In the midst of everything, this is lovely: Turkey embarks on cultural mission to preserve its fairytales: Mammoth task to collate magical folklore of Anatolian plateau involves thousands of stories: '“In folk tales, the heroes are mostly outsiders who suffer the violence of powerful autocrats; for politicians, their defiant tone is dangerous.”'
** ( Read more... )

Today's excursion to the shops made me think that if I'd looked at my horoscope it would have had dire warnings concerning queues.
Because, really. REALLY. What was this thing that this thing was?
First I went to Superdrug and I needed to ask to see if they had something at the pharmacy counter, and there was already a queue, and only one person ( Read more... )

It's rather an Eeyore-ish time of year for me anyway, and this week I have been in rather lowered spirits, between sleeping not terribly well, and (relevant to that) having bad days for the neck and shoulder problems, and the horrible weather (as a result of which my daily walk is curtailed for reasons of mud), and partner having a cold, and a mild ( Read more... )

Anyway, Happy Diwali! Shine the light.
Today we had decided to take the ferry to the 'Three Cities' (cities being somewhat of an exaggeration). It had been raining before we went out, and was a little showery when we left, but seemed to be clearing...
And then when we reached the opposite shore there was a thunderstorm and a downpour positively ( Read more... )

Today we made the trip to the other major island in the Maltese archipelago, Gozo, allegedly the island upon which the nymph Calypso entrapped Ulysses for 10 years.
While the actual ferry trip is quite short, it departs from the opposite end of the island to Valletta, necessitating a somewhat lengthy bus journey to the terminal.
Since our time was ( Read more... )

For a week's holiday.
Technically it takes less time to fly to Malta than to take the train to Glasgow, but not when you factor in a minicab taking a very, very circuitous route to Victoria station, the Gatwick Express, mysterious delays getting off the ground, a passenger having to be debarked to ( Read more... )

You know me, I cannot let terrible ancient jokes die, and on the lines of 'Do you like Kipling? - I don't know, I've never Kippled' I can now answer the question re Stirling.
Which was indeed very pleasant, aided by weather rather better (though with some showery outbursts) than it was earlier in the week and fairly good luck with transport.
Okay, ( Read more... )

Since I felt I was finally ahead of myself on various academic commitments*, I suggested to partner that we might to what had been on our list to do for a while, and go to the Lee Krasner: Living Colour exhibition at the Barbican.
Worth seeing.
I was struck by the way she repurposed materials - the early works made with broken glass and the ( Read more... )

According to Patricia Fara in A Lab of One's Own, the C19th entomologist Eleanor Ormerod - government entomologist 1877 until her death in 1901 - had had her ambition 'stifled... by her autocratic father and her overbearing elder brothers.... [S]he embarked on her career only after the men in the family had died'.
Given that her field of study was ( Read more... )

In which I discovered that the Van Galder Bus apparently no longer drops off at the Bus/Shuttle Center at O'Hare (in spite of what it said on my ticket) and I was instead put off at Terminal 1. And after trying to make sense of the signage I decided to get a taxi rather than try and locate the shuttles and hang about on a less than clement day ( Read more... )