Sit back and relax, with the sounds of the seventies

Well, Monday again and I'm back in my otherwise deserted office, listening to the oddest song I've heard in a long time. Mark has an obsession with The Odd Couple, the 70s sitcom. Now he's discovered Tony Randall and Jack Klugman's cover of 'You're So Vain'. It uncomfortably reminds me of life with Neal!

Powered by Podbean.com

Until Monday, Farewell!

Further to The Culture, Cheese and Pineapple, Neal's cooking a Mussaman curry for Emma, Mark and I tonight. Then tomorrow it's Ho! for the British Fencing AGM. I couldn't face dinner with the buffers, but I'll turn up for the business and the mini-conference, hand over my UKSG welfare report and go home, hopefully unentangled by the politics. Ho ho ho.

Have a good weekend.

Friday conundrum time!

It's Friday afternoon, so the staff here are obsessed with this Name Anagram Generator. If you're good at Scrabble, you can work out my actual name from Brainy Dean. The vice-chancellor, ironically enough, comes out as 'Principal Egos', and Zoot Horn is Calendar Girl. Poor Mark comes out as Jerk Moans.

Anyway, how about a conundrum. A practical one this time. Do I spend my spare money (e.g. what I don't spend on rent and books) on:

a) driving lessons. I'm 34 and haven't hitherto bothered.

b) more violin lessons. I wasn't much good. I'd practice now. Really.

c) smack. It's the only response to living in Wolverhampton.

What skill would you really like to acquire?

I miss Shoegaze

Some Slowdive ('Souvlaki Space Station' from the epic album Souvlaki), and my favourite Mojave 3 track, 'Mercy', though the full electric version has more power. Shoegaze is now highly fashionable as an influence over some electronic bands, but they just don't have the shame that's so integral to the genre.

Man Ray (LaMontagne)

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Ray LaMontagne, of whom I'd only read in Word magazine. (Thanks, by the way, for your comments). Why do all American musicians have beards at the moment, except Kelly Deal? Talking of Kelly Deal, she really is the perfect woman: she's designed her own font and it's free! Her band The Breeders have a site called Breeder's Digest, which is rather brilliant.

I went because Christine and James had managed to book an extra ticket in a different area of the venue - so I ended up on my own, in the balcony, directly in front of the singer - brilliant. Less brilliant was sitting next to a yummy mummy and her daughters Portia and India (I'm guessing). Clearly Mr. LaMontagne and his support act, Radio 2-friendly Josh Ritter, are approved objects of middle-class desire. After they sneered at the scruffy fat singleton in a Green Lantern t-shirt, I sipped beer and read my Shakespeare commentary during the intervals. That showed them.

So anyway, the music. It was odd. I'd heard of LaMontagne and Ritter, and assumed that they were middlingly well-known sensitive folk-country artistes, and so they are. I didn't realise that Mr. Lamontagne is the object of freakish devotion - a mostly full hall (probably 2500) at £25 a go in Wolverhampton is truly astonishing. They whistled, stamped and cheered like Mormons at Joseph Smith's resurrection (don't write in - I've no idea if Mr Smith is expected to rise again, though I imagine the Church would like to know the whereabouts of the golden tablets detailing the Semitic origins of America's ancient peoples he 'received from the prophet/angel/time-traveller Moroni' and then 'misplaced' or 'returned to the angel' before anyone else got a look. Actually, Some Chilean Woman could enlighten us). But I digress. LaMontagne's music was good. It was country-folk-blues and the later the set got, the more impassioned he became. The band was beautifully lit in pools of liquid, varying light, and they stood on rugs, which added to the 1970s atmosphere.

Actually, they reminded me of the post-Slowdive band Mojave 3 but more country, which is high praise from me (listen to some here)!

Then home for the glorious, ambiguous and complex ending to The Wire… Here's LaMontagne on somebody's crappy mobile phone from a couple of years ago, in Wolverhampton. There's nothing up yet from last night's gig.

