They're so young and enthusiastic, and it's pretty cool that so many people choose to do English degrees.

It's been a learning experience as well, and I know there are things I can improve. I think next time I should make more of an effort to write things on the white board, for example - especially when I want to keep certain concepts in play. One of my clearest memories of my own undergraduate tutorials was about structuralism, and the tutor wrote lists on the white board of light/dark, man/woman etc. Discussion was flowing fairly smoothly in my class by the end, and most of them were talking to each other rather than just to me, and bouncing off each other's ideas. Not quite all of them did, however, and I wonder if some more small group work would have helped a couple of them to integrate better. I hardly used small groups at all this time because it seemed to work so well without it. (I started to go into more detail there but thought better of it...)

Anyway they were absolutely great and it's sad to see them go. One of the new lecturers in the department was saying the other day that academics always complain about having to squeeze research into the cracks between other commitments, but he felt that up till this year he's always had to squeeze teaching into the cracks, and he's loving being able to concentrate on it for a change. I definitely squeezed teaching into the cracks this semester, and it was necessary to do so. But I'm glad I was able to do it.

Speaking of Green...

2008-04-28T22:59:00.010+01:00

Yep, it's pretty green round here right now. A sort of scraggly, mossy green - not all the trees have leaves yet - but it's beginning to fill in. Every time I go to the park near my house, some small thing is different.

Time feels like it's passing so quickly at the moment. I fight a battle with my chapter every day, and at the end of each day it feels like it's defeated me, but I make a new assault each morning with fresh ammunition. And I'm gaining ground.

I teach my last class tomorrow. Then I just have to mark the essays, and I'm done.

And - I'm beginning to think about leaving. At the end of June, I'm moving to Norway. I'll still be back here now and again until I hand in my thesis, but I won't have a base here any more. I'm looking forward to it, but there'll be things I miss, all the same. I've been based in the UK for nearly five years now. Maybe it's time for a change.

Why you should read Francis Webb (with a medievalist interlude)

2008-04-26T17:40:00.008+01:00

Because he's different from anything you've ever read, or ever will read. Because he fools you into thinking he's naive or obtuse before you realise he's something else altogether. Because he knits his stanzas together with rhyme schemes so cleverly that you don't even know they're there. Because - just sometimes - his words make your breath stop and your heart beat faster. He takes you to strange places that you recognise.

Take 'On First Hearing a Cuckoo', for example. Here I'm going to take a medievalist detour and talk about a different poem first - a very famous thirteenth century poem which he most likely would have been aware of:

Sumer is icumen in
Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

Sumer is icumen in -
Lhude sing, cuccu.
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springeth the wude nu -
Sing cuccu.

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Murie sing, cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu,
Well singes thu, cuccu -
Ne swik thu naver nu!

I first came across this poem in a small leather-bound anthology of English poetry with bible-thin pages, given to me by my Grandma. I remember sitting down in her spare room in summer and deciding to read all of it. I didn't get very far. This was the first poem. What a strange little thing, I remember thinking.

More recently, I discussed this poem with my students. We talked about how the 'u' sound holds it all together, and makes it wierd and wonderful. And about the internal rhyme in the 6th and 11th lines. My students loved 'icumen'. And one of them pointed out that the bucks are being a bit rude (read 'f' for 'v' in line 11 and you might work it out). The last line means: 'don't you ever stop', or 'don't you ever deceive'. 'Nu' means 'now'. Cuckoos, of course, deceive by nature, and the English summer sadly never lasts long. In the lecture, my supervisor pointed out that when it says 'cuccu', you can never be sure if it means the bird itself or the sound it makes. This poem is memorable because it is small, simple, secretly ambiguous, joyful, naughty, rueful, fun. And it has been claimed as quintessentially English - English enough to open a serious looking anthology.

Cross to an Australian poet in England in the 1960s. He's never heard a cuckoo before:

It was never more than two unchanging words
Heard in the first coming green of daybreak,
The sleepier green than sleep, with a sheer white
Between this yawning advancing green and the colour
Of all lights out. Not consciousness, the awakening early green:
For that was steep curtain, immediate
Structure of pain and learning, familiar rattlings.

In a Webb poem, there's usually a few phrases you don't understand on a first reading. What's this 'sheer white' doing, and why is he using the odd phrase 'all lights out'? But the image of the green dawn and the sound of the cuckoo is gentle and haunting. I love 'the sleepier green than sleep', and the idea of an awareness and a feeling of peace beneath a more frightened and confused 'consciousness' trying to come to grips with the surroundings and the self rationally. The poem goes on to twist around this image of green, and the 'two words' of the cuckoo, which enter through the window:

With this taut white wariness two words
Involved themselves, formed and changeless, cool and haunting.
. . .
. . . But they were quite apart,
So freely entering, so at home,
Not softening, not disturbing, but making distant.
Old-story-devious green, all shapes and sizes
Of illusion, turned right out of doors:
Two words, always the same words, freely entering.

It's hard not to quote the whole poem. It continues through a single day. The speaker hears the cuckoo again whilst 'playing cricket at eleven', at dinner, and at nightfall. 'Voyaging green', 'robust green' and 'sleek green' give way to the 'dissolute green' of evening, and all the while the cuckoo speaks 'two level and small words/Never at odds with self, never with green'. Night approaches:

. . . Then the changeless words
Unelectric among the going green and the advancing
Colour of lights out and the nagging strands
Of an anger. And cool before the cavernous
Green of sleep which could alone lose them.

And you start to realise that the whole poem is about the triumph of colour and light against darkness and confusion. The words of the cuckoo, which embody colour and light, cut through the confusion of the self and the 'nagging strands/Of an anger'. They also cut through darkness. The poem never names darkness, it's called 'lights out' - a phrase that is repeated three times. Electric lights fail against the darkness because they are switched off. The cuckoo's words, however, are 'unelectric/Against lights out', which gives them their calm, persistent power. The poem ends:

What in themselves? Twelve hours shaken away,
Not the abandoned green remained, not self,
Not spring, not Surrey, no, nor merely
A dead word-haunted man. Two words remained -
The language foreign, childish perhaps, or pitiable -
Heedless of enmity, again and again coming
To a taut candour, to a loose warbling green.

Curiously enough, the last three lines could easily be describing 'sumer is icumen in'. The poem is edged by feelings of unease and displacement - England's excessive greenness is strange to Australian eyes and almost threatening. But the cadence of the cuckoo's words overcomes this, even if, like the thirteenth century poem, their language is 'foreign, childish perhaps, or pitiable'. 'Ne swik thu naver nu!'

Another birthday

2008-04-26T00:13:00.012+01:00

Another chance for gratuitous paragliding photos.

And about this much

love winging its way across the North Sea

right about now.

Happy birthday Mum!

2008-04-23T22:46:00.008+01:00

It's Mum's birthday tomorrow. Which is almost today even in this part of the world, so it must be well on the way in Australia. I haven't sent her anything, but maybe she'll accept a slice of cake and a pitcher of Pimms in three weeks time - if the weather's up to it! That's her, in New Zealand, taking off...

More pictures here. We knew she'd love the view of the mountains from above just as much as we do. And here we both are, on a boat, about to discover a cave of the most amazing glow worms. Like galaxies underground. It was her idea to go. She's good like that.

Sending you much love! Here's to many more adventures, very soon....

