Terrible experiments in photography, aka trip to Gibside

So I will be spamming with photos of Bern in a very short while, but first! In August, a couple of friends and I went on a day trip to Gibside, which is a giant sprawling 18th century estate outside of Newcastle, and I have some terrible attempts at photography to show for it. It was a very grey day and began raining towards the end, so the lighting was terrible, but we did have a lot of fun looking at English bourgeois imitations of Palladian architecture, imagining what it would be like to ride horses around a giant rambling estate, and being sorely tempted to climb some fences to get a closer look at some of the more falling-apart buildings (we eventually refrained, because all of us are on visas and deportation would probably be inconvenient). So! Some highly manipulated and sketchy photos:

The chapel for the Bowes family, who owned the estate. SUPER PALLADIAN. There was someone playing terrible pop songs on the piano inside, which kind of ruined the effect. Nonetheless, very pretty.

There was a big walled-in garden. B decided that she needed one for her future home.

I attempt to be artistic! Flowers were actually shootable without the weather ruining everything.

More flowers. 

The entrance to the garden.

There were apple trees badly in need of picking.

FAVOURITE PART: The orangerie. 

I am utterly failing to capture how awesome the orangerie was. It is descending into ruin very prettily.

Was all glassed-in with state-of-the-art windows and roof during the 19th century.

Tried really hard to be artistic. Filters and gradients fail me.

Giant monument to liberty on the other side of the estate. Ridiculously ostentatious and great.

The banquet hall, which you can't actually get inside at the moment, which is very frustrating. Photo had to be taken from down the hill and across a manmade pond. 

So there you are, fun at National Trust sites, followed by fun with photoshop/lightroom! B and I are hopefully going to try and do more trips like this, because it was really easy to get to by bus, and a nice break from research.

Thankfully, the upcoming photos of Bern are far nicer, because there was real sunshine. Also, I'm slowly getting better at fixing white balance and stuff, so. Please stand by!

Life update, and a castle!

I have been terribly remiss with updates, so for the sake of expediency this one shall be in bullet form, at least for part of the way.

• Trip home was lovely, wonderful to see those who I was able to see, sad to miss those I didn't, but Christmas will come soon enough! My tickets are booked, I'll be in the States for three weeks over the holidays, hurrah!
• I was struck down by food poisoning last weekend, and thus managed to miss both a singing lesson and a class, which was most unfortunate. Basically, when the price of a sandwich is too good to be true, it probably is. Lesson learned.
• I had a long and very intensive meeting with my advisor last week which was both productive and terrifying--in sum, I have a great deal more work to do before my thesis is truly up to snuff, but I have a clearer sense of what precisely that work entails, so all hope is not lost. 
• I'm now looking around for a topic for my last chapter, and I'm leaning towards looking at the Great Exhibition of 1851 as a sort of framework for looking at the development of public reception of technology, both the good and the bad, and seeing if some of those pesky mythological narratives are coming through beyond the bounds of Marx and company. I have to do more reading before I can decide that it's a productive route, but I have high hopes. 
• The next couple of weeks will be very busy because I am teaching my usual classes plus filling in for one more, and there is a fair amount of choir happening because we're ramping up towards the advent procession that we do every year in the cathedral, which was really lovely last time, so I'm looking forward to it. Also, right after that I'm grading essays madly and having even more choir things to do, so basically it's all going to be one big run-up until the end of term, at which point I will be very glad indeed to take a breather, I imagine. 
• So that's that!

On a more picturesque and relaxed note, however, my flatmate had some friends from uni up to visit this weekend, and I got to tag along today on a day trip they were making. We headed up north to Craster, which is a seaside village about forty miles up from Newcastle that is home to the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, a very melancholy and lovely heap of rocks indeed. This was a perfect opportunity for me to give this whole taking-pictures-with-a-fancy-camera thing a go, and hopefully I had some success? The lighting was not ideal, as it was overcast and we're far enough into winter that the sun is very low and it starts getting dark around 3:30. Nevertheless, with some photoshop adjustments a couple of these might be passable. Though now that I've messed around with them, the coloration is very inconsistent. Bear with me:

The town of Craster. Dear parents: You may want to add this to your list of ideal retirement spots. Whoops, totally under-did the contrast.

The castle, which is many fields farther from town than this indicates. In between is prime sheep-grazing and dog-walking territory.

A better indicator of distance.

The shore along the North Sea. It was very Byronic.

It was about 2:30 when this picture was taken. WELCOME TO THE NORTH. IT IS VERY DARK HERE.

Inside the castle. I really like ruined architecture.

From one of the upper floors, or what's left of it. Check out the awesome lichen!

