Summer Time Blues

A sultry inactivity has descended over the Pimpernel household, that seems to drain its occupants of any desire to do anything! *sigh*

I have bee trying to motivate myself - my chapter should have been edited and in about a fortnight ago and I haven't even looked at it without flinging it aside in a kind of wanton 'I have a fit of the Victorian vapours' sort of a way!

Summers are for indolence, languidity, somnolent reveries, sauntering, picnics, after sun (fat chance in Scotland I hasten to add) and basically recharging the very depleted batteries that have been exhausted over the winter. Work - what is this thing! It feels like Lady Macbeth's dagger -

"What is this work I see before me" .... and like Lady Macbeth I am in total denial about the immediacy of the situation, the gravity of not completing my draft and the panic which is just round the corner should I continue to delay!

A good thing is that when I come here and off load my moans and groans I generally go back and have a slightly more productive day! This is the space which allows me to rethink my strategies and possibly it has the effect of getting my brain into work mode once more.

I had a thoughtful email from a member of staff today who had stumbled across a new publication which is very pertinent to my studies, so that prompted an immediate flurry as I pressed the one click buy button on Amazon - no point waiting for the library to buy it! My Ph.D will be long finished! (oh that made me chuckle - everyone knows it will never be finished!)

I did wake with a few sentences in my head with which to try and launch the final segment of the Vorticism section - so I've jotted those down and now ... well now I feel exhausted darlings! ;)

Ah today I feel very much like the poem by ee cummings - 'my mind is ... (XXV)'

my mind is... (XXV) by E. E. Cummings

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

My lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings end up here most of the time!

It isn't helping that every time I start to think about things my mind wanders to what I might be going to blip that day!  Shocking! I have been possessed of the photographic urge! 

Having said all that I am in need of a cup of tea and some food - on and perhaps a recline on the deck with a good novel   the latest study in little magazines! 

Conferencing...

really takes it out of you!
First there is the stress if submitting and waiting for your paper to be accepted. Then comes the writing part - always difficult for a researcher! You read and read and read and then read a little more before deciding that perhaps your abstract which is now in print on the programme, was maybe a little ambitious.

The you write - it takes time, especially if you decide images would be good, and that a power point would look incredibly professional!

The you edit - this is always a painful process! Normally you have written far too much to fit into 20 minutes but of course, every word is essential if you are to give a good paper!!!

So you start the painful process of carving off all the delicious sounding words you have conjured up during the reading and writing process and nearly always you end p with what can only be described as a shell of a paper! BUT! it is twenty minutes long!

Then you have the usual paraphernalia of travelling round the country (why are these conferences always way, way down south???) Packing, organising childcare, making sure you have all your handouts, printed paper and power points, saved and replicated in a myriad of forms, just in case something should go wrong!

Then you arrive - orientate and find that your first desire, the night before you are due to present, is to get rip roaringly DRUNK! Of course - you don't! That would be just plain suicidal!

After a night tossing and turning in a strange bed, in a slightly teenage smelling room, you wake completely unrefreshed and stomp off with one hundred bags, pen drives, folders, water, and laptops under your arm to find your venue - usually about 3 miles from your accommodation - or is that just me?

Sweating like a pig and looking like a sun- fried squid you arrive to find that the person who was due to head off your panel has failed to show (no excuse - why do people do that?) and that the carefully prepared timed to the second paper now has to be adjusted to fill the space - so you quickly put back all the delicious sounding words you have so carefully excised the day before in order to survive your now generous 30 minute slot!


The Q&A goes well, you can answer the questions and colleagues mention post-panel that you 'sounded' very knowledgeable and like and expert - erm that would be because I AM KNOWLEDGEABLE AND I AM AN EXPERT, otherwise the last two years will have been for nothing!!!!

When they go well you fly out of your panel and spend the rest of the conference in a halcyonic daze of praise! When they go badly you feel like sloping off to the nearest bar and drowning yourself in a vat of cheap wine! Luckily for me this one went extremely well and I came away feeling refreshed and motivated and ready to write a bloody good PHD!

Whoop!

I HATE PRINTERS

So working from home seemed like a good idea at the time.

It always seems like a good idea until you realise that you are not actually 'working' at all! Merely wandering aimlessly from study to coffee machine and back again, fiddling on the t'interweb and opening and closing prospective works of unadulterated genius - if only you could actually WRITE THEM DOWN!

So I have been 'at home' for the best part of a month and the productivity has all but ceased. I am trying to kick it up a notch today by actually printing off my latest opus (the paper for CU) and making it work!

I have excuses coming out of my ears, the kids have been off, I have one permanently lurking because of 'study leave' - such an oxymoron at 16! A shift worker who wanders in and out of my house at all hours of the day and night requiring love and attention, inconvenient bank holidays which throw everything out of the window - then of course there is SUNSHINE! Such a rare occurrence in this god forsaken place that its appearance warrants taking time off - in case that is it for the rest of the summer!

Ah when you realise all the things that you need to wrangle with in order to get an hours peace it seems so futile - so you decide to start 'later' wander off for yet another cup of something hot and caffeinated!

Then, when you do feel the muse upon you, and actually write something, disaster strikes. Hit print - nothing happens. Well nothing is a slight exaggeration - three pages of sixteen appear, THEN nothing happens!

I LOATHE PRINTERS! I have yet to press the print button and for a document to appear trouble free.

the Printer Deities hate me!

Luckily the Computer Wizard was on hand to help me out and I do have a full document to edit this afternoon ... but why oh why can't these things just WORK when you need them too!