Yet another writing metaphor

2008-04-23T22:42:00.003+01:00

Today, the current chapter feels like trying to put up a big tent - the sort of tent you need at least two people for - by yourself. You just get one pole propped up when all the others tumble down. And then the wind picks up and blows the canopy away. And then you can't find the tent pegs. It's driving me balmy.

Writing a PhD

2008-04-21T11:45:00.003+01:00

is like climbing a mountain. Only you have to build the mountain as you go, from handfuls of rubble. You have to poke at it until it sticks, and holds, and you can climb up to the next bit. But how satisfying it is, after weeks and weeks of gathering rubble and packing it together, to climb up on top of it and see further than you could before.

Reading Webb

2008-04-20T21:15:00.003+01:00

Reading Francis Webb's poems is an extremely odd experience. Practically any Australian poet will tell you he was Australia's greatest poet, but Australian poets aside, hardly anyone knows about him. He was born in Adelaide in 1925 and died in 1973. And the poems are - well - strange. They are densely constructed and glitter like quartz. Sometimes they are startlingly beautiful. Sometimes they don't seem to make sense, but you still have the feeling they know what they're doing. It's slow going, trying to write about them.

One of the problems is the words don't stick in your head. I remember when, as an undergrad, I wrote an essay on T.S. Eliot, I memorised huge chunks of Four Quartets without even trying, and it sang in my head as I walked along. This doesn't happen with Webb. When you look for a line you have remembered and want to quote, it can take you ages to find it, because it's not at all obvious where it might be. And if you're not careful, even if you look in the right place you won't notice it. Maybe this just means I've done enough for the day.

I like him a lot, though he puzzles me. I'll tell you more later...

Australian poetry takes on the world

2008-04-19T13:27:00.002+01:00

A couple of days ago, a fellow phd student who's teaching on the poetry module at the moment told me he got his class to look at 'Noonday Axeman' because he remembered a paper I gave on Les Murray about a year ago. He said he'd never heard of Murray before then, but when he saw the poems in the anthology he remembered, and thought he'd give it a shot. Awesome.

England again

2008-04-17T09:41:00.004+01:00

Back in beautiful Yorkshire. Leaving wasn't such a wrench this time, because M came with me for three days. He had some work to do here (as did I), but we had time for a drive in the countryside, a seriously good pub lunch in Grassington, and an afternoon in dear old York. Felt a bit of nostalgia, as we so loved living there, but . . . onwards and upwards, I suppose.

I bought an embroidery kit of a section of the Bayeux tapestry, just in case I ever finish Henry. Should get me through the next long Norwegian winter! We also made a good start on decluttering my room, and took a carload of stuff to the tip/recycling. I don't like throwing away stuff, it all seems haloed in memories.

I taught on Tuesday, and it was great. We were looking at medieval lyric poetry, which they said they didn't like as much as Chaucer and the other stuff we've done. I asked them to come prepared to talk about one of the poems in their selection. They all did brilliantly, and their introductions sparked animated discussion, and we all (me included) came away with a much deeper understanding of the poems. Classes like that make it all worth it.

The countryside is spotted with tiny gorgeous ungainly lambs, jumping and wobbling about. I didn't get a picture of them, but just remembering them makes me smile. The daffodils are starting to die off, but there's still enough of them crowding roadsides and river banks to brighten the landscape.

M left this morning, early. So now, time to concentrate...

Making Spaces

2008-04-12T14:52:00.018+01:00

When I wrote the mini-post Making Things a few days back, I had really intended to reflect upon all the other things we've been making. Chapters and muffins and chocolate puddings aside, we have been making spaces. Or, more precisely, making spaces for making things.

The magpies have made a rather impressive nest, toiling away through sleet and snow.

As well as programming a program to turn data into colourful graphs, Michael has made a collaboration room. His workplace is stuffed full of uncomfortable meeting rooms, but had no space to do collaborative work on research projects, or analyze dvds from experiments, or discuss plans in an informal environment. So he fixed it. To get everyone on side, he made some 3D models of the proposed room. These are seriously cool, and you can move about in them and populate them with people. Here are some stills:

In order to make the space for making things, he had to make some virtual space first. And when they said, yes, okay, that does sound sensible, we drove up to Ikea and spent the weekend putting it together. Now look at it!

All the meeting rooms have names from Norse mythology. This room's called Åsgard right now, but he thinks it needs a new name: Ginnungagap.

We also bought a new bookshelf for my office, to prepare for the influx of books and other bits when I move in here properly in July. Yes there are some similarities between the two spaces: we likes what we likes. It's a bit messy at the moment but it will be great when populated with my books and my creatures. The futon is at the other end of the room. There are also wardrobes stuffed full of kites and paragliders. I think I will be able to finish my phd in this space.

Today my blog is one year old. This is a space for making things too. And for collecting seasons from three continents. It has been all I wished for and more.

Also today, a long way away, my gorgeous cousin married his gorgeous girl. We ate pizza in their honour (rumour has it seriously good pizza was to be served at their reception). I was sad to miss it, and wish them all the best! A good day for all.

Mornings

2008-04-10T09:45:00.013+01:00

On days like this, the mist-machines
get going early.

The town is shiny with it

but the islands are asleep.

They dream grey dreams
of moon-suns glowing in the depths
beneath the pointed masts.

The harbour polishes the sky

and all the trees say

soon,

soon.

Snow again

2008-04-09T08:13:00.003+01:00

Yep. Swirling down like static. I don't think it will stick around, it's meant to rain all afternoon. Last night, I slept snug under three duvets, and dreamed of warm places.

Of Elves and Rings

2008-04-08T19:22:00.003+01:00

A very long time ago, I read The Hobbit. I was hooked from the start, and when I got to the second half, where it suddenly becomes darker and tragic and achingly old, I was somewhat more than hooked. I went to find the school librarian. Look, I said, it says there's another one, it says there's a sequel. Where is it? You're too young, she said.

A few years later, we were moving to the country. We put everything in boxes. Some hadn't even been unpacked from our last move. On the top of one of them, I found the book - an enormous dusty paperback, fatter than a Bible. I might just keep hold of this one, I said.

I didn't like it in the country to begin with. But I liked the elves. I read it slowly, the year I turned twelve. When it started falling apart, I covered it in plastic. I remember so clearly reaching the end of it as I sat in my parents' threadbare armchair on a quiet afternoon. '"Well, I'm back," he said.' No, I thought, no, you can't be. And the book in my lap transformed from a thing of magic to a heavy lump of soft, worn paper.

After that, I read it again and again. The last time was in the holidays after I graduated from High School. I read it in three days straight, and appreciated the battle scenes for the first time. I was afraid I loved it more than God.

In recent years, I have become somewhat ashamed of my youthful Tolkien fixation. I went to a session on him at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds a couple of years back, and it was dreadful. Laboured re-hashings of the way Tolkien based his monsters and everything else on medieval sources. (Yes this actually is interesting I suppose, but not when it's already been talked about to death. More interesting is why, and what are the implications of his choices...) The unconcealed eagerness in the eyes of the Tolkien enthusiasts made me feel a little ill. They were talking about his creations as though they actually exist.

But we watched the movies again recently. And I thought - I'm glad he wrote that story. And I'm glad they made those films. Even if the elves aren't quite as beautiful as I had imagined.

ps. Tolkien taught at Leeds, you know. Yep, my university. Even if he didn't like it much, and scurried back down to Oxford as often as he could.

