Little English baking*

*With apologies to the BBC

I've been having a bit of a baking craze recently.  It started with a bread and butter pudding -not quite sure why (possibly because we made them at school when I was about 12 and so I thought I could do this again) and followed by Victoria Sandwich Cake, fairy cakes (although I overcooked those) and this week Nigella's Butterscotch Layer Cake.  T helped me make the caramel as that was a first but, boy, is that delicious - we've kept some to have with ice-cream.  It's pretty yummy, if incredibly bad for you.  Anyway whilst a long way from a domestic goddess it has given T options for Christmas presents other than the usual books (not that I would be complaining this Christmas).

Can you believe it's Week Ten of this semester at King's.  Next week we break up for Christmas.  I can't believe how quickly the semester has gone & we will get our first essays back next week (which I'm not looking forward to).  Last week we read Untouchable an amazing story about an untouchable boy during the Empire.  I wasn't sure I would enjoy this book but I found it very affecting - his life was just so hard and unfair.  Anand, the author, wrote and published it in in London and for an anti-Imperialist book it has some interesting quirks - the British characters are generally sympathetic whilst the Indians are not.  I wonder if that is because the Indians are more realistic because Anand doesn't see the British as real but just ghosts (as Bhaka is to the higher castes)?  Anyway, a very good book, well worth the read.

This week we are off to the Museum of London and reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, another book I wouldn't have picked up of my own accord.  It's about the immigrant experience in the meat-packing districts of early twentieth-century Chicago.

I'll finish this here as this should have been posted several weeks ago.  I'll try and update more regularly again!

Thanks for reading

Books, Boilers and Broken Locks

So reading week is over and we're back to normal timetable.  I managed to hand in my first essay yesterday - we had to write a critical commentary of two passages of someone's work and boy was I critical.  I did feel yesterday that the author should have the opportunity of taking apart two paragraphs of something I have written - I'm sure he would have a lot of fun.  Of course I reached that point where I didn't want to submit the essay at all - it looked so nice: pretty front cover; nice double-spacing and lovely footnotes as opposed to the in-text referencing that the OU wanted.  It's just a shame that anyone has to look at the content!  Anyway four weeks 'til we get them back so three and a half weeks of bliss and then a few sleepless nights.  How mean are King's that this counts?

Course-wise we are looking at The Secret Agent and The Ladies' Paradise this week. 

Although I enjoyed Apocalypse Now I really didn't like Heart of Darkness so I wasn't looking forward to this at all.  I actually found The Secret Agent much better.  I thought the story was more engaging and I was interested in the characters.  The theme for this week is 'Terror at the Heart of Empire' which, without giving away what the story is about, is the theme of the book.  Of course this has a contemporary resonance for us as I'm sure I wouldn't have to look too far to find something about domestic terrorism in a tabloid newspaper.  Perhaps that made the story more appealing?  My only concern with Conrad is I feel a certain sense of distance in his writing - he seems to stand back from his characters - but that could be because he is writing in his third language which is a pretty amazing feat!  I would recommend this book as a good introduction to Conrad, certainly much more worthwhile than Heart of Darkness in my opinion (although if you are looking for a critique of empire then HoD is obviously your book!)

I don't know if you can see this properly but this is the cover of Zola's The Ladies' Paradise.  I really like Zola.  He wrote what he described as 'naturalistc' books, that is to say he felt you should just put characters into a situation and see how they got on with it.  I'm not sure I can agree with his view that the novel is an experiment and the novelist doesn't have much to do with it.  After all he is creating the characters, the environment into which to put them and what happens to them.  Zola wrote a series of 18 novels, describing two families and their adventures.  I've read Germinal which is ostensibly about a mining strike in northern France but is actually about how people live and love.  It's excellent.  The Ladies' Paradise is superficially about a much more gentile subject, the rise of the department store in Hausmann's Paris but is again about people's lives and loves and decisions.  I really enjoyed this also and would definitely look for more of Zola's work.  Both books are fully recommended to you.

