Rollin' rollin' rollin'....

I know the wind has been blowing, tumbleweed style, through my deserted blog. It's taken a while to settle in, but I'm enjoying my slightly odd new job at last, I am heartily relieved to admit. I also have a new chunk of teaching elsewhere which seems potentially very interesting, so it looks like I'm crossing into new frontiers this year. A good thing too, as I'm fed up with being fed up about stuff.

There are better videos of tumbleweeds (I know because I have spent a disturbing amount of time watching them, in true procrastinator style) but this one has the advantage of being set to Frankie Laine's perky 'Rawhide'- a genius combination.

Muck

Well, I've been tempted back to the blog by a news item about filth. It's something in the Wellcome Trust e-newsletter about artist Serena Korda's forthcoming work that will be part of a spring 2011 exhibition called ‘Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life’. She is asking the public to donate dust, collected from their houses, workplaces or other locations. She will use it to make an artwork called 'Laid to Rest' which will consist of 500 commemorative bricks made from dust given to the artist by the public. Anyone can contribute and each brick will carry an inscription with details about the dust from which it is made. The project will culminate in the burial of the bricks, returning them to the earth.  Lots of events as part of their 'Dirt' season are planned too - sounds fascinating!!

The press release says "Korda's work is inspired by the commercialisation of waste in Victorian London, particularly the vast dust heaps which dominated the skylines at the top of Gray's Inn Road. Immortalised by Charles Dickens in 'Our Mutual Friend', the dust heaps supported a wide range of industries, including the making of bricks. Mud from the brick fields of Somers Town was mixed with the ash, cinders and rubbish from the dust heaps, and transformed the discarded, detritus and dirt of London into the material from which the expanding city was built."

There's loads of balls of fluff and assorted debris on the stairs at college. They're so big they look like mini tumbleweeds. I was only marvelling the other day at how infrequently the cleaners sweep those stairs - probably not more than once a year - so it becomes sort of self-cleaning, I suppose... we clear the stairs by using them and kicking the muck away with our feet. Ah well, saves money on the Estates budget and cleaning is so boring anyway, surely even for people who do it professionally? I'm not sure how dignified it would be for students to see their tutor grovelling about on the stairs scrabbling for dirt, but I may give it a go. It's a tower block so a LOT of stairs. And potentially a LOT of dirt.

Her blog doesn't tell you what to do with your debris, but perhaps if one bags it up in readiness then more details will appear soon... Something thought-provoking to look foward to next year.

Image: London: The great dust-heap. Credit: E. H. Dixon, 1837. Wellcome Images.

The Procrastinator Returns

Haven't fancied writing anything for ages as all the stuff that's been preoccupying me wasn't really appropriate, given my rather half-hearted occasional attempts at anonymity and trying to be sensible about what I stick on the internet.

I have been offered a different job (part time) as my other one disappeared. It should be more interesting than the old one and will pay the bills (just about), plus it gives me time to carry on teaching in the same institution and to decide what to do with my PhD material. I wish my colleagues weren't going to be leaving though. I like working with people who make me laugh and I will miss their take on the peculiarities of daily life. Perhaps some of the new lot will have the same sense of humour.... I do hope so.

I've got to finish writing a conference paper today, which is presumably why I'm on here, obviously old habits die hard and all that. It's rather out of my academic comfort zone (different discipline) and I keep worrying that it will be regarded as flaky crap, though that's more likely if I don't get on with the flipping thing right now, I guess. But at least my trousers aren't likely to fall down while I'm presenting the paper, as happened to the Lord Mayor of Leicester when he stood up to do a talk for a bunch of schoolkids. Poor things, though it presumably made the occasion more memorable for them. He was a bit fat (it appears) and wasn't wearing a belt. Dearie me, trousers round the ankles... how undignified. Mental note to myself to select a good sturdy belt for Tuesday's outfit, as well as finishing the damn paper before dinner. Maybe the one with the horse's head buckle.... hhmm, it's amazing what you can waste time on when there's stuff to do....strange pink fingers in the pic though!

Marge Monroe

I suppose I'm doing the proud auntie thing here, but it was really nice to hear that my niece's drawing of Marge Monroe won her an (apparently nasty) plastic spider pig object and is star letter of the week in The Simpsons comic. That, and her getting a prize from her MP for winning a drawing competition recently, are the best things to happen this week. Thank goodness for the odd nice bit of news amongst all this redundancy crap. Life goes on...

to cheer myself up...