Oh wait, with this camera I can actually photograph the lichen! LICHEN. This is actually an accurate depiction of the colour--a right proper saffron.

One more washed-out look.

How gorgeous is that? Ah, to have friends of friends with cars. Otherwise, I'd never get to the heritage sites that are around here. 

London, Take One: the fun trip

I am returned from a lovely jaunt to London to meet up with Hannah, who was swinging back west after a family trip to Amsterdam and had time to stop over and see some theatre and have a wander with me. We had an awesome time being non-obnoxious tourists, walking to and fro around central London, drinking coffee, and generally catching up.

London behaved itself in terms of weather, and as we walked we saw the telltale signs of everyone gearing up for the Paralympics, which is pretty cool.

New logo for Tower Bridge!

We went to the Tate Modern and and the Victoria and Albert Museum, the latter of which is officially my favourite museum ever because they have everything from historical costume to Islamic art to ironwork and other decorative arts, and basically it's everything I want in a museum all at once. Also, this time around they had a bunch of chairs in the entrance and out in the courtyard, which bore a very specific design element--they had conical bases!

(Not shown: much giddy laughter and trying to balance upside down while making silly noises.)

We ended up just hanging out in the V&A's garden for a couple of hours, just because the chairs were, in addition to being extremely fun to faff about in, extremely comfortable. It was a good time.

In addition, we went and saw a spectacular production of Sweeney Todd, and a fun production of Singin' in the Rain, which prompted me to watch the movie as soon as I got home. But more than anything, we just walked around, seeing stuff. We hit Baker Street, Fleet Street, Downing Street, saw Buckingham Palace and a very unhappy changing of the guard that started in sunshine and finished in the rain, and wandered around Hyde Park for quite a while. We also walked a good deal of the south bank of the Thames, which neither of us had seen, which was quite lovely.

Most importantly, however, we hit my personal favourite road, which is of course:

Land of the spectacular tailoring. We drooled at many suits in the windows, and were thoroughly intimidated by the people inside the shops who looked so at home amidst so much mahogany and chalked fabric. Ah, the magic of bespoke. 

Anyway, it was a lovely time! I think I finally have a better sense of the overall geography of London, which is definitely something that has eluded me for a long while. So hopefully when I go back on Monday for my intellectual history program I won't get lost. 

In which I embrace country living

Or perhaps more accurately, poke it inquiringly with a stick.

I'm house and dog-sitting for one of the college tutors at St. Chad's, which means that I'm staying in her cottage in Bishop Auckland, a mile outside of town, surrounded by farmland and Roman archaeological sites. I am accompanied only by a very old German shepherd and a giant bumbling mastiff.

It's pretty great, not gonna lie. Highlights have included:

• Getting up close and personal with a squirrel that was stealing dog food out of the shed
• Talking to fellow dogwalkers who I can only half-understand because man, are the accents thick out here
• Finding a giant spider in the sink first thing in the morning and shrieking like a damsel in distress
• Actually learning how the bus system works 
• Listening intensely to Radio 3 since there's a radio in the kitchen, which means everything from my favourite Brahms piano quintet to a John Cage celebration at the Edinburgh festival to excerpts from Dr. Faustus and Richard III and various others accompanied by Black Sabbath and Liszt. Seriously awesome programming that I was not previously aware of. 
• Fresh baked bread, because there is a bread maker so I don't have to actually do any work to make it.
• And the very best, chatting with people camped out on the Roman fort area outside the house who are dressed as Romans for some sort of yearly get-together and re-enactment. Yes, I am totes serious. They had shields! And capes! And some of them drove up from Manchester just to hang out and entertain children! Awesome.

Also, have a spam of pictures taken while walking the dogs:

Dweeg no. 1

Dweeg no. 2

Archaeology! aka Binchester Roman Fort, approximately 30 seconds away from the house. There's a more cleared up bit over to the right, but you have to go through the mini-museum to get to it proper.

Sheep! Also 30 seconds away, and Suzie (the shepherd) likes to fantasize about chasing them.

Auckland castle! I haven't figured out how to get there yet, but it's very close, and technically owns all the grounds from it to the fort, so we're technically neighbours.

Pretty fields. Usually there are pinto ponies grazing there, it's very picturesque.

Speaking of picturesque...

Following the same wall...

...up to a badass Victorian bridge! Man, I love these things.

FAVOURITE KIND OF LANDSCAPE.

I will take pictures with an actual camera next time I'm there, seeing as I'm doing more housesitting at the end of September after I get back from London. These are all ipod photos, so apologies for the crappy quality. 