On a less pleasant matter I'm still having issues in the non-Uni world.  Yesterday I managed to lose my keys and, as T is away at the moment, I locked myself out.  Luckily the locksmith came quickly and fitted a nice new lock for me.  I must have looked very suspicious, just standing outside a door as it got darker and colder but at least it wasn't too cold and it was dry and I was back inside within an hour of calling the locksmith.  About two hours later I realised my boiler wasn't working so no heating or hot water.  Because of my schedule the first time I can get British Gas out is Friday morning.  I can cope without the hot water (lots of kettles) and I've persuaded myself that it isn't that cold so I don't need the heating (and indeed this morning seems to be as bad as it will get) but please keep your fingers crossed for me it's only a little part that's needed and not a new boiler!

Thank you for reading & hopefully the next entry will be more cheerful.  I'm hoping to finish Vile Bodies and the new Stephen King so will try and update on those.  Thanks again ...

Reading Week

It's 'Reading Week' this week. I thought that this would be a staple of all universities but as I have found out it doesn't happen everywhere let me explain that this is a week when you do exactly as it says on the tin; catch up on your reading.  It's a real luxury and enabled me to write the first draft of my first essay yesterday.  I'm suffering a bit from a cold at the moment so I'm anticipating that I wrote a load of old rubbish but I'll find out when I start to edit tomorrow.  The thing that is worrying me most is King's reference differently from the Open University so I will have to pore over my MHRA stylebook tomorrow and see if I can make sense.  I always think the worst thing about an essay is that blank piece of paper staring at you so at least I have plenty to edit (or so the theory goes).

My other goals are to do some reading about T.S. Eliot to help me think about my MA dissertation and enable me to start talking to someone about a PhD proposal (how scary is that - we're only 6 weeks into the MA!)  I've identified who I think could be a supervisor if King's will have me and will need to approach him next week but I want to be able to say something sensible to him.  In addition I need to sort out my thoughts about one of my module essays particulalry what texts I will use & what approaches.  I feel a bit muddled at the moment so hopefully that will all be sorted by next Tuesday (yeah, right!)

But I have taken the opportunity to read some books which aren't on the course - yay!

Meritocracy was written by Jeffrey Lewis who used to be one of the writers on Hill Street Blues.  It's part of a quartet but this is the only one I have read and I think it stands alone well.  It's summer 1966 and a group of Yale graduates meet at one of their family summer homes in Maine.  The family gravitates around a golden couple: Harry, the son of a California senator, and his new wife Sacha.  Our narrator Louie is not old money and, perhaps, a little in love with both Harry & Sacha.  Harry has volunteered for Vietnam although no-one is sure if it is because he thinks it his duty or he will need it to look like he did his duty when he enters politics later in life.  Louie is looking back on this trip and constantly compares Harry to George W. Bush who they knew at Yale.  It's a decent enough read, I don't think you're going to be shocked by what happens but I think if you are looking for something to while away a couple of hours it's good enough. 

As you may know I'm really interested in the Kennedys and have read a lot about them.  T saw this in our local library and thought I would be interested.  If you are interested in the Kennedys too you might want to read it but I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading it without a healthy dose of cynacism.  Heymann claims that Jackie and Bobby had an affair after JFK's assasination - perhaps they did, certainly from everything I have read they were very close.  This is a seedy enough assertion in itself but then he backs it up using interviews with family members and close friends.  I find this difficult to believe.  This is a family that protects itself (and has the money and contacts to do so) as fiercely as any mother with her cub.  Would they really be willing to spill the beans on something which would ruin the reputations of both Jackie and, probably more importantly to them, Bobby?  Heyman aims to show Bobby in as bad a light as possible and so even leaves out some of his dying words (I have read in a number of accounts that he asked if everyone was alright) to make him less likeable.  Now, I'm a biased reader and you may want to take that into account when reading this review but I don't like an author who seems to veer off at any given moment to add another few lines of, irrelevant, malicious gossip.

