I’ve just finished with the conference in Birmingham — my paper went well enough, but I’m glad to be done with conferences for now. There’s a lot to be desired in the format, in my opinion, with days packed from 8:30 starts with only an hour break for lunch and two shorter breaks, panels going right through to the 6-7:30 keynote sessions at the end of the day. I’ll admit to playing hooky a few times. As well, I didn’t bother arranging wireless access for the last few days as I knew there’d be little time to take advantage of it and, quite honestly, what we’ve done here in Birmingham hasn’t been especially worth blogging.
Thought you might enjoy these photos I took in London earlier in the week — windows of a wonderful costume shop ensconced in the theatre district. Wouldn’t it be fun to play dress-up here?
We’re heading back to London soon on the train (I’m down in the lobby wi-fi hotspot right now while Pater’s upstairs devouring the dense, thick weekend Telegraph, mesmerized by the Labour government’s travails and the acres of good journalism devoted to it) — tonight we’re going to another concert at St Martin in the Fields — Mendelssohn and Mozard, worth walking through the rain to. And yes, it’s very British weather at the moment, sadly, and it looks as though it will be that way in Paris tomorrow as well, when we arrive there via the EuroStar. We’ll have to adjust to the change from Full English Breakfast (oh, those beans, tomatoes, and fab bacon) to croissants and baguettes — think we’ll cope?
I also want to say how much I appreciate your comments, even though I’m not finding enough time to respond to them — my Blogger is set up so that the comments are e-mailed to me, so I do get to see and read them all. In fairness to my travelling companion, though, I’m trying to minimize my time at the keyboard. I do hope you understand.
Oh fabulous windows. I love your travel updates and just marvel that you manage to fit them in at all.
I think you were very positive about Birmingham! Glad it went well, now you can relax a little. Those breakfast are 'to die for' in every way, but wait what about the fried bread and black pudding? Sorry but those french breakfast just don't cut it with me especially their inability to make a decent cup of tea.
The winner always in the breakfast stakes are the Dutch, as a child cheese, ham and chocolate spread is just awesome.
The images of the theatrical supplies shop are lovley a girl can never have too many dressing up clothes. Kitty loved Paris sans her mother this time. Hope it stays dry.
Congratulations on the conference papers. Conferences in our field do tend to have a strange format. As I understand it, the premise is that one presents one's papers at a conference in order to get feedback prior to publishing, so the conference should have more of a workshop/discussion focus, but rarely does. I wonder–is perhaps the blog a better format for presenting academic WIPs that are primarily textual to begin with? Something to consider…. Love to hear more about your work, at any rate.
P