Woeful Wednesday

Despite the recent hot weather it is really rather chilly outside. This morning was very deceptive as it was threatening to be a glorious summer day, the kind of day you would expect in late May - but sadly it was not to be.

I am finding getting out of bed very hard to do and spent most of the morning reading in bed.  I have finished reading the selected articles from Freewoman, and I am now moving on to the complete articles from the Clarion. She wrote such a lot of stuff this woman it is mind boggling. I can barely manage this blog daily, three days on the trot is good going for me! my own diary and Blipping!

Though today's blip was significant in that if features my passion for books!

I watched an interesting programme last night about TATE Modern, which has had its 10th anniversary this year. Incredibly expansion programme is going on and I can't wait to pay a return visit to it next time I am in town!

Trying to get down to the nitty-gritty of the presentation now. The more I read the less I clearly know! ARGH!

Tate: British and international modern and contemporary art

Tate: British and international modern and contemporary art

Drowning in Aphorisms.

Today I am at least attempting to do some work towards this paper for Cambridge.

CAMBRIDGE COUNTDOWN: 24 DAYS!


Whenever I read West's work I feel as though I am plunged into an ocean, with each wave crested by something infinitely quotable. It is not a dissimilar feeling to that which I get when reading Oscar Wilde.
You feel you are swept away by their prose, which can be both soothing and pleasant whilst also scathing and sharply satirical.

Today reading some of her early journalism for The Freewoman (March 1912) I came across her review for a book by James Stephens called The Charwoman's Daughter.

She writes: 'This year I shall mark the date of the coming of spring from the day I read this book. And, indeed, it is like a wood being awakened by spring. As the buds leap out on the trees, so word by word unfolds its beauty: each lovely in itself and an essential note in the larger symphony of loveliness. It develops slowly with the sedate spendthrift elaboration of Nature herself, and every page brings the book to a ripe beauty that one can hardly bear to leave, just as one wants every April day to linger for ever. Nothing can express the delicate strength of his style: to read the quick, beating sentences is like holding a bird in one's hand.'

When she enjoyed literature, regardless of its worthiness, she said so. When she loathed it - she also said so; acerbically.

Reviewing anti-feminist writer harold Owen's essay "Woman Adrift", West humorously opened: "Mr Harold Owen is a natural slave, having no conception of liberty nor any use for it. So, as a Freewoman, I review his anti-feminist thesis, Woman Adrift, with chivalrous reluctance, feeling that a steam-engine ought not to crush a butterfly".

I am envious that she had such a capacity for phrasing. She certainly did slash through the swathes of hyperbole to turn the masculine discursive arsenal back on itself 9as I have phrased it in my own thesis!)

One thing I find frustrating is that you can still buy Stephen's books in relatively new editions - but can you do that for West? No, you can't! And yet she was a literary giant by comparison. However, there is one drawback; she was and always will be considered by many to be a second class artist simply because she was a woman! He even has 5 novels on Project Guttenberg despite writing far less work than West, who only has one novel listed The Judge (which in writing this Blog entry I have discovered has just been re-released! Yippee! )

I am struggling as usual to make progress. I had a message from a fellow Phudder* and it seems she is drowning in a sea of her own editing just now.

For a list of West's major novels and work look here. I am slowly but surely acquiring a library of her work!


*Phudder: my own moniker for a reluctant PhD student !

Monday... again

... and all weekend the sun has been shining - no blazing - down on us poor sun-deprived Scots and it will be so hard to get up in the morning and work! But I have to!
The conference is fast approaching and although I know I can write a good paper I just need to get on with it! The dry run at forum the other week went ok - though it does need a rewrite!

Ok so it has been a while - but I now BLIP and I am also a Mass Observation Contributor so my t'internet life is getting crowded!

The annual review went well, which considering I had been labouring under the impression that I failed the upgrade last year when in fact I had passed it, isn't surprising! The supervision was successful if a little intense. The writing is coming on! I am in a relatively good position!

One bug bear - I am still refused permission to teach. The reason given is that there is a question over my ability to mark! However I do think it is more a question of whether or not teaching will interrupt my flow and the dept get penalised for late submissions! I raised this as an issue at my review and got a satisfactory reply!

I seem to be a fortunate soul that when I do actually write I  produce decent stuff - yes it needs some editing and work but it is almost there. This can't be a bad thing!

I've dislocated myself for the summer as well. I spent a morning moving books (not quite the chain gang above but close!) I couldn't bear the tension in the office house; there were spies operating to see who was and wasn't using their desks! I felt like I had been cast as an extra in 1984! The director of postgraduate studies, a woman who has yet to even show her face at Forum, or even reply to my email regarding a PG journal, felt the locks on office doors should be removed to allow more flexibility of space! Given we house our books and personal belongings in there it was utterly inappropriate!  As a compromise two house committee members agreed to act as grasses, informants, desk nazis  monitors of the situation. Plus my office mate yacked! And yacked, and yacked! She is in love! I adore her but I wasn't getting any work done!  Also the petrol to commute was a sting in the financial tail, added to the guilt I felt when my homelife prevented me getting into the office, and the lack of productivity when i was stuck at home because all my books were ... in the office! Enough said I feel!

So I decamped to my own study - no more commute, no more dodging the evangelists, no more feeling like an intruder when I dare to venture out of my office to make a coffee! A weight has been lifted! Just peace, my iMac and my books!

Let's hope this is a recipe for success and not for disaster!