I love Pride and Prejudice.  It would be one of my desert island books and I have read some sequels most of which aren't up to it and one which was verging on soft porn, Mr. Darcy takes a wife if you must know, although I gave that up after a few chapters (honestly.)  I haven't read any P.D. James, as I'm not particularly a fan of murder mystery unless I'm interested in the setting or the period, but T is a fan of hers and wanted this for completeness.  I have to say that I think I enjoyed it.  I think James captures the world of Pemberley in a way that I can buy into easily.  She has changed some of the characters and I'm not sure I liked that but, it is her book.  She focuses more on Darcy and less on Elizabeth which is interesting.  She also introduces some new characters and does that well.  Mrs. Bennett is absent from Pemberley so if you are a fan you might be disappointed.  James does use characters from Persuasion and Emma briefly in one character's backstory and I found that slightly jarring but not enough to put me off.  I felt the mystery was almost incidental, just a device to get everyone together but that was OK - I liked being with them, for whatever reason.  I think a fan of Pride and Prejudice would find this more enjoyable than a P.D. James murder mystery fan but not if they hate someone making any alterations at all to Austen's characters or world.  I think it's a great Christmas present.

Anyway I must get back to T.S. Eliot so thank you for reading.

Let's All Go Down The Strand*

* Today's title is from a Music Hall song and the picture above shows where The Strand and Fleet Street met, just opposite The Royal Courts of Justice.

I was without the internet for 5 days last week and felt like I had lost a limb.  I had a major panic on Monday when I discovered that my router had given up the ghost because I needed to download the reading for my seminars.  Thank goodness Surrey Libraries give you the opportunity to book an hour session on the internet for free.  I was able to download all of the reading and then print off and study at home.  This was the third technological incident we had in a couple of weeks (Sky box stopped working & my laptop is refusing to work properly were the others) so I hope it is the last for now.

It was very busy at King's last week.  Extremely interesting lecture on 'The Trials of Oscar Wilde' and the West End on Tuesday afternoon. Then on Wednesday we had our first workshop to help with writing our dissertations.  The MA dissertation for English should be approx. 15,000 words and we have from April to September to write it which at the moment seems ages (ask me again in mid-July!).  I've written a MSc (master of science) dissertation before so was feeling relatively relaxed about this but that was more of an investigation/project (the benefits of mentoring).  By the time we finished our two hour session I was feeling a lot more nervous about writing this one but, I hope, in a good way.  After that I spent an hour in the cafe checking e-mails (I was able to use my i-Pad and the King's wifi) and then my Oscar Wilde seminar; very interesting.

On Thursday I started with my Modernity & the City seminar.  Our tutor is amazing, he ranges so widely across subjects.  This week we were talking about the poor in 19th C London and how the writers of reports and stories tried to persuade their readers that something needed to be done!  One of the things that amuses me is we were reading Charles Booth's report about the London poor and there is a lot about families living in abject poverty in one room in buildings around Covent Garden.  Anyone familiar with the London property market will know that flats round there now cost hundreds of thousands of pounds - a huge difference in 160 years.  I wonder what would happen if those people could see the streets they used to live in now?

Back to the City then for lunch with a friend, who is looking absolutely beautiful in her pregnancy!  Then dash back to King's for presenations about applying for a PhD and applying for funding.  I really want to do a PhD and I could do it without funding BUT I think it would look much better to say that a funding body thought my research was worth supporting.  The chances are tough - I think there is about a 1 in 4 chance of being accepted to a PhD at King's but the chance of a funded PhD drops to1 in 30.   We got good advice however, including not starting an application to King's by saying 'I have always wanted to study at Oxford'!

