Saw "In the Red and Brown Water" by Tarell Alvin McCraney at the Young Vic tonight. It was an interesting and really ambitious piece, but somehow never really came together. The most dramatic thing about the production was the stage itself, which was covered in several inches of water. After some time to reflect, I think I have a sense of what was going on with that, insofar as the director was clearly going for a dream-like mood (the play itself traded heavily in archetypes) and the water both slowed down the actors' movements and reflected the lighting quite beautifully, but it was such a prominent and unusual feature of the production design that it distracted from everything else going on. Which was maybe just as well: the plot sort of went to pot in the second act, so-and-so is gay, somebody else wants a baby, there's a voodoo priestess, etc. etc. Like I said, ambitious. The actors also narrated their own movements in the third person to the audience, e.g. "she smiles, sadly," which I found incredibly distracting and really quite detrimental to connecting with any of the characters on an emotional level. Which left, then, a bunch of actors standing around in a very large wading pool.
Presently, I am eating a packet of Walkers "Roast Chicken flavour potato crisps." They are not nearly as good as the sweet thai chili flavor, but the back of the package informs me that they are suitable for vegetarians, suitable for coeliacs and contain no artificial colours. So that's something.
To the residents of the flats on the first-- sorry, ground-- floor: please put a shirt on and/or close your drapes.
To the girl on the elliptical in front of me at the gym this afternoon: yes, your pants are too big and yes, when they fall down everyone can see your thong. And most people don't wear underwear that fancy to work out in.
To American women of the fashionable sort: two words for you: harem pants. They are coming for you. You have been warned.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Day 15
Today was a good day, for many reasons.
1) No use whatsoever of AK.
2) I went to the British Library. I looked at rare books (Paul Greaves 1594 Grammatica Anglicae, which bears further consideration, and the 1553 Pierce the Ploghmans Crede, which does not, as the most interesting bits, e.g., the printed marginalia, have been cut away. Rotten 18th century collectors). I am never, ever going to get to see early printed Spenser in person, but that is neither the end of the world not a very big deal, really, when you get right down to it. Were I a hardcore Spenserian-cum-book historian, that would be one thing. But I'm not, so it's fine. For once, I'm interested in what a book says rather than what it looks like.
3) While at the British Library, I ran into Roger and Josh. We had lunch. While I would characterise myself as doing somewherer between "just fine" and "very well" here in London, it was wonderful to see some familiar faces and hear some familiar voices. I'm realizing the degree to which, back in Philadelphia, I was absolutely spoilt in terms of interlocutors, people who know about my work and topic and who have, even in a tangental way, seen ir develop over the last three years.
4) This evening, I attended a terrific talk on transgender time and the middle ages. I'm not sure I agree with everything that was said, in particular I think the categories of transgender and queer were elided in potentially problematic ways, but on the whole it was an engaging and exciting talk. The application of contemporary theory to medieval texts (here, Caxton's translation from French of the moralized Ovid) often and perhaps inevitably goes awry, but I still appauld anyone who tries. If nothing else, I think it queries in a vital way the category of "literature" as theorists often unproblematically posit it (particularly those thinkers whose primary intellectual and philosophical engagement lies elsewhere, as in gender or sexuality). I loves me some queer medievalists, which is to say I loves me some medievalists, because I think anyone who does medieval studies is at least a little bit queer.
5) I met some delightful people at the reception after the talk, and am presently tipsy in the way one can only become on red wine that one is not paying for. London is wonderful, obvsiously, but a departmental talk-- not my hall, not a bar, not the BL-- is quite clearly where I need to go to find My People.
6) There is a wonderful store on Charing Cross that sells Japanese candy in bulk. It's not the best dinner, from any standpoint, but it is delicious and very much the proper thing to munch on while one reads Bede's Ecclesiastical History.
1) No use whatsoever of AK.
2) I went to the British Library. I looked at rare books (Paul Greaves 1594 Grammatica Anglicae, which bears further consideration, and the 1553 Pierce the Ploghmans Crede, which does not, as the most interesting bits, e.g., the printed marginalia, have been cut away. Rotten 18th century collectors). I am never, ever going to get to see early printed Spenser in person, but that is neither the end of the world not a very big deal, really, when you get right down to it. Were I a hardcore Spenserian-cum-book historian, that would be one thing. But I'm not, so it's fine. For once, I'm interested in what a book says rather than what it looks like.
