And now we cross live to the scene

Guys, I've let things slip this past month. I'm sorry. Around the end of last year I started planning a bunch of awesome PhD-related things for my second year, and now, in a complete surprise that I did not see coming, all those things are suddenly happening and I am swamped in a swamp of my own making.

At some point maybe I will report back on these things. In the meantime, here is a scribble I did a month or so ago when I had to get glasses (permanent-like, not just for when I'm at the movies and realise I can't tell the actors apart, or indeed distinguish between actors and scenery):

Poor Chap, he'd been stuck in the glasses shop for hours while I tried on every single pair and then he had to pay for them because I could only afford the ones in the twenty nine pound range and was unable to adequately pull off the retro granny look which this would have necessitated.

This has been another update from my engrossing life; stay tuned for more.

Cogs in the rock

On Sunday just gone, some friends kindly took Chap and I with them on an excursion to Cragside in Northumberland. In best English fashion, we admired a country house, wandered the extensive grounds (are they ever not extensive? Has anyone heard of a country house with limited grounds?), got lost in a rhododendron labyrinth full of what I'm going to call 'contemporary pagan' carvings and had a picnic in weather that was not quite picnic weather.

Anyone who is bored by old Victorian houses and eccentric inventors can look away now, I am about to wax nerdy.

This is Cragside, the country house of Lord Amstrong, who was a Newcastle hero and sort of industrial Renaissance man. A nineteenth-century solicitor, businessman, engineer, amateur scientist, manufacturer and incessant inventor, he was responsible for employing over 25,000 people at the height of his Elswick works on the banks of the Tyne. He designed and built Newcastle's Swing Bridge, invented the hydroelectric power station, restored Bamburgh Castle and founded the College of Science, later to become Newcastle University. He also gifted Jesmond Dene, formerly his private park, to the city in 1883. The Dene, which is right by our house, is a completely remodelled landscape: Armstrong was a keen landscape gardener, and the waterfall, quarry and most of the mature trees are all his doing. He was also an early environmentalist, advocating for the development of renewable energy sources, particularly hydroelectricity, and an enthusiastic adopter of new technology.  He had a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for invention and improvement, a cross between Brunel and Joseph Paxton.

I mention all this because the house itself, which was begun in 1863 as a two-story lodge and expanded over the years into the mansion you see above, is essentially a memorial to its owner's  penchant for contraptions and a neat representation of the Victorian age itself and its obsessions with self-improvement, industry and modernity.

This, for example, is the library. Those are Burne-Jones stained glass window designs. This room was the first the in the world (apart from Swan's own living room) to be lit using the incandescent electric bulbs designed by Joseph Swan, who pipped Edison to the post to produce the first working electric lamp. The electricity was generated by the world's first hydroelectric power station, designed by Armstrong in 1868, for which he had an artificial lake (one of five on the property) made up on the high moor which forms a part of the Cragside estate:

Nothing was a problem for this man, it seems. Every obstacle or inconvenience of nineteenth-century living was reconfigured as an opportunity for invention. This is the kitchen. The only slightly unconvincing fake roasts are being twirled around in front of ovens on spits that are water-powered. It was impossible to get a clear photo, but in several places perspex windows have been set into the walls so you can see the constantly turning cogs and wheels that drive the spits. The same hydro-power system also powers a dumb waiter, an elevator and the world's first automatic dish-washing machine. Down in the scullery beneath the kitchen is the giant water pump that creates the water pressure which drives all this machinery. It still works. In the 1870s, when Armstrong was casually inventing all these labour-saving devices, such things were completely unheard of.

If you were a domestic servant around then I imagine working at Cragside would have been comparatively blissful. I also think this marks Armstrong out as something of a humanitarian (he gets a bad rap because he was an arms manufacturer among other things) because to put it bluntly, human labour was cheaper than machinery. Installing and maintaining these devices would have been expensive, and I'm not sure that many wealthy Victorians would have considered saving the servants from having to haul coal up stairs and scrub the dishes was worth it.

