My Year with Bluestone ... will observe weekends

So while the inspiration for My Year with Bluestone came from the indefatigable Philip Thiel, who blogged every day without fail for each of the six(?) years of his various daily blog projects, I'm working in a different environment, one that has been concerned, almost from its very first post, with the nature of the world of humanities research and the contexts in which it is supported and publicised in Australia.

Over the eight years since then, I've struggled, like most academics, to make sense of our workload, in a context where one's work is never finished. We send essays off; they come back for revisions; and more revisions; and copy-editing (if we're lucky); and proof-reading. Our grants and books go through thousands of iterations. The email in-tray is always full. Our work -- our teaching, supervision, writing, advising, policy-making -- hardly ever reaches moments of final closure.

As I contemplate my return to work on Monday after a few weeks' annual leave (in which I have worked on reducing my email, starting the bluestone blog project and also started reading and thinking about my next essay), I'm thinking that while I may blog on the weekends, as I am doing now, I won't be adding to the bluestone blog archive. Last year I announced I wouldn't be emailing back and forwards in my big research group over the weekends, and restraining the compulsion to blog everyday on the Bluestone is part of the same pattern.

That is, I am trying to order my life a little.  I'm giving myself this year to write the bluestone book, and the blog is already helping immensely in making me realise the things I don't know, and need to think about. Declaring I will write the book this year is a way of giving myself a deadline for it (I will be writing a sample chapter to send to prospective publisher in the next few months), but it's only one of the projects I'm working on this year. And so I am going to pace myself with it, and not kid myself that I can work on all the things, all at once.

Day Surge

A minor operation. A procedure I've had before, in the same hospital, with the same gynaecologist. The worst thing beforehand was fasting after an early breakfast, and missing my 11.00 coffee. I picked Paul up from the airport after two weeks away, we ran a few errands, and then he dropped me at the hospital at 1.30. The Women's hospital is a new building, and I'm in the private ward, Frances Perry House. Everything is clean and calm; and there are no televisions. The nurses introduce themselves by name. I put on my robe and climb into bed under my white cotton blanket. The pale teal curtains are drawn around me. After a while there's a bit of a bustle, a trolley is wheeled in, and it's clear there's a new baby. I don't catch its name but it's named after its maternal grandfather, I hear the father say. I don't hear the mother speaking, but the baby is learning to feed, just practising, the nurses say.

After a while it's quiet again — they have gone back to the ward, I suppose — and Olivia comes to tell me there's a bit of a delay. I'm re-reading Nice Work for a new PhD class starting this week, but after a while I put it aside and sleep. The lights are bright, but it's been easy to slip into the passive role of good patient. I can't email, or hold meetings; I can't write. So I curl up and sleep, for close to an hour, I think — there's no clock — and wake to a gentle touch on my arm. It's Deborah, wearing her scrubs and surgical cap, telling me we'll be going in soonish: there was an emergency caesarean ahead of us. She's the most recent in a long line of wonderful medical practitioners I've met in the last six years: dry and warm (speaking humorally, I see). She is kneeling at my bedside as she wakes me. What a simple thing to do: how little she loses in status by doing so; how much she gains my trust.

I love the feeling of being looked after by this team of competent calm professionals: male receptionist; female nurses; male orderly; female gynaecologist; male anaesthetist.

Graeme comes to take me into surgery, with a new white cotton blanket, which he has warmed up. I meet Andrew the anaesthetist and he and Deborah and I chat about the Melbourne model and the loss of the old Arts/Medicine degree. Another nurse deftly plants sensors on my chest, and before I know it, they have attached me to the drips. I have had almost no experience with hallucinogens in my modest life, and so am curious about the moments before unconsciousness. I keep my eyes open, looking at the white pipes across the ceiling, the lights above me, and hearing Andrew's voice. I think briefly about Michael Jackson. Then, I guess, my eyes roll back, and I'm gone.

I wake. Someone — is it Deborah? — is telling me everything went very well. I think I am back in the ward, but I hear someone telling me they are about to move me back into "day surge". I don't remember the journey, and it takes me a long time to wake up and sip some water. Later on, a cup of tea, some salty biscuits (bliss!) and a sandwich.

Another baby arrives, just with its father: the mother is still in surgery, I think. This baby is called Philip. The father is teacher at a boys' school and tried hard to find a name not shared by any of his students. The baby has a funny little cry, like a chicken... It's not at all disturbing to my calm, to hear the sounds of happy parents. The baby's big sister, five years old, has no idea, apparently, that a baby is arriving today.

