Going Away Again! (Sigh)

but with any luck it will be the last time until next February.

In any case I can't complain as it is almost totally a pleasure trip. We leave tomorrow (winds and waves allowing) and drive to Inverness, where we are seeing the Scottish Opera Carmen at the Eden Court in the evening. Then onto Glasgow on Friday.

 

Saturday I am nipping south of the border for a course (part of Project 60, report to follow). Sunday the OH comes back to Orkney while I chill out with Son no 2.

 

Monday I have a meeting with my Ph D supervisor  :-( .

 

Tuesday I'm hoping to meet up with my Glasgow dwelling Ravelry friend A.  Wednesday I'm going to  this, with my Edinburgh friend V. It looks fantastic and it will be interesting to see if the Restaurant at Kelvingrove is back up to standard...

 

And Thursday Son No 2 and I come back to Orkney via trains, a bus and a ferry - once again weather permitting.

 

I'm looking forward to everything about it bar the supervisory meeting and the packing!

 

 

Project 60 Number 15 - Going with the Flow

I have never been good at not being organised - although a look at the current mess that is my study might make you doubt the veracity of that statement. But what I mean is I've never really been spontaneous. Especially in unfamiliar surroundings and with people I don't know. I never go somewhere without knowing how I'll get back for example.

 

But here's a thing. In Gdansk I made a decision to go with the flow and see where it took me. One afternoon  it took me to a rather nice cake shop in good company. Another time it led me to say an encouraging word to a young female student who had been unfairly treated by a much older male academic. And on the final evening of the conference it took me to the most enjoyable time.

 

We wound up at 5.00 ish and a suggestion was made by someone near me that we should go somewhere for a drink. I thought yes, why not? And here some of us are having said drink....

 

 

 

Regular readers may not be surprised to learn that I had a cocktail - and very nice it was too, although it could have done with being either shaken or stirred

 

But the drink was just the start. Two of the French academics taking part had opted for renting a flat rather than staying in a hotel and even as we were enjoying ourselves they were back there cooking to feed us later in the evening. When the time came to leave the bar I thought about going back to the hotel before it got really dark and  then I thought No, dammit, I'm enjoying  myself and who ever thought that I would be included in this sort of thing so  let's just carry on being carried along.

 

We went off to a supermarket to pick up some more food, blocking aisles and having long discussions about which sort of plastic cheese looked least plastic and tasteless and letting the French choose the wine and then we wandered off into a part of town we hadn't been to before to look for the flat where Sarah and Benjamine were staying.

 

Finding the flat was easy, getting the door to open with the key code they had given us was a different thing, but eventually a text message brought Benjamine to the door and we staggered up two flights of stairs laden with food and wine.

 

The girls had cooked quiche and chocolate cake and apple crumble and there was salad and olives and hummus and bread and cheese and really it was an impromptu banquet. The conversation was wide ranging and generally hilarious, in a fairly high minded and academic way. It was wonderful. It's not every day you find yourself in a spirited but friendly discussion about the finer points of  The Mill on the Floss with a senior lecturer from The Sorbonne!

 

And here we are gathered round the food

 

 

 

And we stayed there till very late and drank lots of wine and I didn't worry once about how I was going to get back to the hotel even though it was late and dark and eventually we left and we all got back safely to where we were staying and even though I normally don't do this sort of thing, this time I did and I am SO glad because honestly it was about the best bit of the whole conference.

 

Maybe I should make a habit of spontaneity (ahem!)



 

But, but, but

what about Poland, do I hear you cry? All that build up,  you've been back nearly a fortnight and you leave us hanging with nary a word.

This is all true. I think I had to get some distance because academic conferences, however dry they might sound to the outsider, are actually quite intense experiences, involving as they do a confined place, a compressed time scale, some very high powered presentations and some equally high powered academic egos.

So overall the conference was overwhelming, exhausting, stimulating, enervating; but ultimately a beneficial and positive experience. My paper was well received, possibly I benefited here from being 'on' early.  I restricted myself to asking only two questions during  the entire three days, which I think is a good sign that I haven't turned into a Question Asker, which is a possibility that haunts me as I have mentioned before.

