Miniature Golf: the way to any woman's heart.

After the exertions of yesterday's Faculty Away-Day (the exertion being mostly of the trying-not-to-scream variety), today's my last day in the office until next week, because I'm off to the UK School Games for my annual opportunity to a) wear polyester from head to toe and b) remind myself why I am childless. They're mostly lovely kids but the emotional roller coaster, mental vigilance required and constant state of flux means that waving them goodbye is sweetest moment of all.

The Games themselves are always fun: 12 sports in an environment designed to replicate the Olympics or World Championships. Many of the current fencing senior squad have competed at the Games, so it's a great place to spot talent and see some top quality action, and it's very photographer friendly, so I'll see what I can do.

Last year we were in the Olympic Park as a test event before the real thing. This time we're in Sheffield for the second time. I visited that city once in the late 90s for a PhD interview and thought the place looked derelict. Now I really look forward to it - the city is beautiful and exciting. Whether I think that as I patrol the halls of residence at 2 a.m. clad from head to toe in mustard yellow (or whatever this year's colour is) is a different matter. I end the week drained but happy. And it can't be any worse than the Cardiff year, which saw me finding alternative accommodation for 100 netball players who'd evacuated their building - long past midnight - due to an infestation of silverfish, while their coach offered to punch the site manager.

So in between doing lots of administration (such as synchronising the Module Guides and the Learning and Teaching Guides), what have I been up to? Well, partly perusing today's book post. In particular, I've had Gissing's Demos, in which he identifies Democracy, Socialism and Lesbianism as the evils currently threatening humanity ( he was a little odd, and it was published in 1886), and best of all, this racy little number:

In my defence, I would say that it's all the fault of Yankee Clipper Books of the United States. What I actually ordered was The Mind and Body Shop, a satirical novel set in a university facing a corporate takeover. Those of you who follow my tales of woe from The Hegemon will understand what led to this choice of reading matter.

However, A Match For Celia has its charms, and I may recommend it to my colleagues teaching the Policing, Uniformed Studies (yes, it's a degree) and War Studies courses. 'Men In Uniform' is a sub-section of the Harlequin Silhouette romance series: other options include 'Desire' (more boffage apparently), Super-Romance (more words), Intrigue (suspense-romance), American ('he didn't just drop bombs…he also dropped his pants') and plain Romance ('Cosmopolitan international settings'). Sadly the range of uniformed gentlemen is limited to 'heroes': traffic wardens, lollipop-ladies and environmental health inspectors are denied their chance to sweep a woman off her feet. Although the cover doesn't really depict a man in uniform, more a man wearing an ID card. Either there's a Derridean 'play' ripe for deconstruction here or the jacket designer was not feeling particularly inspired.

These novels are strictly heterosexual and deeply conservative. Men in uniforms are heroes. Women fall in love with them for their strength. The men have to be caring and considerate, but understand that all the woman wants to do is place herself in his power, to be sheltered by him, safe in the knowledge that he means well. These macho men have to be slightly tamed because they feel desire strongly, but the love of a good woman is all they need to socialise them - sometimes against the woman's wishes. It's a neat trick: the women are independent to some extent, but utterly conventional and non-feminist, reinforcing hegemonic sexual and social roles.

Here's a taste of the novel:

He pulled her effortlessly back into his arms. And then he kissed her until she went limp against him, until she wouldn't have been surprised if smoke had come out of her ears.
     'Don't even suggest', he said in a low growl, 'that I don't want you. I want you so much it's eating me alive. I've wanted you from the first minute I saw you, damn it. So much that I almost…almost lost my head,' he finished, sounding as though he'd started to say something else and had changed his mind at the last minute.
     'Would it really be so bad to lose your head just once?' she asked wistfully, her cheek against his pounding heart. 

That said, A Match for Celia suggests that there are surprising ways to a woman's heart. Letting the book fall open naturally (a sure-fire way to find the saucy bits without wasting time on exposition, plot, characterisation etc) leads to the discovery that virginal Celia isn't only enthralled by FBI man (disguised as a tax accountant) Reed's 'unexpectedly sexy growl', but the mean way he plays golf:

He'd slaughtered her at the game, even though it had been his first time. 