Making Things

2008-04-07T19:53:00.005+01:00

I am making a new chapter out of the fragments of an old one. Sometimes it helps to see them.

Domestics

2008-04-03T08:07:00.007+01:00

General consensus says that my small but devoted readership must be sick to death of Halden photos by now. Especially as they are, according to general consensus, all a variation of about two and a half views. Well, it's a small town. A small town with a river and a harbour and a fortress, which is all a small town needs and more. And at least this one's colourful, right?

I made up for my muffin-flop on Tuesday by making yesterday what was, without a doubt, the yummiest veggie-chilli in the whole world. Diced, fried carrots, kidney beans (half of them squashed), peas and char grilled red peppers. Or capsicums, as we say in the land of sun. Mixed up with tomatoes and spices and garlic. Oh my.

And I made brownies from a recipe on the cocoa box. I thought maybe if I used a Norwegian recipe the Norwegian ingredients and measurements would contribute to my success. Well, it was a success, but more like a cake than brownies. Still.

I just got back from my first bike ride of the season. Today it was ten degrees! Almost tropical! The enthusiastic donning of my sunglasses turned out to be unnecessary. But so, thankfully, were the gloves. I stuffed them all into the pockets of my fleece, and zoomed along though 30k of hills and lakes and pine forests. The light was milky, and so were the lakes. Some had patches of ice, but they were melting fast.

I love my bike. It's sleek and powerful, and changes gear with the flick of a finger. Not like the clunky thing I get about on in Leeds, which requires the handles to be twisted and held in place to change gear - difficult when they're slippery with rain. No, cycling here is something else. Plus there are hardly any potholes and buses and drunk pedestrians.

Anyway, I got back around 6:30 and the man was no where to be seen. There was a note, saying he'd got a dinner invite for 6. Now, in over a year, we've only ever had two dinner invites, and they were on the same night. Sigh. At least I have my brownie cake.

Cakes

2008-04-01T19:35:00.004+01:00

Today I gave into a serious cake craving and made some of these. Bleh. Horrible things. Tasted like sour Yorkshire pudding. Not that I have anything against Yorkshire pudding, in its proper context.

In other news, writing is going well. Sitting at the desk all day, one sentence at a time, begins to make headway in the end. In the evenings we've been watching lots of Inspector Morse, including the final tragic episode that left us still feeling sad the morning after. And my cousin is the only person I know who'd resign his job as an April fools' trick.

Goodbye Snow

2008-03-31T07:53:00.007+01:00

The snow is gone, but I couldn't resist sharing my last remaining snow photos. Now there is mist, and soft persistent rain. I do not mind. I think of the shoots and the seeds hiding in the earth, drinking up all the moisture, swelling, waiting. It is not so cold now. The magpies have made very impressive progress with their nest. They work in pairs, in all weathers. Now when they are inside I cannot see them. Wet and misty or icy blue, there is more light every day. Nothing will stop the spring.

You know the way

2008-03-28T09:49:00.006+01:00

Up the white path. The factory hums beneath you but the snow is made of quietness. Your feet make soft shuffling sounds. You throw back your hood.

Through the guarded gate. The harbour waits beyond, all silver, but sometimes gold.

To where the the islands are frozen and the trees stand sentinel. In a town like this, you seek edges, horizons, the empty sky.

The chapter formula

2008-03-27T18:58:00.003+01:00

Elizabeth wants me to spill the beans... Well, you just give yourself space at the beginning to engage with what everyone else has said about the topic (this should help formulate your own ideas, as well as identifying any gaps in the current scholarship). Then you arrange the rest of the chapter into linked sections (maybe about four of three thousand words each, depending on the length of your chapter), which outline your ideas on the topic as well as developing an argument along the way. Then at the end you link it all together, and there you go!

Pretty straight forward really. I think what stumped me at the beginning was knowing how to position my findings in relation to everyone else's. You need to get an idea of the critical background and critical history of the topic you're researching. Only then can you begin to understand how your own ideas are interesting and relevant. You have to decide who you're talking to, I suppose, and then make sure you understand them.

The big problem I had with my first chapter was a complete lack of understanding of where the critics were coming from. I had the added confusion of trying to write about a seriously difficult poet, without really understanding the field of postcolonial medievalism I was trying to read him alongside. We decided to start with an author-based chapter rather than a theoretical one as my supervisors hoped themes, ideas, structure and approach would emerge from this. They didn't. So in my next chapter, my supervisor forced me not to talk about poetry at all, but to read and summarise all the relevant theorists. It was painful. But it helped. Now, when I go back over that first chapter I wrote, the shortcomings are painfully obvious. I do talk about other critics at the beginning, but I don't arrange this discussion in an ordered way. I mention that the critics say certain things, but I don't explain why - I don't explain what groups they fall into, and how what they say relates to the time when they wrote it. It's not so hard to fix this up now, and it just makes everything clearer.

Ok so it's not so much a formula as a series of realizations. And it relates to an English literature thesis - yours might be a bit different, Liz. If anyone has an article formula, can they let me know?

More ducks and more snow

2008-03-25T17:11:00.013+01:00

This morning, the snow was thick and powdery and it creaked when I stepped on it. I made new footprints. It snowed all night and most of the day. When it stopped, I watched two magpies making a nest in the tree outside our window. Black and white, like everything else. They fussed with the twigs.

I hurried off to the harbour to see if it had all gone white. Only some of it had, but it was still quite a sight. Snow is a novelty to me. Not much of it where I come from. This afternoon, as it fell thick and fast, I stood by the window, entranced. The fat flakes moved as the air moved - you could see the wind! The flakes fell down and up and sideways. I watched them filling up the landscape, covering the flat shapes. Like colouring in, but opposite.

Feeling restless this evening, I scrubbed the bathroom. It's just this weather - you can't stay out in it long. You can't ride your bike. (Comfortably, anyway.) But - how lovely it was, this afternoon, to feel the article begin to make hesitant sense, the tree branches by the window plump with snow, as bits of sky twirled and tumbled for hours.

Words and numbers

2008-03-25T07:58:00.002+01:00

He's programming. Typing in code, and out come graphs of colourful lines. Like kite strings. Like the tube map. You tick a box, and the lines change - the colours, the contours. They tell stories I can't read. You can feel the concentration in the air around him. You can almost see it, this magic fortress beneath the screen, a castle built of air. Precarious, swaying, strong.

My own stories feel rather shell-shocked. There's an article I want to write. The concept of making a seven thousand word article from a twenty four thousand word chapter is simpler than doing it is proving to be. (Even though the chapter itself needs to shed at least 5000 words.) I want to squeeze all my ideas in. Ahem. No. I just need to choose the best ones. The newest ones. And streamline them. Cut down on my examples. I must do it. It will be good for me.

I'm searching for a formula. There must be one. There must be several. It took me so long to crack the chapter formula, and now I look back longingly at all that lovely word length - such space to breathe! An article needs to be sharp and clever and gleaming. Perhaps I want too much from it. I think I need a point of view.

Overnight

2008-03-24T14:44:00.008+01:00

The harbour froze.

The ships aren't going anywhere.

But the ducks are loving it.

The sun and the snow

2008-03-23T15:35:00.009+01:00

Just about this time of year, you start to wish badly for warm sunshine. For now, the cold, sparkly sort will have to do. It makes your nose hurt. But the snow glittered rather nicely as we climbed to the fortress yesterday. And we had icicles on our roof when we got back. We ate one.

