I am not doing very well at this. I'll be back. At the moment, I am swamped with an unexpected amount of work.

The North

I took a brief trip to my corner of the world today: the North West. I italicize the first-person, possessive pronoun there to emphasize my Northern pride. I love returning: the people who share this pride are friendly, have a brilliant sense of humour and an attitude towards life that is stripped of pretention. Also I am a fan of its industrial history-- my history teachers at school specialized in this & my dad did a degree in economic history so keenly took me to museums about it!-- and of course, I am a fan of its cheap(er) prices! I needed to go to the University of Salford to chat about some secondary school teaching that I am undertaking in the summer. The teaching will take place in Nottingham, but the base of the people organizing the scheme in which I will be involved are based near Liverpool (no, not Salford, which has confused a few people, who questioned why I was going to Salford for one hour on a Friday afternoon!). The photograph maps the first leg of my journey towards Salford Crescent. Pictured is one of my favourite stations: Manchester Oxford Road. I love the clocks pictured here, showing the same time (well, station clock is a minute ahead, or the Palace clock is a minute behind). When I boarded a train to Salford, I really wanted to stay on it: not because I didn't want to 'do business' in Salford, but because that same train would take me directly to my home town :-) With various things to do in Nottingham this weekend (mainly marking & invigilating), that luxury will have to wait. Being in North West England was a perfect antidote, however. When I arrived at the university, the secretary made me a lovely cup of tea. Definitely Tetleys. Then when I returned to Manchester Ox Road at 2pm, I had half an hour to spend in one of my favourite bookshops based at the Cornerhouse: Art, Film, Books, Food, Drink. They have a raft of cultural magazines and journals so I purchased a January 2010 edition of Poetry and read a brilliant article by Carmine Starnino about aesthetics, artistic integrity, tradition and invention (all issues were tied together in the context of Canadian poetry & the significance of the Griffen Poetry Prize in relation to poetry's status in society). I am also now in possession of the Nov/ Dec issue of Philosophy Now, which is celebrating John Stuart Mill's 1859 work "On Liberty." Thesis-related and really interesting in terms of its relevance to the 21st-century West. Perfect.  

Back in Nottingham now, but enjoyed today's northernly escapade...

A Room of One's Own

I spent the early part of yesterday evening rearranging the furniture in my flat to readjust the feng shui, which I had felt was particularly poor. Over the vacation, I had purchased two posters of Vanessa Bell's frontcover artwork for two of Virginia Woolf's novels: To The Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway. They are enjoying newfound prominence in this room and appropriately so: this room is my own and it is designed to help me plough through my thesis on those days that I study from home. I take this photo from my computing desk, which looks into the room (rather than towards the wall as it did before) and I have created two further work spaces & a more convincing living area. In Woolf's infamous feminst manifesto, she writes that access to appropriate resources and comfortable economic conditions underpin high levels of creative esteem. If women are to write, and to write well, they need a room of their own (a privilege denied to women at the time-- generally regarded as 'the second sex'): 

'All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions—women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money.'-- (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own 1929)

This is, of course, defending the link between elitism and artistry, but she raises a well-formed point that in order for the arts & humanities to flourish, we need sufficient funds. It defends the centrality of Individualism to the arts: that is, Woolf defends the private interest of individuals so that we might create a coherent understanding of our national history and culture.

What might Woolf write in response to the Labour government's dramatic funding cuts to arts councils, the British Library and (soon) Universities? Britain seems intent on thwarting the link that Woolf promotes. This is bleak for whilst the link is underscored with elitist implications, there are plenty of social engagements at stake. The government is ill-prepared to put money into research projects or creative endeavours that are not tied directly to industrial investment: simply because its value does not translate into £££ with immediate effect does not mean it is not valuable to society at large. Its socially-engaged values bear long-term benefits for society and these (because they are so intricate, implicit, conceptual) are often overlooked...This debate is often reduced to a polemical overview of what is monetarily most important to us: the NHS might save your life, reading a book won't. Polemical accounts form a rhetoric which bids to silence the complexity of art's social-engagements.

