Ilkley

Yes, yes, I know, I've put it all over Facebook already -

if you have missed it (HOW?), I've cycled to Ilkley today, which was exhausting but worth it - 

but I should really like to share a poem that I wrote when I just arrived. I'd picked up an egg & mayo sandwich from the shop and had spread my coat on the grass near a church, overlooking the valley and the river Wharfe, when suddenly this poem pretty much wrote itself. It's not profound in any case, it's basically as light as I felt spread out in the sun after finding a place to just - lie. Also, honestly, days long lost? I haven't any lost histories. But it sounded nice.



While in the grass I lie
Near Ilkley's morbid Moor
Under a cloudless sky
I think of days of yore

For oft when in my dreams I wander
I find in mind the days long past
I gaze upon the hills far yonder
And find my days long lost

The land and paths of this here lawn
This land of people, gods and sheep
Make me do nowt but stretch and yawn
And think myself to sleep. 

Cycling Ignorance and the Police (West Yorkshire - Headingley, Leeds)

This morning, a policeman decided to berate me for something I did whilst cycling.

I'll readily admit I'm not a particularly careful cyclist - I run the occasional red light at the junction of Woodhouse Lane and Clarendon Road because I'd rather run the light via the bus lane than get caught once more in the bustle of motorists; I grumble at motorists who, I feel, are out to kill me but who, I suspect, feel that I am a nuisance in their commute, and I pass motorists stuck at the red light to get to the advanced stop box which is usually half taken up by a motorists thus causing me to have to go even further into the junction than I should be and am comfortable with.

In general, however, I try to be responsibly careless - ignoring some road rules because it's safer to be outside of groups of bundles of steel weighing several metric tonnes than stuck within.

I'll also readily admit that I should be more aware that British motorists, on the whole, are far less familiar with cyclists than Dutch motorists are, meaning that what I perceive to be murderous behaviour may just actually be ignorance on their part; they may not actually understand that what they do is at best a nuisance and at worst quite dangerous. Simultaneously, their lack of experience also causes me to be terrifying to them as I am an unknown factor. In short, I should be more patient and vigilant when dealing with British motorists than I usually am.

Ah, but who am I kidding here - I'm being self-righteous.

No, truth be told, I am, sometimes, a fairly careless cyclist, and I don't always observe the road rules to the extent that I should. Whether or not I have excuses for this is irrelevant.

And I was in a fairly foul mood this morning and it was raining, so I am likely to have been more careless than usual.

But berating me for something that was actually a taxi driver's fault (taxi drivers are not motorists. Taxi drivers are active murderers.) is going a bit far still.

Every morning while cycling to uni, I get to coast downhill from my house to the lights at the junction of North Lane and the Otley Road. Except for Headingley Mount - which is at the top of the hill so it doesn't really matter there, anyway - I have right of way pretty much everywhere on this bit, like motorists would have. Not that I'm always given right of way, mind - motorists don't seem to grasp here that cyclists have the same right of way as they have. I do, however, have to yield once, when going onto North Lane - but I don't usually have to, as by then I'll have come to a reasonably slow pace to simply and fairly safely wind into traffic.

However, at this junction of North Lane and Ash Road, there is another street, too - Cross Chapel Street. Technically speaking, traffic from Cross Chapel Street has to yield for Ash Road traffic and then for North Lane traffic (it's a rather awkward construction). Traffic usually doesn't yield at Cross Chapel Street, however, but immediately goes on to the junction, as it's only a few yards.

Awkward constructions like this are ubiquitous in Britain - they work fine for motorists, who are easily spotted by others and considered equal, but are hellish for cyclists.

All along the Otley Road and Headingley Lane, there are awkward, unclear side streets - traffic coming from these side streets usually has somewhat impaired vision due to walls. The Netherlands have solved this problem by simply placing mirrors at these junction, but it doesn't seem Britain has come to this genius insight yet. Due to this, traffic from these side streets often decides to pull into the bicycle lane along Headingley Lane, forcing cyclists to decide to swerve into busy traffic or scrape these cars.

I have no patience for these people and they have no patience for me. Both parties accept so and both parties go their merry way grumbling at one another.

This morning, however, presented a particularly vicious episode. Out of Cross Chapel Street came a taxi, whilst I coasted along Ash Road. He appeared to yield in his proper spot (a miracle!) and I prepared to flit by to wind into North Lane traffic. I, however, apparently miscalculated, as the taxi went on to try and yield in Ash Road, causing me to swerve - indeed right into North Lane traffic, right in front of, what else, a policeman's car.

Rather than berate the taxi driver for not yielding where he should've - in Cross Chapel Street, not Ash Road - the policeman decided to berate me for a) flipping off the taxi driver, b) not wearing a helmet, and c) swerving into North Lane traffic.

A. I do not flip off other road users. I grumble at them, yes, but flipping them off is a whole other order of magnitude. I did stick up my hand to the taxi driver, mainly because he startled me and that's my reflex - it's almost like shielding one's face from impact. So, cheers, Mr Policeman, for berating me for something I didn't actually do.

B. I don't wear a helmet, no. Traffic law doesn't say I must have one - the Highway Code does advise one to wear one and I respect the statistics, but no, I don't. I realise that in accidents involving cyclists, those who wear helmets are far less seriously injured than those who don't. I would indeed thoroughly advise all beginner cyclists in Britain to wear helmets because whether it's through ignorance or through malicious intent, British motorists are murderous and the streets are filled with potholes and unclear junctions.
However, my personal, empirical experience advises against wearing helmets. I have 20+ years of experience cycling (which is an incongruous thing in the mind of the British motorist - a 23 year old with 20+ years of experience? 'Tis, my British fellow road users, a possibility, for those who spent their youths in a country where cycling is the next step after learning to walk) and I have had the displeasure of wearing a helmet for some years. Over my two decades of cycling, I have had several close calls - all in Britain - and only one serious accident - in the Netherlands. This serious accident happened while I was wearing my helmet.
Motorists are more careful around female cyclists, young cyclists, and unprotected cyclists - some studies have pointed this out, I could look up the statistics if I were so inclined. This matches my experience - motorists are far less likely to do stupid things in my vicinity when I'm not wearing a helmet than when I am. Sure, I'll be less likely to be seriously injured if I'd wear a helmet, but I'd rather just not get into an accident in the first place.
So no, Mr Policeman, I don't wear a helmet and I'm not going to because contrary to your common sense, I am actually better off not wearing one. Thanks for the advice, though - but might I suggest you actually look up the Highway Code before you tell me I must wear a helmet?

C. Yes, I did swerve into North Lane traffic and yes, I'd rather avoided this too. It may be surprising, but I didn't actually want to run the risk of becoming asphalt marmalade. However, when the choice is between going into active traffic with the chance that the motorists can still avoid me and with absolute certainty crashing into a taxi ignoring its instruction to yield, I'd rather take the active traffic, thanks. So cheers, Mr Policeman, for berating me for something I did indeed do but for which you should have berated the taxi driver instead. Thanks, Mr Policeman, for berating the wrong party.

I do understand that this police officer was probably a bit shocked and startled, like I was, and only had his own perspective of me swerving into traffic rather than my whole conundrum of crashing into a taxi versus swerving into traffic, and probably thought he was doing me a service by telling me off, and probably felt that he had to deal with it somehow or other - the taxi had gone by then, of course - but I still do think it's thoroughly unfair to ruin someone's day by berating them for something they're not actually guilty of.

I am not a careful cyclists, far from it, but I hate getting told off for things that aren't my fault.

Having said that, if you're in Leeds, don't be discouraged from cycling here. Leeds is a lovely place to cycle in, and the country around is gorgeous of course. Just be mindful that the roads do have potholes (fewer than in other cities, but they're still there), some junctions are unclear and some motorists have no idea of the risks they pose to cyclists. Let's just keep cycling, because otherwise motorists will never learn proper road etiquette.

As for the taxi driver, well...

Imperial March: Time Lords (probably Part I of many)

Trying to follow in the impressive footsteps of my dear friend Sam, I'd like to end Imperial March the same way I begun it - by describing a villain. Or a set of villains, in this case.