There were some other excellent papers too; it would be odious to make comparisons, but the presentations that stay with me for the right reasons, mainly because they were about writers or writing in which I was already interested were from a) a young Czech scholar talking about the poetry of Derick Thomson and b)  a lecturer from the Sorbonne talking about The House with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown. But there were many other good things.

 

A really positive thing for me was learning that the organisers had turned down a third of the papers they were offered, which makes me feel good to be chosen and banishes any lingering suspicion I might have had about being asked along to make up the numbers.

 

And here is the conference venue itself

 

 

Project 60 - Number 14 - I did what?

I did this.

I saw a piece of art ( a figurine ) in a gallery in Dunkeld, I fell in love with it, I bought it after only about five minutes consideration and I didn't feel guilty about it.

Here it is

 

The artist called her Kathryn, but I have rechristened her Sine which for some reason that I cannot fathom is my favourite female Gaelic name.

 

Son No 1 said she looked totally miserable and she does a bit look like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. But don't lots of girls feel like that when they're twelve and someone important to them has just demonstrated yet again how actually totally out of touch they are with how it feels to be twelve? She's misunderstood and it hurts.

 

Anyway I didn't buy her for that. I just loved her to the extent that I couldn't leave her in the gallery or indeed bear to think of her going home with someone else. It's not an experience I've ever truly had before ( not even for my Yoshi bags - and yes that's a plural and I am very aware that that means there are three Yoshi bags that never made it to the blog.... ) I assume that this is why I am still not feeling guilty despite the fact that she was Not Cheap.

 

It will however be a long time before we  go to Dunkeld again. We'd promised ourselves a visit for ages, and it was an attractive little town with a lovely river running through it. But there were far too many  other lovely things in that gallery; I don't think we can afford a return visit!

More Knitting for Marcus

As the Canadian branch have now received the parcel with the warm weather clothes we sent for Marcus I can show off the knitting that was included in it.

That said I have no idea whether either my son or my daughter-in-law do the really uncool thing of actually reading my blog, but just, you know,  in case, I didn't want to spoil the surprise.

Anyway there was a fairly standard jumper

 

I fiddled with the neck a bit but otherwise it's more or less as the pattern appeared in the magazine.

 

And then there was the gorgeous Drops jacket. When my sister saw this in the summer when it was only partially completed she laughed at it, although I don't know why. I think it's a fantastic design and I am knitting another one, for someone else because I like the pattern so much. That said it is a bit of a slog to knit but the pay off is there is hardly any sewing up to do, just the sleeves, so that's a bonus. And it looks, I think, really good.

 

 

Sent some fleecy trousers as well to go with them. Well, it is Canada and over there 'Winter is Coming' isn't just a typically mordant reminder from Sean Bean before he had his head chopped off!

 

Viva Mozart!

I got back from my adventures in Poland on Monday evening (late, thank you sooooo much Messrs Flybe and Loganair) and was exhausted. So I was not thrilled to be reminded that on Tuesday evening we had tickets for the Scottish Opera touring production of Cosi Fan Tutte.

These tours go all round Scotland and they perform in an amazing variety of places, and money is limited of course so they are piano accompanied only and with minimum sets and scenery. I've never  been a fan of piano only opera and really the last thing I wanted to  do on Tuesday evening was drag myself off to Kirkwall, but you know how it goes, the tickets weren't cheap, we really should turn out to support SO etc etc So we went.

 

And it was fantastic.

 

It was really well scored so that I hardly missed the orchestra. It was sung in a witty English translation, the cast were really good, the pianist was brilliant, you could hear every word - what more could you want?

 

Actually what I could want is an audience that doesn't come out all giving off the opinion that 'it's a silly story but the music is wonderful'. The story of Cosi is not silly; it's dark, sadistic and deeply misogynistic, and not just as a reflection of the times Da Ponte and Mozart lived. It has more relevance to male/female relationships today than I am happy with: given that we are all supposed to be equal these days it's sobering to be brought up against a realisation that actually not a lot has changed in the way men work the world and bend everything to their will.

 

Having said that though, the music is wonderful and however tired I was when I went in I was a lot less tired when I came out.

 

The OH has been nattering me since I got back to update the blog and I know I've fallen very behind. But I have been very very tired.I hope to start catching up tomorrow. But don't hold your collective breaths.

