The Tale of the Giant Cupcake of Covent Garden. (It required its own gallery to tell properly.)

Edited to add: The Guardian has an article on the cupcake; clearly, their reporter didn't get the whole story on the cupcake's construction.

I spent Saturday afternoon in the park with a picnic, a play, a smidgin of rain, and approixmately eighteen people, almost all of whom were previously strangers to me. We read A Midsummer Night's Dream, with parts of costumes and props and improvised acting, music, and dancing. It was a rather impressive production under the circumstances, organized by mirrorshard, with some might fine actors participating. I have no idea when I last was involved in any way other than audience in theater; possibly my brief stint as dramaturge when an undergraduate? In this, I played a minor fairy, which gave me more time to watch the rest of it, a cohort to loiter with, and also the fun of having a role in the dance.

Which is how C. came to ask me about Shakespeare, and I come to give you the question on his behalf: Why Shakespeare? "Genius" alone never explains much of anything; PR makes all the difference. What are the major historiographic developments which made his work, in particular, the subject of such modern renown?

An opera about a twelfth-century troubador, directed by someone from the Cirque du Soleil! I had to go.

This modern opera was written in the last ten years. It was her first and, as is sadly often the way of modern opera, none of the melodies were memorable. Still, it's a nicely multi-country confection, with Finnish composer, French libretto, translated into English, which premiered in Salzburg, and just wrapped up four performances in London. It's set in Aquitaine and Tripoli, and has an Italian director who's most famous for working for a Canadian company.

It was a pair of psychological studies of two people who fall into a long-distance relationship over the internet by means of love songs. He is troubador, named for a real historical one from Aquitaine, Jaufré Rudel, who falls in love with the Ideal Woman, once he is told she really exists. She is the Ideal Woman, titled nobility in Tripoli, seduced by the songs he writes. They are connected by a cipher, the Pilgrim, who seems set up to be part news-bringer, part wishy-washy gossip, part ship, and part angel. It ends in cliché, but I'm not sure any ending would have done the premise justice.

The staging seems to be done on the basis of the audience being easily bored. As a result, the 70 minutes that elapsed before intermission seemed far longer, because so much visually had happened. Acrobats, flowing cloths, actors vanishing into the stage. The three main characters each had two acrobat clones. Sometimes, it seemed as if the entire opera was being done by the puppeteers who introduced most scenes with a shadow play. I thought the Ideal Woman was a kind of Japanese female ghost, all long black hair and trailing robes, flopping through the air from above, until she appeared in person, much improved. The visuals were neat, but overdone, chaotic, and often too heavy-handed in their symbolism.

Still - an opera about the twelfth century! And a troubador! With occasional songs sung in Old French!

Four years ago yesterday, bombers temporarily crippled London's transport system and brought the city together. I wasn't here. I was waking up back in Iowa to the news from London, and being suddenly unsure what to do. I had a flight out that night, to London, where all seemed chaotic, from a distance, and where the transport system might not be functional the next day. In the end, there seemed no safer time to make the flight (although we had a loud and startling "Free Tibet" protester in the row in front of me on the plane). The flight was full.

I arrived the next day, and the Piccadilly Line was running, at least from Heathrow to South Kensington, and from there, the Circle or Distict line to Tower Hill, where we gave up and took a taxi. My luggage was heavy.

It's hard to belive that four years have already passed since both those days, since the day of the bombings, and since the day I moved to London. On one day, many lost their lives. On the next, I began a new phase of mine.

Location: The Grove, in the docks area, Bristol.

riverstation is spacious and light, industrial and civilized. What is now a bar and restaurant was formerly the dockside police station, a comfortable restaurant well-patronized by suited businessmen, standing up, shaking hands, smiling at each other. I met intertext at the train station on Friday and we walked over - 10-15 minutes - with our luggage. Happily, they could keep the luggage in a closet for us while we went to claim our river-views table, booked with a well-designed online interface.

Impressively, the set meal prices have come down since last year's guidebook prices were printed. Two courses for £9.50, three courses for £12.00! My gazpacho was refreshing, and full of vegetable goodness. The mackerel was tender, with more potatoes than we needed, and greens. (I've already forgotten if it came with any sauce or compôte.) The passionfruit crême brûlée was a delight, ethereal in its lightness. Once I'd asked if there was anything interesting to drink other than wine, we received the other drinks menu - entertaining cocktails, and a decent selection of juices and interesting other non-alcoholic drinks. I went with a strawberry bellini.