I haven't done much for Imperial March, partly because the Muses didn't grant me any sort of villainous inspiration (I've done loads of non-villainous artsy things, though) and partly because my PhD research is proving pleasantly time consuming.

But this post is part of a sort of side-project - my now year-old obsession with Doctor Who has proved somewhat productive as I will be talking about Time Lords at a symposium in Westminster in September.

Because that's the thing. Whereas Sam talks about outright, clear-cut villains, I have always had a soft spot for characters who aren't outright villains but who are merely morally ambiguous. Dorian Gray, for instance. It's why I favour the "The Master is basically a scorned lover and is merely trying to get the Doctor's attention by blowing up half the universe half the time"-explanation over "The Master is Evil, period."

And the Time Lords are a magnificent civilisation as a whole, in this regard. They aren't outright evil, oh no. They're just - misguided. Slow. Close-minded. Bureaucratic. But evil, no. Sure, there are some amongst them who could be construed as evil - the Master, despite my preference for an alternative explanation, could be evil, as could be the Rani (I've just heard of the death of Kate O'Mara, may she rest in peace - I've only seen her as the Rani but she was incredibly memorable in that role), despite the notion that the Rani just basically has no regard for anything but her experiments (which should not make her truly evil, really), or Borusa (who really is just too ambitious for his own good), or Goth (same), or the Monk (who just really takes the Doctor's meddling a bit further than the Doctor would). I suppose not even the War Chief is truly evil, just horribly, lethally misguided.

What we've seen of Time Lord and/or Gallifreyan society thus far is not much - just their political and judicial system. A lot can be said about a civilisation from this, but a lot has also been ignored - we haven't a clue what daily life on Gallifrey is like. My historian friend perhaps put it best when she told me that yeah, kings and all are really cool, but it's the real people who actually have to live with their decisions. Which is why I was over the moon - after re-watch, because it needed a re-watch - about The Day of the Doctor, in which we finally saw groups of regular Gallifreyans. Yeah, we saw a group of Outsiders before, in The Invasion of Time, but they were, indeed, explicitly Outsiders. Other Gallifreyans and Time Lords thus far seen were judges, juries, civil servants, guards, councillors, and other people high up in society.

I was also excited about the crack in the universe in The Time of the Doctor, for obvious reasons. Yeah, Mark Gatiss does have a point that the Time Lords shouldn't be featured too often because it makes them seem stuffy and domesticated. But I don't think that 'stuffy and domesticated' is necessarily a bad thing. After all, the Doctor ran from Gallifrey because "he was bored" (The War Games, episode 10) - doesn't the Time Lords being all-powerful but stuffy and domesticated completely justify that? It would justify the Doctor's entire defence in that serial, actually - he basically tells them that they're all-powerful but too content doing absolutely nothing and that therefore he finds himself compelled to go out and meddle in the affairs of other planets, breaking the Time Lords' most important law.

Mind, I'm not saying that they should be featured more often than only every once in a while. I agree with Gatiss there. I'd be perfectly content with seeing them only every three years or so - I'd hate for them to become as normalised as the Daleks.

But in any case, in fact, I think that stuffy and domesticated exactly describes the Time Lords as they ought to be. As they are, generally.

Consider this. For the longest time, they have been a stagnant, introverted, isolationist society. No real outside enemies. After all, it takes the Vardans and the Sontarans a mole to take down Gallifrey's defences from the inside. The Gallifreyans have nothing to worry about because normally Time Lords don't travel too far from Gallifrey - the Doctor, the Master, the Rani and the Monk are obvious exceptions, but despite all their mischievous natures (yes, you too, Doctor), none of them would consciously consider forming an alliance with any party that may actually, actively threaten their home planet. Gallifreyans just live their lives (plural, of course) in relative peace within the confines of the Gallifreyan sphere.

But the lack of a common enemy divides, like a common enemy unites. Even a Time Lord would get right bored if every day was basically the same - especially if you'll have day after day after day of that for perhaps millennia (Seriously, what do they do?). Yes, they study the universe outside of their sphere, and they learn - no one knows precisely how long Time Lords exactly spend in the Academy, but given that in The Sound of Drums it is established that Time Lords get inducted at age 8 and Romanadvoratrelundar was 140 or 125 (even she forgets her age, and she's comparatively young) after just graduating - and she was a particularly gifted student, too - it's safe to say that Academy time may be well over a century.
For comparison, I've spent about two decades (Dutch primary school starts at age 4) in the education system and I'm currently working on a PhD. So multiply that by five (and the other four times twenty years aren't at all concerned with learning to read and write and do maths) and account for the much greater mental abilities of Time Lords and you may start approximating a bit of how much they could potentially learn. And that's just in formal education.
But it's established that the Doctor didn't like his education. If the like-to-dislike ratios in Time Lord society are anything like those I've observed here, I'm fairly certain most Time Lords get fed up with their education at one point or another too.
So that's all they have then. Millennia to live and nothing to do. So you get in-fighting.

Not, like, civil war of course, because Time Lords are highly civilised people. But politics. Cliques.

Chapters.

One thing that struck me (and many others too) is the notion that in The End of Time and The Day of the Doctor, the Time Lords and Gallifreyans seemed united in wearing dark red robes. It was established in The Deadly Assassin that generally, Time Lords wore colours following their Chapters - as Runcible so clearly explains in that serial, "the scarlet and orange of the Prydonians, the green of the Arcalians, and the heliotrope of the Patrexes, and so on". Of course, Runcible also explains in that serial that the robes and the insignia are seldom worn, but we see them in every serial - up to The End of Time - that features the Time Lords since then. Or at least, we see the colours, not the full regalia per se. But in The End of Time, Rassilon has taken over command in the Gallifreyan war against the Daleks, and suddenly the Time Lords are no longer divided into chapters but are instead all wearing dark red. United in a common cause, I expect. There's still internal politics - as the War Council of The Day of the Doctor explicitly references the notion that the High Council had plans of their own which backfired (though they managed to pull the Master back into the war - see The End of Time pt. 2 - poor Master, I hope they fixed his energy and drum issues in their pocket universe).

But not all Time Lords seem to wear the robes of their chapters, even during times of peace.

Guards don't. Andred in The Invasion of Time, and Maxil in Arc of Infinity don't, in any case, nor do any other official members of the Chancellery Guard. Which is really to be expected, them being guards and all - regardless of chapter, they need to stand guard. Of what, if Gallifrey has no 'natural' enemies? Of Outsiders, shobogans and internal politics, I presume. Regardless of chapter.
Magistrates don't, as can be seen in The War Games and The Trial of a Time Lord. I suppose then that justice, even on Gallifrey, is suppose to be impartial - magistrates wear black and white. As does the Valeyard, which we learn is Gallifreyan for learned prosecutor. And yes, prosecutors are generally expected to be impartial too, merely reporting and describing crimes and accusing the suspect regardless of who the suspect is. I do wonder what the difference is between the three-judge court of The War Games and the full jury plus magistrate plus prosecutor plus possibility for defence court of The Trial, but I expect this to be similar to a division between Crown Court and Magistrates' Court. In The War Games, the Doctor is merely a Time Lord hopping about space and time in a stolen TARDIS meddling in things he shouldn't meddle in, while in The Trial he is an ex-Lord President accused of, yes, meddling, as well as genocide and a whole host of other things. Also, you know, the High Council kind of wants him as a scapegoat in that one.
The black robes worn by Time Lord observers in The Three Doctors and briefly in Colony in Space intrigue me, too. Who are they? Canonically speaking, if they were mere Time Lords, they would be wearing their chapter colours, not black (of course from a production point of view, these serials were made before The Deadly Assassin, so before the establishment of chapters). But as we find out in serials such as The Deadly Assassin, as well as some others, the Doctor was forced to work for the Celestial Intervention Agency for a while whilst exiled to Earth after his trial in The War Games. And these black-robed Time Lords can be seen observing time lines and specifically lifting the Doctor out of his own time-line to do battle with Omega in The Three Doctors and diverting the course of the TARDIS to solve some minor crisis having to do with the Master and a human colony in Colony in Space. In fact, the Time Lord who shows up at the beginning of The Genesis of the Daleks to tell the Doctor to go meddle in the time-lines of the Daleks also wears black - it is therefore my hypothesis that these black-robed Time Lords, who meddle in time whilst meddling in time is strictly against the laws of Gallifrey, are indeed CIA-agents. Wearing black instead of their chapter colours, of course, because they are far above petty internal politics. These are intertemporal politics these Time Lords are dealing with, after all.

