Freezing

So, since my last post Spring has not arrived. This means that I have marked dissertations under my duvet rather than outside in my sunglasses with a cool drink and the dulcet tones of Radio 4 in the background. This is absolutely not good at all. While riding last Saturday I was so cold that my fingers stopped working; Tommy was deeply unimpressed by the whole thing too. Coupled with this, I finally got sick last week and, due to general chilliness, I seem unable to fully shift it.

As you might be able to tell I am a little grumpy about all this...

On the plus side, term is over and writing has begun in earnest. The 'Can I Write a Journal Article in a Month?' project is coming on. I now have over 6000 words which is rather brilliant, although I am not sure if any of the actual words are brilliant. I'll work on it for the next four days (discounting Sunday) and then leave it for a week to cogitate before deciding whether it is really ready for peer-review. Strangely, this week has been one of academic disappointments and failures; not huge things but big enough to make a difference. It has got me thinking more about failure which is, I guess, the other side to striving for excellence. No striving, no failure. But you get mediocrity instead which is, when I look at it in the clear light of day (oh, wait, the clear chilly dullness of a grey Lincolnshire Spring morning) ten times worse. So I will plod on regardless and continue striving for what I believe in and what I think is important.

In other news I have watched the second Sherlock Holmes movie again (as always, enjoyed it better the second time), have got into Homeland (it has grown on me and now we are quite gripped), read the first third of Terry Eagleton's magnificent Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (I will write a full review of this soon so I won't spoil it. Suffice to say, it is beautiful and has so far made me laugh out loud at least five times and cry a little bit. Not bad for a crit theory book), done a couple of good workouts (including Trish Stratus' yoga DVD yesterday and don't my abs know it), drunk a number of soy lattes from our new on campus coffee shop and finally seen the bottom of my washing basket.

So I guess things are really good with moments of greyness...if only our weather could work that way round!

CSW

An interesting week

It has been a week of ups and downs, downs which should have been ups and ups that, by rights, should have been downs. Life is a fascinating ride!

In less oblique news, the journal article I mentioned in my last post (hitherto known as Project 'Can I Write A Whole Article From Scratch In A Month?) has had a remarkably fruitful day. I have written a little over 2000 words this afternoon. Phew! My brain knows it too! Suddenly, after days of dancing around it, this impossible project seems possible. I've also been working on a number of applications for different bits and pieces. All have now been sent off and, ignoring for a few hours my inbox full of emails from poor stressed out third years battling their dissertations, I actually nearly have a clear desk before the weekend. Good job really as my house looks like a bomb site! With everything else that has been going on this week, I simply have not had time or inclination to properly deal with it. This is my next job.

Spring seems to have been delayed this year and the crocuses in my garden are looking decidedly grumpy about it all. Even the ducks seem a little under the weather - I think they want some sun on on their backs too. We still have our heat on full in the evenings with is just wrong for March. As well as all this we have been watching a few films, catching up with the wrestling (road to Wrestlemania has started so expect some wrestling posts between now and then), listening to a wonderful couple talk about their summer move to Tanzania and enjoying (term used advisedly) the Champions League football. D continues to work super hard. He is not getting back until 7.30 tonight...on a Friday! He left at 6.30 this morning. This is not an unusual day for us right now! We have, however, booked our summer holiday to Abu Dhabi and Sri Lanka. How lovely it will be! Before that I am off to the less salubrious (but equally lovely?) Birmingham this week to speak at the Northern Modernism Seminar at the University. Not only that but I get to stay over with one of my bffs in Shrewsbury. Hoorah! Should be a good trip. The panel is unbelievable and it is a privilege to be speaking alongside all those great scholars.

Tomorrow I'll be crashing round the house desperately trying to tidy up, riding my sweet horsie Tommy (hopefully not in the snow, though it is forecast) and welcoming our dear friends and family to Nocton for the day. We haven't seen them in ages and can't wait to catch up.

Until next time,

CSW

p.s. this entire post was written to the sounds of our naughty mouse friend who lives in the walls of our house although we've never actually seen him. He does make a racket though when he wants to!

A quick break from my brain

After finishing an article this morning and then making changes to the Introduction for the next book, I have spent the afternoon thinking about whether I can write an entire journal article in a month and half for a special edition on modernist performance. Despite two hours of thinking and scribbling, I am no closer to finding an answer to the question so I thought I'd take a quick break for a blog post and see if that doesn't clear things up. It would be quite an undertaking on top of everything else so I want something that a) won't take too long to write b) I have done most of the research for and c) I feel might fit into another project just in case I don't make the deadline. I may have stumbled across something...

