It has been a predictably busy few weeks.
In half term, I went to Oxford for the week. It was a very productive trip. First of all, I found a new library that I hadn't been into before; it turns out that it was only opened in October last year, which explains why I had never been in, even though it is under 10 minutes' walk from where I stay and open 9-9. I spent a very long day in there, as well as hitting All Souls and the Rad Cam, my two long-standing favourites; I ate at my favourite breakfast, lunch and dinner spots; I walked in University Parks. My Oxford swansong. I booked an additional night there just before dissertation hand in and also discovered I can get a Bodleian libraries card as an alumna, so the libraries won't be totally off-limits. I'm fairly sure I won't get back there nearly as often as I'd like to, though.
The best thing about going to Oxford was the progress I managed to make on my dissertation. I have gone from it being a low-level panic that I thought of when I woke up every morning, to something that I am now confident I can finish on time in a state that will pass. I got about 7000 words down in the week and I finished my research interviews; since then, I have made some updates to my lit review and started coding my data, as they say. I was all in my head about coding my data for a long old time but then I realised that it just means reading it and picking out some things that look like common themes. Not such a big deal. I had an online meeting with my supervisor this week and it really does feel like the end if in sight; after doing some coding, with the meeting coming up a day earlier than expected, I decided I would sit for an hour and bash out some things I had spotted: that turned into a thousand words and a comment that 'this looks really good, now it's just a question of finding some quotes'. Thrilling.
It is hard to carve out the time now that we are into marking season, but carve it out I will. The date for the end of All The Work is still the end of September, but as that draws closer, it is actually comforting. The period of endless hard work is shortening. Work is being done. It will be fine.
A couple of other half term adventures included a walk around Chew Lake with Saff and Kate, on a blisteringly sunny day, and a visit to an exhibition of lesser-seen Elizabethan portraits during my quick trip to London. Plus the new Banksy statue.
I wedged a lot in. It's what happens when I'm busy with work. On Friday night I got AI to teach me how to code a button on my homescreen that plays the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme tune whenever Mr Z says something about everything going wrong. It took longer than it should have done but I was thrilled with my new knowledge and with my new ability to soundtrack his life. We are into week 4 or 5 of impossibly hurty knee, so he is less thrilled than me.
This past week has been setting up everything for exam marking, which necessitated a couple of 16-hour days, but it is becoming clearer to me that the more hours I can put in ahead of online marking starting (this weekend), the more fruits will appear. The way that the system works now, the bulk of my labour is done. That feels very odd to say that, but it is true. There is plenty more to do, of course, but it is spread out and deadlines are fairly moveable.
I've been re-reading Dracula through all of this, which is easy to pick up for a few pages, mostly because I know it so well. I saw Cynthia Erivo playing Dracula in London during Oxford week. It was a great version where she played 23 different parts, interacting with pre-recorded characters she'd played, and I enjoyed it hugely. The one thing that irritated me was that she had a conversation with Lucy, early on in the play, where Lucy admitted to having been intimate with Arthur. I didn't remember this being in the book and it was so f'ing hackneyed, that awful old trope of 'woman has sex and then gets horribly murdered' that shows up in all the sexually-repressed American films, that I had to come back and reread the book to see if it was in there and I'd forgotten. It's not. There's a letter that Lucy writes to Mina where she says she is looking forward to Arthur being her 'husband and lover', but that's it. Now, I never read Dracula at school: I haven't done a deep dive into the themes and metaphors Stoker apparently put in there (I think he was just looking to write a blockbuster horror book like Mary Shelley but I'm not an English teacher so...) but I think it would be a stretch to suggest that Lucy was promiscuous just because she was proposed to three times in one day and was excited about marrying a man.
As you can see, this topic has been living rent-free in my head for some time now. I just hate the inherent misogyny of the whole 'if you have sex, things will end badly for you' theme. For a modern example, see Taken: friend says she will have sex with Frenchman she met, friend kidnapped and ends up dying after being overdosed with heroin in a squat. Meanwhile, girl who was shocked at the idea of having sex is rescued. Tell me that's not barely-coded messaging to elicit patriarchal society's preferred behaviours among women, but I will not believe you. And I'm very annoyed that the writers of stage Dracula decided to take this quite modern trope and wedge it into a 19th century book. As if we need any more trad wife messaging*.
Anyway.
The blue jumper grows: I'm about 4 inches off finishing the body. I am concerned about the roll of the neck but I will take some steps to fix it when I'm finished and know how much yarn I have left. I shouldn't be spending any time knitting but I am desperate to see how much yarn the body will take and the only way to find that out is by knitting it.
The peonies came out in the garden in spectacular fashion and have now gone over and been replaced by the honeysuckle. The cooler June has enabled outside sitting. I've enjoyed it. Maybe a separate post for the peony pictures because they were so lovely, I took loads.
I've been baking this weekend, ahead of teacher appreciation day. I don't bake so often these days and I don't write about it on here, but I will say that I made a mint version of the lemon curd recipe I discovered over 15 years ago. I think I had in my mind that a lovely mint curd would be like a slightly less cloying version of the centre of a Fry's peppermint cream bar. I couldn't find a recipe I liked, so I halved the OG lemon curd recipe and blended a fair old bunch of mint leaves with the sugar before I made it. This definitely worked, but the result is more toothpaste that peppermint cream. I might try mixing in some icing sugar before I put it in a cake.
* be a trad wife if you want to. I am here for it. Feminism is all about women, and men, choosing what they want. But within that, don't tell other people that it's the better way to be. That's up to them to decide.
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