Mutated Medieval Meme

2008-03-22T13:18:00.005+01:00

I was tagged by Highly Eccentric ages ago for this. You're supposed to give eight facts about your favourite historical figure. Well, being more interested in things literary than things historical, I have more time for stories than for facts. Though I guess they overlap. I had an involved discussion with a historian once about this, who try as she might couldn't get her head around why anyone would study English literature. I said I found the stories people told to be more fascinating than what they ate for breakfast.

Anyway, after much thought, my favourite historical figure is Caedmon. I discovered him during my masters at York. He's one of those Old English figures who make you smile when you think of them (I'd also add Bede and King Alfred). This is in itself slightly curious, and I think it's connected to a notion of Englishness. Anyway... I like Caedmon because I think Anglo-Saxon biblical poetry is just great. The language is shining and strong. The most fun I had during my masters was writing an essay on the creation myth in Anglo-Saxon verse: Caedmon's Hymn, the beginning of Beowulf, 'The Wonders of Creation', and I think there was one other... The story of Caedmon is particularly interesting because Caedmon's hymn is a myth about the creation of the world, embedded within a myth of origins of Anglo-Saxon poetry, embedded within a story about the origins of Englishness.

You can read about him in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Or here. I don't know about little known facts - you either know about him or you don't. And if you don't, here goes:

1. He lived at Whitby Abbey with the Abbess Hilda (she was there between 657 and 680, and is a pretty impressive figure in her own right).
2. He didn't like singing.
3. He couldn't read or write.
4. When it was his turn to sing at dinner he was so shy that he went to sleep in the cowshed.
5. God appeared to him in a dream and told him to sing. After much protestation, he did.
6. The poem he sang (which he later sang to Abbess Hild and the others) is recorded as the first Biblical Anglo-Saxon poem.
7. The monks later would translate the Biblical stories from Latin into Old English, so he could understand them, and then he would make them into poems.
8. If you feel like it, these days you can have a chat to him in the museum at Whitby Abbey.

I wanted to include some pictures of Whitby Abbey, which is one of my favourite places in England. But despite having visited several times, I don't seem to have any decent digital photos. Can't be bothered tagging anyone, but pick it up if you feel like it, or tell me who your favourite historical figure is in the comments.

Happy?

2008-03-21T13:14:00.002+01:00

Snø!

2008-03-21T11:37:00.005+01:00

Much excitement!

The master photographer in the house says this photo isn't blog worthy, but as it is difficult to snap anything much more exciting from our lounge room window, and as it's not exactly tempting to venture outside, it will do for now. I didn't think I'd see snow in Halden this year, but it's snowing at Easter, just like it did last year. It's not meant to venture above zero for the next couple of days, so it should stick around. We're quite happy to be inside with the fire and candles and pancakes and Easter eggs and writing projects.

Speaking of snow, there's a low pressure system wreaking havoc in Germany and Switzerland right now, called Melli! God help them...

Sometimes

2008-03-19T08:06:00.005+01:00

You wonder

who's inside...

Here

2008-03-17T22:21:00.005+01:00

Lakes, and clouds, and trees. Some days grey, some days golden light all over the fortress. The blossoms on the tree outside our window just thinking about opening. I nearly missed my flight on Thursday due to the English train system, but I made it. Easter eggs, and science fiction dvds late into the night. No need to think about teaching for four whole weeks. Frothy, milky coffee in the mornings. Bread with brown cheese. I sent off a new, longer version of my last chapter on Friday, and have got back to redrafting the first chapter I wrote, two years ago. Yep. It's good.

Northern Lights in Adelaide

2008-03-12T10:23:00.008+01:00

Clouds and chimney pots.

A long way away from here, it's the festival. The best time to be in Adelaide. This is what my Mum says:

We went into an outdoor music club set up on the banks of the Torrens by the amphitheatre called the Persian Gardens. They had persian carpets and cushions all over the steps of the amphitheatre, and also carpets and little low tables and small beanbags on the grass under the trees with Persian looking brass lights etc. It was cool down by the river (it's been very hot here) and was a great atmosphere. All the state buildings on the north side of North Tce are lit up by a light display for the festival called Northern Lights!! They are fabulous and it seemed half of Adelaide's families were out strolling or driving in a very slow traffic stream down the road to see them. They have generated computer slides that match the building outlines and details and throw different coloured lights (very strong colours) and patterns onto them. The designs change every 5 minutes or so. They all look rather gothic and sort of lurid or ghostly by turns; eg the museum had fossils superimposed all over it, and then spiderwebs and a huge spider. The side of the library had one version that made it look like a huge bookshelf, and Elder Hall had music notes trilling along it. The art gallery looked as if it had very realistic marble statues at the front of its pillars at one stage (people were going closer to check!) and then as if it was a charcoal sketch of the building at another. At other times they just looked like very coloured European buildings but as if the doors and windows were glowing luminescently. It really was incredibly engaging to see buildings we are so familiar with transformed in such ways- and you noticed things about the architecture you always take for granted. Apparently it took a year to develop the concept- money well spent I'd say.

And this is what thirdcat says, and, strangely, fifi is talking about light too. Here are some pictures. Go on, look at them, they're amazing. I wanted to pinch them for my blog, but they are cleverly protected...

In other news I'm off today to catch up with my cousin in London, and then I'm flying to Norway tomorrow morning. There's still the small problem of deciding exactly what to take. (Fewer books! Fewer books! I hear you say...) I've been quite sick for the past week with a weird cold that just makes you really exhausted (all my housemates have it), so I haven't been able to achieve quite as much as I wanted. Teaching takes it out of me too. But now I have four uninterrupted weeks to work on the thesis, so I should more than catch up.

I was walking in the park near my house on Sunday, thinking how lucky I was to live in such a genteel neighbourhood. On the way to the park you pass a posh Church of England primary school, and the park was full of families with small dogs and little kids. The park is great - there's grassy areas, and forest, and a creek lined with daffodils. And then I approached a group of twelve year old boys walking the other way. They crowded the path so it was hard to get through. One of them patted me on the shoulder. Once I passed them, they started throwing twigs and small stones at me. I thought about putting the hood up on my coat, but decided not to.

I'm not me, I'm my friend

2008-03-09T12:07:00.004+01:00

I was talking to a good friend from Adelaide the other night, and she asked me the dreaded question: what are you going to do when you finish? I took a deep breath to stem the customary flow of panic. I have a new technique, I told her. When I think about my future, from now on I'm going to pretend I'm not me, but someone I know. Cos when I'm talking to a friend who's panicking about their future, I look at them and think: you're talented, hard-working, educated, nice - it's going to work out for you in the end. Maybe not tomorrow. But sometime. (I'm thinking about one friend in particular who was desperate last year but has now landed a great job in publishing.)

This works for me when I'm editing my writing, too. I love helping other people with their essays. But I get sick of staring at my own work. And nervous about finishing it. But if I pretend the writing belongs to someone else, it suddenly isn't so threatening. Speaking of which, I'd better get back to it...

Rainy Saturday

2008-03-08T22:41:00.008+01:00

The blue room is so much nicer when there is a small creature curled up in the corner of it. I cycled home from town today in the rain, my knuckles red and aching with cold, the back of my coat soaked through where the water flicks up from the wheels. And who should I meet at the doorstep but a very wet kitty with a very clear idea of where she belonged...

