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dolorosa_12This weekend started with drinks with friends who left the country due to Brexit, moved on to joining the last ditch People's Vote march in London, followed by freezing until our feet were numb at the annual Apple Day in the botanic gardens. Now I'm sitting here drinking a mug of tea and feeling utterly exhausted. This rather frenzied weekend followed a working week in which I spent three-quarters of my time teaching, as October is the busiest time of year for me.
*
I've been very uninspired in my reading recently, and only finished one rather slight YA novel, The Deathless Girls by Kiran Miller Hargrave, which fills in the blanks of the story of the two 'brides' of Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel. It's competently written, fairly standard YA, but loses something because the reader obviously already knows where the two eponymous girls will end up, and their journey to get there isn't filled with many surprises. The novel does shine in its depiction of setting, especially the deep, mysterious forests that are the girls' home, but over all I wasn't super impressed.
I'm currently slogging through Nisi Shawl's steampunk alternate history Everfair, which imagines that the Congolese were able to drive out the horrific, exploitative Belgian colonists (who in reality committed appalling atrocities, even by the standards of the era) and carve out an independent, anti-colonialist country in nineteenth-century Africa, helped in large part by the steampunk technological innovations that they engineer. The idea is splendid, but the execution is poor, partly because the novel is so packed with point of view characters and time-skips (each chapter tends to leap forward by a month) that it feels hard to connect with the story or engage emotionally with any one character. I will keep reading, but I'm not wildly impressed.
*
Our friends P and V, who now live in Vienna, were back in Cambridge for a flying visit, and we caught up with P for drinks with several other mutual friends (V was feeling ill and didn't come out). We ended up spending most of the evening ranting about Brexit and the current terrible debate that is engulfing medieval studies, but it was a nice way to spend Friday night nonetheless.
*
On Saturday, Matthias and I dragged ourselves down to London for the anti-Brexit People's Vote march. I'd been at the last one, in March, and the mood had been cautiously hopeful. This time — Johnson's 'deal' in hand and rumours swirling that he had the numbers to pass it in Parliament — the mood was more furious despair. I went along feeling like I had when I protested against the Iraq war in 2003: knowing it was hopeless, but feeling that I had to be there for the historical record, to be another pair of feet on the ground showing that this dreadful thing was not being done with the consent of the entire voting population.
They said there were around 1 million people marching yesterday, roughly comparable with the figures in March. And, as we poured into Parliament Square, there was a glimmer of hope: the Letwin amendment, forcing Johnson to ask for an extension from the EU to allow time for his (terrible) deal to be properly scrutinised, passed, and the crowds went wild with emotion. So, we limp on to fight another day. It's guerrilla warfare — an amendment here, an unexpected alliance there — but it's all we've got, and I will continue fighting this terrible thing until all legal methods have been exhausted, and all hope is lost.
*
I was so tired from the march (not only did we walk the march route, but we walked to and from the train station, and to and from the start and end points of the march and Kings Cross, which added up to 16km in total) and so determined to celebrate tiny victories that I bought a bottle of cheap cava and drank a glass of it, mixed with a shot of the sanddorn liqueur Matthias and I had bought in southern Germany back in July, while lying in the bath and feeling outrageously decadent.
*
Today was Apple Day, which happens every year in the botanic gardens here in Cambridge. You can buy bags of lots of strange varieties of apples, taste apples (more than thirty varieties) to your heart's content, and there are food trucks, coffee carts, live music, and lots of small children running wildly around. We go every year, and every year I end up freezing half to death, but it's worth it. We now have bags of five different types of apples (all sour, crisp varieties), crabapple jelly, and chili jam, and I have eaten my body weight in apples and woodfired pizza.
I'm now lounging around at home, drinking tea, and getting ready to switch over the bedding to the winter weight duvet. The seasons have well and truly turned, but, as events in Westminster showed yesterday, there is lingering light and hope still remaining.
I've been very uninspired in my reading recently, and only finished one rather slight YA novel, The Deathless Girls by Kiran Miller Hargrave, which fills in the blanks of the story of the two 'brides' of Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel. It's competently written, fairly standard YA, but loses something because the reader obviously already knows where the two eponymous girls will end up, and their journey to get there isn't filled with many surprises. The novel does shine in its depiction of setting, especially the deep, mysterious forests that are the girls' home, but over all I wasn't super impressed.
I'm currently slogging through Nisi Shawl's steampunk alternate history Everfair, which imagines that the Congolese were able to drive out the horrific, exploitative Belgian colonists (who in reality committed appalling atrocities, even by the standards of the era) and carve out an independent, anti-colonialist country in nineteenth-century Africa, helped in large part by the steampunk technological innovations that they engineer. The idea is splendid, but the execution is poor, partly because the novel is so packed with point of view characters and time-skips (each chapter tends to leap forward by a month) that it feels hard to connect with the story or engage emotionally with any one character. I will keep reading, but I'm not wildly impressed.
Our friends P and V, who now live in Vienna, were back in Cambridge for a flying visit, and we caught up with P for drinks with several other mutual friends (V was feeling ill and didn't come out). We ended up spending most of the evening ranting about Brexit and the current terrible debate that is engulfing medieval studies, but it was a nice way to spend Friday night nonetheless.
On Saturday, Matthias and I dragged ourselves down to London for the anti-Brexit People's Vote march. I'd been at the last one, in March, and the mood had been cautiously hopeful. This time — Johnson's 'deal' in hand and rumours swirling that he had the numbers to pass it in Parliament — the mood was more furious despair. I went along feeling like I had when I protested against the Iraq war in 2003: knowing it was hopeless, but feeling that I had to be there for the historical record, to be another pair of feet on the ground showing that this dreadful thing was not being done with the consent of the entire voting population.
They said there were around 1 million people marching yesterday, roughly comparable with the figures in March. And, as we poured into Parliament Square, there was a glimmer of hope: the Letwin amendment, forcing Johnson to ask for an extension from the EU to allow time for his (terrible) deal to be properly scrutinised, passed, and the crowds went wild with emotion. So, we limp on to fight another day. It's guerrilla warfare — an amendment here, an unexpected alliance there — but it's all we've got, and I will continue fighting this terrible thing until all legal methods have been exhausted, and all hope is lost.
I was so tired from the march (not only did we walk the march route, but we walked to and from the train station, and to and from the start and end points of the march and Kings Cross, which added up to 16km in total) and so determined to celebrate tiny victories that I bought a bottle of cheap cava and drank a glass of it, mixed with a shot of the sanddorn liqueur Matthias and I had bought in southern Germany back in July, while lying in the bath and feeling outrageously decadent.
Today was Apple Day, which happens every year in the botanic gardens here in Cambridge. You can buy bags of lots of strange varieties of apples, taste apples (more than thirty varieties) to your heart's content, and there are food trucks, coffee carts, live music, and lots of small children running wildly around. We go every year, and every year I end up freezing half to death, but it's worth it. We now have bags of five different types of apples (all sour, crisp varieties), crabapple jelly, and chili jam, and I have eaten my body weight in apples and woodfired pizza.
I'm now lounging around at home, drinking tea, and getting ready to switch over the bedding to the winter weight duvet. The seasons have well and truly turned, but, as events in Westminster showed yesterday, there is lingering light and hope still remaining.