Skating Ducks

I was reluctant to walk through the sleetish snow this afternoon, but I had to post a parcel at Dunkirk post offiice. On my walk down there, I curbed the path that leads from the Trent Building to the Lakeside area of campus where I discovered that birds had taken to the ice. They were expectant of food and all the things that I could not offer them, but were not quite so expectant as the swan pictured to the right of this blog. I include an additional photograph today to portray the hunger of the birds in this cold, icy winter. The small pond opposite the Arts Centre was completely frozen over, and this bird took to petitioning passers-by for food. This photograph makes the swan seem austere, but he was like a beggar on a pavement, asking me to spare a few crumbs. Through his best swan chirp, he was trying to tell me that he was cold and hoped I would lift out something edible (rather than technological) from my bag: he did not flinch as I took this picture. Usually photographing birds from within a small range is next to impossible: they fly off scared or preoccupied, but not today as temperatures plummetted and the lakes froze.

First Thing

I added this photo at 7:30am this morning without annotation. I had to invigilate two exams today, which explains my brisk departure shortly after this was taken. It represents a morning ritual that I cannot live without. Or, rather, if I live without it, I am grumpy or sustain a slight headache, so in that sense you can substitute the word 'ritual' in the previous sentence with the word 'addiction.' The dopamine levels in my brain dramatically increase once the smell of freshly brewed coffee permetates my flat. The sound of coffee as it pours into the cup is one of the most reassuring and then, of course, the first sip and my brain ignites; I can feel the engine purrrr. I am currently drinking a soft and rich brew with caramel hints, which is actually a continuation of Christmas, because it is a festive special that I purchased at Whittards! French pressed coffee prepares me for the day ahead whether I plan to study from home; go to my office; teach a class on Victorian literature, or go out for an early morning run(!). I *have* to drink coffee before anything else. In the early hours, everything is secondary to that one ritualistic pleasure. And until any solid research strongly advising me against this is impressed upon me, I am not looking to give this up.

The practice of photo blogging is usually fuelled by my french pressed coffee, and this one (recorded at 3:30pm) is of no exception. My french press is, perhaps, the preserve of a bourgeois lifestyle, but as an impoverished academic serf, I can vouch for the fact that this device is, for me, an affordable investment and as such, this image provides a glimpse into what I consider to be 'ordinary'. (I am aware that I may sound like a champagne socialist here in the sense that I risk rereading this last comment in horror at the blindness I have shown towards the economic conditions of our class-bound society).

Signs

10/01/10

This sign does not represent the route that I walked across campus yesterday evening, but that is partly the point. I know my way around campus intuitively and I could list ten other routes than the one that this sign recommends. At one time, I was grateful for-- and at the mercy of-- these signs. There are 330 acres to roam and back in the early days I would find myself lugging heavy bags of books around the perimeter failing to register opportunities to cut-through...Since then, unintentionally, I've become somewhat of an expert guide: leading campus tours and constructing make-shift signs across campus for various events. Today is the start of term so there will be some lost-looking faces of students who are perhaps here for a term or starting lengthy postgrad courses. I'm sure signs such as these will become redundant to those students too. They'll pale into insignifance as their knowledge of the place increases & like me, they'll start to form their own personalized routes from a-b.

Snowline

'A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over England. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the houses of Beeston and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Morecambe waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Alfred Edwards lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.'

An appropriation of James Joyce's 'The Dead,' in Dubliners (1914)...all Irish-/ Dublin-specific references are substituted with those that describe this English/ Nottingham freeze

[In this photo: The Downs, Rutland Hall, Beeston snowlined houses]

Snow Through Trees

At last, a snow-related image. This is the edge of the Downs, one of the only parts of campus still covered in snow. It was about 2pm & I was on my way to 'work from home' since my office lacked the main resources that I needed to conduct some MLA referencing. It is going to snow again tonight, which is not a story unique to Nottingham as this high definition image (courtesy of Nasa) shows. I tried to capture the way nature creates its own boundaries and thresholds, which, in this picture, are produced through contrasts in the land's exposure to precipitation and light.

Nottingham's All-Year Christmas

Again, the promise of a snow-related picture had to be broken: when I visited town yesterday, I was shocked to discover that Nottingham City Council has decided to continue Christmas after 12th Night.

Leaving their Christmas decorations on lamp-posts-- especially on those outside Zara near Bridlesmith Gate where this festive arrangement was documented-- NCC have generously bestowed bad luck to all! I should have used the date stamp setting to prove that this photograph was, in fact, taken on 7th January, but you will have to trust that I am faithful to my own (arbitrary) rules!