3) While at the British Library, I ran into Roger and Josh. We had lunch. While I would characterise myself as doing somewherer between "just fine" and "very well" here in London, it was wonderful to see some familiar faces and hear some familiar voices. I'm realizing the degree to which, back in Philadelphia, I was absolutely spoilt in terms of interlocutors, people who know about my work and topic and who have, even in a tangental way, seen ir develop over the last three years.
4) This evening, I attended a terrific talk on transgender time and the middle ages. I'm not sure I agree with everything that was said, in particular I think the categories of transgender and queer were elided in potentially problematic ways, but on the whole it was an engaging and exciting talk. The application of contemporary theory to medieval texts (here, Caxton's translation from French of the moralized Ovid) often and perhaps inevitably goes awry, but I still appauld anyone who tries. If nothing else, I think it queries in a vital way the category of "literature" as theorists often unproblematically posit it (particularly those thinkers whose primary intellectual and philosophical engagement lies elsewhere, as in gender or sexuality). I loves me some queer medievalists, which is to say I loves me some medievalists, because I think anyone who does medieval studies is at least a little bit queer.
5) I met some delightful people at the reception after the talk, and am presently tipsy in the way one can only become on red wine that one is not paying for. London is wonderful, obvsiously, but a departmental talk-- not my hall, not a bar, not the BL-- is quite clearly where I need to go to find My People.
6) There is a wonderful store on Charing Cross that sells Japanese candy in bulk. It's not the best dinner, from any standpoint, but it is delicious and very much the proper thing to munch on while one reads Bede's Ecclesiastical History.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Day 14
Today was part II of my Men Hitting Things (and Each Other) with Sticks weekend. The weather cleared up sufficiently and, after sorting out the address and realizing it was only a ten minute walk away, I went to see some bike polo played in Islington. As I've previously mentioned, it is exactly what it sounds like, people on fixed-gear bikes with mallets hitting a ball into one another's goals. In practice, it plays more like hockey, with a lot of satisfying thwacks and the incipient threat of bodily harm. The shared punk/geek affinities of fixed-gear afficianados were on full display (if you've ever spend an evening at Fiume, you know exactly what I'm talking about, for better or for worse): anyway, a lot beautiful bikes and, not coincidentally, loads of fancy digital SLR cameras in evidence, and when someone very kindly offered me coffee they assured me it was vegan.
Like comic book culture, then, cycle culture involves a lot of black hoodies and facial hair and appears to span the Atlantic. Indeed, on a dilapidated playground decorated with fantastic graffiti under the shadow (well, there would have been a shadow if it wasn't raining) of several massive apartment blocks, I could have been in Brooklyn or Philly, if not for the preponderance of british accents.
I really would like to get a bike while I'm here. The tube is expensive and the most interesting parts of the city I've explored so far are rather afield from where I live and I've got things to do besides spend hours walking everywhere. London drivers are not especially bike friendly, however, and there's the whole left-side driving thing, which I worry would cause confusion. Opinions, among those whom I've queried, have been split 50-50 on the subject of whether a temporary transport and non-avid cyclist such as myself should even bother, athough John and Joshua both had bikes while they were here and reported no difficulties in that respect.
I wonder if it's possible to spend an entire year working on one's dissertation in London and not finish a single book. I suspect it is. I also wonder if it will be possible to spend an entire year living here without visiting a single restaurant (so far, everything has been either from the hall or sandwiches from Tesco and the like). It is a sad thing that I have no one to explore London's myriad and tacky tourist trap restaurants, as well as the various US themed establishments scattered about (cf. my earlier comments about Detroit). Someone please come and visit so that we can look for vampires with perfect hair drinking pina coladas at Trade Vic's!
Like comic book culture, then, cycle culture involves a lot of black hoodies and facial hair and appears to span the Atlantic. Indeed, on a dilapidated playground decorated with fantastic graffiti under the shadow (well, there would have been a shadow if it wasn't raining) of several massive apartment blocks, I could have been in Brooklyn or Philly, if not for the preponderance of british accents.