I'm home by 7.30 and even manage to sit up for pizza night. Two days later, my legs still feel a bit wobbly, but it's much better than the last time I had a general anaesthetic, when I felt teary and miserable for nearly a week.

This was a diagnostic procedure, just to make 100% sure the observable and measurable after-effect of Tamoxifen on the endometrium isn't malignant. I'm expecting nothing but good news.

Jury service

Write, write, have a little holiday, write, pause to process a thousand emails, write, write, have big ambitious thoughts, have a possibly serious and threatening brush with post-Tamoxifen side-effects, then write some more.

And then, today: jury duty. I've never been called, not once, so was curious, though very scared of getting empanelled in a long trial. In the end, you actually have very little say over what happens. I was in the County Court, a rather nice modern building opposite the old Supreme Court, with 200 others, all under the care of an astonishing jury pool supervisor, who kept us informed, described procedures in crystalline clarity, made us laugh, and took all the uncertainty out of the process. So lovely to see someone loving their job and being great at it.

I chatted to her at one point (my occupation was first listed as teacher of English to non native speakers, and she then changed my "professor of medieval literature" to "university professor) and she had done teaching and librarianship at Melbourne, and had travelled a fair bit too. She told me when she took her husband on his first overseas trip, it was Hadrian's Wall and Stonehenge that really blew him away. There you go, with that medieval stone thing again.

Anyway, the people who had to return from yesterday were being empanelled for a TWELVE WEEK trial. The longest one for us was about three weeks. Were any of us wanting to be excused? As we were waiting, I'd phoned my gynaecologist, and confirmed some minor diagnostic surgery* in three weeks' time, so I felt I could legitimately say I couldn't guarantee to keep that time free.

Then I was called for a shorter, civil trial. Thirty of us lined up to be called for a jury of six. This was after a great deal of elaborate, but also efficient calling and registering of numbers and a lovely old wooden box from which they drew the numbers.

We all lined up and were taken into court. Judge, wearing wig and purple robe; two bewigged male barristers, two unwigged male ones, and two elegantly dressed female associates. The judge explained the case (an OHS one) and read the list of witnesses. We were then asked to excuse ourselves, and a few people did. I bit the bullet and said I was "present." But then one of the self-excusers said she had a holiday booked the same day as my surgery, and she was excused, even though the judge said it was unlikely the case would still be going. But then I changed my "present" to "excuse". I don't want to put off the procedure any longer. We then watched as 12 names were drawn, and the two sides had the change to remove three names (they'd all turned to look at us as their names and occupations were read out), then six were chosen and sworn in, and the rest of us went downstairs.

By then it was lunchtime and so I went out and bought a pair of shoes (I don't normally shop in the city, but it was FABULOUS! so many shops! so many sales! Spanish fabric wedge pumps reduced from $315 to $75!!!). We all turned up again at 2.00, hung around for half an hour and were then let go. I could tell Pauline didn't want to let us go. She was like a great tour guide, or a lecturer, actually. She told me she loves it best when she is managing big groups. She would have been looking forward to tomorrow, when she will have about 400...

Well, I'm glad, now, I don't have to do it, because there is a fair amount of writing to be done. There are three facebook friends all waiting for me to get on with it, so I'm back on to it now.


*seriously, just minor. So far, I have dodged the big bullet that seemed to be heading my way.

That horrible moment when...

You know the drill. You've submitted your thesis to the examiners, or your essay or book has gone through final proof stage when ... you discover a book published ten years ago on exactly your topic that for some reason you never came across and have taken no account of.

Resigned to the worst, I trudge over to the library to find the offending, newly discovered volume, and turned with foreboding to the index. Sure enough, lots of ominous entries for "Garter, Order of the." I turn resignedly to the most substantial looking, but wait: Caroline Shenton can't possibly have written TWO articles on Edward III's collection of leopards in the Tower of London? Hooray, it's a book (Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen), which I read in St Louis in 2005. And yes, it's in my bibliography.

This is not to say I won't yet discover something I should have read. It's inevitable, really. But today, this Friday afternoon, I feel I have definitely dodged a bullet.