Morning. Ish.

Hello readers. How are you all? I sort of took the morning off. Instead of swimming and coming into the office, I went to Birmingham to look at furniture. I'd received a leaflet which promised things like 'Eames Chair, was £1500, now 20p'. It turned out to be obscenely expensive articles reduced to merely extortionate and I bought nothing. I was tempted by the massive bookshelves (damaged) reduced from £12500 to £10,500, mostly because they featured a ladder on runners. I'd only have required three…

Then I went to Habitat in Brum, which is now a rather forlorn 'outlet'. Tempted by an elegant sun lounger which would serve very well as a chaise-longue, and by the extremely cheap, solid CD storage, but couldn't be bothered. I'll just see what the parents have in the attic when I move in a few weeks.

Exhausted, I met Bec from my PGCE to compare teaching workload and colleagues. She's over from Walsall for graduation, and was resplendent in a suit and Staffordshire Uni gown (staff wear the gear from the institution at which they gained their highest qualification). I was less resplendent in my 2004 English Youth Championships fencing t-shirt, 501s and an ancient but very cool pair of superannuated fencing trainers. People think I'm the photocopier engineer.

Who loves ya, Birmingham?

Merciless posted a link to this legendary film in the comments section, and I feel you should all see Telly Savalas's guide to Birmingham, from sometime in the 1970s.

We academics don't change much

I'm reading Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives at the moment - it's very good. In it, I found this description of an 18th-century academic, which fits almost exactly the character and appearance of one of my colleagues. English lit students and staff are invited to speculate.

Of Farmer, it was said that he enjoyed three things above all else–old port, old clothes and old books–and that there were three things he could not be persuaded to do: rise in the morning, go to bed at night, and settle an account [this last doesn't apply, as my colleague always buys his round]. To such externals as his personal appearance he was happily indifferent… [he met the Archbishop of Canterbury] "dressed in stockings of unbleached thread, brown breeches, and a wig not worth a shilling"… his most delighted hours were spent over good wine, and amiable conversation in the common room…

To me, he sounds like the perfect academic, and great company.

Your critical opinions are valued

I'm going to a gig by Ray LaMontagne tonight, as Christine and her husband James have a spare ticket. Any opinions? I've heard he's good, but never heard anything by him. I'll probably spend the afternoon checking out last.fm and Youtube stuff by him.

Take a strong draught of Meades

I'm agitating to get Jonathan Meades an honorary doctorate next year. What do you think? He's the sharp-suited, sunglassed, freakish architecture fan, food writer, offbeat Victorianist and cultural historian who alone justifies the licence fee. He even wrote presented a documentary about Birmingham called Heart By-Pass.

Watch some of his work at the Meades Shrine. His books include Filthy English, English Extremists, and Incest and Morris Dancing. Documentaries include: Jerry Building: Unholy Relics of the Third Reich, Queen Victoria died in 1901 but is alive and well today, Surrealism and Magnetic North, in which he explored the cultures of Northern Europe, to stunning effect.

He's also a leading secularist and humanist.

Here's a taste of Heart By-Pass:

Not waving but drowning

Good Morning Campers, Hi-de-hi! That's what I felt like last week as I traipsed round an enclosed Welsh campus making sure everyone was happy - wearing livid yellow.

I went swimming today, for the first time in two weeks. It was neither pleasant nor reassuring - fully five minutes slower on my 1500 metres than previously. Shameful. Bits of me finished each lap several metres behind…

What a relief Walden's a fictional university, eh readers?

I love Doonesbury. Click on the image for a larger version.

Final few photos from Cardiff (neat alliteration, huh?)

As always, click on the images for a larger version. The whole set is here.

Ismay Cowen (British Fencing director) seems at a loss…

Georgia Manikum-Hannay moves fast!

A Scots sabreur tastes defeat.

Another sabreur gives a referee the death stare

More fencing shots

I'm quite pleased with this one - both feet off the ground.