I really would like to get a bike while I'm here. The tube is expensive and the most interesting parts of the city I've explored so far are rather afield from where I live and I've got things to do besides spend hours walking everywhere. London drivers are not especially bike friendly, however, and there's the whole left-side driving thing, which I worry would cause confusion. Opinions, among those whom I've queried, have been split 50-50 on the subject of whether a temporary transport and non-avid cyclist such as myself should even bother, athough John and Joshua both had bikes while they were here and reported no difficulties in that respect.
I wonder if it's possible to spend an entire year working on one's dissertation in London and not finish a single book. I suspect it is. I also wonder if it will be possible to spend an entire year living here without visiting a single restaurant (so far, everything has been either from the hall or sandwiches from Tesco and the like). It is a sad thing that I have no one to explore London's myriad and tacky tourist trap restaurants, as well as the various US themed establishments scattered about (cf. my earlier comments about Detroit). Someone please come and visit so that we can look for vampires with perfect hair drinking pina coladas at Trade Vic's!
Day 13
Yesterday AM I went to tour Sir John Soane's museum, which every single guidebook or website I've read describes as "one of the hidden gems of London." And so it is: the museum consists of two houses on Lincoln's Field, a residential spot not far from where I'm living, that belonged to Soane, a Regency architect of some reknown. Soane had a complicated family life and died estranged from his only surviving son, leaving his estate instead to endow the museum. Soane was, apparently, an inveterate collector but a discerning one, and the meticulously preserved house--which, in addition to serving as a residence and the base of Soane's architectural practice, was designed and modified specifically to show off his collections to best advantage, mostly by playing with filtered natural light from overhead-- is filled to the brim with statues, vases, plaster casts, paintings, stone building elements, stained glass, and architectural models. The sarcophagous of the pharo Seti I is in the basement; Hogarth's A Rake's Progress series (paintings, not prints. I had no idea.) is on the walls in the picture room. It's difficult to describe the exuberant density of things in the house. In some cases, hinged panels are installed in the walls to allow multiple layers of pictures to hang. The panels can then be unhooked and swung forward to reveal additional works (or, in one case, a sort of nave with a statue and a model of Soane's design for the Bank of England). The tour took great pains to point out the ways in which the house itself is quite interesting and experimental in its use of light, mirrors, colored glass, curved ceilings and the like, but the overall impression really is the abundance of stuff on display. The collections were brought together to serve a didactic purpose, for the education of Soane's pupils and others, but there's a palpable sense of whimsy as well. E.g., Soane was notably antipathetic toward neo-Gothic trends in architecture and only one room has any such elements in it. He called it the monk's parlor and invented a fictional monk, Padre Giovanni, who lived there (with his dog!). There's a tomb for both Padre Giovanni and the dog outside. There's a shrine to Shakepeare on the landing of the staircase, all marble busts and dewey oil paintings of a young-ish Bard being attended to by the muses (who's a romantic now, hm?). The guide happily and proudly related to me how Soane-- and here's the fetishization of the material object again-- owned copies of the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Folios. I certainly did not later get in an argument with this guide, who was the curator of drawings at the museum, about the Society of Antiquaries.
On my way back I stopped at the plaza outfront of the Waitrose near my hall to check out what the signs advertised as a farmers' market. I think that it does not mean what they think it means, or at least what I think of as a farmers' market, having been conditioned by the ambient slow food, organic, localvore mentality of my delightfully lefty neighborhood back home: there was only one stall selling produce, and two or three selling fresh bread. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the rest of the market, which had maybe twenty stalls altogether, was made up of vendors selling cheese, sausage, chocolate, fudge, cupcakes and numerous varieties of street food (malaysian, indian, etc.). And there were samples! I wandered around for a bit noshing on what I could and chatting with people. Cheesemongers are some of my favorite foodpeople to talk with, almost every one I met has come to it as a second career and has an interesting backstory. As it turns out, the man running the Neal's Yard Dairy table was originally from Battle Creek, and had lived in Ann Arbor and worked and Zingermann's for a number of years before coming to London-- the first Michigander, I think, that I've met here. Later, before it started to rain and I, umbrella-less, ran off, I tried some amazing harissa. "Secret recipe!" the Turk (?) behind the table assured me. Although I wouldn't dare entrust, well, anything, to the communal fridge in the tea kitchen, I'll probably make a return trip next week for items I can keep in my room to vary my peanut-butter-and-apple lunch routine and offset the rather uninspired offerings in the dinning hall. I still haven't had a restaurant or home-cooked meal in England, though I try and eat as many whole foods in the dining hall as is possible.