Shortly after this photograph was taken, I went to the Tesco Express on Angel Row. I then boarded a bus back to campus and everything was running like clock-work. However, on returning, I discovered that I had left half my tesco items at the checkout! And I thank NCC's poorly-timed gesture of good-will for this moment of knee-kicking forgetfulness.

***

I should not complain *too* much, however. My bad luck was assuaged by my Better Half who decided we should go for a curry and watch Sherlock Holmes so as to economize bus money! I recommend S.H...I think there is something for everyone. Late-Victorian London is aestheticized into a Gothic landscape packed with a decadent inventory of props and all is thrown against a dark, grey light that seems simultaneously artificial and natural. It teases out contemporary debates about the polemic possibilities offered by scientific & supernatural theories (possibilities that collate to inspire Sherlock's inventive mind) and pays close attention to historical detail (I'm not sure about accuracy to periodization in every frame, but noticed a campaign banner which read 'Phrenology is the Future of Being'). Above all-- and this is where its popular appeal will lie-- the film is an action-packed comedy that uses light-hearted comedy throughout to undercut its otherwise dark plot.***

I think I'll leave my shopping behind more often!

Lenton Lodge

First off, apologies for not following through with the promise of a snow shot. To counterbalance the humdrum image offered in today's post, I promise snow-inspired beauty tomorrow (the MET assures me more is on the way).

I have taken quite a few pictures of snow this morning on my walk around campus, but cannot think of anything interesting to say about them. Perhaps I am no longer excited by the landscape's transformation into a winter wonderland (I enjoyed a whole week of snow in Lancashire over Christmas).

So this is a picture of a meeting on producing professional development portfolios for seminar teaching in English. The meeting was organized by my colleague Jude. Jude and I are in the early stages of working towards the PGHCE so we visited the resource room in Lenton Lodge to discuss some ideas (for those in Nottingham: Lenton Lodge is the beautiful house behind the swimming pool).

The room is stocked with books for improving research and teaching practice in Higher Education. I had no idea this facility existed until this morning, which perhaps says more about my status as a new member of the part-time teaching staff than it does about the PD department's efforts to promote it.

I decided that the scene deserved photographic record: meetings are usually documented in the form of minutes or notes, not pictorially (and for good reason: issues of confidentiality, for example). That said, I would not have taken this picture in most other meeting contexts...I consider Jude a friend as well as a colleague...

N.B Another thought, which I make in this horrendous bee-yellow colour: the humdrum image has some bearing on 12th Night...

This is, of course, the last day for guiltless excess and I am wondering whether this post should have portrayed the last crumbs of festive behaviour.

However, as the photographer of this photo, I am back to wearing my puritan hat: remember all decorations and cards must come down before you go to bed.

The Walk Home

05/01/10

This post appears a day late, but represents a snowball fight on the way home from the Johnson Arms at 9.30pm yesterday evening. I am appreciating this photo's impressionistic style.

I have a frosty lense thanks to being undeservedly smothered in a snowball slightly before I took this shot. I was not participating in this 'fight,' which transforms my friends into anonymous and homogeneous dark figures. It seems I am the impersonal, detached observer of this scene, capturing it for the sake of taking a photograph. Perhaps this position allows me to reveal the strategic nature of what is a good-humoured, childish game: each 'player' is spread out across the field in formation, each person creating enough distance between one another...

The whirlpool pattern on my lense creates the illusion of a ghostly snowball traced in mid-flight...

It is snowing heavily this morning so expect another snow shot later.

Monday Morning

Today is defined by an early start: rising at 6:15am turns 9am into mid-morning and offers the opportunity for a partially-deserved study break. The view is similar to yesterday's although the smoke is inaccurately portrayed as eerily ghost-like. There is, in fact, a high and well-defined plume of smoke parading through the air this morning, but I like the mood that this photo evokes. It reflects that feeling of somnambulance, which I associate with what is usually a hazy-start to the working week. It is also a photo fully aware of time-- clearly defined by the clock-- but in the same breath, it is a photo that knows its own transience. Soon morning will slip away into the afternoon and from that short-lived time-frame, the day will disappear into dusk and fall into nothing but night. The ghost-like quality of this photo is, of course, undercut by its promise of industriousness: the coal-furnace serving as a trope to indicate productive employment. At that point I return to reading about women's social amelioration in late-Victorian London.