I've had a typical and pleasant Saturday: yoga in the morning, a bike ride to town in the afternoon, braving the ghastly but cheap supermarket on the way back to pick up ingredients for sag paneer (I love my weekly dose of spinach), and an hour or so of inane but pleasant tv in the evening. Last week it was England's attempt to choose a Eurovision song, this week the double triumph of a Doctor Who special issue of The Weakest Link. Who could ask for more? (Well, Doctor Who itself would have been more fun, but still...)

It's back to work tomorrow to straighten out the ragged ends of my final chapter so I can send it to my supervisors before I go away. There's just a few other loose ends to tie up and one more class to teach, and then I'm off to Norway via London. Good.

Teaching Rainbows

2008-03-04T18:01:00.007+01:00

The last two days have been a blur of marking essays and seminar preparation. I felt quite irritable about marking the essays because they pulled me away from the last stages of fixing up my chapter. But it has been interesting to see what my students are capable of (one essay in particular was utterly fantastic). I also had to be observed by a lecturer during my seminar today. I was not looking forward to this at all. I felt flat, exhausted and uninspired. I'd only met my 'teaching mentor' last week, and didn't feel like I clicked with him particularly well. So it was a rather reluctant meli who turned up to class today, having very elegantly managed to forget both her pen and her role book.

But it went GREAT! The students really got into Chaucer, and we had fun looking at the relationship between the tale, the teller, and the person he interrupts in order to tell it. My teaching mentor was extremely positive afterwards, and said it was the best postgraduate taught seminar that he'd ever observed. Both relaxed and scholarly. Hurrah, hurrah! A tutor with a slight stammer is not a kiss of death. It doesn't matter. And I even managed to bond with the student who lent me - and then very kindly gave me - her pen.

I rewarded myself with a fat, fudgy brownie from the cafe across the road. I mustered the energy to attend the medieval lit lecture, which was entertaining and reminded me how international Chaucer is. And then I cycled home as fast as I could, arriving at my door as the thunderclouds cracked above me, and a faint rainbow shimmered above the rooftops. A good day.

Meanwhile, in Halden...

2008-03-03T22:34:00.004+01:00

Just in case you're tiring of my feeble attempts at photography, here's some magic from across the North Sea.

Taken by my loved one, yesterday, in the land of long, slow sunsets and golden light. In under two weeks, I'll be there too.

Lakes for all Seasons

2008-03-02T23:26:00.009+01:00

Went walking in the Lake District today. It's only two hours from Leeds. Every time I arrive there I feel this pang of excitement - the slate-walled cottages, the lakes, the hills. I grew up with my Dad telling me about the Lake District as though it were the promised land. The first time I went it was raining and I couldn't see a thing. But there's something special about the Lake District. Now when I go I remember the times I've been there with those close to me - the lovie, his parents, my parents, and last year, my grandparents (not all at the same time!). But special times, each of them.

It was cold and windy today and the photos I took didn't really turn out. We went up Red Screes from Ambleside, then across to Dove Crag, then back along the ridge to the town. We did spot a pretty cool stone wall.

At the end of the walk I couldn't help thinking how different it will look in a couple of months time when the trees will be shiny and green. A bit more like this, perhaps...

Daffodil Hunting

2008-02-26T17:12:00.006+01:00

Daffodil with students

I had the nicest dream this morning, just before I woke up. I dreamed that someone wanted to publish my novel. In fact - they had already published it, and I held it in my hands. I have actually dreamed this before, more than once. But never before was the dream accompanied by such a feeling of bright sweetness, which did not fade with the day. One day, maybe.

It was probably because I have been reading blog posts about other people's books being published. And also because last night, for the first time, I piled up all the sections of my thesis, and held the wad of paper in my hands. And hugged it. It is scruffy and covered in notes. But it is a hellova lot of paper! This is exciting but also slightly daunting - all that will need checking, and some of it needs rewriting. But mostly it is exciting. It seems faintly ridiculous - I can't believe that I have come this far and am actually going to achieve this thing! I will try to keep this feeling of sweet wonder alive, and tap into it when I need encouraging.

Today in my class we discussed Breton lais. The students seemed to like them. I didn't ride my bike in due to the wind (70kph, says the weatherpixie). Walking home, through swirling eddies of rubbish and the frizzled remains of autumn leaves, I was glad. The wind roared like a low aeroplane. The trees staggered like drunks. I'll be catching the bus to my dance class.

Daffodils and teapots

I like weekends

2008-02-24T20:26:00.003+01:00

Even when I spend most of them working on my thesis. Because I don't feel guilty about going to yoga on Saturday morning, or the gym on Sunday afternoon. Because watching the thesis grow makes me happy. Because Sunday evenings are sweeter when you're managing your own time on Monday, no matter how much there is to do. Because Leeds is not so bad.

I like zooming around on my bike, despite the buses and the potholes. I like the other English post-grads. It's only recently that I've begun to really feel at home here with these people, who are wonderful. Approaching the end of my thesis, I see so many others in the same boat - uncertain about the future, but passionate and hopeful. It's not easy but it's worth it. Even if things don't work out the way we hope they will, it will still have been worth it.

These are the nice things I have done in the past few weeks: experienced (this is the right verb) the last night of the York pantomime; learned yoga and how to dance; washed dishes at my friend's disability conference, in exchange for dinner and wine; talked to my loved one on skype; taught Anglo-saxon poetry and Icelandic sagas; sat in pubs discussing poetry and general silliness; walked in the Dales in the sunshine and snow; listened to papers on radios and medieval animals; and, last night, watched a ballet production of Hamlet. This list isn't exhaustive. Combing though poems in order to complete my last chapter has been pretty nice too.

Every time I arrive back in Leeds it hurts. Transitions are not easy. Sometimes I wish I had all my life in one place. But I guess there are advantages to this set-up. Only three more weeks of teaching, and then it's off to Norway for the Easter break. I wonder what spring will have in store for me.

I've run out of photos. Maybe I need to go daffodil hunting.

A walk in the park

2008-02-22T20:52:00.006+01:00

For two days this week the park by uni was covered in snow, or more precicely, frozen fog. It was beautiful.

Now it has warmed up again but the wind has come back. It shakes my window panes and keeps blowing out the pilot light in our water heater. I have been analysing poems all day and my brain feels as hazy as the sky. But it is nice - to hold the poems lightly in your hands and hear them talk to each other, to coax them out of hiding.

Winter sunlight

2008-02-18T23:12:00.008+01:00

A dear friend of mine once wrote: 'you don't need a big backyard for sun: a deckchair and a lemon tree, its pockets bulging'. Well, I didn't even have a lemon tree, but that didn't stop the sun from warming the kitchen wall all afternoon. I had the house to myself all weekend, and on Sunday I worked in the kitchen, in the sun, next to the heater. Part of me wished I was in the frosty, sparkly dales (it was freezing but bright), but it was good to work on my chapter in calm and quiet.

In the evening I braved the cold and watched the sky blaze tropical, as the streetlights vied with the sunset.

And this was a good week

2008-02-16T18:32:00.006+01:00

The view from our kitchen.