But in the end, yes, stuffy and domesticated and all-powerful. And boring in the most exciting way. That's what Time Lords are, or what I believe them to be. How I perceive them.

Not villainous per se. Just fascinatingly uncaring.

I expect I will continue writing about them some other time. They're a fascinating fictional society.

Imperial March: The Scarlet Pimpernel

Technically, today's post is not dedicated to an outright villain.

Though he can be a villain from a certain point of view.

You see, yesterday, one of my fellow EvilCo'ers posted a list of villains elsewhere, sourced from 'The Oxford Book of Villains' by John Mortimer*. This reproduced list contained a villain whose inclusion at first I found somewhat surprising - Chauvelin from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (1905).

Now, I have recently read this book for various reasons but mainly because I wanted to read something entertaining, and a turn-of-the-century book of a swashbuckling adventure set in Revolutionary France seemed to fit the bill.

Both Chauvelin and the Scarlet Pimpernel can be construed as both heroes and villains.

Chauvelin, as an agent of the French revolutionaries, seeks out French aristocrats for guillotining.

I like the French Revolution as a historic era on its own and as a sort of prequel to the Napoleonic era, and I fully sympathise with the ostensible aims of the revolution - liberté, fraternité, égalité. Without the French Revolution, our world today would've looked much different, perhaps we'd still be living in a more or less feudal age, with a wealthy upper class, the 1%, and the rest of the world being peasants - okay so perhaps the French Revolution in the end didn't change all that much when it comes to wealth inequality, but at least it led to some new political philosophical ideas, plus the veneer of democracy that we all enjoy today.

So to a certain extent Chauvelin can be construed as a hero of the French Revolution.

But the random guillotining of aristocrats doesn't sit right with me - killing people just because they or their parents were born aristocratic is not particularly egalitarian. You can't really change what you were born as. So in that sense he's rather a villain.

This random killing of aristocrats also doesn't sit right with the Scarlet Pimpernel, who happens to be an English aristocrat and who swoops in and out of Paris to save more or less innocent people who have been condemned to the guillotine. So he's a hero, but he appears to oppose the revolution and in that regard is a villain.

As the book was written by the daughter of a Hungarian baron, who fled Hungary in fear of a possible peasant revolution, the author is clearly sympathetic to the Scarlet Pimpernel, painting him as the swashbuckling hero and Chauvelin as the clear-cut villain.

"six foot odd of gorgeousness, as represented by [**]", p. 55, is indeed rather sympathetic to the protagonist - I had to giggle when I first read that because it feels rather Twilight-esque to describe a protagonist as such. Very much the author-narrator's voice bleeding through, there.

But my egalitarian ideals force me to disagree, not with the Scarlet Pimpernel as the hero because in the end he's the one (well, with his friends, of course, especially Sir Andrew Ffoulkes) who ends up saving innocent people from an unfair death, but with Chauvelin as the villain. Sure, he is rather extreme in following up on his revolutionary ideals, and I can't in anyway condone murder - because that's what it is, in the end - but I do agree with the revolutionary ideals, and part of me also warns that there's a distinct possibility that Chauvelin mainly did his perceived duty under societal pressure. That's not entire the reason for his murdering people, of course, he does seem to rather relish it, and he does pose a considerable threat to the Pimpernel (well...). Though I am not really certain whether he's so keen on capturing the Pimpernel because the Pimpernel deprives him of his opportunity to carry out more or less institutionalised murder or because the Pimpernel's actions pose a dangerous loss of face to Chauvelin - I think that there is a considerable threat that if Chauvelin is found wanting, he could end up under the guillotine instead.

Legally speaking, that's called duress - he'd still be guilty of murder, but wouldn't be entirely responsible for it. I'll leave it to a lawyer to interpret whether Chauvelin's situation fully counts as duress, but it does negate his villainy somewhat.

Of course the heroic thing to do would be to say "I'd rather get killed than murder!" or for him to decide to sneakily cooperate with the Pimpernel, but real people often aren't that heroic.

I'll leave it to my dear friend Samantha Schäfer to identify what sort of villain Chauvelin in that regard then is, if he is a villain at all.

Of course the Scarlet Pimpernel remains the hero. He saves people and swashbuckles. I'm sure that's enough to qualify as such.

So, my tiny little artsy project for today is a rendition of the Pimpernel's calling card, which he often leaves for Chauvelin to find out that he has yet again foiled his guillotining (I'm taking the inspiration for this more from the 1956 tv-series than from the novel, mind).

The main thing to conclude from this tiny artsy project, however, is that I need new nibs for my calligraphy pens. I like how the flower worked out, though.

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* I am dying to read this book now. My library doesn't have it. I'm annoyed by that.
** I really don't want to spoil it. Read the book. Watch the series. Read the wikipedia page.

Imperial March: Celebrate Your Inner (Doctor Who) Villain

Evil Greetings.

It is Imperial March once more, meaning that I get to spend a month exploring and celebrating my inner villain as part of EvilCo's celebrations. 

I wrote a post last year about what Imperial March actually is... in short, it is a month (March - ah. yes.) in which one celebrates villainy in fiction - films, novels, video games, anything that tickles your fancy*. 

A year has passed since, and in that year I have grown - as cannot have escaped anyone's notice as it is one of only two things I talk about these days - into an almost hard-core Whovian. 

In that year, I have fallen in love with the evilness of the Daleks (they just need a hug, honest) and the Time Lords (because if anything they're the real proper villains of 70s and 80s Who - I can't wait for them to come back) and simply the way in which Doctor Who portrays villainy - sometimes it's rather camp (The Master, anyone?) and sometimes it's a bit wobbly (Ice Warriors - they do look like muppets) and sometimes you have a hard time believing something so cuddly can be evil (The Yeti - I just want to pet them), but so often it's much more complicated than just putting down a flat, two-dimensional monster. 

Yes, the Daleks are pretty much the embodiment of evil - they were based on the Nazis, after all, who are a go-to standard if you want a shorthand for something really evil in fiction - but yet this is explained because in the end they are the result of a mad scientist's meddling with genetics and there's an almost touching scene in the Eccleston serial Dalek when the last remaining Dalek (or is it?) gets really rather desperate.

The Master - well, he and the Doctor are basically the embodiment of the Foe Yay trope (I heartily support any Doctor/Master shipping) - see also this - but in the end his evil is because the Time Lords caused him to go insane and because he really wants to attract the Doctor's attention (this latter interpretation may also be due to me spending too much time reading fan fiction, which isn't nearly so bad as people make it out to be). 

Sure, there's plenty of villains and monsters that are really a tiny bit, well, shit (looking at you, Dominators), but this is off-set by having villains like - is it spoilers if the episode aired 30 or more years ago? - a former Academy lecturer rising through the ranks of Time Lord society until he becomes acting Lord President and basically being willing to sacrifice all of time and space and the Doctor in return for immortality, or an earlier example of a Time Lord Judge (then Chancellor) willing to falsely accuse the Doctor of murder so he (the Judge) can be elected Lord President by default. 

Or what of a power-hungry scientist playing the media and politics in a scheme to take over the world (I love Enemy of the World, and that has only partly to do with the fact that Patrick Troughton is in it twice). 

So, as a first part of my Imperial March celebration, I made a set of election posters for EvilCo (click for large - warning, quite large indeed)**. 

The rest of the month will be spent doing other artsy things. Writing blog posts about other villains. I may put in a post about Michael Corleone and the Corleone family - I haven't lost my Godfather-fanness yet. Doing drawing - I can't draw but practice makes, well not perfect obviously, but better - and doing poetry because I like poetry.