Sunday Afternoon

Sunday afternoon and the sun is casting an orange-pink glow through the wintered trees; the ground is sprinkled with snow. This image does not do justice to the colours, which are unique to this time of year, epitomizing the cold and hard January light. However, this photo compensates for its low resolution by dint of the clock-face displaying the time & smoke tunnelling through the air behind the porter's lodge. I chose to emphasise the photographer's "perspective" by angling a strip of the window-frame into the shot.

As I sign off, the sun-- now exotic red-- is sitting on the tree-lined horizon, ready to fall from view entirely.

N.B. So far, each photo has been taken on campus: in future posts, I hope to vary the location of shots in an attempt to prove I am not institutionalized and to avoid institutionalizing this blog.

Windows of the Soul

The subject of today's photograph is an Ikea 'Billy' classic, and consists of five shelves in total (the top three are pictured here). I bought it online about two months ago & it took one month to arrive. The first two deliveries failed: on the first, Ikea had confused my billing & delivery addresses; on the second, Ikea arrived at my delivery address but had forgotten to load the ordered goods at their depot in Birmingham. It was a (book)case of third time lucky: it arrived one Saturday morning at 9am. Hurrah! I admit that flat-packing is not my forte and a friend with a tool-kit did most of the construction.

However, compartmentalizing is a strength and I have enjoyed creating organized sections. On the top shelf are monographs on Aestheticism and works by neglected female writers including Mona Caird and Vernon Lee. My Broadview editions, which present the work of Amy Levy, Ella Hepworth-Dixon and again Vernon Lee, are on the second shelf after the small poetry section.

My poetry section includes Sylvia Plath, Yeats, Phillip Larkin, Sharon Olds, Carol Ann Duffy, Tim Liardet and the Forward Poetry Prize Collection which reprints one of my favourite poems in there called 'A Literary History' by Emma Jones.

Next on the shelf is a Hespern edition of Christina Rossetti's "Commonplace" and missing are two other Hespern editions of Henry James: The Lesson of the Master and The Diary of a Man at 50 both edited by two esteemed James biographers, Colm Toibin and David Lodge, respectively.

Following on from this, I have a small collection of Penguin Books: Great Ideas, which showcases the inspirational prose-writings of John Ruskin, William James and Virginia Woolf. The line of red is the result of my preference for Oxford World's Classics editions. One of my favourite tutors who specializes in 'The History of the Book' (amongst other things) at University shared her views on this by saying 'They are just better,' referring here to other available editions of the same works. I teach a first-year literature course and am found repeating this to my students. The cheap editions without annotation or critical introductions are redundant in my opinion. This sort of debate could last all day, but I am proud of my red line.

Beneath the Red Line are two sections: Biography & Theory. The first includes literary biographies on Edith Wharton, John Ruskin and Rebecca West. It should also include my biographies on Vernon Lee, and my history biographies on 'The Edwardians' and 'The Victorians: Consuming Passions.' The section I term 'Theory' include books about books, or books that think about the value of studying books. My favourite, or most thumbed, is Carol Atherton's 'Defining Literary Theory.' A compelling book that has undergone critique within my work quite a lot is Angela Leighton's On Form. The most recent addition to this shelf is Zadie Smith's 'Changing My Mind,' a great collection of 'occassional essays.' This was a Christmas present from my parents and I am finding it fascinating for its content alone, of course, but also for the implications of its haphazard composition & the statement it is making about essayistic criticism as a practice, particularly as an artistic and/ or non-specialist practice.

Unfortunately, the photo omits from view my Oscar Wilde collection, which is enjoying the arrival of the latest edition of his Short Stories (for all ages) courtesy of the Stephen Fry Industry.

This photo is not exhaustive & not the complete version of my personal library. However, I have placed the books that I need to have in one place at this very moment on these shelves.

It feels quite indulgent and exposing to list my books on here, but I recommend a. bookshelves and b. writing about them...

