The Plashing Vole

Monday, 26 October 2020

Some midnight content

Here I am at midnight trying to sort out tomorrow's two face-to-face seminars. Not because I'm slack and always do my homework the night before, but because it took most of last week to do last week's teaching and record/edit/post the lectures for this week's class (favourite moment: when the automatic subtitles got closer than usual and claimed that Angela Carter wrote The Sardine Woman - if only she had).

Tomorrow sees me exploring anthropomorphism in the Children's Lit class, and popular engagements with politics in the other one, using the Doctor Who episode 'Oxygen' (serviceable but not the best) as the primary material. I published a journal article comparing old Who with Star Trek using a Foucauldian angle once. I thought it was pretty good but the REF reviewer judged it insufficiently critical of Foucault to be worthwhile. Which wasn't the point, but never mind.

Despite the best efforts of the university and even me, the students are disappearing both from the face-to-face classes and the online ones, while the pre-recorded lectures are going unwatched by most. Some of it is for very good specific reasons, other people are struggling with the pandemic, and the small minority who wouldn't have put in any effort under normal circumstances have seen no reason to change their ways now. Last week saw the return of the 'value for money' objection to what we're doing…only slightly undercut – not that he saw it that way – by the admission that the student hadn't bothered reading any of the primary texts assigned for any modules. I try to see the best in everyone especially in trying times, but the paying-customer mentality tests me sorely. Especially as the live contact time here is exactly the same as it was before The 'Rona. I'm so old and boring that I use the analogy of the gym membership: you don't get fit simply by joining the gym and watching other people exercise (the gym on the retail park in town had panoramic windows. Quite often you'd see McDonald's customers munching burgers while staring in at the serried ranks of people on exercise bikes staring out at them. I like to think both sets of people got something out of the encounter).

There has been a bright spot in the last week. Following the Tories' tone-deaf defence of their decision to subsidise arms manufacturers and the like while letting children go hungry, some visited the office of my sinister and dishonest MP to engage in a spot of public shaming (the old ceffyl pren as it's known in Wales). Sadly he won't see it because while he insists that everyone should be back at work, he exempts himself.

Anyway, here are a couple of photos from what was my last visit to the ephemera museum The Land of Lost Content back in 2015. I like them because they're disturbing on a number of levels.

Not long afterwards I spent a wintery afternoon in Llangollen, when travel to Wales was legal.

Thursday, 15 October 2020

Reasons to be Cheerful?

We're all – I presume – experiencing a weird new emotion that's equal parts terror and boredom, brought on by the formless, endless future of a pandemic without end so I won't go on about it. I'm still in the classroom as well as teaching by video and again, have mixed feelings about it: I don't think it's safe but it is what I'm good at. When it comes to on-screen teaching I feel like Norma Desmond: 'it's the pictures that got small'. To add insult to the various injuries, I also seem to have suffered what footballers refer to as a 'groin strain': I can still ride a bike but walking is a bit painful. I'm not just Norma Desmond: I'm the Fisher King. I just hope my minions don't decide to slit my throat and bury me in a bog to restore fertility to the stricken land like the old days (or as we put it these days: hope they don't murder me to improve applications and NSS scores)

There are bright spots though. It's so good to see and talk to students again even though I'm fully aware that we're only there so management can get to the top of the Great HE Willy-Waving League Table. it's also wonderful to have a few Erasmus students here despite everything. Not sure whether they're here in the spirit of going to the zoo or if they're on an anthropology field trip ('Roll Up And See The Cargo Cult Next Door Before It's Too Late (Oh, And The Cargo Is Stuck At Customs'). My friend and colleague Keith has just appeared on the Jodie Whittaker episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (following in the footsteps of our colleague Jenny who was in the Jack Whitehall episode). Donald Trump's definitely going to lose (but will he notice?). The autumn leaves are a delight. Sophie Mackintosh's new novel The Ticket is just as good as her first one, The Water Cure: in both novels she makes what might otherwise be quite familiar dystopian plots much more emotionally and psychologically immediate by removing all but the most basic realist devices to evoke the sense of a weightless nightmare rather than an expository novel. Weirdly, the world-building is more convincing than one that spends its time trying to prove that everything could happen: instead the narrative assumes its own basis in reality and the reader assents, leaving all concerned to get one with the real core: female psychology and culture in a patriarchal world. I actually haven't been reading much outside the texts I'm teaching at the moment (The Handmaid's Tale, the SCUM Manifesto, Robinson Crusoe, The Fire Next Time, Oroonoko, The Passion of New Eve, The Emperor's Babe and a couple of others). I am halfway through Mrs George De Horne Vaizey's More About Pixie, one in a series of Improving Novels for girls from the 1920s - I got interested in stories featuring children from the wilder fringes of the Empire and still intend to write something about them. The most famous is Anne of Green Gables fame: red hair, bad temper, barely civilised: she's definitely Irish. Then there are Nancy and Princess Gwyn in Olive Dougan's forgotten novels. Pixie is perfect though, from the name to the continuous horror and fascination with her wildness. Who could resist passages like this?