Fiction, perhaps - I still have last year's Imperial March story to finish.

I cannot update daily, due to thesis work, but I will put a new Imperial March thing online whenever I have something. 

And that's a promise. I may even keep it. 

Or not. MUAHAHAHA.

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*is it just me or does 'tickle your fancy' sound rather smutty?
** Yes, I know. Obviously the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors don't do elections, and I daren't be sure about the Daleks seeing as they have a parliament and also an emperor (constitutional monarchy? Which also forces one to ask - how can there be a Dalek Emperor? Unless I am mistaken in my belief that an emperor is different from a king in that an emperor generally rules multiple territories and peoples, and Daleks are a bit too genocidal to rule over other species. Unless of course you consider several Dalek factions to be different peoples. Also, how is there a Dalek Emperor in the first place - is he somehow more Dalek than all other Daleks? Or what?). I know the Time Lords do have elections, but they're too xenophobic to even consider letting non-Gallifreyans (or even just non-Time Lords!) run for office. This poster is meant as a bit of a joke. 

The Insignificance of Being Gwendolen

Wildeans of the internet, rejoice!

Yet another adaptation of one of Oscar Wilde's fantastic works has premièred today – The Insignificance of Being Gwendolen.

The vlog-styled webseries was created by a handful of people united by their love of Wilde, to portray Wilde's theatrical masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, which saw its first performance on 14 February 1895, from the point of view of one of the secondary characters in this play.

This character is Gwendolen – or Gwen, for short, in the project. In the original play, Gwendolen is the daughter of the draconian Lady Augusta Bracknell, cousin to the incorrigible Bunbury-ist Algernon Moncrieff and love interest to the not-so-earnest Ernest (Jack in the country) Worthing.

This charming webseries goes accompanied by a blog, The Triviality of Being Cecily, written from the point of view of the daydreaming Cecily Cardew, originally ward to Jack (Ernest in town) Worthing, love interest to Algernon.

Of course, the family relations in this multimedia project are somewhat different, explains driving force behind the project Lisa Theresa Downey Dent, as relationships between first cousins (as - spoilers? - Gwen and Jack/Ernest originally turned out to be) are nowadays seen as “somewhat icky”. Cast in the role of Cecily is visual artist Danou Duifhuizen, whose background in amateur theatre has us look eagerly forward to her appearance. Another very much-anticipated appearance is that of Josh Sutherland, a promising young actor who recently figured as David Tennant's body double in the BBC's 50^th anniversary promo for Doctor Who.

Instead of using a Victorian setting, the play has been updated to be modern, something for which Mr Wilde appears to have given his blessing 119 years ago when he indicated the mise en temps of The Importance to be “the present”.

In this updated setting, explains Lisa, “Gwendolen is a frustrated 20something who just wants to move out from her parents’ place, find a hottie to date and fulfilment in life….don’t we all? Her best friend Algernon tries to set her up with some guy in London, called Ernest….Ernest of all names. Her therapist, Dr. Chasuble, suggests she should do a regular vlog on YouTube to let off some steam. So she does. Since she isn’t exactly technology savvy, she teams up with a bunch of film students who edit the footage she sends on to them. Not always in the most flattering ways… ”.

Lisa also make it known that audience feedback is much appreciated.

So be quick and catch Gwen's first vlog, and don't forget to leave a comment!

Christmas On My Own

Just now my landlord popped by to check the house for the winter - to set the boiler to heat up the water if none of us would be here, so the pipes don't freeze, and all that - and seemed surprised to see me home.

"Are you staying here over Christmas?"

Yes.

The incredulous reactions I get from people - aren't you going home* for Christmas? No. Why not? I don't want to. But - will there be people coming over? No. So you'll be all alone for Christmas? Yes. But - oh. Well. Happy Christmas then.

People seem unable to understand I'm actually looking forward to celebrating Christmas on my own.

All except my family, who are perfectly good with it. And there would be no use in me going home for Christmas anyway.

My Mum, despite not having to, being management and all, volunteered to help out on the wards she manages in the care home she works at. Her wards, being part of the care industry, are normally wildly understaffed as it is, let alone over the holidays. Even if she had intended on celebrating a family Christmas, she would have at least popped in for a few hours to help out - as she did two years ago, when I did go home for Christmas (if she were Catholic surely she'd have been sainted by now). Similarly, my stepfather will be working.

My Dad's been scheduled to work Christmas day, and his plans for Boxing day are similar to mine, as he told me yesterday. Being a lover of seafood, he'll make himself a lovely seafood platter and snack on that all day as he'll enjoy Boxing day on his own.
"Ilse," he said, "enjoy having time to yourself over the holidays as long as you can - this will be the first holiday in forty years I'll have to myself. Soon enough you'll have to spend Christmas day here, Boxing day there, then New Year's elsewhere."

My brother's come home from Alicante to celebrate Christmas,  but he'll be spending it mostly with his girlfriend and her parents, so he'll be busy too.

In short, I don't have any strong reason to visit either of my parents over Christmas.

Last year, when I still lived in Leicester, during the seven-months winter, I fell ill just before Christmas, and then I'd also decided not to visit my parents for the holidays. Instead, I spent Christmas in bed with a bottle of wine and some delicious snacks, and went out into the snow for a long walk. I enjoyed that, and I intend to do the same this year - sans snow as they're not predicting any for the holidays, and perhaps also sans bed as I haven't got the flu this year, just a cold. I spent last year's New Year's sleeping off the flu; this year I might go into Leeds for a bit of a party.

It's wholly selfish, but there is no better way to celebrate the holidays than doing so completely on your own terms. Where you get to decide what wine to drink (none of that "oh yes but I've just opened a bottle of Merlot, I know you normally drink white but certainly you'll have a glass of red instead?"), what food to eat (no people around to pull faces at the Brussels sprouts because I actually like them, and will have them for Christmas. Along with delicious dishes of mushrooms in puff pastry and roasted cherry tomatoes with balsamic vinegar), what to watch on television (no "do you have to watch Doctor Who? You're the only one who likes it anyway, can't we watch something everyone enjoys?" - and also no talking during the show!) and what to do when.

It's hardly something to feel bad or sad over - I love my family and they love me, and if we'd wanted each other's company we could've done so. It's just that things like this don't have to be celebrated precisely over Christmas - last year instead I visited them in late January and we exchanged some gifts and had a nice get-together then. Christmas is in that regard merely a calendar date - doing stuff with your family should be possible any day of the year.

Plus, I've got the rest of my life to get stressed over celebrating the holidays with other people ;)

*Home to me is Leeds, but as long as I study people will probably assume that home is Hellevoetsluis / Oostvoorne. I'm not sure why.

Vegetarian Split Pea Soup (Vegetarische Snert / Erwtensoep)

Today I found myself craving split pea soup, as I usually do around late November.

Last year, I posted a recipe for a meaty split pea soup, but, having decided to try and avoid eating meat, I needed to convert this to a vegetarian recipe.

This served another purpose: if I can somehow convert all my old family recipes to vegetarian recipes, I'll void all my excuses for not going vegetarian.

Also, the myths I posted last year are myths for a reason. Though the enamel soup pot thing is still true - I had my favourite fantastic one this year and I do taste a difference, if only psychologically.

Thus far, my vegetarian split pea soup seems to be turning out quite well - actually, I may like it better than my meaty soup - so here's the recipe. Also, a great thing about this is that it feeds loads of people or feeds a small amount of people for a long while, and shouldn't cost more than about 7 pounds in total, so it's also the ultimate budget food.