I also met my personal tutor for the first time on Thursday afternoon & she was great.  She gave me some ideas about books to read for my MA dissertation and was encouraging about the PhD subject.  I was exhausted when I left her and set off down The Strand for Charing Cross station.

This week we are moving on to World War I and tanks (yes, it is an English Lit course) and Our Mutual Friend which is probably my favourite Charles Dickens novel ever.  Oh yes, and my first essay is looming on the horizon.  I love it tho'!!

Thanks for reading & I'll hopefully update more quickly next time.

Tired but happy in Paris & St Petersburg*

* with apologies to George Orwell and, of course, I'm only there in the pages of books!

I am now two weeks into the MA. I had this fantasy that I would spend four days a week on my two modules and then be able to take Fridays to read things that I just found interesting. My weekends would be spent on whatever I fancied.  Hmmm - how naive was I?  I've just spent the best part of today, Sunday, reading articles for one module and Friday was spent the same way. The amount of reading is huge and whilst part of me says this is at it should be - it is an MA in English, the other part feels a bit nervous that I'm not taking enough in as I'm having to read everything so quickly.

But I have to tell you that I absolutely love it. I have vast numbers of e-mails, everyday, inviting me to  research seminars being held by all the arts & humanities departments as well as the School of Advanced Study, to participate in King's medical research (not brave enough to do any of that yet) or to join in various college activities. The English department alone seems to have weekly events run by either the staff or research students & everyone is so nice that you really want to go and support them. It's only been two weeks since I started properly but last Wednesday as I was walking past the (illuminated and beautiful) chapel I realised I felt like I had been here forever!

Last week we looked at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Marx on the value of labour and Guy Debord on spectacle and commodification. Really, really interesting stuff. Basically you have all these theories about the Crystal Palace itself - it was the first pre-fabricated building in London and had the first public toilets (thank you Prince Albert).  There were huge concerns about the building - would people boil to death inside when it got sunny (not in London methinks!) and how would the lower orders behave.  There had been revolutions across Europe in 1848 and Britain had only just emerged from the trauma of the 'Hungry Forties' when people where actually starving so you can almost understand their concerns but, I am pleased to report, the working classes (who could afford to attend) did behave themselves and no foreign revolutionaries instigated any attempts to overthrow the government!! 

In 'Modernity And The City' we studied St Petersburg.  The photograph to the left is of St. Isaac's Cathedral and at the top The Admiralty Spire.  I think St.  Petersburg is absolutely beautiful.  I was lucky enough to have to go on a work trip three years ago in early July.  As you can see the weather was fantastic & it was during the period of the 'White Nights' when it hardly gets dark at all.  I had just over a day to look around on my own and was able to visit the Hermitage, the Church on Spilled Blood, stroll down Nevsky Prospect and see the beautiful rooms inside the Strogonov Palace.  I stayed just opposite St Isaac's in the Hotel Astoria - a great place to stay if you can visit.

Of course in the seminar we were looking at a far less enjoyable side of Petersburg life.  We read Dosoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Gogol's Petersburg Tales.  I really enjoyed both, but particularly 'The Overcoat' by Gogol.  The authors are writing about St Petersburg in the 1840s and 50s so its a massively rigid society in which clerks don't matter but the gentry and military do.  There is a strong need for recognition in all the stories and I think the character in 'The Overcoat' is the one who manages to achieve it- in a fairly novel way.  We talked a lot about facades and prospects, St Petersburg was built to impress, all of which you can still see even if the city isn't quite in its imperial pomp today.

This week we're looking at Charles Baudelaire and the Flaneurs (apologies for the lack of accent there).  We're looking particularly at his poems Les Fleurs du Mal or The Flowers of Evil which apparently deal with some subjects that were a little sensitive in the 1860s.  I've read some of his prose poems and have found them quite touching.  The Encyclopaedia Larousse defines a flaneur as a loiterer or fritterer away of time (isn't that lovely).  They used to stroll around Paris, sometimes with a turtle, in the passages and arcades.  But there is a real sense of melancholy and disaffection in Baudelaire's work - it wasn't all fun being a flaneur because you might have had to keep changing your lodgings and you probably needed a job to support yourself.  Our tutor is lovely and seems  to know everything so I'm really looking forward to the seminar (if I can get all the reading done).