The house also had, by the 1880s, an electric room-service system, fire alarms, underfloor heating, amazing Turkish baths, hot and cold running water, and this thing:

This is a marble fireplace, although the word 'fireplace' seems scarcely adequate. It's at the very top of the house, in the section added in anticipation of  a visit by the Prince and Princess of Wales. It weighs ten tonnes, and is built into the cliff face the house backs up against, so it doesn't crash through into the foundations. It's an amazing piece of engineering, and ludicrous, utterly tasteless.

The two little matching blue vases on either side of this roccoco extravaganza are, in my opinion, what really makes the room work.

The family's taste in art was clearly questionable, with lots of terrible Victorian sentimental animal paintings all over the place, but the decor of the house itself (the Royal-impressing upper addition aside) is a gorgeous Arts and Craft style. There are Burne-Jones and Morris stained glass designs throughout the house, exposed wooden panelling, Morris wallpaper and these tiles in the hallways:

There is, naturally enough, a formal garden component to the aforementioned Extensive Grounds; its centrepiece is the glass conservatory, in which every pane of glass can be opened and shut via an extensive system of interlocking cogs and wheels and pulleys, some of which might just be visible, and which kept the Armstrongs supplied with figs and citrus fruits and whatever else doesn't grow naturally in the north of England.

There is also a cast-iron and glass summer-house from which you may either gaze out over the valley, or, it being late in the day and you having tramped approximately ten miles through the estate, have a little nap:

Finally, I will leave you with this idyllic scene. Like everything else in the estate, it's a man-made landscape. It's called a 'pinetum', which is essentially a cultivated collection of conifers. One these trees is the tallest conifer in Britain, but they won't say which one in case someone cuts it down out of spite.

You can beat genetics, right?

A little while ago I mentioned that I had signed up to run the 2012 Great North Run for the charity Shelter. I have somehow, incredibly, flying in the face of my un-athletic genetic inheritance, managed to maintain a consistent training regime. This has been fraught with various embarrassments, just two of which I have helpfully detailed below:

The first is that for reasons unknown, when I run in cold weather my eyes water uncontrollably. Combine this with my general slowness/red faced-ness/frowniness and what you have is a slightly tubby girl apparently driven to tears by the misery of exercise. When I run in the Dene on cold mornings, it's not uncommon for other runners to give me sympathetic and encouraging smiles or thumbs-ups. Knowing that I am the Plucky Little Fat Girl Who Could doesn't make me feel wonderful.

This is the second indignity: on the very few occasions that Chap's elected to  scrape himself off the computer to accompany me for a run, his naturally superior runner's physiology completely trumps all my hard work. If you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Chap, imagine that someone took a slender six-foot-tall man and then stretched him out to be six foot four, without adding any further body mass. And then imagine that most of that six foot four was legs. Inevitably what happens is that he spends about two miles doing a sort of run-five-steps-walk-five-steps thing until I lose my temper and yell at him to run as fast as he wants (and yelling at someone when you're out of breath is utterly infuriating) and then usually I try to run at his speed for a while, berating him the whole time for his ridiculous genes and randomly shouting 'HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? YOU HAVEN'T MOVED FOR THREE WEEKS' until I collapse.

Running is not what I am designed to do. I have flat feet, dodgy hips and vertigo. On top of my poor biological form, I have also subjected my body to a fair amount of abuse over the years, including a nine-year smoking habit that I still haven't entirely kicked in addition to the usual poor consumption habits associated with being an undergraduate.

Despite this, I have somehow reached a point where I can run for six miles without stopping. More impressively, five mornings a week I wake up forty minutes earlier than I otherwise would and drag myself out the door (this is impressive because left to our own devices Chap and I would spend 75% of our lives asleep). Knowing that I have made a commitment to a charity has certainly helped to keep me accountable. And here is where I get to the point of this long and self-involved ramble: I am officially switching from vaguely telling people I'm doing a half marathon for charity to actively seeking your money. It is time for donations. It won't be pretty, but I am reasonably confident that on 16 September I'll be able to run 13.1 miles without dying or giving up (all other physical and emotional indignities are, of course, very much on the cards).