I'm leaving (on a jet plane)

but I do know when I'll be back again which is next Monday.

Tomorrow I get up at daft o' clock to catch the first plane out of here to Edinburgh. From Edinburgh I fly to Copenhagen and from Copenhagen to Gdansk. I'm sort of looking forward to it and sort of not.

I'm not bothered about giving my paper, but I am bothered about spending four days with people I mainly don't know, in an unfamiliar environment and eating unfamiliar food. That is the sort of thing that stresses me out in a major major way.

 

Anyway I shall be back blogging properly at the beginning of next week. So many things I haven't caught the blog up with; two new Project 60 things, a serendipitous find in a charity shop, a Ph D supervisory meeting, and of course there will be pictures of some finished knitting. Oh joy!

 

And if I get really desperate while I'm away for something to take my mind off things  we have tickets for the Scottish Opera touring production of Cosi Fan Tutti the day after I get back. Right here in Orkney. Yay!

A Flying Visit to Glasgow

We did this almost two weeks ago now and I can't believe that I haven't already blogged about it. We really do get more use out of that Glasgow flat than I ever dreamed we would.

We went down for a Scottish Opera party really. Over the past couple of years we have become more involved with Scottish Opera, if by more involved you realise I mean we give them money. In return they ask us to events and although these are often in Glasgow and therefore we cannot often go we do try to make some of them. It helps that Glasgow is really growing on me as a place to visit. I never knew it very well before, but I usually look forward to going nowadays.

 

The party was for people who had sponsored the up-coming Carmen revival and was very enjoyable, even for anti-social, not very party people like us. There was plenty to eat and drink, all on a Spanish theme, and although I was obliged to wave away all the things that contained olives or seafood, that still left me with plenty to choose from. The desserts were generally more my cup of tea than the savoury nibbles, but then that is usually the case; some seed type cake, orange tarts, turron and the most beautiful chocolate covered almonds. The catering was done by La Bonne Auberge and it would be churlish not to give them a shout out for both the food and the staff. Food was followed by a short talk from the director and the conductor, and then a couple of the cast did a 'turn'. There was also an opportunity to get dressed up in suitable Carmen costumes and have a photo taken but we passed on that, because we're miserable types who don't do that sort of thing!!

 

Earlier in the day I had met up with a new-ish Ravelry friend at The Yarn Cake : again it would be totally churlish not to put in a link to this very friendly place that is equally dedicated to selling lovely yarn and gorgeous cake. We had a good long chat and some cake and surprisingly enough (cough cough) I bought some wool. Not much to be fair. I knew I was going to get some for a baby jacket, because I have three up-coming babies to knit for, and that is about 40% done already. Other than that, I only splashed out on a ball of sock wool, and only because it was such lovely colours I couldn't bear to leave it on the shelf.

 

On the way back to Orkney  we dropped into the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness and bought our tickets for Carmen, which we will be seeing towards the end of the month. Report in due course, but of course, like almost everything else I mention these days, that will be After Poland.

Can this really be the end...

...of the home improvements? Inside at any rate?

On Tuesday some men came to lay the new hall carpet. Sadly they thought that they had come to lay a living room carpet and were a bit non-plussed that that wasn't the case. Additionally they seemed a bit overwhelmed by the size and shape of the hall. Think of an L, but with a T junction at one end

 

Anyway after surveying the hall in some dismay they turned round and went away again to get the carpet cut down and supply themselves with some glue; carpet nails and flagstone floors not being a marriage made in carpet heaven apparently. They did come back and got as far as finishing the underlay and yesterday they came and put down the carpet and the hall is now done. As is most of the rest of the house. The OH's office and my study still need some work but that is not happening before 2017 because I am sick of spending money on the house and now we're saving up for a splendiferous holiday in Oz next February.

 

The new carpet, or more possibly the underlay, is beautifully thick and bouncy and now that it's all done I have definitely achieved my objective. This was to turn a shabby-chic hall without the chic into a shabby chic  hall without the shabby and I am very pleased with the result.

 

I am less than thrilled at the thought that I now need to spend most of this afternoon re-filling book cases that have been filled and emptied more times than I care to think about over the last 21 months or so, but I soothe myself with the thought that this is the last time for the foreseeable.