Later, I ventured back out, to the gym in the student union. Numerous people have advised me that gyms in the UK are vaguely "different" than those in the US and I can confirm that this is true. This one is small, and rather dingy, but I can pay over the counter month to month and it will do. It's got a 30m pool as well, which was a major selling point, but when I took a look yesterday it was really, really crowded, maybe 6+ to a lane. Hopefully, it's less busy at times other than Saturday afternoon. A helpful undergraduate alerted me earlier this week to the precence of a machine in the building at which one can buy cell phone time ("top up one's mobile") using cash, so I've now got a working cell phone. Don't have any one to call, or be called by, but it's probably a good thing to have.
After dinner, I ventured out in the ugly, nasty weather with a large-ish group of mostly postgrads from my hall to a Canadian pub to watch the Penguins play the Senators in Sweden. Apparently it was a regular season game, despite the fact that it was played in Sweden. Who knew? It was pleasant enough, if crowded, but I am always skeptical of these sort of group outings based solely on residential proximity to one another. I mean, yes, it's good to know your neighbors, and it's definitely pleasant to have people to sit with at meals and so on, but just because we are living in the same place does not mean we have anything beyond that in common with one another. There's a kind of group-think that arises in these situations that is just deadly in its banality. Everyone is encouraged to excise the most interesting and distinctive parts of their personailty and winds up becoming boring when they are really just trying to be nice. (My friends, you are my friends because you are interesting, not because you are nice. A great many of you are terrific, kind-hearted individuals but not all of you are and that's okay because you know what? There's room in life for that. We'll never be BFFs but a girl needs wit and whiskey as well as tea and sympathy.) Anyway, you wind up doing things like going to see "Dirty Dancing" the musical or agreeing to the statement "it's good to try new foods, but it can be hard" because you're hard up for social interaction and just desperate for the comfort of some kind of group formation. And it's not that you disagree because the activities and the statements are just pabulum, really, and there's no way to disagree with them, it's that at a fundamental level you just don't care and you're really quite bored and you hold back from doing the things that are uniquely, specifically, and passionately interesting to you because a big part of what makes them so personally fascinating is that they don't have wide appeal. This is me being a snob (a hipster, perhaps, that rare [or not] American creature?), but I am making a stand for quality over quanity in social activities.
So I ditched the boring group and went to another bar with three very nice Canadian boys (are any of you seeing a theme here?). The bar, called, hilariously, FREVD, had cheap drinks and minimalist techno and concrete walls and was full-- very very full-- of pretty young Londoners in elaborate rock-and-roll getup. (London requires a certain recalibration of my personal aesthetic and also reminds me every twenty minutes or so that I am no longer twenty one. More's the pity.) The Canadians tried to convince a giggling trio of Greek girls to come with them to a concert. They were having none of it. I chatted with another guy who really, really wanted to talk to me about Chaucer, thumping bass and bored-looking date be damned. London nightlife, at least my extremely limited experience of it so far, seems highly social but also effervescent, even with the curiously standard exchange of email addresses for Facebook purposes. Not knowing anyone frees you up to talk to everyone.
Today, I am supposed to go to see the bike polo (hipsters on fixed gear bikes hit a ball with mallets made out of ski poles and gas piping), but it's raining for real, not just drizzling and I have only a so-so idea of where the court is located. Also, something about a dissertation? Work to do? I dunno. We'll see what the weather does.
On my way back I stopped at the plaza outfront of the Waitrose near my hall to check out what the signs advertised as a farmers' market. I think that it does not mean what they think it means, or at least what I think of as a farmers' market, having been conditioned by the ambient slow food, organic, localvore mentality of my delightfully lefty neighborhood back home: there was only one stall selling produce, and two or three selling fresh bread. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the rest of the market, which had maybe twenty stalls altogether, was made up of vendors selling cheese, sausage, chocolate, fudge, cupcakes and numerous varieties of street food (malaysian, indian, etc.). And there were samples! I wandered around for a bit noshing on what I could and chatting with people. Cheesemongers are some of my favorite foodpeople to talk with, almost every one I met has come to it as a second career and has an interesting backstory. As it turns out, the man running the Neal's Yard Dairy table was originally from Battle Creek, and had lived in Ann Arbor and worked and Zingermann's for a number of years before coming to London-- the first Michigander, I think, that I've met here. Later, before it started to rain and I, umbrella-less, ran off, I tried some amazing harissa. "Secret recipe!" the Turk (?) behind the table assured me. Although I wouldn't dare entrust, well, anything, to the communal fridge in the tea kitchen, I'll probably make a return trip next week for items I can keep in my room to vary my peanut-butter-and-apple lunch routine and offset the rather uninspired offerings in the dinning hall. I still haven't had a restaurant or home-cooked meal in England, though I try and eat as many whole foods in the dining hall as is possible.