'Sylvia mentally repeated the phrase as it sounded to her ears. "Oi'm like that meself!" and came to an instant conclusion. "Irish! She's Irish. I'm glad of that. I like Irish people"'

Faith and why wouldn't she? Anyway, next up is cult 1920s classic Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, which looks fascinating.

I've also been listening to a lot of new music, after barely listening to any during the first lock-down. Weirdly, reading the obituary for cryptic crossword setter Chifonie (whose puzzles I liked a lot) lead me to buy an album of hurdy-gurdy music.

I confess I'd love to play one even though I don't have buboes or wish to join a crusade to liberate Jerusalem. I just like drones and sympathetic strings - the Hardanger fiddle and the nyckelharpa also appeal. Oh god. I've become Professor Welch, without the professorship. Late Junction also got me to buy Meara O'Reilly's postminimalist Hocket for Two Voices and Anna Hytta's Strimur:

Lanterns on the Lake getting a Mercury Prize nomination reminded me of how brilliant they are: I loved Beings and bought the rest the other day, along with the new Fleet Foxes album and Sarah Davachi's Cantus, Descant, Bill Callahan's Gold Record, Hannah Georgas's All That Emotion and Bjork's Homogenic (only about a decade behind the rest of the world).

I admit that I only stumbled across Lanterns on the Lake because I couldn't remember the name of the wonderful Stars of the Lid. No, me neither.

So anyway, there's always a crumb of comfort to be found.

Thursday, 8 October 2020

Yma o hyd…

Well, here we are at the end of a second week of term. We've been teaching in person and by video, and my colleagues and I are exhausted: it's a lot of extra work turning loosely scripted lectures designed to be dialogues into lengthy monologues and recording them in time for the students to watch them before in-person and online seminars and fora. The light relief has been the subtitling: any complex or foreign words, and any delivery in a less than Californian accent is instantly garbled into a beautiful form of poetry. Not great for students who need subtitles, admittedly, but editing the nonsense generated by inadequate software would triple the time spent on any task. The various apps employed have all crashed in various and baroque ways, but we're muddling through. I am looking forward to the end of lockdown though, when academics from across the university can gather round a pyre made of Ed-Tech evangelists and party like it's Oxford, 1555.

We're pretty much sitting round speculating how much longer in-person classes will continue. I'm enjoying them, despite the weirdness. Both our new first-years are sparky, engaged and interesting, and management assures us that our student body is sufficiently different from students at all the institutions that are suffering outbreaks that we can relax and carry on. In fact, the students' mental health depends on it! How convenient – especially for an institution which sacked most of the mental health staff – that the perfect outcome is the one that management, in their spacious individual offices, most wanted. What a coincidence. I'm also enjoying the way we're being thanked for our work, warned of the dangers of burnout, and simultaneously told that something called 'carousel assessment' is coming. That's right, kids: ALL MARKING, ALL OF THE TIME. Again, something that sounds great if you're drawing a massive salary not to teach. However, while I'm convinced that the paramilitary wing of HE executives are determined not to let a good crisis go to waste, I have some sympathy for the VCs and their acolytes: they've been left to twist in the wind by a government that is itching to shut down a few of the more unfashionable institutions (like mine) and spoiling for a fight with the non-existent Forces of Wokeness that they imagine have turned Britain into such a nation of snowflakes that it has (checks notes) elected Conservative governments for a full decade and opted to leave the European Union. No doubt some macho VC's are beating their chests because their campus is still open, but others are holding out because there's no money left. Why there's no money left is another question: a hopeless addiction to ripping off the children gilded élites from various shady countries isn't a particularly ethical or sustainable business model enormous bonus-fuelled exec salaries, insane bond issues and shiny Ozymandiac buildings are part of the reason but it's also true that the £9250 fee hasn't kept pace with inflation and education does cost money. Not every HEI has a small county or decent little Rembrandt to take down to Cash Converters when things get tight.

