Kilmeny look'd up with a lovely grace ( Read more... )

I've been in Newcastle and Gateshead - mostly the latter - for the last two days, visting the Seven Stories archive - specifically the parts related to Lucy Boston (though I took time off to have dinner last night with my friend and children's literature colleague Lucy Pearson: I'm doing all the Lucys ( Read more... )

I write this post (or at least, begin it) in Aberystwyth, where I have come to examine a PhD. I will have to turn to PhD-examining matters shortly, so may have to finish this later, but wanted to share a couple of photos of Brockhampton Church near Hereford, which I visited yesterday en route to West Wales. It's all part of the Cotswold Project of ( Read more... )

Yesterday I took a couple of hours to do my first (simplest, quickest) Cotswold project field trip - which was, basically, to go to Castle Combe and take some photographs of it. The weather was sunny, it was February (i.e. before the tourist season), and the middle of a working day, so the place was more or less deserted, and I got some nice ( Read more... )

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.
Happy first day of research leave, everyone ( Read more... )

Tomorrow is my birthday, which will take me into the very midst of my mid-fifties. It occurs to me today that I have (within a month or two) also now been a university lecturer for exactly half my life ( Read more... )

I'm still marking, hence my recent silence - and indeed, I should be doing so even now. If only I could train the two hemispheres of my brain to work on different tasks at the same time! Productivity - doubled ( Read more... )

Last semester's marking has just touched down in my in-tray, so I'm likely to be preoccupied over the next two or three weeks, but to keep my spirits up I've begun making arrangements for my research trip to Japan in May (which is, for the first half, a tour of resorts, malls, etc., inspired by Britain, and particularly the Cotswolds). First up, I' ( Read more... )

You will no doubt remember that I've been interested for a while now in the image of Britain in Japanese anime, and increasingly that interest has focused on the Cotswolds. If all goes according to plan, next spring I will be back in Japan looking at all the Cotswoldy things there, such as Dreamton and Yufuin Floral Village. Before that I will be ( Read more... )

Did you call? Sorry if I wasn't in, I just popped out for a minute to go to Canada.

Specifically, I was in York University, Toronto, for the IRSCL - where I gave a paper comparing the UK and US dubs of [The Secret World of] Arrietty with Ghibli's Karigurashi no Arrietty, and indeed The BorrowersAnyway, that all went well, and the conference was ( Read more... )