The price was right, the food generally enjoyable (though forgettable around the edges), the drinks good, and the light-filled space beautiful, but the toilets might as well have been candlelit, they were so dark. Still, I had a lovely, relaxing lunch there in good company with generally good, if busy, service. I'd be willing to go back, but I'm much more interested in exploring more of Bristol's many other scattered restaurants instead.

A kestrel swoops down, glides just above the uplighters, the shadow of crenelations behind them. The lights show off its creamy feathers, flecked in brown, its precise beak, and then it has flown beyond sight again. There was a fundamental quiet to the moment, only the murmur of voices in our crowd of fifty, but no other people beyond them.

Our birthday party of six people were in the hush of the Tower of London at night for the Ceremony of the Keys. Swarmed in the daytime, the Tower is tranquil at night, a small village of fortified residences in the heart of a sprawling metropolis. The Yeoman Warders live there with their families, children, and grandchildren. Soldiers stationed there live in residence too. The numbers are not large, given the scale of the place, and so it is an island of peace when the crowds have gone.

Our guide had about fifteen minutes to give us touristic commentary on the Tower and the towers around Water Lane before the ceremony began with the appearance of four soldiers on ceremonial duty, armed for the security of the Tower. The Senior Warder, hat marked with ribbon, collected his guard for the locking of the Tower's main gate. They returned to the scripted call-and-response, another soldier on duty letting pass the Queen's keys. Then we flooded up the slope for the final interchange with yet another yet of soldiers, and, while the bells struck 10 pm, the trumpeting of Last Post. Night had fallen, but the last light not yet gone from the sky. The ceremony was complete.

The Ceremony happens nightly at the Tower of London, and has done for around 700 years, apparently. Tickets are free (donation requested, but it was a mystery as to how to give one). Ticket requests are limited to groups of six, and the overall group limited to 50. Requests must be made 2-3 months in advance.

So. An entire conference devoted to Diana Wynne Jones and, improbably (because of the topic), I gave a paper.

It was a lovely conference, by and large, around 50 people most of the time, although a total of about 70 were pre-registered. We were in a conference bubble for the weekend, staying and working at a semi-rural university in greater Bristol and - due to lack of appropriate tech support from the university - generally without internet access for the duration. I was planning on being offline; most people were not. There was a full program of papers, double tracked on Saturday, a handful of plenaries (including Sharyn November channelling DWJ), a HarperCollins-sponsored drinks reception, and a showing of the 1992 BBC six-parter of Archer's Goon. Despite the threatened heavy rain, the weather was almost entirely good. intertext, heleninwales, gillo were there. steepholm and fjm organized it. I have now met lady_schrapnell, among a great many other engaging people who may or may not have weblogs.

That there are a great many interesting things to say about our author was evident from how, at the end of the weekend, it felt as if we'd barely scratched the surface. Many books weren't mentioned at all in any paper I attended, or mentioned only transiently, especially her early work and her short stories. No one spoke about Dogsbody, for example, which would have made a good pairing with the two papers on The Game. The Howl series was - as expected - ever-popular. Dalemark was only occasionally attended to.

I'm happy to say that my paper went well. I boiled it down to a reasonable subset for twenty minutes, and had a good discussion about it with the audience afterwards. I also didn't feel as out-of-my-depth as I was expecting to, given it was a conference so far removed from my usual ones. Best of all, mine was part of a session of really well-presented papers. It was a real pleasure to listen to the others in it.

I'm delighted to report that my entry to the BSHS's song competition is a runner up! (There are two runners up and one first place.) I won't be able to make the conference this weekend in Leicester as I'll be presenting at a different one that day in Bristol.

In honor of Canada Day, I wore my Tilley hat. It was hot and a bit sweltery, so absolutely necessary. And a hat! (I note that heavy rains are forecast for the weekend.)

All my previous conference papers have been opportunities to explore new little topics around the edges of what I was already working on. They were based on sources I already knew well, but focused on some related, interesting aspect which I hadn't already explored. They supplemented the rest of my research. This is also why none of them have been directly on, say, anything I have publications or theses written about. They were modest little related projects, just the right size for a twenty minute conference paper.