I'm also reading Our Mutual Friend at the moment for our seminar in a few weeks time.  It's 800 pages so I'm supposed to be reading 40 pages a night but I did read a bit extra today.  Normally I don't particularly like Dickens.  It's all of the cliffhangers he had to incorporate as the novels were serialised but are for me intensely annoying in a novel.  I normally get irritated with the silly names too (needed to make them memorable) but I like the name of the Veneerings (what was that about facades and false impressions) so maybe the course is starting to have an impression on me?                                                                     

Thanks for reading.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Only Connect

A few years ago I started to research my family tree.  I am very lucky as my mother's mother had an unusual maiden name and her family have tended to be in the right place at the right time (for censuses) and are easy to find in the records.  I was amazed at how many of my ancestors seemed to have some kind of connection to my life or interests (granted I was wanting to make those connections).   My Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather (I think) for example lived in the street where my sister and I worked two centuries later.  He ran a circulating library (the earliest forms of library) which is absolutely appropriate for a descendant studying for an MA in English.  Imagine the fun I could have discussing the latest of Jane Austen's publications with him.  I wonder if she was popular with his readers?  Those of you who know me know my love for Boston - imagine my amazement to find out my Great-Great-Great-Grandfather died there!  He was a merchant seaman (not surprising for a Liverpool family) but I think there is something rather poignant about the fact that I love visiting the city for holidays and he ended his days there.

My grandfather's (my Mum's Dad) side seemed to be much tougher to research as his surname is more common and, whilst the maternal line was very settled in Liverpool, his father's family came from the Lake District and were there as recently as the mid-19th century.  As the family made their way down, however, they do seem to have become involved in the industrial revolution - we have an engraver at a calico printers in the family and this involvement in the Lancashire Cotton Industry makes me feel proud.  My ancestors were there as the modern age was being born and having spent the afternoon looking at modernity as part of my background reading it really creates an interesting link for me.

Yesterday I found out something really exciting.  It seems (I'm 90% sure but need to do a little more research) that through my Great-Grandmother, on my Grandfather's side, we are descended from the family that tenanted the amazing building pictured on the left during the 18th Century.  This is Speke Hall which is a fantastic National Trust property just outside Liverpool.  Now I don't think it looked quite this good when my ancestors were there, in fact the next family to own the Hall considered that the tenant farmer families had ruined it!  I just feel amazed that I could be connected to history like this.  Other people have done work on this family and they seem to be relatively easy to trace as they are all christened or associated with a church in South Liverpool which has done a great job of preserving its records.  The really exciting thing is that people have traced this family back to the 1540s - how brilliant is that!!  I started my family history research after my Grandparents had died (in their 90s) and how I wish I had started when they were still alive.  My Grandad particularly would have been thrilled with this information, he was a really proud Scouser!   I think I wanted to feel rooted,or connected, but I never expected to find out just how rooted to that part of the country my family is.

The title of this entry is Only Connect, which is the epigram from Howards End by E.M. Forster.  It's a great book about three families, the poorer Blasts, the bohemian Schlegels and the capitalist Wilcoxes.  Forster looks at the interactions between the families in the context of places and culture.  This afternoon I was reading about the difference between place and space.  I won't bore you with the details but it was very interesting and the book that I read suggested that Forster isn't quite so against the city as first reading may suggest.  Perhaps he just found London at that period difficult to capture as it was changing so constantly?

I finally start the MA tomorrow - huge, huge hurrah!  A lecture and then seminars on Wednesday and Thursday. I'm sure I'll be nervous when I actually have to advance some ideas but perhaps the idea of how much change all of those ancestors saw can help me cope with a new beginning!