Later, I ventured back out, to the gym in the student union. Numerous people have advised me that gyms in the UK are vaguely "different" than those in the US and I can confirm that this is true. This one is small, and rather dingy, but I can pay over the counter month to month and it will do. It's got a 30m pool as well, which was a major selling point, but when I took a look yesterday it was really, really crowded, maybe 6+ to a lane. Hopefully, it's less busy at times other than Saturday afternoon. A helpful undergraduate alerted me earlier this week to the precence of a machine in the building at which one can buy cell phone time ("top up one's mobile") using cash, so I've now got a working cell phone. Don't have any one to call, or be called by, but it's probably a good thing to have.
After dinner, I ventured out in the ugly, nasty weather with a large-ish group of mostly postgrads from my hall to a Canadian pub to watch the Penguins play the Senators in Sweden. Apparently it was a regular season game, despite the fact that it was played in Sweden. Who knew? It was pleasant enough, if crowded, but I am always skeptical of these sort of group outings based solely on residential proximity to one another. I mean, yes, it's good to know your neighbors, and it's definitely pleasant to have people to sit with at meals and so on, but just because we are living in the same place does not mean we have anything beyond that in common with one another. There's a kind of group-think that arises in these situations that is just deadly in its banality. Everyone is encouraged to excise the most interesting and distinctive parts of their personailty and winds up becoming boring when they are really just trying to be nice. (My friends, you are my friends because you are interesting, not because you are nice. A great many of you are terrific, kind-hearted individuals but not all of you are and that's okay because you know what? There's room in life for that. We'll never be BFFs but a girl needs wit and whiskey as well as tea and sympathy.) Anyway, you wind up doing things like going to see "Dirty Dancing" the musical or agreeing to the statement "it's good to try new foods, but it can be hard" because you're hard up for social interaction and just desperate for the comfort of some kind of group formation. And it's not that you disagree because the activities and the statements are just pabulum, really, and there's no way to disagree with them, it's that at a fundamental level you just don't care and you're really quite bored and you hold back from doing the things that are uniquely, specifically, and passionately interesting to you because a big part of what makes them so personally fascinating is that they don't have wide appeal. This is me being a snob (a hipster, perhaps, that rare [or not] American creature?), but I am making a stand for quality over quanity in social activities.
So I ditched the boring group and went to another bar with three very nice Canadian boys (are any of you seeing a theme here?). The bar, called, hilariously, FREVD, had cheap drinks and minimalist techno and concrete walls and was full-- very very full-- of pretty young Londoners in elaborate rock-and-roll getup. (London requires a certain recalibration of my personal aesthetic and also reminds me every twenty minutes or so that I am no longer twenty one. More's the pity.) The Canadians tried to convince a giggling trio of Greek girls to come with them to a concert. They were having none of it. I chatted with another guy who really, really wanted to talk to me about Chaucer, thumping bass and bored-looking date be damned. London nightlife, at least my extremely limited experience of it so far, seems highly social but also effervescent, even with the curiously standard exchange of email addresses for Facebook purposes. Not knowing anyone frees you up to talk to everyone.