Anyway, it's nice to meet some students and my new colleagues, even if it's from 2 metres (I assume that anti-metric types think coronaviruses are hoaxes anyway), behind a mask. I do miss sitting around chatting: a surprising amount of my research and teaching ideas come from idle conversations. I miss conversations per se: a video meeting or class is a series of monologues punctuated by awkward clashes as we all miss the non-verbal cues that tell us so much. When I'm not on-campus my conversations tend to be with the bin, or the laundry basket until they get bored and wander off. I used to shout at Radio 4 a lot too until I gave up the whole channel as a bad job. Higher life forms (flies, mice) have learned to avoid the place, especially if they spot the Twitter app open: they know there's another explosion of impotent fury coming. Perhaps it's better just not to know anything: I've friends who are living proof that ignorance is bliss. Or one could just assume the worst and be very occasionally pleasantly surprised: as a long-term Stoke City fan, I can recommend this option.

Enough of this. Have some photos, this time from the 2015 Stoke Ceramics Biennial in the abandoned Spode works and Minton Library. Whenever anyone tells me I have a big head I agree and show them the pictures.

Tuesday, 29 September 2020

The view from the lectern

So here we are, a couple of days into the new academic year. I'm at one of the institutions that is doggedly insisting on face-to-face teaching: students can opt in to slimmed-down classroom sessions on a slimmed-down curriculum, with others tuning in online, and everyone getting pre-recroded lectures and a live online class later in the week. I've done three face-to-face sessions so far, and a lot of induction talks. The atmosphere is very weird. Some students don't want to be in class at all; others are desperate to be back. Some have quiet home spaces and reliable tech; some have one of these or neither. We have a last cohort of Erasmus students, but they're confined to their rooms for another week – I hope they think it was worth it. I'm not sure exactly why we're here. Other universities have cancelled all face-to-face classes as a precautionary move; others have cancelled classes after a coronavirus outbreak, and my national union has called for all teaching to move online. My branch has mixed views, as do I. I'm not convinced that management (largely ensconced in large private offices sealed off from large groups of people) genuinely thinks that the staff and students are safe, and I suspect that the motives are financial and also competitive – we need the cash and I have a sneaking suspicion that 'we're still open' is seen as a victory. However, most of our students don't live in halls of residence as they're almost all from within 35km and the stereotypical student night-life doesn't really happen here. There isn't a huge influx of people from all over the country forming a hotspot for the exchange of fluids/disease - our students are the local community and vice versa, so I suspect our infection rates will be no different from the surrounding area rather than fuelling outbreaks.

We're using large classrooms but allowing only a few students in at any one time. They're widely spaced behind single desks - there's no seminar format, only serried ranks facing a lecturer who is forbidden to move around. Whether it stops us getting infected remains to be seen, but it's certainly retarding any progressive pedagogical practise. It's interesting seeing the way the students tailor the online experience too. Virtually none want to turn on their cameras, which is fine by me, though I will award extra credit for cats (demerits for any dogs polluting my stream). I wish I didn't have to appear on camera either: there's nothing more distracting than seeing a student being physically sick). Some are happy to talk, most aren't: use of the chat function is far more common. The lack of facial expressions and other cues makes it very difficult to have a conversation or general discussion.

The pleasures are those of every new academic year: fresh faces and new ideas. The pains are the obvious psychological and emotional wounds caused by months of deprivation - of fresh air, of company, of debate and stimulus. Oh, and the awful, awful IT experience: I haven't yet managed to get Panopto (the lecture streaming/recording system named by ironic scumbags) to live-stream anything or record a whole live lecture. Today it broadcast slides for a lecture I gave the previous day, then cut off anyway after 20 minutes. I have a badge which reads 'Ed-Tech Will Not Save You' (courtesy of @DrDonnaLanclos).

It's tempting to get a new one: 'Not Only Will Ed-Tech Not Save You, It Will Push You In'. The HEI ecosphere is packed with salesmen flogging shiny applications that promise managers an end to the misery of employing actual human beings, owning buildings and books and equipment, or doing things that can't be made, done and assessed algorithmically. The pandemic has been like a lottery win for these people, as desperate decision-makers shell out the readies for anything that promises a zipless education without any human contact. They largely don't work for anything beyond the monologue that I thought we'd largely abandoned, at least in the humanities. When they do work, they promote a linear and uncritical model of pedagogy that literally isn't worth having. The Open University knows how to do it properly - everyone else wants to do it quickly and cheaply. Having gutted my curriculum to make space for the hours-hungry new model, I tried to get management to admit that the students would have a worse education than under normal conditions: they wouldn't do it, which I thought was shameful.