Beginnin' to see the light

For too long now I've been struggling. My job, while wonderful in so many ways, is also really hard sometimes. Yes, I get to work on wonderful material; and yes, I get to travel around a bit; and manage my own time. And indeed, I get a great sense of achievement in my work when I finish big projects. I am also the first to admit that my path through the professional and intellectual minefield that is the modern university has been easier and more straightforward than that of many people. I've been wonderfully lucky in my students and colleagues, locally, nationally and internationally. I'm pretty well paid for what I do. I have excellent superannuation and health care in a country which is also providing my son with excellent health care and education through the state system. We are heavily mortgaged, but there are two of us on full salaries and our house, while badly run down and crumbling in places, is spacious and pleasant. We eat well; we are happy as a family; we are close to friends and family; and our lives are full of music, words and images. Even my own trajectory through breast cancer was relatively straightforward: the end of this year will mark the end of my five years' treatment and the point where I will have substantially reduced the risk of recurrence so that it will not be much higher than the risk a woman my age might face of first contracting the disease.

And yet too often these days I wake in the night and toss and turn about the always-unfinished, always imperfect and utterly invasive nature of my work. It goes on and on. It is never finished. It is never perfected. It is never complete. Instead, it feels partial, incomplete, unfinished. I can't control the endless emails; the online forms and processes; the constant requests to assess, grade, quantify and rank that eat into the time and concentration I have available to read and study medieval literature. I feel I have cleared the mental space to write this blog entry only because I've been working so hard to delete and file emails (I have processed over a thousand of them in the last few days in a concerted effort to control them) and have cleared most of the surface of my desk and home.

I try to give myself Saturdays off, so I had a "normal" day today: breakfast with Joel (Paul comes home from Europe on Monday); Italian class; gym workout; leftover pizza for lunch; made chocolate and cherry muffins. We introduced the kittens to my parents who came and sat and drank tea as we watched Wulf and Orlando taking turns to play with the toy mouse (Wulf tired first and climbed up on my father's lap, while Orlando knocked herself out leaping and tossing and chasing the mouse before climbing on Pa's lap to curl up with her brother). I then raked up about eight barrow loads of leaves, and raked the gravel paths before I came in to watch the last scenes of The Ghost Writer (I had fallen asleep on the couch watching it the night before), walked it back down to the video shop, then made mushroom and spinach risotto (secret ingredient? a big spoonful of creme fraiche right at the end) and watched Dr Who while we ate it.

But even a normal day like this feels less like a good balance of work and life and more like a day of respite snatched from the chaos and the lurching from task to task that seem to characterise every day — and the anxious reliving of that chaos that often characterises the hours between 2 and 4 am.

I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong. I'm sure I could be more disciplined (sigh) about being organised and prioritising stuff. I'm also pretty sure this feeling would be one clearly identified symptom of mid-life crisis. I'm pretty sure most folk in Australian universities - and elsewhere - will be feeling many of the same things. Even so, I'm hesitating to write this, as I feel I'm normally so upbeat about my work. And I guess that is also the professional persona I have cultivated. So it feels like something of a betrayal of all that.

And yet. And yet. I'm going to "publish post" in a minute, anyway. This is what I set up my blog for, in any case, to trace these vicissitudes. But can anything be done? Will it always be like this?  For now, I'm going to put the kittens to bed and read a chapter of the book I'm reviewing before I go to sleep.

Finishing

There are many stages to finishing a book. But one of the biggest is when you send off ten files that include Acknowledgements, Bibliography and Table of Contents, as well as deathless Introduction (oh! ghost of Gwen Harwood, who used to use that adjective to mock academic prose, do you choose this moment to visit me now? *shudders*) and seven chapters. As I have just done.

The study is a mess of papers; the computer is a mess of files (will back-up as soon as I post this post); there's an enormous pile of ironing in the basket; and a stack of emails to answer, and tasks to complete.

There'll be another round of tightening-up revisions once the copy-editors have been through the manuscript, and Helen and Anne are still working on the thirty photographs and images and permissions, but for now, I've done all I can.

I feel I've run a marathon. I'm dehydrated. I haven't been to the gym for a week. My shoulders ache and my eyes blur. I crash into bed at nights exhausted and lie waking for three more hours. It's partly the sheer masses of detail that have to be mastered: the checking, the refining, the polishing. The redundant commas to be removed: thanks, Romana! But hardest of all is the relinquishing, the letting go of the project and its infinite possibilities. The last few months have been a slow and painful process of letting go of all the other directions this book could have taken.

I feel I'm not writing this very eloquently. But I am also aware of the irony: finish a book, then immediately write something else!