Today, I am supposed to go to see the bike polo (hipsters on fixed gear bikes hit a ball with mallets made out of ski poles and gas piping), but it's raining for real, not just drizzling and I have only a so-so idea of where the court is located. Also, something about a dissertation? Work to do? I dunno. We'll see what the weather does.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Day 11
Not so much to report (alas, I fear this is all going to get more and more mundane as I settle into a routine). My advisor will be in town briefly next week, which has produced in me not just the vague awareness of the fact that I should be doing work, but an actual desire to get something accomplished. I'm reading Jennifer Summit's new book, which is awful good, and thinking about the difference between collections of books and collections of texts within a single volume. Summit talks about Sir Thomas Elyot's confusion when, upon gaining access to Henry VIII's library to work on his Dictionary (printed, of course, by my bff Thomas Berthelet, who is also the only early printer to print editions of texts by Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, i.e., I think he had a specialty, i.e., I should probably write an article), he finds to his dismay that the books are arranged alphabetically, making it impossible for him to determine which sources are orthodox and which could be dangerous to cite in the rather chilly political climate of the late 1530s. Which I think is quite telling. It's difficult for me to wrap my mind around, but alphabetical organization of libraries and collected works of recent writers (vernacular writers, even) are just not givens in the sixteenth century the way they are today. There are certain advantages, of course (Elyot's Dictionary is in fact arranged alphabetically, just like the library he worked from), but to early modersn these were not naturalized organizational schemes but specific choices to be made, with certain tradeoffs.
But enough about that. The most exciting thing I have to report is that the battery charger I ordered last week has arrived, in good working order, and I can take pictures now (it's also proof-of-concept that I can, in fact, get mail here. See?
The first is the view from my windows, the second two cover pretty much my entire living space. It's tiny but not too bad, unless I start to think about how much it costs. I figured it out and the useable space is only about forty square feet less than my freshman year dorm room, which was of course shared.
Yesterday, in proof that in times of social isolation we all revert to type and mine is geek, I also visited several nearby comic book stores, including Forbidden Planet, looking for the trade paperback of Rex Libris. Everyone knows the title, remembers having it in a month or so ago, but hasn't got it now. They can order it, though! I don't know where the stereotype of comics store employees being aloof and unhelpful comes from, they've never been anything but solicitous and helpful to me. I bought the Great Outdoor Fight book instead. Based on this admittedly cursory expedition, Anglo comic book culture seems quite similar to its American equivalent, just with the books of creepy pictures of Japanese girls more prominently displayed. Same dress code: jeans, black sweatshirt. Facial hair encouraged.
I took a more structured detour through Covent Garden on my way back, and looked at a lot of very nice things that I certainly can't afford to buy, including a beautiful dark grey down-filled silk coat in the low four figures (and that's pounds) that I feel certain would have magically transformed me into the sort of sleek, stylish, slightly patrician and deeply cool woman who seems to fill the streets here. I really do need to go buy a winter coat, though. It's chilly here, and very frequently wet, and for packing reasons I left my own coat, a 3/4 length downfilled thing that doesn't fit anymore anyway, back at home. My original plan was to find something cheap in a charity shop, and then just donate it back at the end of the season, to rent it, as it were, but all the stores I've been to contain just two sorts of coats: those that don't fit me, and those that are shapeless, in bad condition, and generally make me look like a homeless person. Plan B is Topshop. A peek online at their current offerings is promising, style-wise, but I thought Topshop was supposed to be cheap! (I like this one best. I'm a UK size 10. Just FYI.) Maybe Primark will have something.
Later in the evening I made a second venture to the bar in the basement, which was remarkably less crowded and noisy than on my earlier visit. There, I enjoyed a pint of Grolsch for two pounds (hard to argue with that) and lively conversation with several first year undergraduates who fancied themselves intellectual gentlement of the world (no doubt just the sort that would to a woman such as myself!) and told me about the tiny towns that they'd managed to escape from by dint of their wits just a few weeks before. They were awesome. If it's my fate in life to spend a lot of time in bars talking to nerdy boys in bars-- and the last decade or so of my life suggests that it is-- well, I could do a lot worse.
I've taken some non-drowsy decongestant and now I feel all wonky. Kind of great, and no more stuffy nose, but definitely wonky.
But enough about that. The most exciting thing I have to report is that the battery charger I ordered last week has arrived, in good working order, and I can take pictures now (it's also proof-of-concept that I can, in fact, get mail here. See?
The first is the view from my windows, the second two cover pretty much my entire living space. It's tiny but not too bad, unless I start to think about how much it costs. I figured it out and the useable space is only about forty square feet less than my freshman year dorm room, which was of course shared.