This is completely self indulgent on my part, posting a video to cheer myself up a bit rather than writing anything vaguely interesting, but this is such an aimless blog anyway that it's ok. This version of House of the Rising Sun is one of my favourite Animals ones on YouTube because I like it when Eric goes a bit out of tune at 0:43 and his and Chas Chandler's expressions. I also like the way he sings the phrase about spending your lives in sin and misery and the accompanying facial expression. He's got a slightly fuck off attitude about him, which I find rather attractive. I prefer this video to the colour in-tune studio version where they're wearing the same suits wandering around a tiny set, obviously miming, under what look like christmas baubles dangling sparsely around their heads.

A few minutes of cheering up, courtesy of YouTube, is essential right now because everything has kicked off at work over the past week in a rather stressful and unpleasant way. My department is now in the middle of a drastic restructuring that leaves our jobs 'at risk' - ie they won't exist any more in their present form. It's an early stage in a much bigger cross-university thing, so we're spending our lives in uncertainty, waiting to receive letters about our jobs and to see what happens next. Maybe the email will arrive tomorrow at the end of the day, when it's too late for us to respond in person with any questions, with a hardcopy in the post on Saturday. It's quite difficult to muster much enthusiasm to get on with day to day stuff right now, alongside going to meetings with management and the union, plus talking to colleagues in the same situation (far better information than through the official channels). It's a relief to be able to go to the pub to talk about it after work, as it could be so much worse if we were really isolated in our jobs. It was interesting to see who avoided us at a private view the other night, creeping away from us around the exhibits and not making eye contact - it wasn't paranoia on our part as we all noticed it, but presumably just a consequence of those who knew what was going to happen to us the next day not wanting to face any awkward questions from us.

Ah well, this is just the beginning unfortunately. I think it's probably realistic to blame the bankers for the economic mess and Mandleson's massive cuts in HE funding. One wonders what the state of the sector will be in a year's time after this meltdown predicted by academics. It's not the best time in the world to be trying to build an academic career after finishing a PhD.

Winding down

Things are winding down at college now. The students finished their term a week ago and there aren't going to be many staff around in the next few days. All my term's essays were marked and back last week, with internal moderation on Friday.... I can't believe how many essays from other tutors' courses I read for that. I'd never heard of Rudolph Hitler before, nor considered his place in history alongside Confucius as one of the world's greatest and most inspiring teachers. Working in higher education certainly is educational at times. The marking took all day in the end and left me completely drained but happy over the weekend. It's the first Christmas for years that I haven't had the PhD lurking in the background, making me feel guilty and anxious even when I pretended I was having a break. That's one big reason I'm looking forward to next year now, it will be different in a thesis-free way, even if nothing else happens.

Oh yes, another thing... I started fiddling with the 'follow blogs' thing in blogger but became slightly horrified when the google reader filled up really fast with people's posts and it felt overwhelming for some reason, as if I had to read everything because it was there. So as I'm in winding down mode, I changed my mind about the feed reader and have gone back to good old-fashioned links. I'd rather just pop over via a link when I fancy seeing how people are getting on with their various blogs, then it feels more like a pleasure than a duty, even if I do lurk rather than comment a lot of the time these days. Maybe I'll get my 'commenting mojo' back soon when I've had a good rest (and apologies for the Cheryl Cole/X Factor reference, it's obviously etched on my brain after all those weeks...). Hhmm, I clearly do need a rest...

The changing face of beggars

I was a bit shocked to be asked for spare change by a little old lady when I came out of the supermarket today. She looked like someone's grandmother, perfectly ordinary if slightly pale, with a curly grey granny perm, casual anorak, navy slacks and trainers, plus a standard NHS walking stick. You get used to different types of beggars in central London, the junkies, the Eastern European children with their mums not far behind and the groups of alcoholic street drinkers, but she didn't fit those stereotypes. It's not a particularly seedy area round here anyway and we don't get loads of beggars. I was taken aback by a local streetdrinker who bellowed 'got a spare tenner luv?' at me a while ago. That's inflation, I suppose. I quite admired her cheek for asking, but I wasn't shocked. The granny-beggar today was memorable as she seemed so normal. Maybe it was some scam, or maybe she was after her next fix, who knows, but I gave her a quid and hoped that's not going to be the way elderly people are having to supplement their pensions nowadays.