I met with my supervisors on Wednesday, and they liked my chapter!!! This is my last chapter. It was pretty tough to write and I was worried they'd tear it apart. Instead they said all kinds of nice things like I'm streaming ahead on my own now, they're happy to sit back and watch! It just needs a little stretching and tidying, no more than ten days work. They reckon if I put my mind to it I could be done in September! So. I'm putting my mind to it. Most of what needs doing is adding in more close analysis of poems, which is my favourite bit anyway.

I taught Beowulf this week. It was so much fun reading it again - apart from reveling in the shiny, heavy language, I kept making all sort of new connections. (New for me, anyway.) I thought it was so interesting the way fratricide is emphasised in the narrative, and how Grendel's descent from Cain (specifically, from Cain's murder of Abel) is played against this. He is a monster - an enemy of God, and of the people of the story, but the people of the story commit the same sin which made him a monster in the first place. One of my students asked if this was another example of the Christian author of the poem distancing the Christian audience from the pagan practices of the past. An interesting thought...

I also asked them to read Tolkien's 'The Monsters and the Critics', but I told them it was optional - a mistake I will not be making again (none of them read it). I enjoyed rereading that, though, too. When I was an undergraduate, I missed out on the Early Middle Ages module, but I made a point of reading Beowulf and that essay. Beowulf didn't do a lot for me the first time I read it, but the essay made me shiver with delight. The way he talks about dragons! (I have a fondness for dragons.) This time I couldn't help noticing how both universalism and nationalism frame his interpretation of the poem. He says it is a poem about man confronting the darkness of impending doom and inevitable death. He says this quite poetically. But - it's not just that. The poem isn't just about universal 'man'. It is about a very specific society, which it goes to great pains to construct. The monsters don't threaten humanity, but the Scandinavians. Hence my theory about Grendel, which I outlined above...

Anyway. The students weren't quite as excited about it as I was, but it is a difficult poem and I think they did pretty well. Next week, the sagas....

Hihi!

2008-02-14T10:14:00.002+01:00

Weatherpixie is in love. In a very cold land.

Today was a good day

2008-02-13T15:49:00.007+01:00

I wasn't there, but I read about it, here and here and here.

And I had a pretty funny conversation with my supervisors about it. Supervisor 2, who's one of those brilliant, old school lecturer types who wears a tie everyday and gave an awesome lecture on vikings yesterday wearing a plastic viking helmet (got to keep the punters entertained), said:
'What do you say to an old fascist like me who asks - why don't we get Norway to apologise for invading us all those years ago?'

Supervisor 1 (postcolonialist with a focus on Australia and New Zealand): 'Well, for a start, and I know this doesn't apply to you, I'd say that fascists usually aren't very clever. And then I'd say, you need to learn about modernity.'

Ah. And now I was going to give you a nuanced and considered paragraph of my own thoughts on the matter, but it's late and I have a headache after writing about poetry all evening. (Not the poetry's fault, I'm sure.) Anyway, apart from the posts I linked above, here's the best thing I read about the issue:

Why is the word ‘sorry’ important as part of the apology?
The word ‘sorry’ holds special meaning in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. In many Aboriginal communities, sorry is an adapted English word used to describe the rituals surrounding death (Sorry Business). Sorry, in these contexts, is also often used to express empathy or sympathy rather than responsibility.
During the 2007 election campaign, then Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd also recognised the significance of the word sorry:
“… simply saying that you’re sorry is such a powerful symbol. Powerful not because it represents some expiation of guilt. Powerful not because it represents any form of legal requirement. But powerful simply because it restores respect.”

Quoted from here. I was talking to a friend about it, who wonders if it will change anything. I wonder too. But I think this claim that it restores respect is more than just empty words.

Pen-y-Ghent

2008-02-11T23:40:00.001+01:00

We dashed off to the dales again yesterday, and oh my goodness it was lovely! Warm sun on our faces and hardly any wind. All the snow had melted, save for a few pockets in the shadows of the stone walls. We climbed Pen-y-Ghent, another of the three peaks, and did a loop walk of about 20k. The photos don't capture it at all. The first year I was in England I badly missed the sea, but being out in open spaces like this turned out to be just as good. The burnished hills and plains are like the sea in some ways, with the tufts of grass and heather. Oh and did I mention mud? Managed to put my foot through an invisible hole filled with water. I love seeing the dales in all moods - the clouds and snow and grey-greens are lovely too. I think my favourite are the clear, cold winter days when the whole landscape sparkles with frost. Yesterday the land was a great platter for the sun, and we stayed out until the sky dimmed and the cool slither of moon rose above the fields.

Spring?

2008-02-09T18:44:00.001+01:00

You’ve been wooing me for days,

invisibly, with the most delicate of whispers.

With a fragrant smell despite the clouds,

with sunlight on my bathroom floor,

with snowdrops crowding the tombstones

of the old church.

I’m pretending not to notice,

knowing (rightly) that winter will crush me again,

hammer me with black weight,

and I am so tired.

How can I trust what weighs less than my breathing

and vanishes when I turn around?

But look, winter’s worn himself out with gravity

and there’s nothing to do

but breathe again, and float upwards.

I had read of the lightness of spring

but never felt it –

this quiet buoyancy – how strange!

O fickle lover, I know you won’t stay.

Now it's birdcalls in the mornings,

and minute gifts of extra daylight,

and everything will rise again without trying,

impossibly.

I won’t speak of you yet, too loudly –

I might scare you away.

Yes, cold may come again,

with the wind and the hail,

but maybe I like you,

maybe I trust you,

maybe I’ll walk with you, now.

Poems and pancakes

2008-02-07T22:41:00.000+01:00

Teaching went much better this week. In fact it was fun. I found a table in the corner of the room, moved it to the centre of the room, and we all squeezed round it. That was part of the problem last time - no table. It's much easier to relax around a table (for the students as well as me). We discussed a very old poem based on a very old bible story, which included a feisty lady and some serious head-chopping action. So no surprise, really, that it held everyone's attention!

I've been going Eastern this term in an attempt at a more active lifestyle. Bollywood dancing and yoga. Heh. I'm pretty uncoordinated at the dancing, and yoga has left me with seriously sore shoulders, but also energy and focus and confidence. It's quite amazing. I'll keep it up.

This little creature has been guarding our doorstep. Looking much happier today in the sunshine than she has for a while. I wish I could kidnap her. (In reference to a previous discussion, yes, she's a she!)

I've been revising the first chapter I wrote for my thesis, on Francis Webb. His poems are pretty tough, so it's not surprising that I had trouble with it to begin with. It's so much easier now to see where I went wrong, and how I can transform the chapter into something quite exciting. So. That's good too.

The worst thing about being so far from home is missing out on things. The first two members of a new generation of my family arrived the day after I left Adelaide. And an invitation to my cousin's wedding arrived this week. I would have loved to be there.

My brain's a bit funny tonight. Must be all the exercise. The only other thing of note this week is pancakes. Tuesday was pancake day. We ate pancakes with mushrooms and spinach and fetta, pancakes with warm cherries and greek yoghurt and hot chocolate sauce, and, best of all, pancakes with lemon and sugar. No photos, we were too busy gobbling.

It snowed in Halden, too

2008-02-05T23:49:00.000+01:00

I woke on Saturday morning to snowflakes dusting the wibble-tree and the cars outside, patterning my cobbled street. Not enough to be spectacular. But the strange loveliness of the snowflakes' quick-feathered dance made me hold my breath. They swirled and twisted, weightless. And it snowed in Halden, too. I think they should put the whole town on top of a Christmas cake.