So yes, now I'm off to London to meet up with Hannah and tool around being touristy, then back to Durham, then back to London again to do intellectual history summer school, then back to Durham again, and then it's time for the NENC Symposium! And then back to housesitting, and then teacher training for the coming academic year.

Phew. This summer has been way busier than expected. But I can't say that I mind. I am much better at being productive if I have more things to do.

Post of procrastination!

These are becoming tellingly common. Anyway. Random things have happened this past week and a half! Let me round them up.

First, I have to share a weird thing: so given that I was ill for most of the choir tour, I had an oddly limited range that was mostly ridiculously low or high and breathy--no normal, middle range at all. Well, now I'm feeling better, and miraculously I seem to have...discovered my head voice? I don't even know, but I feel like I've unlocked a level on a video game, and now all of a sudden I can reach high Fs and stuff. It's crazy! Not the prettiest sound yet, but in tune and not entirely offensive, and it doesn't feel like I'm forcing it or anything. I can't explain it. Hopefully it won't suddenly disappear again. I don't trust it yet.

I'm working on my Shelley chapter as diligently as I can, which is going okay, though I'm not sure whether it will be done on time. No doubt it will hinge upon my ability to just hunker down and ignore all other things until it's finished, which may or may not happen, we will see. There are lots more interesting connections cropping up between Promethean myth and Faustian myth, between Goethe and Shelley, so I'm fairly confident that at the very least I'm not making up connections and arguments where none actually exist. The problem, as usual, is articulating all of these things in a meaningful way, which can only be accomplished, so far as I can tell, by pecking at a sentence or two, staring off into space for an hour, rinse, repeat.

Occasionally there is tea somewhere in there too. And sandwiches.

Beyond that, I went to a workshop last week on how the publishing world is faring (here's a hint: not well) and how best to deal with it as an academic, and received the comforting news that while the market is terrible and the competition fierce, my style of research--aka, big and sprawling--is far more appealing to publishers than the narrower case studies which tend to be in vogue within thesis writing. So when I emerge, pale and blinking, from the bowels of my degree, I may actually stand a chance of getting an editor interested in my work. But of course, that is in the far distant future.

In the less distant future, I've been accepted at a four day summer school program on intellectual history run by UCL and Sussex, so I'll be taking a trip down to London for that in September, which is exciting. Hopefully I'll be able to get money from my department to pay for it, or if not, somewhere else. I'm also applying for a second teaching position out of the School for Combined Honours, which is basically a liberal arts degree some Durham students can apply for, rather than the usual UK specialisation scheme. Their one required course is the one I'd be teaching on, and basically is designed to foster critical thinking and self-reflection in first year students. If by some great good fortune I manage to get a position doing that as well as teaching within my department, I could actually pay for my rent through teaching alone! That would be nice.

In less businesslike news, I went to a friend's birthday party the other day and had excellent drinks and burgers with lots of fun and lovely people, and then had a very entertaining time getting back the next day because all of the trains south were delayed due to...wayward cows. Apparently the farmer had to be informed that exactly nineteen cows had gotten free and were loitering around the track, like you do. The droll announcement of this over the tannoy more than made up for the delay, in my opinion. Also, there was a very small child on the train who, unlike the rest of his family, who were dressed like normal weekenders, was done up in tweed and was earnestly asking various passengers, "Excuse me sir/madame, does this train go to Derby?" which was basically the most adorable, ridiculous and English thing I have ever seen in my life. So yes, train travel--it's a fun time. Far more fun than planes.

The rest of the week will no doubt be far less interesting than all this, because it is just writing, writing, writing, 'til this chapter is done. Fingers crossed that the words come easy.

Transforming Objects

So I am home from my adventure in conferencing, this one being far less stressful than the last, probably for a number of reasons that include the lack of travel stress, good friends being in and around the conference, and a very congenial bunch of delegates.

My paper was on one of the first panels, so I got it out of the way early on, and then I chaired a panel the next day, which was entirely new to me but very fun. My own paper went well, I think, though I tripped over the words a bit because I hadn't read the whole thing aloud end-to-end before, just in bits and pieces, but on the whole people seemed to like it. I had a great discussion with one of the other panelists who is working on a different aspect of the same general subject, so in that regard it was very fruitful. Chairing was good also, all on the life of paper and the physical engagement with it from a processing point of view, and in the market place. I was very pleased to come across someone else who liked the magical way in which Marx wrote about the economy as much as I do!