Oh, sorry. Not golf. Miniature golf. Or as we say in Europe, pitch-and-putt or crazy golf. That's a tip, gents. Write it down and your love-life will be smoother than the final green at St. Andrews. Don't listen to mockery of The Simpsons:



If I recall correctly, Homer and Marge end up having sex in one of the obstacles. So maybe A Match for Celia gets something right. Perhaps the 'match' in the title is a subtle play on words, meaning both 'marriage' and a miniature golf rivalry after which they all live happily ever after. I'll never know. Though for all my mockery (and this is a terrible book, as hackneyed as any cheap porn or war thriller), work like this is important in some ways. Through it, we glimpse a readership using such material in specific ways: to project their hopes and dreams, to escape from a mundane reality, to enunciate sexual, economic and social ambitions. The uniformed aspect of it suggests that there's a deeply conservative political economy underpinning the social structures of these fantasies - which makes it fascinating, albeit unreadable.

To the Iron Bridge

I've had the pleasure of an afternoon spent with my esteemed colleague Dr C., and a coachload of budding travel writers, all primed with Romantic poems and accounts of Ironbridge Gorge and its associated village, Coalbrookdale.

We visited Rotunda View, Mr. Reynolds' Romantic lookout point on a high hill, though his structure is long since gone, then wended our way through the most beautiful post-industrial landscape you'll ever see: the soft tips of the alder trees give the impression of billows of smoke.

While up there, Dr C. read an extract of a travel letter describing the exact spot, by Richard Warner in 1807. Perhaps there's hope for Detroit yet.

My pictures are here

Anna Seward had this to say (in typical Romantic style) in 'Colebrook Dale' (1810)

Scene of superfluous grace, and wasted bloom,

O, violated Colebrook! in an hour

To beauty unpropitious and to song,

The Genius of they shades, by Plutus brib'd,

Amid thy grassy lanes, they woodwild glens,

Thy knolls and bubbling wells, thy rock, and streams.

Slumbers!--- while tribes fuliginous invade 

The soft, romantic consecrated scenes. 

Warner:

…our wonder was still more excited by Coalbrook Dale itself, a scene in which the beauties of nature and processes of art are blended together in curious combination. The valley which is here hemmed in by high rocky banks, finely wooded, would be exceedingly picturesque, were it not for the huge founderies, which, volcano-like, send up volumes of smoke into the air, discolouring nature, and robbing the trees of their beauty, and the vast heaps of red-hot iron ore and coak, that give the bottom, "ever burning with solid fire", more the appearance of Milton's hell than of his paradise.

Ships that sink in the night

In an earlier post, I joked about meeting a Radio 4-loving single girl at the airport. Well, when the plane came in to land at Stansted, the Polish young woman next to me noticed my abject terror (is this an attractive feature?) and we chatted until we'd collected our bags 20-odd minutes later (I didn't even pun). We exchanged names and talked about what we do, shook hands and said goodbye. Did I give her my number? Of course not. The very idea makes me sweat.

Decompressing from my trip was very strange. For four days, I lived in a bubble. I'd never met virtually all of the children on the trip, and we were placed in a strange relationship in an alien city. Over those days, I learned all their names, picked up on their personalities (who needs coaching, who doesn't, who's loud, who's quiet, how they respond to winning and losing), and spoke to very few other people. We explored this new city together (within limits) until parts of it became familiar, coped with victory and defeat - then dispersed again over a period of ten minutes, back to our ordinary lives. It was as though the trip hadn't happened: only my England shell suit says it did.

After four days of listening, talking, warning, entertaining, encouraging, advising, I was alone again, looking forward to a couple of days of my own company. The coach from Stansted (5 horrible hours) gave me time to listen mostly to downbeat music (Mazzy Star, Tindersticks, John Adams) and relax - until I hammered on the door for half an hour trying to wake my housemates after discovering I'd lost my keys.

Sunday was the day for buying birthday presents in Birmingham. I have to confess to purchasing a few little presents for me too. Largely, you'll be hugely unsurprised to learn, books. Then, finding myself outside St. Philip's Cathedral at 3.30, I went to Evensong. I know, I know, atheist Catholics shouldn't indulge, but the music's good, though I didn't realize I was letting myself in for more than an hour and a sermon (interrupted by the regulation drunk nutter). The sermon was kind of interesting: beautifully delivered and thought-provoking until he decided to reference Jade Goody and Murphy's Law in the course of his disquisition on Britain's pseudo-Christian culture. Let's be clear: fiction is written to make a specific point. It's constructed. It doesn't, therefore, prove general cultural truths for extrapolation.

After that - off to Wagamama for a solitary meal and read of the Guardian while being elbowed by beautiful couples. And so (as Pepys said, though not at 5), to bed.