Yesterday, in proof that in times of social isolation we all revert to type and mine is geek, I also visited several nearby comic book stores, including Forbidden Planet, looking for the trade paperback of Rex Libris. Everyone knows the title, remembers having it in a month or so ago, but hasn't got it now. They can order it, though! I don't know where the stereotype of comics store employees being aloof and unhelpful comes from, they've never been anything but solicitous and helpful to me. I bought the Great Outdoor Fight book instead. Based on this admittedly cursory expedition, Anglo comic book culture seems quite similar to its American equivalent, just with the books of creepy pictures of Japanese girls more prominently displayed. Same dress code: jeans, black sweatshirt. Facial hair encouraged.
I took a more structured detour through Covent Garden on my way back, and looked at a lot of very nice things that I certainly can't afford to buy, including a beautiful dark grey down-filled silk coat in the low four figures (and that's pounds) that I feel certain would have magically transformed me into the sort of sleek, stylish, slightly patrician and deeply cool woman who seems to fill the streets here. I really do need to go buy a winter coat, though. It's chilly here, and very frequently wet, and for packing reasons I left my own coat, a 3/4 length downfilled thing that doesn't fit anymore anyway, back at home. My original plan was to find something cheap in a charity shop, and then just donate it back at the end of the season, to rent it, as it were, but all the stores I've been to contain just two sorts of coats: those that don't fit me, and those that are shapeless, in bad condition, and generally make me look like a homeless person. Plan B is Topshop. A peek online at their current offerings is promising, style-wise, but I thought Topshop was supposed to be cheap! (I like this one best. I'm a UK size 10. Just FYI.) Maybe Primark will have something.
Later in the evening I made a second venture to the bar in the basement, which was remarkably less crowded and noisy than on my earlier visit. There, I enjoyed a pint of Grolsch for two pounds (hard to argue with that) and lively conversation with several first year undergraduates who fancied themselves intellectual gentlement of the world (no doubt just the sort that would to a woman such as myself!) and told me about the tiny towns that they'd managed to escape from by dint of their wits just a few weeks before. They were awesome. If it's my fate in life to spend a lot of time in bars talking to nerdy boys in bars-- and the last decade or so of my life suggests that it is-- well, I could do a lot worse.
I've taken some non-drowsy decongestant and now I feel all wonky. Kind of great, and no more stuffy nose, but definitely wonky.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Day 10
Today, to my shock and surprise, I actually did some work. I also sat in on another class I'll be dipping in and out of; a lot of the lectures will be repeating information I've already covered twice or thrice in my own coursework. Today was mainly an introductory session which I attended to meet the professors and suss things out; I incidentally got to witness a lot of MA students here in London to study the Great Genius Shakespeare get their first taste of historicist kool-aid. It does burn a little going down the first time, but they'll get used to it.
This evening, I attended a lecture and reception at the British Library to celebrate their acquisition of the only known complete copy of the 1595 English translation of the book De Arte Natandi. The book, as those of you who know Latin may have already surmised, is a how-to-swim manual, according to the lecture only the second known printed work on swimming and its English translation the first known book on the subject in English. It's appearance at the end of the sixteenth century has a great deal to do with humanism and a renewed interest in and appreciation for classical texts. Julius Caesar was a great swimmer in his day, apparently, something about swimming in the Nile during a naval battle while holding important documents above his head. And if it was good enough for Caesar then, by God, it was good enough for the gentry of sixteenth century England. (People who worked around water had always had to know how to swim, of course, but it was not until swimming Became a Roman Thing to Do that it was promoted as sport rather than practical skill.)
So there's this book, which is weird and wonderful on at least two fronts. The first concerns its author, one Everard Digby, whose career as a senior fellow at Cambridge came to a rather awkward end: as the blurb for the lecture puts it, "Everard Digby was a rumbustious Tudor scholar, thrown out of Cambridge for offences ranging from crypto-Catholicism to fishing when he should have been in chapel and blowing a horn and shouting round his college."
The second is the books woodcut illustrations, of which there are forty-three. Each consists of one of five frames showing a waterside scene (riverbanks, the edge of a lake, and so on) into which a central block has been inserted bearing a figure demonstrating the particular stroke or trick under discussion in the accompanying passage. These range from something like our modern breast stroke and backstroke (the crawl is a nineteenth century invention. Unless it's not. There was quite the debate over this during the Q&A.) to tricks, like swimming while holding something above water in each hand or swimming while trimming one's toenails, that suggest Digby viewed swimming as rather more akin to acrobatics than a form of transportation.