Life here continues apace. It is nearly March! Today the sun is shining and the ducks have been laughing themselves silly for most of the day. I have hung washing out for the first time this year! I am more than delighted that Spring is on the way. More than ever, I am totally done with Winter! University life is very busy, by and large, with lots of teaching and extra bits and pieces. We've still had time for some fun though, including a rather lovely trip to Derbyshire with Mum, Dad, Smelly and Stu for Smelly's birthday. Hot tubs, massages and runs through the forest were the order of the day. Just lovely! D and I have watched a few films and have got back into season two of Treme after a bit of a break. He's been reading lots and lots on his long train rides; I've been reading books on theatre historiography when I've had the time! I have a pile of fun books to read which I'm looking forward to getting to at some stage. We've been discussing holidays and have so far drawn a blank although D seems to have a few ideas as of last night. Last week we had a friend to stay who is a missionary in Papua New Guinea and had amazing, inspirational stories to tell.

Other than that, things continue as normal here in Lincoln. I've been returning to one of my favourite topics recently: planning. Formal planning forces us to think about what it is we want to do, what we are qualified for, what our dreams are. I love it! My current plan is coming together well and, for the first time in a long time, has specific aims and objectives even if they are not necessarily entirely in my power. Perhaps more on that when I finish it.

Anyways, my currently untitled document is beckoning me back so I had better add up the weeks and see if this rather mad project is even doable.

Later
CSW

Chaos and peace

If I have to fill in one more funding application I might go mad! It is silly season in academia land where all the deadlines come at once. At least I can cross some of them off my list today! Anyways, I have combined funding admin with book chapter writing (the next one is just about done), dissertation proofreading for my students, teaching and reading lots of Auden. Life is quite peculiar just now as one day I am running around like a mad thing at uni and the next (e.g. today) I am busily writing at my wee desk in rural Lincolnshire. It is a little like having two lives! Next week is Reading Week and we get to welcome the next intake for interviews. It makes for a chaotic but jolly fun five days.

Apart from work, life is relatively quiet. I enjoyed some time on my horsie Tommy on Saturday and we've watched a few films. We've also been catching up with Borgen, my current favourite show. It is brilliant. I love Birgitte. I've enjoyed some workout time with my punchbag - D recently put together a new mix tape (or the C21 equivalent anyways) for my workouts with a selection of tunes, many of which are wrestling related. Talking of wrestling, here is a wee picture of me presenting at the recent conference in Bordeaux.

All in all that's about it really. Tonight will go: workout, shower, dinner prep, D comes home, eat dinner, make pancakes, watch RAW, read new book about an athlete called Kathryn Bertine (really excellent), get ready for a chaotic Wednesday, snooze. It really is all rock n' roll here.
CSW

Wrestling both on and off the page

My trip to France was really excellent. I started the week feeling unusually anxious about it, wondering whether my GCSE French would enable me to even get to the venue, let alone allow me to understand anyone. Actually, it was a wonderful trip - very relaxed indeed, some truly excellent scholarship and some amazing food. I ate at least two delicious pastries every day! It made me realised that my interest in pro-wrestling and performance is actually a legitimate scholarly pursuit. Expect some articles out in the near future. Bordeaux is a beautiful city and I visited all the major attractions, despite the freezing cold weather. After the conference, I had the whole of Saturday to drink lots of coffee and simply wander about. I also (and trust me, this is quite unlike me) did a little clothes shopping, a complicated business when you can't quite fathom the sizes or how the discounts system works. On my flight home, I finished the original book version of Les Miserables, truly a novel that will stay with me for the rest of my days. Hugo was a genius! It is better than the musical and the recent film.

As well as that I have been working on a standalone book chapter on fascism and theatre (nearly done), faffing about (e.g. editing) the second chapter of the Book, and teaching futurism which has been very jolly. I am always surprised (and grateful!) that the students run with the ideas and documents on the Modern European Drama course. If you don't enter this course with an open mind then you are simply done.

Apart from that I have been getting better with my punchbag, drinking lots of soy lattes from our new campus cafe, watching the first episode of the new Stephen Poliakoff series Dancing on the Edge (despite his pretentiousness I really love Poliakoff) and rewatching the rather good boxing film Reel Steel, excellent not simply because Hugh is in it but also because it has a rather engaging story and some pretty great boxing moves.

Anyways, lunch beckons before an afternoon with Kermode and Mayo's film review and chapter 3. How I love days like these! I think I enjoy them even more than I did when I was on sabbatical as now they are interspersed with teaching days - individual scholarship and inspirational pedagogy...wicked combination.

CSW

The wonder of Hugh

I am delighted with my title pun! It is in reference, of course, to Les Miserables which D kindly took me to as a wee treat. He is very patient. So, I realised I haven't yet posted a review of this so here it is...