The Stew Project is another creature entirely. It is a whole research project in its own right, only marginally related to anything I've ever done before; and by this, I don't mean it deals with other medieval documents, but with whole other disciplines and time periods. I am multiply a novice in working on this project, in the twentieth century, in children's literature, in the study of speculative literature, in the study of medievalist, and in the study of travel writing. Fortunately, there's a history of technology core to it all where I feel right at home, and, after a few years of dabbling in food history, I at least feel I'm not completely new to that, even if I still have a great deal to learn indeed.

As a result, I've been reading in all directions lately, crash courses in relevant parts of disciplines. Sadly and fortunately, the history of travel turned out to be a logical, but unfruitful direction; but the rest remained. Now I know enough to know more how ignorant I am of all these disciplines. And the conference for which I have written this paper will be full of people who know those other disciplines thoroughly. (Well, maybe not the food history part.)

This paper is also proving an object lesson in why disciplines are important, why it's crucial to repect specialization and benefit from it, to do the work of understanding what makes a discipline tick, at least a beginner's level. (Not that I'm claiming even that in many of these!) This is also why editorials arguing against disciplines, banish the departments, and yay!interdisciplinarity bother me. Not many really do interdisciplinary work, the work which falls between disciplinary boundaries and is claimed by no one.* They do multidisciplinary work, working between multiple fields. And without disciplines, you can have either multi- nor even inter-.

* I know, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary are usually used synonymously, but I think this is an important distinction to make, and gives each word a useful meaning relevant to prefix.

Back in Toronto, I tried all the afternoon teas the city had to offer. There were only seven or eight to choose from, so it was possible to be comprehensive in a way that will never be achievable for London. Periodically, friends ask me for afternoon tea recommendations for London, and I have very little to tell them, having been to so few. This summer is shaping up to remedy my inexperience here.

The Goring
Location: Beeston Place, Grosvenor Gardens, London, near Victoria Station

The highlighted location for afternoon tea is the terrace, but we've opted for indoors, out of the breeze and heat. We gain an extra table for the tea pots, conveniently out of the way, and begin with a light seafood amuse-bouche. Our three tiers of tea are substantial, but not particularly memorable. It was just what it ought to be, with delicate crustless sandwiches (four kinds apiece), cozy scones (with jam pre-potted), and a selection of pastries to negotiate over. There was a further pudding for a finale too. Classy and competent, it offered good service and pleasant enough ambiance, but unmemorable - if correctly done - nibbles.

Palm Court at the Langham
Location: 1c Portland Place, at the top of Regent Street, near Oxford Circus

( Lovely space, all sweet foods... )

From the_lady_lily...

( Advanced level internet user... )

( The adult uses of children's toys... )

( Lovely people of the interwebs who exist inside my computer... )

( Transcontinental academic adventures... )

( Fine dining... )

You know those "where were you when..." questions? Those were my first thought when, going down an escalator at Liverpool Street Station, two drunk guys in suits going down the stairs beside us asked us if we'd heard that Michael Jackson was dead.

A few stations later, C. could check the news. It was uncertain. We overheard snippets of conversation. "He's dead", they said, nameless, looking at their phone and talking to neighbors and friends. By the time we made it home, the BBC was willing to commit. I am so rarely conscious of news stories as they develop. Also, very few random people ever pause to pass on news items.

morganlf and I were going down the Thames, en route to Greenwich, yesterday when she asked me where the word "Limehouse" came from. Today I checked - it's from "Lime Oast", i.e. lime kiln, kilns for making quicklime. Quicklime is used in everything from mortar to plaster to slaking corn to pottery. Apparently, Henry III's navy blinded an invading French fleet with it.

Chalk is a kind of limestone, chalk such as the chalk of the Chalk Group, the stone underlying much of southern England, under the Channel, the Netherlands, parts of the North Sea, and down into Champagne. It's also the name of a town in Kent, Chalk, reading about which, thanks to a prompt from ladybird97, is what reminded me to check on Limehouse's origins today and started this whole chain of connections.