A few examples taken from the Latin original can be found here. The Latin version is STC 6839 and the English translation is STC 6840, if any of you with EEBO access would like to take a look at the full series.
Anyway, it's a funny little book, and it was nice to learn a little more about it. The reception afterwards gave me the chance to add the British Library to the big list of Cultural Institutions in which I Have Had a Drink, and I should think a bit about what other London places needed to be added to those rolls before I leave here.
This evening, I attended a lecture and reception at the British Library to celebrate their acquisition of the only known complete copy of the 1595 English translation of the book De Arte Natandi. The book, as those of you who know Latin may have already surmised, is a how-to-swim manual, according to the lecture only the second known printed work on swimming and its English translation the first known book on the subject in English. It's appearance at the end of the sixteenth century has a great deal to do with humanism and a renewed interest in and appreciation for classical texts. Julius Caesar was a great swimmer in his day, apparently, something about swimming in the Nile during a naval battle while holding important documents above his head. And if it was good enough for Caesar then, by God, it was good enough for the gentry of sixteenth century England. (People who worked around water had always had to know how to swim, of course, but it was not until swimming Became a Roman Thing to Do that it was promoted as sport rather than practical skill.)
So there's this book, which is weird and wonderful on at least two fronts. The first concerns its author, one Everard Digby, whose career as a senior fellow at Cambridge came to a rather awkward end: as the blurb for the lecture puts it, "Everard Digby was a rumbustious Tudor scholar, thrown out of Cambridge for offences ranging from crypto-Catholicism to fishing when he should have been in chapel and blowing a horn and shouting round his college."
The second is the books woodcut illustrations, of which there are forty-three. Each consists of one of five frames showing a waterside scene (riverbanks, the edge of a lake, and so on) into which a central block has been inserted bearing a figure demonstrating the particular stroke or trick under discussion in the accompanying passage. These range from something like our modern breast stroke and backstroke (the crawl is a nineteenth century invention. Unless it's not. There was quite the debate over this during the Q&A.) to tricks, like swimming while holding something above water in each hand or swimming while trimming one's toenails, that suggest Digby viewed swimming as rather more akin to acrobatics than a form of transportation.
A few examples taken from the Latin original can be found here. The Latin version is STC 6839 and the English translation is STC 6840, if any of you with EEBO access would like to take a look at the full series.
Anyway, it's a funny little book, and it was nice to learn a little more about it. The reception afterwards gave me the chance to add the British Library to the big list of Cultural Institutions in which I Have Had a Drink, and I should think a bit about what other London places needed to be added to those rolls before I leave here.
Days 8 & 9
Back-to-back theater: Timon of Athens at Shakespeare's Globe yesterday and Stoppard's new translation of Chekov's Ivanov starring Kenneth Branaghghghgh (acting very much like Hamlet, but acting very well). The latter was truly outstanding; I don't know when I've ever felt so engrossed in live theater. Go look up the reviews online: all I can add to them is that they do the production justice.
Got way, way lost around Covent Garden walking home; I'd passed the London branch of Forbidden Planet on my way to the theater and had stupidly assumed I'd be able to find it again on my way home without noting, say, the street name. This was to prove not to be the case, and I learned that the Centre Point tower, which I'd been using as a navigational guide, looks exactly the same from the east as from the south. I did, however, come across Detroit Bar (careful, makes noise) which promises "no attitude, no pretension, just Detroit." I will obvs be back.
Explorations in British confectionary continue with the purchase of a Cadbury Crunchie bar. The packaging advertises "milk chocolate with golden honeycombed centre." I'm still not sure way that last bit means, but it was very tasty indeed, much more so than the stupid Aero bar.
Got way, way lost around Covent Garden walking home; I'd passed the London branch of Forbidden Planet on my way to the theater and had stupidly assumed I'd be able to find it again on my way home without noting, say, the street name. This was to prove not to be the case, and I learned that the Centre Point tower, which I'd been using as a navigational guide, looks exactly the same from the east as from the south. I did, however, come across Detroit Bar (careful, makes noise) which promises "no attitude, no pretension, just Detroit." I will obvs be back.
Explorations in British confectionary continue with the purchase of a Cadbury Crunchie bar. The packaging advertises "milk chocolate with golden honeycombed centre." I'm still not sure way that last bit means, but it was very tasty indeed, much more so than the stupid Aero bar.
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