Not sure much of this rambling makes much sense, but then again, I'm not hearing much sense from many quarters, including the government. I've lost track of what our extra local restrictions mean, and long stopped understanding why I can meet a few friends in the pub but the same friends couldn't sit in my garden, for instance. Personally, the lockdown has been mixed. I've gone from being in the office for ten hours a day every day of the week to popping in for a couple of hours to teach. I miss my friends/colleagues (largely the same group) and of course seeing friends and family elsewhere, but I've lost a ton of weight through getting out on the bike every day and not living on colleagues' baked goods, but I miss chatting with students and colleagues over tea. I miss the random conversations, the thousands of books I have at work, unexpected breaks and solidarity. I've had to install home internet, but I also installed a new kitchen. I've given up on Radio 4 for ever, while Radio 3 has become my happy place despite the vandalism of Late Junction's abolition. I've been for badger-spotting walks, but I miss gigs and concerts. The radical narrowing of my horizons has led to a reduction in opinions. Or rather I still have a lot of opinions but on few subjects: I bore myself, which is why I've largely replaced blogging with photos.

Ah well, this too shall pass.

Friday, 25 September 2020

Intermittent Photos No. 8: Looking down on you all.

I found myself alone in London one day, heading to a book launch promising a keynote lecture by Stephen Greenblatt, the Renaissance expert. It was quite disappointing so I won't dwell on it, but it did give me the chance to go up the Shard to do some photography. Not being a London resident, I don't mind it (other than morally): if I lived within sight of it, I'd be looking out Guy Fawkes's old recipe books. But on the basis that the only place your eyes can't be soiled by ugliness is from within said monstrosity, I bought a day-and-night ticket and paid two visits, sandwiched by the nibbles-and-anecdotes act from the august professor (surrounded, I'm sorry to say, by people who clearly thought they were the embodiment of a new Renaissance and whom either Cromwell would happily have flayed alive).

The Shard itself is clearly a monument to and a mausoleum of speculative capitalism: most of the floors were empty and the residential spaces are simply glass-and-titanium piggy banks for various shady types, but the experience was still fun. I enjoyed the Americans in the lift explaining that £35 was a lot of money for a building and a view which were both disappointing compared with the big tower in Jacksonville. Judge for yourself. I enjoyed the people on the viewing platform, discussing mortgages and yoga classes while staring idly out at one of the world's most historic and cosmopolitan cities. I appreciated the wit of an architect who designed a photography deck encased in blurry, highly-reflective glass, and I enjoyed the way the price of a cup of tea rose exponentially the higher you got up this glorious folly.

Is it better than Jacksonville? Well, given that the view encompasses every postcard of London you can buy, plus the opening credits of Eastenders and Yes Minister, I'd have to say yes, despite never having had the pleasure of Jacksonville or indeed Florida (I've been to Fayetteville, AR and Austin, TX: that's quite enough). By day, the scale of the city and its geography are revealed. By night, the city as a set of networks becomes clear. However, I'm always a bit dubious about these superior-perspective panoramas: they encourage a sense of domination, rendering the messy life of ordinary humanity invisible. It's no coincidence that mountaineering, hobby flying, aerial photography and aerial bombing were largely pioneered by the same small clique of extremely rightwing men in the early decades of the 20th century.

Thursday, 10 September 2020

Intermittent photos 8: Change and Decay

These are from a visit to Calke Abbey in Derbyshire. It's very much a place that evokes differing reactions. The National Trust took it over from the last scion of the dynasty that built it, an old man who'd retreated to a room or two in this massive mansion as the impossibility of upkeep overwhelmed him. Rather than restore the place fully, the trust stabilised the building and its contents at the point they took possession. To people wanting to glory in the possessions and hegemony of the ruling classes, it's a deeply unsettling place: to those for whom 'mutatis mutandem' holds no fears it's an object lesson in decay…or perhaps progress: the best the National Trust could do for the family was to note that one of them once declined to attend a public hanging. While they owned vast estates, they made absolutely no contribution to public life, preferring (as the endless rooms of taxidermy attest) to shoot anything that moved across several continents. It's enough to make one turn to Matthew Arnold whose habitual term for the toffs was 'Barbarians'.