Sometimes people ask me, "have you finished your work?" It's the nature of the academic life that you have never finished. There is always some ongoing project. I'm going to be late with a book review that's due in ten days.

But once a decade or so, I manage it. I have finished. My work here is done.

You're probably dying to know what the last word is. It's "heart".

Finishing

Sometimes I think the book I am finishing is brilliant. Sometimes I think it's under-researched, under-theorised and badly written.

Sometimes I think I'll have it ready to send off by the 21st of this month, as promised. Sometimes I think I'm just deluding myself.

Nevertheless, it finally now feels I am on a train that won't stop till I get there. There's a closing finality about each long sentence I break into two, each extraneous comma I remove, each query ("follow up", it says) I either resolve or abandon, each time I check whether I have already referred to a book or article so I can use its abbreviated title in the notes (Chicago style, I love you).

On Sunday I decided not to work on it late at night because it then became too hard to sleep. Yesterday I worked on it till midnight and slept all night, dreaming vividly, but sleeping all the same.

Nearly there.

Quick update

In Australia, we finish teaching around the end of October. And that's when it really starts to get busy.

The marking (though I'm not complaining here as I've had a very light teaching load this semester). The meetings. The planning. The exchange approvals (this program has exploded in popularity since I was last in charge of granting subject approvals, and I'm seeing or emailing about three students a day about this). The honours applications: my two weeks on fairy tales in Romancing the Medieval is generating lots of interest for honours thesis topics.

The meetings. Did I say that already?

I'm on two job selection committees: we did video interviews for one, this week, finishing 9.30 pm on Tuesday night. Another big one coming up, for which I want to read some of the candidates' work.

The emails.

Booking various tickets (Marriage of Figaro with Teddy Tahu Rhodes; Rigoletto with Emma Matthews; Ashes cricket with ... well, who knows, by then?).

Planning a little holiday in NZ around the ANZAMEMS conference.

Helping organise our School's Christmas party (with the Blue Manoeuvres).

Reading a re-submitted volume of essays for the Late Medieval and Early Modern Series.

Preparing project pro-formas for the first phases of my work in the Centre of Excellence (I'm already late with this: not a good way to begin, though we don't start till next year).

And finishing my book. I'm feeling more confident about being to wrap it all up as an intellectual project; now it's just a question of finding the time. Sadly, that's what my annual leave will be for, starting Wednesday week...

[Update: and while I wasn't watching, my counter counted its 100,000th visitor since July 2006. Go, little blog!]

Late with essay: here's a tiny installment

Oh dear. I am running along as fast as I can, whizzing past a series of writing deadlines. I'll keep going, but will just pause to paste a couple of paragraphs:

In yet another display case in the same hall in Canberra are three petitions on bark from the Yirrkala people in Arnhem land, presented to the parliament in 1963, and 1968, requesting that their submission protesting the proposed excision of land from the Arnhem Land reserve be heard before the relevant committee. The petitions are typed on paper, with English translation beneath, and pasted onto bark that is decorated with traditional Yirrkala designs, including fish, turtles and lizards. They are accompanied by an appropriate certification from the Clerk, affirming that their form on bark was acceptable to parliamentary bureaucratic requirements: ‘I certify that this Petition is in conformity with the Standing Orders of this House.’ An information card in the case also draws attention to the medieval antecedents of the form of the petition:

The three bark petitions displayed here are vivid examples of the fundamental right, dating back to the thirteenth century, of citizens to petition parliament concerning their grievances.

There’s a lovely and not atypical contradiction here between the anxiety about the  form of the bark petitions that needs to be reassured with the Clerk’s certification; and the affirmation, taking the longer historical view, that these petitions are ‘vivid’ exemplars of a medieval tradition. These differences may reflect changes in attitudes to indigenous culture between the 1960s and the more recent present: they are just as likely to reflect the contradictory relationship between modernity and its medieval inheritance.

I just remembered why I love my job. Now, back to it!

A quick word from Hypatia

Many thanks to all who've contributed suggestions to Hypatia's reading and listening list. She has emailed to say how grateful she is to everyone — "moved and cheered", she says. And she'll keep checking back, so if you think of anything else, please add it in.

She also says she is very happy for you to picture her as Rachel Weisz, though I must admit this film passed me by completely:

Word salads; salad words; salad days

I am now really truly and seriously working on chapter seven. In it are Camilla's tampon; Annie Liebowitz; Virginia Woolf; the little model of St George and the Dragon that replaces the jaguar on the Queen's car when she rides out; a drinks coaster and a packet of chocolates. If only I could get the order right.