Ilse's Recipe for Vegetarian Split Pea Soup

Ingredients:
5l water
1kg dried split peas
2 leeks
1 big onion
half a box of white mushrooms*
3/4 of big celeriac (all of it if you're using a small one)
1 table spoon of mustard
half a stick of salted butter
six vegetarian stock cubes
salt and pepper
carrots

In a 5-litre soup pot, melt half the butter. Fry the sliced mushrooms; dice the onion and fry this too; slice the leeks and fry this (clean the leek beforehand!). Cube the celeriac (as finely as possible) and fry. Fry everything until nice and brown. Add the mustard and two stock cubes and the rest of the butter - leave until butter has melted. Add 1l of water. Bring to a boil. Add half the split peas. Stir. Add 1l of water. Bring to a boil. Stir. Add the rest of the split peas. Add 2l of water. Add the rest of the stock cubes. Add 1l of water. Bring to a boil. Stir occassionally. Keep tasting and add salt to taste.
When almost done (that is, when the split peas have dissolved), add sliced carrots to taste (not too many, they sweeten the soup). Add salt and pepper to taste.

Ideally, make it cool down quickly and leave outside (if [near] freezing) or in the fridge overnight, then freeze or serve.

*I find it interesting that apparently I find it less insulting to my family recipe to use mushrooms to add a bit of an earthy, nutty flavour to the soup than I find it to use potatoes to thicken it. Perhaps because adding potatoes points to bad technique and using mushrooms enhances flavours. I don't know. Potatoes in split pea soup remain evil. 

The Doctor Who 50th

NOTE: HERE BE SPOILERS FOR THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY EPISODE. IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN IT, DO NOT SCROLL DOWN BEYOND THE PHOTOS OF THE FOUR CLASSIC DOCTORS.

If you have talked to me at all in the last few weeks/months, it will not have escaped your attention that I had the incredible fortune to be allowed to attend the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Celebration at the ExCeL in London last weekend.

I've written before about how I am fairly susceptible to fandoms, but this was my first ever full fandom event. And I got to experience it with my Whovian friend Lisa. So that was all really cool.

Being a big fan of dressing up - if you manage to pull up late 1990s files for the Oostvoorne local library, you'll see that my most-borrowed book was one that had instructions on Halloween outfits, my favourite of those being a vampire cape; also, on the days where I don't feel like "ah, sod it, I'll wear something comfortable" I dress up like the persona I want to be for that day - I of course went all out on creating a costume.

My initial plans - back in June - were wildly ambitious. I would sew a full skirt that consisted of layers of leather (or fake leather, more likely), candy striped cotton, burgundy velvet and some black-and-grey chequered fabric. I would wear a white blouse and a red-and-white chequered corset or waistcoat. This would be combined with my tweed jacket, a burgundy tie, brown-and-white brogues, and a recorder.

Oh, and I would devote time to learning how to knit and then I would simply knit a 20-foot orange/purple/burgundy scarf (because I like Four's second scarf so much better).

Ironically, time got in the way of me creating this - in my mind still rather wonderful - Renegade Time Lord (The Oncoming Storm, the Valeyard, and all that) costume. All Doctors At Once.

Also I didn't like how it made me ignore so much of my favourite Doctor, the Second Doctor, who was, of course, played by Patrick Troughton whom I've since watched in The Six Wives of Henry VIII and The Omen and a bunch of interview on YouTube and have come to appreciate as an actor beyond Doctor Who as well.

This is how my costume eventually turned out:

I would really like to say that there is something political about me making it into a female version with the skirt (and the fact that - really, my body shape will always reveal my biological sex), but the truth is that I simply found this skirt in a charity shop, squealed in delight and appropriated it. I prefer wearing skirts instead of trousers anyway. 

Of course, this is still political in the sense that I apparently feel that in any case the gender identity of a fictional character is more than capable of being fluid. A female Second Doctor is still the Second Doctor, in the end. 

But let's leave the gender politics for what they are, for this moment at least. They are really very important, but not central to this blog.

I loved dressing up like this. We saw loads of fezzes and full Eleventh Doctors (including that fabulous plum coat), loads of Fours and Tens, but I saw only really a handful of Second Doctors, which left me in the curious position of getting to scope out the "competition" and admiring their efforts at the same time. My coat wasn't right, which left me to admire this one guy who had managed to somehow find a proper morning coat that was slightly too big (I know where to get them - eBay - but that doesn't reduce the awesomeness of him having the right coat).

The Fourth Doctor scarves - so, so, so many - were all brilliant. I complimented a guy on his scarf and immediately afterwards I wondered whether "nice scarf!" is Whovian flirting. There was this woman in a fantastic TARDIS dress. Children in Silurian and Weeping Angel costumes - and so well-behaved! 

And everyone was nice. Like, so nice. Lisa and I took a photo with this random couple we met whilst queuing for the TARDIS console photo - no idea who they are, but we had a really nice conversation to pass the time. Whilst I waited for a Classic Lounge panel, this American woman talked to me about her convention experiences overseas, and I just felt in awe at her brilliant stories. 

We started our morning at the Stratford tube station, noticing children on the platform waving sonic screwdrivers around and grown men in 20-foot scarves and women in Dalek dresses. Good start. 

We got off the tube at the ExCeL, spotting Canary Wharf in the distance and me accidentally dropping my bag and exclaiming "oh bugger!" (if I'd been in character, it should've been "oh my word" or "oh crumbs" instead), which I really hope didn't offend the parents of the child standing near me. 

We had to queue for our first panel, the SFX Panel, and no one complained about the queue other than "I wish they'd open the gate" and "ah, they've opened the gate" when they let us in. The SFX show was fantastic, with a 'break-away' Dalek being blown up (apparently, this Dalek has been used multiple times. It breaks away into nicely big chunks of Dalek armour and can easily be put together again. So it's basically a humpty-Dalekty) and a Cyberman being shot (with squibs! An adorable little boy dressed like Eleven, hardly taller than the great massive gun Rose used in The Stolen Earth, got to use exactly that gun to shoot at the Cyberman, while a woman in a TARDIS dress got to play the companion and fire the squib trigger). There was fire and lasers and fake snow and PHWOAR SO MUCH AWESOME.

Then Lisa and I both went on our separate adventure, she to take a picture with Jenna Coleman, I to attend the Classic Panel with William Russell and Carole Ann Ford. 

We met up again afterwards to take the TARDIS Console picture and also snuck a photo of the TARDIS console itself.

Time passes so quickly, and at 1pm it was time to queue for the next show, the Regeneration Panel, which I had been most looking forward to, as it did not only contain the multicoloured Sixth Doctor, Colin Baker;

The rhotic Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy (sans spoons, unfortunately);

The beige Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison;

But also, the legendary Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker. 

These four absolute LEGENDS got to talk at the audience for a good while about having been the Doctor, and the fandom now, and the 50th, and everything. 

This was over far too quickly, but was followed by another big Panel, the Eleventh Hour, which had Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Steven Moffat (whom we disliked but came to like through this Panel) and the producer, Marcus Wilson. 

This Panel made me really sad to see Matt leaving by Christmas, but then on the other hand we'll get Peter Capaldi, who I'm sure will blow us all away, judging by his *SPOILERS FROM HERE ON* appearance in the 50th. 

Again, time for independent adventures: I sent Lisa off to another Classic Lounge panel and then I scurried off to queue to get William Russell to sign my copy of this month's Doctor Who Magazine.

All the while I stood in that queue, I had cool things to say in my head. Like, "William, you're so cool! Ian is my favourite companion!" and all that. But then I actually stood in front of him and my mind blanked and, in a move of self-protection, my mouth didn't want to speak either - which kept me from making a drawn-out 'EEEPP' sound. 

So he signed my magazine

And then I took a picture with him

And he seems to be such a sweet man, he did seem so nice. I felt awful for not being able to say anything beyond "could you please sign my magazine and do you mind if this person here takes a picture?" but at least I didn't say anything embarrassing, which is perhaps something I should be sort of grateful for. 

I then hurried off to follow Lisa in  her adventure, which was to secure seats in the Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling Classic Lounge panel. This was brilliantly hilarious, with them cracking so many jokes and just generally seeming to have lots of fun. 

We ended our ExCeL experience by attending a screening of Caves of Androzani pt 4 and then having a look about the display area where they had loads of stuff from the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff.

Like the Second Doctor costume.

But, as Time will do, we had to catch the tube to Greenwich to go to the O2 to watch the Day of the Doctor, which blew us away.

No, but seriously. 

In 3D.