On the whole, while I wasn't very familiar with a lot of object research that's happening at present, the perspective on it which was presented at the conference on the whole was really fascinating, and a good alternative look at the era I'm researching. Also, I'm now convinced that I need to learn how to give papers without a full script, because one of the keynote speakers did his full hour with nothing but a powerpoint (which didn't include any prompts or bullet points) to help him along, and it was very impressive and engaging. So that'll be my next project. I'm probably going to try it with NENC, since we're doing a speaker series this summer and I'm presenting something in the August session. It'll be an adventure in not being frazzled!

To look at the schedule of the other papers, and the general gist of the conference at large, go here.

Now, I must get back to Shelley and write up my chapter this month, eek!

A Monstrous Conference!

Or rather, a conference about monstrosity.

It went really splendidly, I am pleased to say! Didn't exactly have an auspicious beginning, but it ended up being both a fun and engaging experience.

I got to Leicester around noon after having a frankly dysfunctional morning--the night before, I discovered mold growing in my bedroom and had a hypochondriac freakout about how I was going to inhale spores and die, and so I slept for a scant few hours on my floor away from the wall in question before catching an early morning train. Additionally, getting to Leicester required switching not only trains, but also stations, which meant that I had to almost-run from one part of Newark to another (yes, there is a Newark here) with my luggage because my first train was running a half hour late. It was not great to do that on two hours' sleep.

But in any case, I made the second train, and got to my hotel to drop off myself without too much difficulty; my map-reading skills have apparently improved. I had a slightly harder time finding the DeMontfort campus, but still found it in good time to see the beginning of the conference.

The conference itself was quite interesting, with a good blend of papers and approaches to themes of monstrosity and their implications for literature and culture. We covered everything from American Psycho to Lovecraft to pamphlets of the English Civil Wars, and I particularly liked how different time periods were blended together in discussion such that the central themes of what made a monster and what undermined them always came through strongly, no matter what the context. There was also an openness about letting classic canonical literature reside easily with pop culture that I really liked.

My paper on Saturday seemed to go over quite well also, though as usual I had some esprit d'escalier moments over the questions I got asked. The keynote speakers were both fascinating, and had hilariously opposed ideas about humanism/universalism vs. cultural subjectivity, which played out in lively debate and spilled over into the conference dinner. I also met some great people from all over the world, and talked about everything from steampunk to the horror of Twilight over some really delicious food. So on the whole, it was a very successful weekend.

I'm going to do a more academic write-up of the conference on my reading group's website, so when that goes up, I'll post a link to it as well.


EDIT: The write-up is now online; you can find it here.

Ta for now!

Caaaake

Went out for dinner and drinks with the flatmates the other night for a belated birthday celebration, wherein I sampled a couple of extremely delicious cocktails and gorged myself on some excellent Thai fried rice. It was served in half a pineapple! Delicious!

And also, because she is awesome and also an extremely skilled baker, Barbara made me a cake!

RAINBOW CAKE. It contains so much sugar it's ridiculous. The icing is like flavored crack. But I've had to be up early three days in a row due to a plethora of choir rehearsals, and tomorrow I am editing my paper, emailing lots of people, singing a service at the cathedral with lots of small children, and then making my power point presentation. So I am all about temporarily upping my sugar intake. Cake for breakfast, woohoo!

See, I'm totally not a real person yet.

Things that have happened

Good god, I'm twenty-four now. I'm supposed to be all adult and stuff. What??

I am fighting this by watching How To Train Your Dragon and buying comic books. Yes.

Anyway.

I have finished my conference paper! Or at least a draft of it. I'm going to fix it again next week before I have to present it officially, but so far the people who have read it have enjoyed it, which I'm very pleased about. I'm relieved to have the bulk of it done so that I can go back to concentrating on my thesis, which I haven't done for about a month, oops. In the meantime, I will endure the annoying restrictions of powerpoint and get that done as soon as possible, and then read it all aloud a lot so I don't stutter and let my voice drop down into the bowels of my stressed-out register.

I taught my first tutorial last week, which went fairly well--I have a really excellent group, in that they're all willing to participate but no one person completely dominates discussion. I quite lost track of time, so we talked quite a lot about Robinson Crusoe and not a lot at all about Mansfield Park, but on the whole we covered the main themes that needed to be touched on. I know I need a lot more practice in terms of getting comfortable enough to really listen and use students' points as jumping off points for continuing discussion, but hopefully that will come with repetition and ever more note-taking and study. It was definitely enjoyable though; I must admit I do enjoy teaching on the whole.

I've also been enjoying choir immensely for its fast pace and large repertoire, and the fact that we're going to Rome in the spring to do a tour, which is extremely cool. I've also had the first of a few singing lessons and the instructor has said that I have a few more notes in my upper range if I work at it, which is kind of exciting. It would be nice to have a proper handle on my upper register rather than having to strain to reach notes. We're doing a couple more performances in the cathedral as well, which will never not be awesome.