But in the meantime, I am driving to Glenroy to pick up a new thermometer for the incubator — and then driving back later that day with my wallet. I'm making a warm salad of zambucca prawns, polenta chips, fresh coriander, and yoghurt cheese. I'm meeting with students and going to meetings, and agreeing to attend lots more. I'm answering emails and paying bills. I'm watching the Australian women's hockey team win gold in Delhi. I'm watching Chilean miners ascend from the earth. I'm starting to think about a lecture I'm giving soon on John Forbes. I'm planning a trip to Perth in a couple of weeks; and wondering how to finish my essay on the Australian parliamentary obsession with Magna Carta before then. Thanks to a facebook friend, Gio Abate, I'm journeying back to the past, listening to Melanie Safka, "Leftover Wine". I'm checking the temperature in the incubator before finally setting the eggs tonight, while improvising a metal tray out of a cake cooling rack because the proper one has gone missing (I'll have to get something bigger in three weeks when the chickens hatch, otherwise they'll fall off the edge of the cake tray: hardly an auspicious beginning to life). I'm tidying up the garden because the designer has entered it into a competition, four years later. I'm experimenting with some new medication. I'm thinking about how to fulfill the annual leave requirements while serving out my term as head.

And I'm waiting for Paul to come home from Sri Lanka (no ordinary research trip, this one), as he's going with some indigenous AFL players to visit indigenous communities in Sri Lanka, a kind of reconciliation program through sport. Oh, and look what I've just found on YouTube: some raw footage of the doco they're making, with a nice soundtrack: keep watching till you see someone — is that Adam Goodes? — pick up the flag at the end of the soccer pitch and make like the didgeridoo with it:



You can't really see Paul here; except sometimes with his camera.

So that was what some of today was like. But it began (and here I'm responding to KG's curiosity after my FB update), with a boxing class at the gym.

Since Sophie, my dear trainer, left the gym a few months ago, I've been working on my own, though have also just started pilates classes. But for two weeks the gym made all its classes free for members, and I signed up for a trial this morning.

I'd done a tiny bit with Sophie, so had a rough idea what to expect. Alex the trainer is pretty tough, though. There were six of us in the group, so after a bit of a warm up, we divided into pairs. I held the pads for another woman for the first 15 minutes, as Alex took us (in his rather heavy French accent) through a sequence of various things. I can't describe them very well, really, but there's lots to remember. Left foot forward; keep both hands up in guard position; and then various crosses and jabs; punching directly into the pad held up before you; or swinging across, almost horizontally into the pad held at right angles; then ducking; then kicking up into the pad held low; then punching down, either quickly or strongly, into the pads the other person holds at thigh height. Then some elaborate sequences of left right, up and down, etc. It took me a long time to work out which bit I was counting, and my partner was very patient. So we'd do a sequence of five movements, with ten, then eight, then six repetitions, etc. Then we swapped; and she held the pads for me. Then we did a mini circuit of 60 second repetitions: skipping rope; jumping backwards and forwards on the rope ladder laid out on the floor; a little push-up assisting machine; steps up and down on a little step; a little wheel you'd roll out and back from a kneeling position; then resting your forearms on a big punching back lying on the ground, and bringing your knees up to kick it. Then another short punching session; then a stretch. I have to say it was a lot of fun. To my surprise (apart from the difficulty of co-ordinating and counting the sequences), I wasn't too slow, or unable to do most of it. There were two men and four women. Some skipped faster; did lower squats; and more full-length push-ups than I did (I'm concentrating on my form, here, to make sure I'm doing them right), but I held my own. And certainly wouldn't have been able to do that 12 months ago.

In keeping with the salad-theme of this post, I have now lost any thread it once had, and so, unusually, I'm not going to edit much. I'm going to bed, instead.

How to mess up a job interview

In a couple of weeks, my School will be holding a workshop for graduate students on academic job interviews. It will involve a mock interview, for which we are currently preparing a kind of script, with a mix of "good" and "bad" responses.  In this country, we are usually pretty hamstrung in the questions we can ask, which are usually supposed to be the same for each candidate.

In a nutshell, the questions would normally be something like this:

·       Why should we hire you? i.e. what’s distinctive about you and why are you a good fit for this job? (code for "how will you fit in with us?")