Especially the appearance of Tom Baker at the end (we hoped for jelly babies but were sadly deprived of this) made an impact, having seen him just hours before. 

I personally am extremely happy that they're bringing back Gallifrey and the Time Lords. The Classic Series episodes where the Doctor visits Gallifrey are among my favourites (including the last episode of The War Games), especially the one where the Fourth Doctor basically waltzes in all arrogantly, demanding to take up his post as Lord President and it all turns out to have been a defence strategy (The Invasion of Time). There is something magical about this highly intellectual society living in what basically amounts to fear of the outside universe (I see parallels with academia). 

Of course, the whole episode in itself feels a bit Deus Ex Machina, in the sense that suddenly, in one episode, the whole New Series is reset and the Doctor didn't kill all his people, he just thinks he did. But it was cleverly done, I think, and there were enough nods to the past to shut up my inner critic and just enjoy the ride. 

And perhaps I should just watch it again.

On the way home we stopped by Burger King, which isn't in itself significant other than the fact that it led me to remark later that it had been "a brilliant day of Doctor Who and Burger King!" which had Lisa in a fit. 

There were comments on facebook about a Sherlock teaser so once we were back at the hotel we fired up my computer to watch the teaser (and the teaser for the Christmas episode), then watch The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, which Lisa termed (I'm paraphrasing here), the real 50th Anniversary Celebratory show. 

It was hilarious indeed, especially as our internet connection was, for lack of a better word, crap, and froze every minute or so, leaving us time to fully appreciate and laugh at each joke before we saw / missed the next one. 

It also led to some minor facebook fangirling over Peter Davison (there are too many funny Tristan Farnon gifs on Tumblr) and Sylvester McCoy. 

In short, I had a fantastic birthday weekend. 

And let me now close by quoting and paraphrasing the First Doctor:

"Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.
Goodbye, readers.

Goodbye, my dears."

100th: Why Am I So Lucky?

This is my 100th post. And I have, again, changed the title of this blog - it has gone from Leicester Adventures to Committing Criminology to now, Committing Criminology & Loving Language because I am, indeed, loving Language but still committing Criminology every so often.

The tag line has changed too, and is now "A Criminologist doing an English Language PhD in Leeds" - which is basically what I'm doing, of course.

And I feel so lucky. How did I end up doing this? I can't wrap my head around it. I doubt it's a manifestation of the dreaded 'Impostor Syndrome' - because I don't feel like I'm not up to the job - but it's a good question nonetheless.

Yesterday, I attended a series of presentations the School of English uses to determine who should get a job with them/us (I feel uncomfortable still saying "us" at this point). This was fascinating - being able to see what everyone has done that qualifies them to get invited for such an interview. In the first place, one needs a good number of good publications. This makes sense, because a good researcher does, naturally, good research. Skills are essential too. But the main qualification that I felt was most important was coming across as a friendly person, capable of explaining stuff to others. And they were all really good at that. One of the presenters had a massive CV, with a brilliant and straightforward educational background and lots and lots of languages. Another had an intense list of publications and did a brilliant presentation too. Yet another had a fabulous list of industry-related jobs and qualifications. A fourth had precisely that pedagogical philosophy that I have come to appreciate as a student. The panel must've had a tough time deciding to whom to give the job.

Oh, and they were all women, which pleased me too. I'm not sure if this was reverse gender discrimination - if they had been all men, I do think I would have felt that way - but given their incredible qualifications, I do very well believe that gender had little to do with it.

We all had a Uni-provided lunch in the Douglas Jefferson room (which is gorgeous with dark wood panelling) and I had some chats with some of them - a chat about MOOCs, which was entirely enlightening and made me realise that I should look into some of them, and that MOOCs are far from the end of academia but instead enhance the experience. Distance Learning didn't kill the Universities, so why should MOOCs? I also had a chat with the author of a book I read, and it turns out she's a lovely person in real life - they were all lovely people, really - and I suddenly felt better about having made that slip when telling a prison guard at HMP Grendon that I'd found my visit brilliant, because her research is also related to human suffering and she used the word 'fun' to describe the process.

But it is fun. Human suffering is evil and wrong and everything, but the research process is so much fun. I can't believe I get to do it.

Everything's going so well, I feel like I'm waiting for something to go massively wrong because somehow I do believe there's only a finite amount of luck a person can have in a given time and surely I've used all of mine up by now?

I just keep on reading, and I love doing it. I've got a job test lined up with the City Council. And - as I keep on bragging about - I get to go to the Doctor Who thing in three weeks, and they published the Saturday guest list yesterday and IT. IS. AMAZING.

Seriously, things had better start going wrong or I'm going to start feeling paranoid.

Chicken Sateh / Kipsaté / Sate Ayam

I had chicken satay at a Thai restaurant the other day - I was quite happy to see that on the menu, it's perhaps my favourite chicken dish. But Thai chicken satay is not like the dish I've grown up on, which is the Indonesian version (well, one of the islands' version, but I'm too ignorant of Indonesia to know exactly which. Probably Java).

As luck would have it, I have a brilliant "Indisch" (Dutch-Indonesian fusion cuisine) cookery book, plus our family recipe for saté sauce. So I'll post it here for other people to make use of.

In the interest of vegetarianism (I'm currently contemplating actually making the move from a little meat to non-meat diet), I must post here that this dish also works well with tofu and chicken substitutes.

It can also be made with other meats, such as pork (babi), goat (kambing), shrimp (udang), and, for those so inclined (perhaps fewer Brits than Continental Europeans, who are far less difficult about horse meat), horse (kuda). Those are slightly different recipes though, and I restrict this recipe to chicken (ayam) / tofu / substitute only.

The Indische chicken sateh dish consists of two elements; the chicken and the sauce.

Chicken:
All you need to do for this is to cut chicken breast into cubes and stick it in a marinade to soak overnight.

Here's the marinade for 500 grams of chicken.

3 tablespoons of ketjap manis / dark soy sauce (if you can get it, ketjap manis. If not, dark soy sauce is a good enough substitute. The differences, though they are different, are fairly minor).
3 tablespoons of lemon juice.
2 tablespoons of peanut oil / vegetable oil (again, peanut oil is preferable, but vegetable oil works well enough).
1 teaspoon of pepper
salt to taste (remember soy sauce is already fairly salty)

So soak the chicken overnight in the fridge, then either shallow-fry the cubes or stick them on a skewer (wet the skewers if you're using wooden ones!), then on a grill.

Sauce:
Okay, so this is the family recipe for the simple version. The difficult version involves crushing peanuts to a powder and all that sort of nonsense. So this works well enough.

Get a small jar (300 grams) of smooth peanut butter. Not chunky. Smooth. It needs to be relatively oily too, so if you've got a 'dry' peanut butter, you need to add some peanut / vegetable oil to the recipe. You'll want to use half this jar.

Chop chillies, or use chilli paste - preferably sambal ulek/oelek, but that's so hard to get. Chillies and chilli paste work well too. Mix this with a pinch of ground ginger and a pinch of ground coriander.

Fry a diced and cubed onion with two chopped cloves of garlic (or more, if you like garlic). Add the spice mix. Then add the peanut butter and add milk and water, until everything has dissolved and the sauce has a sauce-like consistency. Add a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of ketjap manis / dark soy sauce, two tablespoons of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and a 1 cm^3 cube of creamed coconut. Tweak the amounts of milk, peanut butter, chillies and spices until it is just the way you like it.

Serve over the chicken cubes, or with chips, or over nasi goreng or other rice dishes, or whatever you like because you'll want to stick this peanut sauce on just about everything. 

And that's it. Bon appétit.

On the Benefits of an Interdisciplinary Education

Whenever UC Roosevelt explained the concept of 'liberal arts and sciences' to (prospective) students and their parents, some people often drew on the medieval and Renaissance concepts of the 'trivium' - grammar, logic and rhetoric - and the 'quadrivium' - arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy - which together are supposed to make up a full education.
Naturally, today's demands have changed education - especially music and astronomy are often left out of general education, although some schools may offer music as an elective art class and some schools may touch briefly on astronomy in science classes. Nevertheless, the point remains that a full education should entail the mastery of several subjects rather than just one.