The Yorkshire Dales

2008-02-04T11:34:00.000+01:00

Here's the viaduct near Ribbleshead, part of the Settle-Carlisle railway (we caught the train across from Leeds). It was built in 1870. I think it's great. It was threatened with closure in the 1980s, but after much campaigning it was restored in 1991. At the Ribbleshead train station, there was a little museum about the railway line, into which we retreated yesterday to escape the cold. The Spanish students who were with us were quite dismissive of the whole thing, and incredulous that anyone had made such a fuss. But I think it is a thing of beauty.

From the viaduct, you can see the three highest peaks in the Yorkshire dales. Above is the view of Ingleborough, with slightly better visibility than when I climbed it last year. If you're a bit mad you can climb all three peaks in a day (in summer), including walking between them. We did it once in ten and a half hours, and could barely move afterwards.

Yesterday, we got to the top of the ridge of Whernside, but turned back due to the slippery ice and the extreme wind. It was quite difficult to stand upright. It doesn't matter. I love this place.

The last day of January

2008-01-31T23:38:00.000+01:00

Eee, just look at that weather. That stuff can't decide if it's rain or hail or snow. Even leeds-girl has her coat out. All that and seriously windy too. Roar down the side-streets, rattle the windows, wail in the chimney, shake you off your bike windy. And I cycled all the way to uni and back again.

Stammerer

2008-01-30T11:40:00.000+01:00

I once wrote a poem that went like this:

i know the cruelty of consonants
the sweep deep swish
of sss-ss-ssss, the fish gaping
vowels

BURST!

BURST!

i want to float
soft drifting word-sea
slide through meaning
weightless/fluid/bright

BUT

Kookaburra laugh
KcKckkccckkKcckkc
helicopter wings whirring
shatter air

you guess my words
steal

RIP

from my throat

CUT

with clear tongue
precise mouth, cruel

my words
choking, knocking, flapping
dying moths

stillborn

This was ten years ago. I was eighteen. (The spacing isn't quite right - you can read it better here.) I wrote it during an English tutorial on postmodernism at Adelaide University. We were reading poems by Ania Walwicz and J.S. Harry. I sat in the corner, a bubbling mess of emotion. I was in awe of the playful and violent ways they made language sing, but I couldn't express how I felt. I was too afraid to speak, knowing my words would crash and crumble and collide.

Flashback to a history class, aged fourteen, when the teacher asked me a direct question because she knew I knew the answer, and I pretended I didn't, because I knew I couldn't say it.

I sat in the corner some more. And then I started writing. The words tumbled out, as fierce and pure as the words everyone else was discussing. It felt good.

The poem won a competition. There was an awards dinner, and we were supposed to read out our poems. I said no, I couldn't do it, not this time. So the organizer of the competition said she'd read it for me. She took me aside to practice reading it. She read it well, but not quite right. I would read it more like this, I said. I read it. I made the harsh bits hard, and in the quiet, wistful stanzas I put all my longing. She looked at me. Meli, she said, you are reading that poem.

I did. And I read it again, to hundreds and hundred of people, when the book was launched at Writers' Week. Someone recorded it and played it on Poetica on Radio National. The best bit was, my second cousin's step-father, who is an academic in Sydney, heard it on the radio in his car. That night, he said he'd heard an amazing poem about stammering on the radio. That's Meli, said my cousin. No, he said, it couldn't have been, it was someone older. And then she showed him the book.

The poem is an elegy. And it is a sharp sword, sheathed. These days, I don't need to think about it very often. Only sometimes, giving conference papers, or meeting new people, or teaching... Yesterday, my class crumbled a bit at the end. Afterwards, I felt embarrassed and distraught and wanted to hide. I remembered the poem. When I was younger, I used to wish I could swap my disability for something else. I thought - I would rather be in a wheelchair than stammer. Having since worked with people who rely on wheelchairs, I take this back. I definitely have the better deal. But if you're in a wheelchair, you work things out. You get ramps fixed in your workplace. I can work things out, too. I can work out what went wrong, and how to avoid it next time (in this case, make sure I have all details like names of websites on a printed hand-out). It can be done.

Not yesterday, but the day before

2008-01-28T23:20:00.000+01:00

I climbed up to the fortress. I saw lampposts fold the sun into glass caskets.

I saw the harbour crammed with islands.

I saw the trees show off their new silk scarfs.

And then I climbed down, beneath the chimney pots, into the shadows.

The Wallet Fairy

2008-01-27T23:12:00.000+01:00

I arrived back in Leeds this evening feeling slightly sheepish and very grateful. After lugging my heavy backpack and overstuffed shoulder bag all over the station, I finally got on my train. And left my wallet sitting on the bench outside. With my money and credit card and student card and train ticket. Some nice people found it, opened it, saw my drivers license, recognized me, and gave it back!!!

This is not the first time something like this has happened. When I first arrived in London four and a half years ago, groggy with travel and not really sure what I was doing, overladen with books and clothes and an old brick of a laptop, I dropped my wallet as I searched for my Youth Hostel. (Directions are not my strong point.) Someone came running up behind me and gave it back. My housemate says I must have very good karma. My boyfriend says I always carry too many books.

Night, and Light and the Half Light

2008-01-25T09:54:00.000+01:00

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths
enwrought with golden and silver light,

the blue and the dim and the dark cloths
of night and light and the half light

I would spread the cloths under your feet.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams.

I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.

W. B. Yeats

I memorised this poem when I was sixteen. I think I particularly liked the line about the half light. There's a lot of that around here at the moment. The photo of the full moon setting was taken from our window at 8.15 in the morning. The photos of the fortress and the harbour were taken about 4 in the afternoon. But it's lighter for longer every day. The half-light edges its way into the darkness, spreading its cloak.

Ida Brown/e

2008-01-23T10:11:00.000+01:00

Even assuming everything this year goes to plan, I won't be the first in my family to get a phd. The first in my generation, yes. And I don't think there was anyone in my parents' generation or my grandparents', though I could be wrong. My Dad's dad, who was an engineer with a master of arts and a master of science, and used to do experiments on blocks of asbestos at home, was I think working on a phd on some sort of esoteric theology when he died. But Ida Brown, my great great aunt (my maternal grandma's aunt), got a doctorate of science in paleontology in 1932. How cool is that?

She had been born on 16 August 1900 at Paddington, Sydney, daughter of William George Brown, an insurance clerk from New Zealand, and his wife Alison, née Logan, a Sydneysider. Educated at Fort Street Girls' High School and the University of Sydney (B.Sc., 1922; D.Sc., 1932), Ida graduated with first-class honours and the university medal in geology. Having briefly held a science research scholarship, she demonstrated in geology at the university until 1927. That year she was awarded a Linnean Macleay fellowship which enabled her to develop geological investigation of the South Coast, a study in which she combined field-mapping with laboratory work in petrology. She travelled extensively abroad, attending scientific congresses and research institutes.
Ida returned to demonstrating at the university early in 1934 and next year succeeded W. S. Dun as assistant-lecturer in palaeontology, once she had hurriedly acquired new expertise. Promoted lecturer (1940), in 1941 she published a notable paper on fossiliferous Silurian and Devonian sequences of the Yass district. She had successfully negotiated the shift from hard-rock to soft-rock geology, both in her research and teaching. More distinctly palaeontological papers on Palaeozoic invertebrates (especially brachiopods) followed, as did studies in palaeontological stratigraphy. Ida became a senior lecturer in 1945, but resigned in August 1950.
Sourced here.