·       Tell us about your current and future research plans?

·       Tell us about your teaching philosophy – and give an example of how you handle difficult situations.

·       What kind of graduate supervisor will you be? This is especially hard for recent graduates...

·       This job involves a fair amount of administration (i.e. convening a large first-year subject). How will you balance the demands of teaching and research?

·       What kind of courses would you like to teach?

·       Do you have any questions for us?

From your experience, on either side of the interview table, what are the most common pitfalls for job candidates in this situation? What kinds of answers work best? What are the golden rules of academic job interviewing? We have a very talented person who will be the "candidate" in this interview, but it would be great to have some specific examples. Any suggestions and advice are welcome. And then I'll undertake to post an account of the session, with the advice from our expert.

The work experience kid

... has just come home from his first day in the office with a family friend who's a Senior Counsel in the city. Still looking pretty spruce in his skinny black jeans, dark red shirt, v-neck jumper and sharp black tailored jacket, he's collapsed exhausted in front of the Simpsons (well, I presume he's taken the jacket off!). He spent much of the day in the Supreme Court, observing appeals today; and meditating on the balance of incredibly interesting and boring that is the law.  He also had the fun of catching up for lunch with a dear friend who's doing his work experience in the Federal Court.

For his second week, next week, he's working in a fruit and vegetable shop in Brunswick.

Of all the things this boy has done this last year — grown taller than me, cycled in Italy, wandered around selected blocks of Manhattan on his own, performed with his jazz group at various school venues — this business of heading off into the city for work is the one that has most made me reflect on the years that have passed since he used to sit up in his high chair wearing a stripey jumper knitted by Nana and eating toast.

Weird to meditate on the nature of work, today, too. I gave a little talk this morning on a panel about finding academic employment. Don't know what planet the HR person was from: the advice to find an academic job by searching the University of Melbourne's job list would have sounded somewhat hollow to anyone in Arts...  But the muscle wastage expert and I were of surprising accord: no, the pay is incommensurate with the hours you put it; no, it's incredibly difficult to strike the right balance between teaching and research; but yes, the job is great and still worth doing if you love the research.

But the struggle never ends. As Gordon and I both said, you will be continually asked to excel, to exceed expectations, to perform and to compete.

For example. We've just heard that our application for an ARC Centre of Excellence (the History of Emotions, 1100-1800) has made it to the final cull. We think there are about 15 applications left, of which perhaps 10 will be funded. So I have to start preparing to go to Canberra to be interviewed in early July — and to Perth next week to be grilled by way of a practice interview. L'horreur!!! But it would be truly wonderful if this UWA centre, with nodes in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne were funded. Fingers crossed...

Following sport is HARD

I was about to give up on sport. I was so disappointed for Sam Stosur; then Essendon lost narrowly to Sydney and dropped out of the top eight; then Australia lost to the US at soccer (soccer!) in a World Cup warm-up. Well, but why did I tie my happiness to a woman I've never met who hits balls back and forth for a living? I told myself it was because I felt she was an ordinary woman who had recovered from serious illness and who was now about to make it really big. That's a pretty nice narrative to identify with. And she's not a prima donna. And she doesn't dress in chiffon to play tennis. And she is, after all, an Australian. But really, it's so arbitrary.

But we got home at midnight after seeing Richard III (run, don't walk, by the way, to get tickets for the last week of Ewen Leslie's extraordinary performance) and I turned on the TV to watch the second set. It was hard, for all my patriotism, not to be moved by Schiavone's late-career-blossoming, and her passionate kissing of the clay of Roland Garros, but I was all the same very disappointed for Stosur; and that feeling stayed with me much of the day (not improved by Essendon's last-minute loss to Sydney).

But I've just now seen Stosur on TV, saying how thrilled she was with her winning performances in Paris, and that while she was disappointed, she was still going to enjoy her success. So I'm somewhat reconciled, now, and reminded of all those truisms about sport; that it teaches you how to lose, as well as how to win.

I think with sport, I'm particularly fascinated by what looks like the purity of a good athlete's focus and concentration: evident, often, only when they have stopped competing and let go. I find it much harder to have the same kind of on-off switch with my own work. But could wish for it. And I think that's why I like vicariously switching on to see that kind of concentration at work. And surely, Sam's set up well for Wimbledon? No one will take her for granted, at least.