This concept is not wholly foreign to Universities - just consider the recent founding of a number of liberal arts colleges in the Netherlands (UC Utrecht - 1998, UC Maastrict - 2002, Roosevelt Academy/UC Roosevelt - 2004, Amsterdam UC - 2008, Leiden UC The Hague - 2010, Erasmus UC - 2013).

For a very long time, people were considered to have been educated up to a sufficient level if they could read, write and pay their bills.
People were considered well-educated if they had a profound theoretical knowledge of a certain topic. But in today's world, where all information known to humankind is a screen-swipe at a rainy bus stop away, even if this is generally used to look at videos of Star Wars-sourced lyrics set against a capella renditions of John Williams soundtracks (it never gets old), this just isn't enough. People need to go back to the idea that a good education contains a bit of everything - the current day-reading&writing&maths.

UCR puts it that '[t]he Liberal Arts and Sciences educational concept is based upon the idea that today’s most complex problems can no longer be solved with a mono-disciplinary approach.' (http://www.ucr.nl/about-ucr/Pages/Liberal-Arts-and-Sciences.aspx), EUC says that '[t]o be successful in today’s evolving world, one must be literate in a host of arenas.' (http://www.eur.nl/euc/liberal_arts_sciences/introduction_las/), while AUC states it best when it writes that  '[t]oday's society is in a constant state of flux, and our future leaders need to be flexible, creative thinkers, able to cope with the complexity of the issues facing the world. A liberal arts and sciences education is an excellent foundation in this context. In addition to factual knowledge, a liberal arts and sciences education prepares you to become a multilingual, informed and engaged global citizen, with well-developed intercultural competences, able to read intelligently, think critically and write effectively on the processes shaping our world.' (http://www.auc.nl/about-auc/about-liberal-arts--sciences/liberal-arts-sciences.html).

I do, however, recognise that changing education for the best takes a very long time (changing it for the worse, however, is much easier - but building always is more effort than destroying); it's already been 15 years since UCU was founded and only now the UC-movement has gained enough momentum to be recognised by people outside HE. So to help this process, let me list some advantages we interdisciplinarians have over those monodisciplinarians.

1. If we are in Arts, we can still do maths / if we are in Science, we can still deconstruct pop culture.
There are, of course, many other things we are also capable of, depending on the modules we took, but the fact that we will have had to pass modules in fields only tenuously related to our major (if that) means that we have a good theoretical knowledge of our major (that's what it's our major for) but also that we haven't been allowed to give up on basic capabilities such as doing maths and analysing poetry. I'm not saying a Literature major should be able to do calculus at the level of an astrophysicist, or the astrophysicist to understand all the subtleties of 'he was withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage' (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 20), but I am nevertheless saying that interdisciplinarians can do more than just their major. We are inherently mixed methods rather than either quant or qual - we grasp SPSS as much as we grasp doing an ethnography.

2. We learn / study more flexibly.
This is related to the point above and naturally differs per person, but the fact that we have been forced to study different things means that we will have had to develop ways to deal with different topics, meaning that we are likely to be familiar with a whole range of study methods. This, in turn, will quite likely have prepared us to deal with having to learn new things later in life. We may have majored in one field, but our study skills make it easy for us to pick up knowledge in other fields too.

3. We can keep up an intelligent conversation.
This is not to say that monodisciplinarians can't - of course they can - but we are perhaps more comfortable than they are in doing so. We in Arts can still discuss time travel with a Science-friend, who is equally capable of keeping up a conversation on misogynist ideology in mainstream media (without saying profoundly stupid things). 

4. We look at things in different ways.
A philosopher with modules in economics, a mathematician with modules in sociology - it works. Instead of continuing on the well-worn paths, we are able to apply concepts from other fields and translate our own ideas into other fields, thus finding ways of thinking outside the box, of approaching matters from different angles. This may not necessarily make us more creative, but it does make us less derivative.
Crossing fields is incredibly daunting, but being able to do so will keep not just Academia fresh and flexible, but industry too.

5. We don't have to give up interests.
While the first four make us good employees/entrepreneurs, this one is perhaps more to our own benefit. Not having to give up your other interests can change your life. I shall take myself as case in point: when I was 17, I really wanted to study Law. I was going to study Law, too, at Tilburg University. Had I gone on to study law, I would now be starting my internship at a law firm, probably having specialised in Family Law and intending to be a divorce lawyer, although I find Criminal Law much more interesting - Family Law is the safer option. But instead I got to combine Law with Economics and a bit of Politics, as well as Media Studies, Rhetoric and Stylistics, and I got to attend a book club and a literature and linguistics discussion group - so now I'm doing a PhD in English looking at UK news media (re)presentation of corporate fraud instead of learning how to tell people what's in it for them if they decide to get divorced. I dare say I am much happier than I would have been in the alternative scenario, if only because I get to do everything I find interesting, instead of just some little bit of it.

So, to summarise; we interdisciplinarians are flexible, hard-working, fast-learning, creative, intelligent and, importantly, happy people. There may be a fallacy here - did our interdisciplinary education make us so, or did we so start out so and chose an interdisciplinary education because of it? It is probably a bit of both, but fact remains that an interdisciplinary education is something to be supportive of.

Of course, interdisciplinarity does have its downsides. It is incredibly hard work - UCR used to advise that the average week in the semester entailed 56 hours of course-related work. I sometimes joke that my love for my alma mater is the result of Stockholm Syndrome. In order for it to be effective, class sizes should be limited - this could go both ways, as it would improve employment for academics but may be quite expensive if ill-organised. And it is difficult to explain what exactly you're doing - which is fine if you're just talking to your gran at a birthday, but is perhaps a little more difficult when you're looking for a job and have to say "yeah, uhm, look, I did major in Science but since I took modules on Physics and Engineering and IT and Mathematics it's basically equivalent to having studied Computer Science", or even worse, when you're a politician trying to make a point that Higher Education funding should not be further cut (which would get you my vote) and have to say "yes, look, I know it is not incredibly clear what our students are being trained for but I can assure you that they will be incredibly capable at whatever they end up doing" - saying you're training n lawyers, p surgeons and q historians (or, even more political, that you're training x STEM-field students, who are obviously a worthwhile investment because of the clear-cut monetary value of STEM-research - I have briefly covered this before, I promise to expand on it some other time) is much more likely to earn you the approval of other politicians. Perhaps monodisciplinarians with only one interest are happier being monodisciplinary.

And sometimes being interdisciplinary makes us a bit arrogant because it makes us think we know it all.

But it's worth it. Because ask yourself - would you rather have a GP who is really good at her job, or a GP who is really good at her job who also understands what she is doing when she votes during elections? A computer engineer who is really good at fixing your computer but also understands when the media are trying to manipulate him? An investment banker who is brilliant at handling your portfolio or one who is brilliant at handling your portfolio and also understands ethics?

Living in Leeds and Starting the Research

When I came home from Uni yesterday, I was feeling particularly giddy; things are going quite well, and I am absolutely enjoying it.

You see, this week is the week that I officially started, and it's my fourth week of living in Leeds, so I'm more or less settling into a routine - and it's a routine that feels just right.

I really, really like Leeds. Leeds is technically a city and so I shouldn't like it - I don't like cities - but it doesn't feel big to me at all. It feels right. I can take a train from Headingley station (which, incidentally, I noticed was used in the pilot episode of DCI Banks, which I watched on ITV Player yesterday evening) and be in the city centre in 10 minutes. And there I find all the shops I could want or need - vintage and retro shops, fabric shops, shoe shops, bookshops, everything. I love the architecture - very redbrick Industrial Revolution urbanisation thing, there. I can cycle to the centre too and be there in 30 minutes.