She apparently was quite a star, taught at Sydney University for years, and was known internationally. When she was 50, she married William Rowan Browne, also a geological hot-shot. My Grandma said this created quite a stir (I think they'd all given up on her). Anyway, they both retired, but continued their work together, joining each other on field trips. How sweet is that?

And when she married, she gained a silent 'e'. I wonder how she thought about that: an unobtrusive gift you can see but not hear. Her own name but different, augmented. Quietly new.

The Stone Ship

2008-01-20T16:55:00.000+01:00

A detour on the way to our grocery shopping takes us to Blomsholm. When the sign mentions stone ships I don't pay much attention. These are standing stones. If they found stone ships here, they must have taken them away.

The wind is cold. The stones stand as they have for fifteen hundred years.

And there it is - the stone ship.

The stones outline the shape of the ship - a ghost ship, sailing through the earth.

What skies it has sailed.

Halden in January

2008-01-18T09:17:00.000+01:00

No snow yet. But the lamps on the grey bridge made me happy. There's something almost magical about caskets of light when it's not quite dark. I noticed the same thing when I passed through Liverpool on the way here - the light-filled buses green and strange in the 4pm twilight.

I am working on my last chapter. There. Let me say that again. I am working on my final chapter. That doesn't sound so bad, does it? I've been putting up quite a lot of resistance. Of course I need five million cups of tea, and another domino stone, and I really should light the fire, or go for a walk while it's still light... Agh! The chapter is promising, but very fragmented at this stage. I don't like the feeling of working blind, attacking various sections when I'm still not quite sure how they fit together, or what the final form will look like. I guess I just need to keep chipping away at it, looking at it from different angles, smoothing, rearranging, hoping. Because it will come together in the end. It always does.

In just over a week it's back to Leeds to start tutoring on an introduction to medieval literature module, which I'm quite looking forward to. I'm excited about a couple of conferences coming up in July, and I also want to rework the chapter I wrote before this one into a journal article. Because, even if I do say so myself, that chapter was pretty cool. I've also started looking around for post-doc opportunities - eek! But first things first. Once I finish this one, I have a draft of the whole thing (not counting intro and conclusion). And that's worth smiling about.

So's this. It stopped raining yesterday, and the icy light hovered over the small islands of the harbour.

Summer blogging

2008-01-15T10:03:00.001+01:00

I took a picture of the weather outside, but it made it look more depressing than it actually is, so I thought I'd spare us both. Suffice to say, you can't see the tops of the hills for the mist, the river is a rapid flowing murky brown, and the trees are brown and bare. Very pretty they are in the evening, though, when the lights of the small town shine through their hair. And it's cozy in here. The fire warmed up the flat so well yesterday that we haven't even had to light it yet today. The cold that knocked me out over the weekend is slowly fading. The lovie is faring a little worse, and keeps telling me that he's about to die, but I think he'll be okay. We sleep for at least twelve hours a night at the moment. And here's what we left behind.

Me flying at the Bluff. It felt pretty cool to zoom around this South Australian landmark. Well, it's a landmark of my childhood, anyway, from countless weekends in Victor Harbour. I'm not about to land on the rock - I'm actually going up.

See? That's me in the background. And now can I tell the story of how the wind got too strong and I nearly didn't land safely? (Some people I know are already sick of hearing it.) It was scary. I was almost dragged across the road. But at least I know for sure now - when the wind gets too strong for you, come down. Don't stay up an extra five minutes cos it's fun. Just don't. Anyway...

Happy flying bugs.

We don't fly these, but they're pretty.

My favourite Christmas photo - me and Auntie Annie, the feast in the background.

Sydney sunshine. And the paragliders out surfing the wind at Tunkalilla. I bet they're out there still.

Just as I got settled...

2008-01-11T13:31:00.000+01:00

I got back Tuesday. I recovered from jetlag. I went to a gym induction and booked into dance classes. I made an admirable start to my less chocolate more vegetable (and more variety) new year eating regime. It's all about sustainability, I decided. The grey stopped getting me down. Cycling to uni on the icy streets, past frosted grass and bare trees cloaked in mist started to be fun. I confronted the dread of my tangled chapter, and faced up admirably to the recurring doubts which are surely part and parcel to a phd. I vowed to stay in the same country for at least two months (novel thought I know). And then - I realised seminar teaching didn't start for two and a half weeks. And there was a cheap ticket to Norway. This afternoon...

Flying at Tunkalilla

2008-01-05T14:11:00.000+01:00

We have some of our own photos that we'll post soon, but this will do for now! The red and yellow gliders are me and Michael (I'm the one who's higher up). Fun fun fun. We loved it.

Doctor Update

2008-01-02T02:30:00.001+01:00

I went back. Eye is healing excruciatingly slowly. Turns out the doctor's Mum was my first primary school teacher. Tis a small world, this city.

Adelaide

2008-01-01T02:59:00.000+01:00

I went to the doctor's yesterday with a nasty inflamed eye. She was a newish doctor, and very lovely, and as she didn't look much older than me, I thought - 'I probably know someone who knows you.' After ascertaining that my sight wasn't in grave danger, she asked what I did. When I told her I studied English literature in England, she said - 'you wouldn't be Richard's cousin would you?' I said indeed I am. Apparently they are old friends, and he used to tell her about his cousin Mel who wrote amazing poems (her words). Richie, if you're reading this, she says hello.

Soaring with seaguls at Seaford

2007-12-30T12:09:00.001+01:00

has been one of the highlights of our time in Adelaide. There have also been some minor disasters, including gliders tangled in trees and drenched with sea water (not as bad as it sounds, but time-consuming). Oh, and bad storms hitting Queensland which meant we decided not to go there...

It's always slightly strange coming home, knowing that I'm not the same person who left. Christmas was overwhelming but lovely. It's been great catching up with some old friends but I no longer have the stamina to catch up with all of them. Every meeting is also a goodbye. In the past I have identified strongly with the place in which I live, so having homes in three different countries is confusing. But it's been wonderful revisiting the South Australian landscape - we've spent a lot of time on the coast south of Adelaide - acres of sunlight, red cliffs beside a dazzling ocean. And sometimes we've seen it from the air.

Photos soon.

Queenstown paragliding

2007-12-16T10:35:00.000+01:00

A lot has happened in a week. A lot of miles covered. A lot of time spent in the air. But here is the best bit.

Sorting the lines.

Ready to launch.

A few steps, the glider surges above me, and I'm off.

I find a thermal, and soon I'm above the launch, soaring next to the rocky, intricate peaks of the mountains. All by myself. I'm up for an hour. The glider turns beautifully. I love it up there. I remain inordinately pleased with myself for days.

Long Distance

2007-12-06T16:46:00.000+01:00

Parting's not the best.
But meeting glows in you for days.
It colours your dreams.
It sleeps in your belly, and stretches,
a contented cat.
It hums with you on the train.
Every time.

I'm famous!

2007-12-05T20:42:00.000+01:00

Well, my Grandma's chocolate cake is. Quite rightly, it is very tasty indeed. A dear friend who I lost touch with for nearly fifteen years remembers it.