The week before last I found that it had happened again: I discovered I had a really busy week ahead of me. Given the lengths to which I go to keep my life quiet and empty it comes as a great shock every time I discover that all of a sudden I have 10 days in a row in which someone somewhere has expectations of me. Even if those expectations are just me turning up to drink coffee with them.
Some of this was my own fault. No-one after all stuck a gun in my back and told me to register for the Scottish Women's History Conference, which was held in Orkney this year on 3rd and 4th May. I saw it mentioned for the nth time in the local paper and although the closing dates for attending was past I dashed off an email to the organiser thinking that if she said the thing was full, the so be it. But in fact I was able to go and had an enjoyable and interesting time.
The majority of attendees and paper givers were women and it amazed me what this did to the atmosphere compared to the more standard mixed, for which read mainly male, academic conferences I have attended previously.
One of the reasons I was keen to go was that the overall theme of the conference was Women's Production and a lot of the papers were to do with textiles. Knitting, spinning, weaving and lace making were all covered, in periods ranging from 1000-1945, and there were speakers from Denmark, Finland, the USA and Canada as well as Scotland herself.
I'd like to think that I'd become a regular attendee but was rather put off to learn that next years will be on a sporting theme and held in the Central Belt to tie in with the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Oh well, 2015 then. Maybe.
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