Cycling to the Uni takes 12 minutes (15 when it's raining, as it is today), on a reasonably flat road (only one significant incline and even that one is not very steep) with fairly wide bicycle lanes. The Uni itself - or, well, the bits where I have to go, really - is wonderful. The School of English, on Cavendish Road - I'm typing this from its second floor computer cluster - has beautiful period features. There's a coffee shop nearby that does decent black coffee. It's only a bit further to the Parkinson Building (the one with the white tower that you see when you type 'University of Leeds' in Google Images), where the Brotherton Library is which has so.many.books and a wonderfully art deco interior. There's a bicycle repair shop on campus (yes, really) and there's lectures in a fascinatingly ugly but complex building (the Roger Stevens) which has M.C. Escher-esque staircases.

And I like Headingley. I like the shops that are only half a mile from my house and I like my house and my housemates (except when they wake me up at 5am). I like how the bus from Headingley to the Uni only costs a pound.

So now that I have drawn the background - the landscape, if you will - I shall tell you what a first week of a PhD at the School of English of the University of Leeds is like.

I met my fellow PhD students last Thursday during the Induction. The Induction more or less precisely serves this purpose; meet your - coursemates? colleagues? - and the Department/School. Naturally, there was a bunch of practical information too - Leeds PhDs are provisional for their first year and have to be 'upgraded' (well, technically it's 'transferred', but 'upgraded' sounds so wonderfully scifi) to PhD, to MPhil if the work is not up to PhD standard, or be asked to try again in three months or simply withdraw. So, technically, we are all Provisional PhD candidates until we are upgraded.

This morning ended with some drinks, and then an informal campus tour which was cut short by everyone deciding to have pints at the SU.

On Monday, the real work started. I audited a seminar and two lectures - yes, that is also possible at Leeds, if you can work it out schedule-wise and with your supervisor and the module coordinator - and attended another School reception. The seminar was my supervisor's undergraduate Stylistics seminar, which I basically audit because though I already took Stylistics in my undergraduate at UCR, new angles are always useful. I will not attend all, though. One of the lectures was for the Power of Language module, which is fascinatingly fascinating. I suppose I will draw most of my inspiration from this module.

Tuesday was a day for the Uni's 'Starting your Research Degree'-workshop, which, like most one-day workshops I have attended so far, involved post-its. I did, however, get some useful information out of it - mainly practical, though it did inspire me to go home and do a mindmap for my research. The mindmap ended up quite elaborate. I also audited a Forensic Linguistics seminar, which again I found fascinating.

Today, then, is finally a day for starting the work. And it's difficult. I don't know where to start. I'm supposed to have a formal meeting with my supervisor next week, but I want to have an idea of what I'm doing before I go there. I decided, eventually, to go philosophical; drag my more philosophically-inclined books to Uni, and work from there. My main aim is to find a politico-philosophical justification of my research interest, as my research is highly dependent on political context and I feel I need a solid grounding there.
As I often do, I reached for Lon Fuller's assertion that communication is the basic necessity for human survival and worked from there. I am currently working on justifying my position that establishing morality and (de)criminalising types of behaviour is dependent not just on legislation but also on public discourse (such as the media), which explains why it is important to understand the mechanisms of public discourse - and looking at media representation of corporate fraud as linked to the global economic crisis is one way of doing so. Of course, this position is far from controversial - of course people's opinions are changed based on what they hear and read and with and to whom they talk. But precisely because this 'of course' feels so much like common sense, I need to find out how and why this is so.

This may not end up in the final thesis. Heck, it is week 1, it will most likely not end up in my thesis. Will I end up including Cesare Beccaria's idea that judges get to judge because of a direct or indirect agreement of those subject to the law? Probably not. But it's good to look into it regardless.

I know I'm not studying anything that will tangibly help humanity. I am not curing HIV or Cancer, I am not building jetpacks or lightsabers or hoverboards, I am not figuring out how to travel to whatever planet is most like Gallifrey and I am not developing a truth serum. I am an idealist, and as such I want to understand the language of justice, and justice through language. 

Flammkuchen

Sorry that it's been so long. Anyway.

My 100th post is coming up, so it's time for an overhaul - that's why from now on you'll find my blog under a different url, committingcriminology.blogspot.com - this is also because it's no longer Leicester Uni Adventures as I'm no longer a student at Leicester. Expect further changes in the next couple of weeks.

I now live in Leeds, or in Headingley to be exact, in a house with five other students - third years, fascinating from an anthropological point of view - and have not been up to much lately other than attend Leeds Uni's Crime Fiction conference, and taking the train to Manchester to see Kristy, who's moved to Oxford this week (somehow Manchester ended up the easiest place for us to meet, long story). I like Headingley, it's a nice place, half a mile from shops (ten minute walk, which is great because I've had something like Fresher's Flu the last few days and I'm quite capable of starving myself if I don't feel like going to the shops - half a mile is just the right distance for me to not have an excuse to go out) and with a great public transport connection to Leeds city centre (and the Uni, of course). My housemates seem friendly enough, so that's cool too.

It's been a bit sunny too, yesterday and today, and Kristy gave me a lovely photo book of our trip this summer, so all in all I was reminded of Heidelberg - and with memories of Heidelberg come memories of Flammkuchen. It's not a difficult thing to make, so I decided to give it a shot today. The traditional version first, I'll make the veggie one next weekend (I do think I prefer the veggie version, to be honest - the traditional one is a little heavy. You'll see why). As coincidence has it, today the Dutch newspaper I regularly read online has a fairly big thing on the German elections. I suppose it's a bit of a German day today then.

You'll need the following equipment:
A measuring cup
Baking paper
Baking tray

Optional:
Mixing bowl
Mixer
Rolling pin

Ingredients:

Dough:
200 grams (7 ounces) plain four
110 millilitres water (tap water is fine)
1 teaspoon salt
1.5 teaspoon olive oil

Traditional toppings:
200 grams crème fraiche (Sainsbury's has some decent ones, also 50% less fat ones but I was being unhealthy with it anyway so went for the full-fat one)
100 grams diced bacon (I diced two rashers of thick-cut smoked back bacon, but it depends on your own tastes. I suppose smoked bacon is better than unsmoked in this case though, despite being bacon even smoked has enough difficulty to hold its own in this dish)
Half a diced onion (or however much you want - I like onion, but don't need it to overwhelm me. Also these are big, big onions I'm using. Just make sure it properly covers your dough)

Vegetarian toppings:
200 grams crème fraiche
Cherry tomatoes
Rocket
Pesto
Onion optional (I don't recommend it, this combination has more delicate flavours than the above sturdy one, but to each his or her own)
Pine nuts (they make everything better)

Preheat the oven to 230 - 250 Celsius (depending on how long you want it to take and whether you mind checking up every minute if you do it really hot)

So, you start by making a dough - in a mixing bowl with a mixer, or on the counter top with your hands if you like it messy. Hands and surface must be clean. You simply slowly (a bit at a time) add water to the flour, which makes for a dense and sticky ball of dough. Add the salt and oil, which makes it extremely sticky and a bit stringy too. Don't get dough on your shirt, and if you do, keep your shirt on until you're done because you don't want to make more than one dirty. If you're making a messy dough (like I did), you'd be better off wearing an apron.

Stretch the dough on the paper on the baking tray - with your fingers if you don't have a rolling pin (or perhaps with your fingers even if you do, because this is really sticky dough and will most likely stick to the pin rather than your paper). Get it nice and thin without any holes.

Spread the crème fraiche on the dough. You'll get a fairly thick layer, but that's how it's supposed to be. Sprinkle on the onions and bacon, or your other toppings (you can stick your bacon and onions in a frying pan first for a bit if you so prefer). It's supposed to look a bit like this:

Stick the tray in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes (do check often because it's fairly easy to cook this thing to a crisp, which is such a waste of a good dish). Once it's done it looks like this:

Eat. Recommended for drinks is a lager (personal recommendation is a nice, clear Heidelberger 1603 but if I did that here I'd probably end up the same as whenever I get my mum to bring me a bottle of a nice French wine I used to drink during holidays in France - it never tastes as good as it did there) or a dry white wine that holds its own. If going for non-alcoholic (I may be living in the UK now but even for me 2 in the afternoon of a regular Sunday is a bit early), keep it simple with a (sparkling) mineral water.

Enjoy it. I know I am :)