Shelter are an amazing charity who work at both the frontline and the policy level to help alleviate the distress caused by homelessness and bad housing, problems which are getting worse under the current government's policies. They provide free legal advice and support to anyone who is homeless or facing a housing issue, develop housing policy, and lobby for legislative change. And they have real impact. It was largely down to research, policy recommendations and campaigning by Shelter that on 6 April 2012 a law was finally passed requiring landlords to place tenants' bond in a bond protection scheme. They are good eggs, these guys, and demand for their services is only going to rise. I have committed to raise £350, but I think we can beat that. You can sponsor me here; please do.

Theory today

My friend N is working on visual technologies and the moving image in Victorian literature; occasionally it makes her say things like this:

Bonus points if you read this looking through the window of a train pulling out of the station over someone's shoulder on their iPad. There is no such thing as too much mediation, y'all.

Not really sure where I was going with this, to be honest. I think my point is: people do PhDs on amazing things.

'Blackpool of the North East'

It's the hottest March in ever or something but out on the shore of the North Sea there's a freezing wind. This is Whitley Bay last Sunday.

To the north is St Mary's Lighthouse. The island's been in use since the eleventh century, when the monks at Tynemouth Priory, just down the coast, used it as a a cemetery. There's been a lighthouse here since the seventeenth century. It's accessible at low tide but was separated by 200 metres of water when we walked past. The misanthrope in both of us was immediately drawn to the idea of a house that people could be physically prevented from approaching for most of the day.

The flowers tied to the railings I think have something to do with the sailors who've drowned here over the years: this coast was notorious for shipwrecks.

EDIT: My friend B says these are actually left on Mother's Day for mothers and grandmothers who've died. Apparently this is a North East-specific custom.

Kids are made of titanium. The sunshine is a ruse, it was jumpers and jackets temperature with the wind chill.

Beach hut crossed with bomb shelter, I have no idea.

The other skate bowl I can think of that's right by the sea is that famous one on Venice beach. Here they've moved on from skateboarding though, scooters is where it's at. Well, if you're five. There were a bunch of skaters and some BMX riders as well and they were pretty good and pretty big, whizzing all over the place, but these little kids did not give one shit.

I'll restrain myself from posting daffodil photos, you'll be glad to hear, but again spring is upon us and again I am in awe of how fast the season changes in these parts. 

A truth universally acknowledged

The context to the following conversation is that in July I am attending (and presenting at) a four-day conference. The conference is held in Somerset and includes, in addition to the usual stuff, some walks in the nearby Quantock Hills.

Also, somehow we had gotten onto the subject of which field produced the worst-dressed academics (anyone who's ever seen a computer science department may well wonder how this could even be up for debate).

Me: Wait, when you say English academics...which period in English literature do you think has the worst ones?

Chap: Hmmm... I guess probably ladies who like Jane Austen, all the long silly dresses.

Me: OK, leaving aside your assumption that it's 'ladies' who study Austen, and also, hang on, we're talking about academics, not fans, right?

Chap: [....] yes? That's....not...the same thing?

Me: You know there is a difference between academics who study Jane Austen's novels and hysterical people who are often ladies and who dress up in Georgian get-ups at festivals?

Chap: No? I mean, that's what'll happen at your conference, right, you're going walking...

Me: What's going for a walk and being into re-enactment festivals got in common?

Chap: Well, walking's a slippery slope, isn't it... you start off on a nice stroll and then suddenly you're wearing a dress and calling people my dear Sir.

Me: You and I have managed to go on any number of walks together and never once have we even slightly dressed up in Regency-wear.

Chap: Yes, but, you'll be at the conference, so....

Me: Can you maybe tell me exactly what you think goes on at a Romantic literature conference?

Chap: You...drink tea... um... you write... sonnets? And letters? ... Someone plays a harpsichord?