Cockatoos, creek, work

What with going to the gym these days, and gadding about in Europe, and then being sick, and finishing up a big semester, I've not spent much time along the Merri Creek the last few months. So for how long have there been black cockatoos there? I went for a walk on Friday afternoon, and at first thought there was a murder of crows in the tree on the opposite bank, but then I saw a flash of yellow. (And as I realise, the Australian ravens tend to go about in pairs, as I know from seeing them perching on the top of the huge Norfolk pine two houses down.)  Anyway, I think they were yellow-tailed black cockatoos. There were about a dozen of them, moving from tree to tree, hanging upside down and generally ... creating (scroll down this page and click to hear their call). And I've just seen a few more this morning when I rode up to let the chickens out at Ceres.

This creek is full of surprises. I've been living on its banks for sixteen years, as its vegetation has been improved and refined, and de-Europeanised. I hated it when they cut down the willow trees (J used to sing at them in his pram when we would walk along), but since then I've probably seen more birds; and apparently the willows were dreadful for erosion of the banks.

Normally P does the fortnightly morning run to Ceres, but once I'd got out of bed it was pleasant enough riding along the creek. And now I'm back at my desk, it's good to think of those cockatoos busily working their way through the trees along the water.

Now that teaching is over, and now that I have the all-clear from my editor to do the final revisions of my book (and write the last chapter) more or less as I see fit, I'm preparing to fire up the cylinders for a final onslaught. I have to hold all the ideas in my head at the same time, to ensure the balance and sequencing of the argument is right. I had a quick read through the other day. Having a few months' break from it was good (try telling that to the ARC!), and overall it's not looking too bad. Let's see how much I can get done before I leave for Siena in July.

Today will be a pleasant clean-up day: washing, ironing, running Joel to band rehearsal, sweeping up piles of bright yellow leaves from the garden, catching up on email, then the afternoon at a friend's retrospective art exhibition where J, the drummer (the artist's son) and the bassist will play, then a dusk trip up to Ceres to put the chickens away. Then tomorrow? Chapter Seven:

The wo that is in grant-writing

Horrible, horrible process, this writing of grant applications. I realise I have no head for figures, and can hardly bear the wretched negotiations over money and prospective contributions from the university for a grant we don't even have yet.

I've just spent a stupid hour re-formatting my ten "best" publications.

Grrrr.

But then I thought my neighbour had switched on the bathroom light, which I can normally see from my study. I looked up and there's two thirds of a big white moon with soft clouds floating gently across. Time to nip out into the garden for a good look, then finish this section and go to bed, leaving the blind up so I can sleep in the moonlight. Sigh.

Gosh, I'm busy!

Oh my goodness. Gasp. Take deep breath.

I am very busy. There is much to do. All due pretty much tomorrow. Much of it exciting (our Centre of Excellence application); much of it deeply enjoyable (my teaching, once I get into the classroom); some of it less so (organising the timetable of the English program's teaching for next year, etc.). My research is absolutely on the back burner, though hopefully just for one or two more weeks while the semester takes shape. Things are particularly tricky today as I managed to rub my eyes last night after handling (a) fish food or (b) potting mix. After 30 minutes both eyes were bright red and the eyelids swollen to three or four times their normal size, to say nothing of the huge pouches underneath the eyes. After a dash to the late night pharmacy in Sydney Road I dosed up with drops and antihistamines, but today it still looks pretty gruesome. Even that bony bit of skin between nose and eye is puffy. I'm about to go in to work to welcome the fourth year students: hope I don't frighten them away!

But here's something to look forward to:

Wednesday, March 17

Professor Stephen Knight

Cardiff University (formerly HOD English University of Melbourne)

The Arctic Arthur

King Arthur has had many manifestations, from the warrior giant of early Celtic to the bearded ancient of DC Comics Camelot 3000. Few have been as surprising or downright bizarre as a formation that developed in the eighteenth century and found its apotheosis in Bulwer Lytton's 1848 epic poem King Arthur. This was a very northern Arthur, fighting in Scandinavia, engaging with Odin and his cohorts, captaining a Viking Ship into the Arctic ice. This paper will seek a passage through the perils and excitements of this unusual domain of the Arthurian myth.

Stephen Knight is the author of Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1980); Arthurian Literature and Society (London: Macmillan, 1983); Geoffrey Chaucer Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); Continent of Mystery: A Thematic History of Australian Crime Fiction (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 1997); Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); A Hundred Years of Fiction: Welsh Writing in English (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004); Crime Fiction 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and Merlin: Knowledge and Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).