Utilizing this physical apparatus effectively helps you to consolidate your books and in turn, help you to organize your mind. The practice of writing about your bookshelf forms the second phase in this process of consolidation. By participating in both practices you can have a more established sense of how the books that you own link together and automatically increase their capacity for doing something meaningful and powerful. Since the billy bookcase arrived & stood in the corner of the living area in my flat, it has improved my sanity :)

Happy New Year: New Beginnings & Archives

This photograph captures part of my walk home from a supermarket shop in Beeston. I live on campus at the University of Nottingham and this is the first New Year's Day that I have spent in Nottinghamshire. Everywhere is quiet: only a few students and fellow hall tutors are staying here.

Pictured is The Coveny Library at Lincoln Hall and the gates mark the start of The Downs, rolling fields that lead to my own place of residence: Sherwood Hall (although pictured is my walk to Lenton & Wortley Hall). The library, as far as I know, is not stocked with books relevant to the residents' learning, but I suspect the library is used frequently as a study space for students. The path that you can see behind leads to the Hallward Library, which stocks resources for the Arts & Humanities...It is, of course, closed today but I have been in there this week reading an interesting article from The Dickens Studies Annual by Talia Schaffer entitled "British Non-Canonical Women Novelists, 1850-1900: Recent Studies."

Usually I would have boarded a bus to Beeston, but services are not running until tomorrow. I walked for 1hr (in total- there and back) & on arrival discovered all shops closed with the exception of Sainsbury's and Costa Coffee.

I went to buy salmon, white wine, fresh corriander, chocolate, fruit (not all for simultaneous consumption) and a copy of The Times newspaper. Today marks the 225th anniversary of the newspaper and so what better way to celebrate than give readers a free souvenir edition... It starts with a column addressed 'To the Public' and reads:

'To bring out a New Paper at the present day; when to many others are already established and confirmed to the public opinion, is certainly an arduous undertaking; and no one can be more fully aware of its difficulties than I am: I nevertheless, entertain very sanguine hopes, that the nature of the plan on which this paper will be conducted, will ensure it a moderate snare at least of public favour; but my pretensions to encouragement, however strong they may appear in my own eyes, must be tried before a tribunal not liable to be blinded by self-opinion: to that tribunal I shall now, as I am bound to do, submit these pretensions with deference, and the public will judge whether they are well or ill founded.'

The paper anticipates its reception and envisions its "public"-- which, in 1785, an elite group of men must have constituted-- in a heavily qualified and elaborate opening paragraph (which is a one long and spidery, multi-claused sentence). Its demand for an impartial reader exposes the paper's anxiety towards its critical reception. It draws the reader's attention to the difficult production conditions of "launching" a new paper and pleads for an open-minded readership 'not liable to be blinded by self-opinion.' This plea for disinterestedness asks the reader to leave her (or I suppose in this case 'his') personal investments at the threshold of the text (what Genette might want me to call the 'paratext') and from this attitude, ascertain whether the paper is of value 'to the public,' which is later made synonymous with the term 'community.' This is 1785 and so the term 'community' is interesting: before the advent of mass literacy, only a small portion of the community would have been able to read. It follows the logic that underpins Edmund Burke's ideas on Individualism, which, as stated in a slightly later essay entitled 'An Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs" (1791), advocates a hierarchical society whereby 'the wiser, the more expert [...] enlighten and protect, the weaker, the less knowing, and the less provided with the goods of fortune.' The Times had hoped to form part of the educated and wealthy class' subscription to a 'habitual social discipline.' The by-product of their good conduct would supposedly create an enriched, civilized culture for the poor to enjoy too. Does this elitist logic still exist today? Does it still underline the subtle politics of The Times in 2010? Answers on a postcard.

This photograph of a library on new year's day summarises the appeal of new beginnings: the patient archive lets us reflect on the past whilst the future, unseen, invokes anticipation of "the new," which we try to engineer and control through making resolutions. You could say the paper recovered from The Times' dusty archives embodies this appeal too.

***

N.B. I usually will not write as much as this. Jeanette Winterson once said it is "rude to write long books." However, it is New Year's Day and rather than work on the article I am writing, I am blogging this whilst watching The Line of Beauty, a screen adaption of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel. I am cringing at Nick Guest: a PhD student studying Henry James (it is hard looking at this decadently- portrayed occupation when it almost perfectly mirrors your own!)