dolorosa_12 | Entries tagged with london

I made a whirlwind trip to London on Friday, as I was attending a course on book conservation at this library. I really enjoyed it as it was hands-on, practical training. The organisers had damaged some books beforehand (all the librarians attending winced at this) and then taught us how to repair the various torn pages, broken spines and peeling covers. My favourite aspect of library work is the sense of making order out of chaos, of tidying things up into organised categories, so I think that book repair is going to suit me very well.

It was an interesting bunch of people attending - I'm used to courses at Cambridge, where everyone works in academic libraries, but everyone on this course worked at museums, cathedral libraries, stately homes and so on. I was the only one who didn't manage a special collection in some way, although one of the three libraries in which I work does have a large number of rare books.

I'd never been to Middle Temple before, but it's a pretty cool part of London, filled with odd little winding passageways and hidden old buildings. The library itself was very interesting, although there wasn't much time to explore it.

On Saturday morning I actually managed to have a Skype session with all of my four sisters. Mim, the oldest, was visiting our father, stepmother and other three sisters, and we had set up the session so that I could see Maud, the newest sister, in person. As it turned out, our other two sisters, Kitty and Nell, popped in and out of the conversation as well. Maud herself is super cute (although she looks disturbingly like a shrunken version of my dad), and it's a real shame that I'm not going to be able to see her in person until at least September next year. That Skype conversation was the first time all of my sisters and I have been 'in the same place' since Nell's baptism in 2008. This is, I suppose, one of the unavoidable side effects of being an immigrant.

There are a few fanworks and other pieces of writing making me very happy at the moment.

This short story by Rachel Swirsky retells the early parts of the Iliad from Iphigenia's point of view. This is exactly the kind of Iliad I like - one that's all about the women and their relationships, is filled with anger at what the men around them do to them, and doesn't paint Achilles in a good light. You should definitely read it, although be aware that it includes depictions of violence, murder and an extremely misogynistic society.

This story by

notbecauseofvictories is basically the story I'm searching for every time I read: the interaction between human and non-human characters, in which each is overwhelmed and slightly unable to comprehend the other's nature. It's called 'Ten Things Gabriel Finds Fascinating About Humanity' and I highly recommend it.

There are some great Vividcon vids starting to emerge. My favourites so far are 'Bones' (Luther) by

gwyn and 'Fembots' (multifandom) by

Grammarwoman.

Also, I just noticed that someone finally wrote Romanitas fanfic, which makes me so unbelievably happy. It's by

a_la_greque, and is Marcus-centric.

I hope you are all having marvellous weekends.

Current Mood: happy
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( Recs behind the cut )

For the history lovers out there, I've also got a couple of fascinating videos. The first is archival footage of my Cambridge college (and the wider university) during the 1940s.

"St John's College in the 1940s" (Watch on YouTube)

The second is something I encountered just today, and is truly amazing. It's a virtual map that traces the growth of London from Roman times to today, and is the best thing I've seen on the internet for a long time. I'm getting a very Troy Game vibe from it!

"The London Evolution Animation" (Watch on YouTube)

Finally, I've noticed some people have been complaining about the latest changes to Livejournal. As far as I can tell, I've managed to avoid them because I never chose to have the 'new' friends page (if I ~~wanted~~ have to endure endless scrolling, I'll go to Tumblr), and I'm only seeing differences on the login page, and if I comment on other people's posts. However, I think there's a possible way to avoid them if you go to Display section of the Settings page, and select 'View all journals and communities in my own style' and 'View comment pages from my Friends page in my own style'. That may make things slightly better. The only other thing I can advise is to keep your friends page in the 'old style' as long as possible. I'm not going to change until it's forced on me.

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: Orbital - Shadows
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Yesterday, Matthias and I made a flying visit to London. We'd originally planned to go there for the whole day, but that was when we thought I'd be finished my PhD by now. As it turns out, I'm not finished (though I'm so close I can see the end of the tunnel), and thought it better to spend the morning working. We caught the train after lunch and were there by 3pm. One thing I love about living in Cambridge is how close it is to London!

Our original purpose in visiting was to see Matthias' old PhD supervisor give a paper at the British Academy. The paper itself was excellent. Richard (Matthias' old supervisor) is a very good speaker, and was able to pitch the content at exactly the right level so that the very senior experts in Old English, Middle English and other fields of medieval studies, and the enthusiastic members of the public would all be able to get something out of it. A lot of old friends of mine who have since graduated and gone on to work outside academia in London also showed up, and it was great to catch up with them over a glass of wine afterwards.

Prior to the paper, we had a coffee in my favourite London cafe, and then wandered around Soho for a bit trying to figure out where we would eat dinner.