Funnily enough I actually preferred it to the stage version and it is not often I say that. There are two reasons: 1) the book (which I have nearly finished) has such tremendous scope, particularly when it comes to the French Revolution. The stage show, for obvious reasons of brevity, is forced to ignore this. The film (because a picture can say a thousand words, of whatever the cliche is) manages to capture some of that scope. As a prime example, Hugo devotes twenty pages or so to discussing the Paris sewer system, a fact that goes unrecognised in the stage show. On screen, Valjean and Marias' escape through the sewers is pretty graphic and perfectly responds to Hugo's description 2) on stage your perspective is set. Unless you run up and down the aisle (not recommended) you are always the same distance away from the stage and even if the set designers mess with the perspective a little, you are always more or less a particular distance from the action. In the film, Tom Hooper used close ups...lots of them...and then scanned back...a lot. While this 'in and out' movement had the potential to become a little grating, actually it worked wonderfully for this film especially for Fantine's solo (Anne Hathaway should win every award going for this) and Valjean contemplating his fate in the Bishop's church.

I really liked the live recorded singing. It made the whole piece feel very fresh and unusually raw for an on screen musical. This worked particularly well with its sense of realism, again chiming with Hugo's prose. As for the individual performances...well my standout was, of course, Hugh Jackman as Valjean who was born to play that part. As anyone who knows me will know, Hugh can do no wrong in my eyes. Anne Hathaway is immense and Russell Crowe has been given some bad rap but is actually a rather good screen presence especially in the 'Wolverine v Gladiator' scenes. Eponine and Marias were both excellent, although I wasn't a huge fan of Cosette's voice, but that might simply be personal preference. In a lovely nod to the history of Les Miserables (one of my pet hates is calling it Les Mis - don't even think about it!) the Bishop was played by none other than my childhood hero (and original London Valjean) Colm Wilkinson, whose voice remains as good as ever. And it was nice to see a brief cameo role from Sheffield Crucible's own Dan Evans.

So, my verdict? For me this film redeemed a musical that had become rather tired and cliched. I have fallen out of love with the musical over recent years but this has convinced me that there might be a place for a really good musical story in the modern world.

Anyways, back to the books. I am in France at the end of the week at a conference and have plenty of work to do on a book chapter and, of course, the Difficult Second Book which I approached with intrepidation today after some months away from it. The Introduction is a 6 out of 10 currently which really isn't too bad.

CSW

Slow down 2013...

...so, I guess this is my happy new year post. Quite ridiculous considering that half of January has already gone. Well, happy new year anyways! So far 2013 has been a rather odd year - lots of happiness and some sadness.

Rather than go through everything, I'll mention some happy things that are currently in my world:
1) deadlines: OK so deadlines aren't necessary happy things and having 5 before the 1st March is a bit much. That said, it is jolly nice to be wanted! And all the work is very interesting.
2) running with my new fitgloves: former wrestler Trish Stratus has created these amazing fitgloves which adds 1lb to each arm while you run. It is rather remarkable what a difference such a small amount of weight makes! My run today was freezing but fun. Lincolnshire is a wonderful place to run - flat, well-pathed and relatively pretty. And you never know when you'll come across a tiny brown Labrador puppy or a naughty horse who doesn't like walking on grass!
3) Punchy: this is the new name for my punchbag, a Christmas present from D. I love it! Boxing is brilliant for fitness.
4) the darts: I would like to say I am embarrassed about my love of darts...but I've not. The past week has been a celebration of the big men and I love the drama, even of the rather rubbish BDO. Stockport-born Tony O'Shea is still in it. Up the Hatters!
5) reading about Russia: one of my projects right now is about Russian theatre in the UK. It means dealing with a heap of fascinating books and archives. It makes me want to go to Russia some time soon.
6) rooibos tea: I used to drink a lot of rooibos but I haven't drunk it for ages. Recently the wonderful people of eteaket sent me some and I am loving it.
7) admiring D's computer game chops: I have never seen anyone finish a computer game and, not growing up with computer consoles and therefore being rubbish, even at things like Sonic, I was super impressed that D finished Uncharted 3 two days ago. Actually it is easy for none gamers to scoff, but these games are unbelievable - cinematic, well-scripted, exciting. I was quite impressed and got into spotting the baddies as D played.
8) riding: I am still loving my riding and get to have a jolly half hour with Tommy tomorrow morning. Horses are amazing - they just get it.
9) Twitter inspiration: recently I've been following a number of new folks whose attitudes and great work ethic are extremely inspiring. It just shows how fantastic Twitter can be if used well.
10) planning 2013: there are so many wonderful things to look forward to - gigs (lots!), holidays, time with friends and families, living in faith.

So, when life feels just a bit on the odd side, or the sad side, or the confusing side, how good to focus on wee blessings.

Hope 2013 is proving great for you so far.
CSW