Thanks for reading ...

Here we go, here we go, here we go

Last week I registered at King's.  I was actually surprised at how well organised it was, wait in a room next to the registration room until the queue lessened and then join the green line to hand over passport and documents to prove you really had passed a bachelor's degree.  Unfortunately my degree certificate didn't arrive until Friday but I had something from the OU which stated that I wasn't arriving at King's under false pretenses.  All in all it must have taken about 20 minutes and then it was pick up the ID card which doubles as library card, be presented with a couple of letters stating I am a full time student (hopefully useful for convincing the tax office I don't work anymore) and I'm officially a student.  Well, I haven't paid yet but there doesn't seem to be much of a rush for that - what funding crisis?

Off I went to the library again (that's a picture of the entrance above, copyright King's) with the added excitement of being able to take some books out.  I'm currently reading Pierre or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville and not particularly enjoying it so I concentrated on books that would help with this.  I had walked to King's from Victoria Station, as it was a nice day, but my route took me past The Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey and so was full of tourists (hopefully spending lots of money).  It took me quite a while to get there so I decided that a bus was the solution back and whilst that took nearly as long it was much more comfortable.

Tomorrow is 'Induction' - three hours of it and then two hours of drinks.  I feel a bit nervous, not quite sure what it will bring and what will be expected of us. My great fear is someone asks me to stand up and explain what I have learnt from the background reading on Freud (not much really).  We also have a library induction on Friday - I'm sure I won't be brave enough to admit to already having used it - who's the old swot in the corner?  I'm really looking forward to starting the course - it's been nine months since I was accepted and nearly four months since I left work so a bit more structure in my life will be greatly appreciated.

I had a quick trip to see my parents at the weekend.  Dad & I went to see Liverpool play Wolves on Saturday afternoon.  Last week I saw something someone had written about watching football not being entertainment, it's far too stressful for that (although I guess if your team is Barcelona and they're playing their brand of football-porn you might not agree).  This was one of those afternoons.  The first stress was parking the car.  Anfield is situated in the middle of rows of terrace houses so no nice big official car parks.  When I first was allowed to go (in about 1980) you could park in the streets nearby and kids would offer to watch your car for whatever the going amount of money was (Dad used to look after people's bikes for a few old pence in the late 1930s).  Now those streets are all on resident's parking permits and anything possible is turned into a carpark (garage, school playgrounds,churches and even some people offering to rent their drive to you).  The charge is now £10 and there's no competition - the cost of going to a match certainly adds up.  We parked in a local junior school playground that meant I was able to combine football with some genealogy - we passed the house some of Dad's family lived in when the 1911 census was taken. 

I love the feeling of going to the ground - when we leave home we may see a couple of other cars with people wearing replica shirts or scarves.  As we get closer we start to see people walking to the ground, initially in maybe twos or threes and then, when we get to Stanley Park, people start to converge and as we come out of the passageway into Anfield Road suddenly there are hundreds of people all dressed in red - the main artery as opposed to minor veins.  Anfield is old, undoubtedly and perhaps if/when a new stadium is built there will be more tickets available and more ladies' toilets (please!) but it is magical.  It's a combination of residual emotions from European nights, tears spilt over tragedy and the souls of many of the faithful (although now the pitch management is so scientific I wonder if you can still spread ashes there?)  We were right in the corner of the Main Stand, parallel with the Kop and with a slightly restricted view, which no-one told me about when I bought the tickets, but nothing I know matches being part of more than 35,000 people singing You'll Never Walk Alone as the team comes out - no wonder so many old players hang around.  If it's addictive in the stands, how much more so is it on the pitch?  I won't go into the detail of the game - the team is still a work in progress (and watching was extremely stressful at times) but they won so we've got a 100% record in the games we've seen this season!

Thanks for reading ...