I insisted on stopping off in Seven Dials and having my photo taken. It's getting to the point where the entire city of London is crisscrossed with a network of Significant Sites That Feature in Ronni's Favourite Works of Literature. (Almost the first thing I did when I moved to the UK was visit the ruins of St Dunstan in the East, a place which features prominently in Sara Douglass' Troy Game series.) Seven Dials is where the criminal gang of clandestine clairvoyants are based in Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season, which as you'll recall is my latest literary obsession. So I made poor Matthias take my photo in Seven Dials. The Christmas lights were on, and it was almost dark, so it looked very pretty.

( A couple of photos behind the cut )

So, anyway, after that, we made it to the talk, which as I've noted was in the British Academy. I'd never been before, and I was very impressed by the setting. If you can make it in academia in this country, you get to go to some pretty cool places.

After the talk, we went out for dinner at this Vietnamese restaurant in Soho. I love Vietnamese food, and can't get it in Cambridge, so I was very keen to see what Banana Tree was like. The food was excellent, and extremely cheap, especially by London standards. When I'm in London, I normally go to the same places over and over again, so it was good to try something new.

After dinner it was back to Cambridge and reality.

Current Mood: determined
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I feel as if I haven't blogged in ages, and it's mainly because life has been very lifey. There are have been moments when I had ideas for posts, but then thesis or visitors would sweep me away and the moment passed. But now, I have a moment's pause before things start to get really busy again, and I thought I'd try to do a couple of catch-up posts, mainly in order to close a few tabs.

My mum is currently about 16 hours into her 24-hour flight back to Australia. She visits me in Europe for about a month every year. This year, her visit coincided with the celebrations in Germany for my partner's mother's 60th birthday, so during that weekend, Mum went hiking with friends in England. I flew in to Germany for an (almost) literal flying visit, four days there and then back to Cambridge at midnight. The celebrations were in an old hotel in Schonach (in the south of Germany), and I met lots of new people - mainly friends of the family - and tried to speak my rather limited German. One afternoon we went for a trip to the nearby medieval town of Rothenburg. It reminded me of a smaller version of Heidelberg: cobblestone streets, pretty buildings, souvenir shops, masses of tourists. For some reason, you are guaranteed to find three things in every German tourist town: a million pubs serving variations on the same food, shops selling wooden ornaments, beer glasses and faux-medieval gear, and a million ice-cream cafes. It's a thing. Rothenburg had all such places. On my last half-day in Germany, Matthias and I went up to Bremen (from where my flight would leave) and explored the town. Its old centre is very beautiful, and there are some cool areas with little winding cobblestone lanes and quirky cafes.

After I got back from Germany, my mum stayed with me in Cambridge for a week. We developed a good routine: after buying coffee from the only decent cafe in town, she would head off to the municipal library and read, while I would go home and edit my thesis. She came back home for lunch, after which we would go hiking for the afternoon. Then we would have dinner, and possibly another short walk.

After this week in Cambridge, we both went to London for several days. We have family friends there. Mum usually stays with them for part of any trip she makes to the UK. Last week, they were on holiday in France, but wanted someone to stay in their house and keep a vague eye on their two adult children. Since we wanted to be in London, that suited us fine.

One thing I should explain about Mum and me - and my sister Mim, too - is that we are unapologetic food snobs. The first question we ask when it is suggested we go anywhere is 'Will we be able to get good coffee there?' The second is 'What will we do for food?' We never go on holiday without researching places to eat. Scenery, museums, art galleries and hotels: all are secondary concerns. And our favourite thing to do in big cities is walk for miles, and then eat and hang around in cafes.

This London trip was no different. We ate breakfast every morning at Princi, but moved to another cafe on Berwick St for coffee because the stuff at Princi was sub-par. We ate dinner in Wahaca, and even managed to structure our two longer walks (from Tower Bridge to the Thames Barrier, and along the entire length of Regent's Canal) so that we would be able to eat decent food. I know that all sounds ridiculous and over the top, but it's just the way we are.

Foodwise, the best discovery this trip has been Ottolenghi. I've been a bit of a fangirl of his for a year or so now (late, as ever, to the bandwagon), but had never eaten in any of the cafes or restaurants. But we found one cafe in Notting Hill, and ate lunch there - amazing hummus with za'atar, beetroot and peach salad, savoury danish with capsicum, cheese and olives - before I went back to Cambridge and Mum flew back to Australia. I also brought a box of mixed salads back home to share with Matthias for dinner, and Mum brought another box on the plane with her.

This is not the most bizarre thing we have brought on a plane. On one, notorious return flight from New York to Sydney, my mother, sister and I bought a whole roast chicken, salad and bread from Dean and Deluca and ate it on the plane. This was in 1999, a simpler time, and we were allowed to bring Swiss Army knives in our hand luggage, which we used to cut up the chicken, as well as some apples we had bought.

My family will do anything to avoid eating plane food.

I'm missing Mum already. I always think I've come to terms with living so far from Australia, but whenever family visits, I'm reminded of the distance, and of the things I've given up in order to be here. I have lots of people with whom I can talk about everything, but there's no one with whom I can talk in quite the same way as my mother.