I've also joined a reading group based in Newcastle that is being organized in part by a friend of mine from Leeds: www.northeast19century.org
We had our first meeting last week and it was very enjoyable, and I'm now in charge of making posters for it, which is good fun. I think it will be a really nice way of getting back into a semi-seminar environment with other postgrads, and having some fun reading literature that isn't necessarily revolving around my specific research. For Halloween we read ghost stories, and next week we're talking about the Brontës and the Lake District Poets.

The days have gotten abominably short again, which never fails to be both depressing and incredibly confusing since I no longer have any sense of when evening is, since the sun sets several hours before any definition of evening begins. It isn't particularly cold yet, though, of which I'm glad. This time, however, I'm prepared! I have fingerless gloves, a hot water bottle, and two extra blankets on my bed. I'm going to look like some sort of bundled urchin, but I am going to be warm all winter. I am determined.

Also, I'm pretty sure that anyone who reads this already knows, but my parents has acquired KITTIES. Eeeeeeeeeee! After a very long debate, they are henceforth named Gwen and Cecily, or alternately Moose and Squirrel, and I cannot wait to go home to meet them. There will be a lot of cooing and squeals of delight involved. Because this is exactly me:

http://xkcd.com/

So yeah. It's gonna be awesome. Either that, or my parents are going to throw me out of the house for being obnoxiously twee.

Whitby: Abbey ruins are my favorite thing.

Doris's sister and her friend are visiting from Germany for the week, so Doris rented a car to take them around, and I happily tagged along for the ride when they went down to the coast at Whitby on a rather glorious day yesterday.

It seems that coastal towns all have the same general feel of boardwalks and artisan shops and random goth stores. It kind of felt like Cape Cod.

However, Cape Cod does not have fantastic ruins on cliffsides. I swear, I will never get tired of these half-crumbled churches and abbeys, they are just way too beautiful.

It was a fantastic day for picture-taking, as is probably apparent, and for the first time in what seems like aeons, I actually brought my own camera, so I had a lot of fun framing shots.

 

Then we wandered around town a bit--it was really crowded with families, since it's Easter vacation--and walked out along the harbor.

 

After that, we had lunch at a pub before climbing back up the 199 steps to the abbey (apparently the number is a big deal? It was on a sign post) and heading home. Spring is cooperating quite nicely so far!

Success!

My Carlyle chapter is done! 13,000 words, another 40 pages down, and I actually feel good about this one. It felt substantial and coherent, and not just the ramblings of someone who has done too much reading and not enough thinking. Hopefully my advisor will like it.

Also, it is Maggie's birthday on Friday, so we are doing celebration stuff both on the day and on Saturday as a way of blowing off some steam. Fun times in Newcastle, which will actually still have people in it, unlike Durham! This place is such a college town, it is absolutely desolate right now since all the students are on Easter break. It is very strange.

Okay, bed now! My brain is exhausted.

Tynemouth

Last weekend, Maggie and Doris and I took the day off to go to Tynemouth, which is about a half-hour from Newcastle, out on the coast.

Basically, all I really need to say is that if anyone comes to visit me, this is where I'll take you. It's a short train- and metro-ride away, and even while it was a bit damp and cold, it was spectacularly beautiful. Observe:

This is the ruin of the priory. Just below it are cliffs and a beach that goes straight into the North Sea. It is spectacular and dramatic, and if I was a Romantic poet, I would be writing odes to it.

It's also an odd combination of the old and new, as the priory was built in 11th century, I believe, but the graveyard in the back is at least partially Victorian.

And then there's also a reproduction of a giant cannon-like gun from WWI on the coastal wall, which could apparently shoot bullets six inches in diameter seven miles out to sea. Pretty impressive.

But not nearly as pretty. I mean, really.

>

Pretty amazing. The town is gorgeous too, with townhouses that reminded me a bit of Bath, but the coast is rocky and treacherous and fun to navigate (at least for me--I had hiking boots on, and I have a weird liking for hopping around and balancing on rocky outcroppings. I'm getting in touch with my inner mountain goat, or something).

We also went to the local aquarium, which was unfortunately a rip-off, and walked along the coast for about two towns (which sounds impressive, but towns can be tiny, so it was only five miles, maybe). Still, the views were gorgeous, the weather mostly tolerable, and much fun was had. It's definitely a place to go in the summer as well, since a lot of the shops and restaurants were clearly seasonal, and probably due to open in April or May. There were some crazy people who were already surfing, but I get the feeling that everyone probably descends upon the place in June and July. I'll have to go again then.