Later, yesterday, after seeing the North-West Passage exhibit at the National Maritime Museum (CanCon dealt with for the week), and coming back home to burn things, we sipped on a sparkling wine which proclaimed itself argillaceous. Today's lime-browsing reassured me that not knowing how to translate it said nothing about my French and everything about my ignorance of stratigraphy. Argillaceous rocks have clay content. Limestone can be argillaceous, as is the argillaceous chalk marl through which the Channel Tunnel was dug.

Marl is lime-rich mud. In French, it is marne, from which the river and the department in France are surely named - for that's where Champagne, of the chalk-rich soil and sparkling wines is.

Speaking of limes - one of the other kinds - we also wondered why yuzu has become such a trendy fruit in chocolate.

This last week has been a whirl of out-of-town visitors. DD from Toronto, my third-grade teacher, meeting gylfinir and spending a delightful evening in her company over Japanese food, easterbunny and aca, and Derrick, down from York. And that's without counting a missed visit from austengirl. (I'm happy to say it's also been a productive week for tying off the semester's loose ends and starting work on my forthcoming conference paper.)

The Modern Pantry
Location: 47-48 St. John's Square, Clerkenwell, a block-or-so north of Farringdon. London.

( The Modern Pantry... )

Alas, the pub reunion at the Lyric afterwards was more frustration than satisfaction: all these wonderful, wonderful people I rarely see, and too much noise to hear what they were saying!

Asadal
Location: 227 High Holborn, London, immediately outside Holborn station. London.

( Asadal... )

And so, Derrick is off to Clarion West, we're off to sofa shopping (we may someday buy one), and Taste of London is this weekend!

This afternoon, I had afternoon tea at The Goring Hotel near Victoria with one of my elementary school teachers. We haven't seen each other since I was in fifth grade; small city connections in Des Moines accidentally put us back in touch a few months ago, when she already had a trip to London planned. Today, we nibbled on crustless sandwiches, scones, and sweets, all bracketed by a seafood salad amuse-bouche and a final mini trifle. It's fascinating to hear of oneself from so long ago, from someone who hasn't had that memory confused and eclipsed by everything that's happened since.

Speaking of afternoon delectations, I spent a lovely loitering afternoon with rosamicula the other day, shopping for chocolates at Melt and having epic adventures in attempting to pay for a whimsical, now story-laden, dress I was buying. She was endlessly patient, and the shop people - indirectly family friends - diligently entertained us with videos of the fall collection, magazine articles about friends, and delicately-detailed shoes. We ate chocolate while waiting - it helps to shop at the chocolate store first. In the end, I went out and brought them cash, and they gave me a lovely hair ornament: perhaps I really should learn how to do anything else with my hair after thirteen years of growing it out.

I object, now and again, at how meager most English storms are. Today, the weather has obliged me. Thunder rumbled fitfully in partly-blue skies all afternoon. Late in the day, the thunderstorm began, heavy rain saturating the greenery, lightning striking. Eventually, i thought I'd go home, the length of the garden: and then, before I could, the torrential rain added hail to its repertoire. It's bouncing against the windows of my office.

Good things in stamps:

Last month, the French post office released a history of chocolate in ten chocolate-scented stamps.

This month (tomorrow), the UK post office is releasing a set of mythical creatures stamps, illustrated by Dave McKean.

Also, back in March, the UK post office released a set of stamps dedicated to "Pioneers of the Industrial Revolution".

We went garden-visiting on Saturday, a day of tours of private gardens, entered into by the organizer's personal connections. (It was another Smith Club event.) Petworth itself is a lovely little town, a twist of streets with art galleries, antique stores, and craft shops, wrapped around by the walls and monumentality of Petworth House, and centered on the old Market Square, now a minor mess of parking and traffic. It's on a broad hilltop with views of the North and the South Downs.

( At and around Petworth House... )
( An artist's treasure of a garden... )
( A medium-sized garden in layers... )

I'd come with C. and J. - we drove - and so were free to explore the town for a little while before returning to London. We opted not to buy a UKP 95,000 enormous 1930s desk from the antique store, and instead came home empty-handed but full of inspiring memories, enough that we finally finished repotting the rest of the plants this afternoon, and dreamed of more lavish and better-managed gardens than our own little first one which we have now had - as of Friday - for an entire year.