Me: Wait...you actually think...So, if I am hearing you correctly, you think that 'Romantic literature conference' and 'appearing in a BBC Austen adaptation' are synonymous.

Chap: No? But you do dress up, right?

Me: OK, let's entertain that for one second. Where did you think I would get the costume from? Do you think I have one hidden around shamefully for when I do 'literature things'?

Chap: I thought maybe the conference fees included...not like a whole outfit, that would be silly. But maybe it would include a bonnet?

So. My boyfriend thinks that an academic conference and a re-enactment fair are one and the same. And his original statement that Austen academics dress the worst is apparently based on a belief that all English literature academics habitually dress up in the fashion which was prevalent in the period they study. This is a new development, one wholly unexpected, but it does explain his occasional air of mystified contempt when I try to talk about my work.

When I leave for school in the morning, he doesn't think I'm off to continue working on research that will ultimately constitute a new contribution to knowledge, he thinks I'm going to get dressed up with a bunch of other people and spend the day pretending I'm from the late eighteenth century.

Do you hear the people sing

We were supposed to go to Paris last Wednesday night for two days - Chap for work, me for shameless piggy-backing on his work - but then, because of a boring and aggravating set of occurrences that included a stolen iPod, the delaying, and subsequent un-delaying, of a flight, some comedy Anglo-French charades, an ill-timed printer malfunction at the airport police station and the usual Easyjet rigidity as to gate closing, we stayed for the weekend as well.

We had some tolerable food, and by tolerable I mean one of the best meals I've had in my life here (ignore the slightly naff website and if you ever can, just go, alright?), an amazing Sichuan meal with Chap's French colleagues, and really good Vietnamese here, where at 7pm (unfeasibly early for dinner in Paris) the queue of at least 75% hipsters was down the street, in scenes redolent of Hoxton.

These places were all in residential areas of Paris, well away from any of the tourist spots, and this explains why every other time I've been in Paris I've had resolutely average food. It also meant that my slender cache of French was exposed and found wanting, and pretty much every interaction boiled down to this:

I won't bore you with further tedious accounts of sights seen, except to say that we went, on my father's suggestion, to the Pantheon, and thoroughly, thoroughly, enjoyed ourselves. The Pantheon was built in the late eighteenth century as a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, but was completed just in time for the French Revolution and so was immediately de-consecrated and turned into a mausoleum for the great and good of the new republic. It then spent the next two hundred odd years being flipped back and forth from a secular to a religious building as the republicans rose then fell then rose again then fell and then finally rose for good in 1870. So now it's come full circle and is a mausoluem again, housing in its crypt Rousseau, Voltaire, Emile Zola, Victor Hugo and the Curies, among others, and that's all well and good and creepy.

What amused us most,* however, was the early twentieth-century interpretations of the Revolution which were scattered around the main space:

My goodness, that's a lot of chest-thumping. These men can't even draft a bill without gesticulating wildly and assembling in a dramatic tableau! Can we get a close-up of this revolutionary fervour? Why yes!

I should point out that in that third photo, they are not doing a Nazi, but rather ecstatically stretching their hands towards a statue of Marianne, who is out of shot.

So, OK, I shouldn't be facetious about the French Revolution, especially given the genuine hope it inspired not only in France but across the ditch in so many of the British authors who I'm interested in and who were living under a nastily repressive government themselves. But I do find it interesting that the artist(s)* who did these sculptures in 1902 chose to refer back, despite (or perhaps because of) how the Revolution ultimately turned out, to a moment of unsullied and ludicrously exaggerated revolutionary idealism.

This is what the interior is like:

*I should maybe qualify this by saying that the Pantheon was also where Foucault (no, the other one) did his pendulum experiment which illustrated the earth's rotation. It has been recreated in the main dome and this arguably interested Chap more than everything else in Paris combined.

*The outstretched hands one is by Sicard and is called La Convention Nationale; I'm not sure if he did the others. They seem less chunky and more classical, so perhaps not.