Victory and defeat in one shot.

Curtis can't believe what the referee just said!

Watching the box!

To the point

The Welsh Assembly building - astonishing.

A Welsh epeeist prepares for a fight:

Ben Hughes can't believe what's just happened.

Nor can Steve Cowen (England manager) and Matt Haynes (England coach)

Darren Campbell, Olympic medallist, pays his respects to James Davis!

Picture this

At last, I've posted my photos of the UK School Games - some of Cardiff Bay prior to the opening ceremony, which I missed because I took some drenched fencers home early, and many of the fencing. Some are quite good, but I'm not quite used to fast sports photos. Others will only be of interest to the individuals concerned, of course. These were taken as the weather closed in. Click on them for larger images

Coincidence or conspiracy

I hate to introduce the word cock-up in this context, but over at Sue's Blog, her post linking to the notoriously homophobic Daily Mail brought up the verification word 'bumsomy', which is surely a street version of 'bum sodomy' (Americans: bum is a childish word for posterior in UK vernacular).

This has amused me more than it should.

Mischief managed

Well, that's graduation done. Decent speech from the Students' Union vice-president, worthy ones from the worthies. The honorary degree went to Sathnam Sanghera, who despite his day job with the Murdoch press, wrote an excellent memoir of growing up in Sikh Wolverhampton, Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, and gave a great little acceptance speech. Other highlights were a card from Christine, and seeing the engraved Pen Anna-Maria gave to William. He's a Baudrillard expert and she's spent the summer at Disneyland, so the pen quoted JB: 'Disneyland is paradise…' - the other half of the quote speaks of 'toxic excrement'.

I felt a little less like Laura Ashley curtains circa 1986 this evening, after a student pointed out that our robes are in Gryffindor colours. Now to the pub to accept libations from survivors (or graduates, as they're technically called).

PS. I almost forgot. According to the platform speeches, Wolverhampton is the greatest university in the world, with a bright future. And not a place which is sacking 250 employees (management exempt), cutting degrees and modules, reducing student workload, increasing surviving staff's workload and increasing class sizes at all! How wrong I've been.

Valete, graduands

That's one graduation ceremony down. It's always a mixture of sweat, pride, laughter and astonishment - it's hot, there's a real thrill in seeing some of the students getting through and/or doing well, there are always amusing interjections from the crowd, and there's always the chance to put a face to the names of students whose attendance was not always, shall we say, 100%. Meeting the parents is always fun too. Nobody's asked for a refund on their fees yet, though when I got my PhD, some of the media/cultural studies students asked if I had any qualification in their field at all. The answer, of course, is no. However, they passed, so can't complain! The speeches are always very dull, especially from those who use the same one year on year. Frank Skinner's getting an honorary PhD though!

Almost time for a pre-match drink before the second go.

Back to the books

In my absence, the flow of lovely books did not stop. Today's haul included Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, a classic detailing the period in which religion and politics were nigh on indistinguishable, and in which political radicalism and heresy often went together. Thanks to Norbert for the recommendation! I've also dived into European literature - which we, and certainly I, shamefully neglect. I've bought Cees Nooteboom's postmodern The Following Story and volume 1 of Peter Weiss's The Aesthetics of Resistance: a novel. One day, I promise myself, I'll be able to read it in the original. I can read French and with some effort, Welsh, but I'm continually ashamed of my limited abilities in languages.

What else? A collection of Margaret Atwood's essays called Curious Pursuits, and David Horspool's The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Troublemaking from the Normans to the Nineties. It looks like a slightly more conservative companion to Vallance's A Radical History of Britain. I love this stuff because despite the many evils perpetrated by English and then British imperialism, the British are also recalcitrant bunch who don't want to be pushed around. You decapitated a king before the French and staged numerous other revolts from the Peasants to the Poll Tax. Revive that tradition!

I also received a replacement Danish Literature Tree and Renaissance Tree posters - very beautiful.