Lecture Theatre C, Old Arts 4.30-6.15pm

(http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/seminars.html)

Drinks at University House afterwards

Free of charge and open to all staff, postgraduate, undergraduate
students and members of the public

Closing out the first week with a little poetry

The first week of semester is always tough. Even when everything goes smoothly there's a lot to manage; and lots of little details to sort. One of things I have to do these days, too, is make sure workloads are evenly distributed in the English program. We have a very elaborate system that counts everything; but no simple computer programme to which everyone has equal access. Our IT support seems to be slipping behind our needs.

Anyway, it was also the week for meeting my new 3rd year class (lecture on Sir Gawain, amongst other things), and my fourth year honours seminar (also Sir Gawain, but in a different context: next week, John Mandeville and Margery Kempe in Jerusalem, with Carolyn Dinshaw as tourguide); and my two new MA students. We had a talk from Stephen Knight for the Medieval Round Table (Celtic and Christian elements in English romance), and the Middle English reading group met for the first time this year. We are going to read Wynnere and Wastoure (it is SO bizarre to have people turn up with my edition: I "forgot" to bring in my own copy, as I always find it hard to return to work I have done in the past).

I was very nervous — as I am every single year — before actually meeting the people in my honours class (9 enrolments and two or three auditing: perfect numbers), and being in the room with the 80 3rd year students. But now I have crossed that bridge, the semester looks as if the teaching will be fun.

Last night three of my girlfriends came over for a glass of wine after dinner. Sometimes these four families all get together: our sons are all about the same age, and have shared different childcare, kindergarten, primary and secondary schools. In fact, three of the boys are currently forming a little jazz trio (bass, drums, piano), so our pride knows almost no bounds.

But last night was girls' night, and very pleasant it was too. Just at the end, after one had gone, another started talking about Robbie Burns. She's a Scot, and an actor and is learning "To a Mouse" as a Christmas present for someone in her family. With a little prompting, she slipped into character, accent and voice, and performed it for us: utterly mesmerising. What a lovely way to set us up for Friday.

I was in the office this morning wrestling with the software and the workpoints; and then some more cumbersome software for some last minute additions to the "publications workbench" for the online record of research, but now I'm home. I'm going to tidy my study; do a little Italian homework; then head down to the gym, and get ready for Friday night.

In tears at her desk

I was recently at a meeting where various folk had to come in and talk to the committee at different stages of proceedings. At this meeting, there was a little delay, then a man walked in and said the woman who was supposed to come couldn't, because she was in tears at her desk.

I felt this was a little too much information, in a professional setting. I know we always like to hear about trauma and drama, but if I am ever discovered in tears at my desk, I'd prefer people didn't announce it, with my name, to a committee of strangers, thank you very much. I'm just saying.

My New Phase and a Wishlist

Over at In the Middle, Jeffrey is posting about the new phase in his professional life, as he steps down from being head of department. Almost to the day, I am stepping up to a new phase in mine, as I take on the role of head of programme (English and Theatre) within a large school (Culture and Communication), within a large Faculty (Arts).

I haven't moved offices, but last week I did go in and start cleaning it up. It wasn't too bad, as I'd cleared some shelves and obvious surfaces because other folk were using my room while I was on leave. But I managed to fill a big paper recycling bin; and there's another pile waiting for the confidential recycling bin. And that's without really tackling the big piles of photocopies I should file properly. I'm finding it hard to throw away the files of Chaucer material I used for the Chaucer book. And I have lots of files left over on Gwen Harwood and Wynnere and Wastoure, too. Perhaps I'll just do this a bit at a time. All the Garter stuff is at home, as I never really do any research or writing in my office at work.

Jeffrey says he likes to position his desk at a bit of an angle, and seems to like the way it throws people off-guard. In my girly way, I'm making different kinds of resolutions, about keeping my office clean and tidy so it looks reassuringly calm, and sometimes putting fresh flowers in there. Or at least having a plant of some kind. Or perhaps a fish?

The emails have already started coming in, along with what I think I'll like least about this job: the regime of bureaucratic compliance. I'm also hoping not to do bureaucratic emails at night or over the weekend (though I've just now received one...).

I think there'll be lots of fun things, too, but the biggest challenge was made crystal clear to me when I went to talk to our manager about our budget. Our program is short-staffed, but our budget is school-based. So even though our Old English specialist has just left, and even though our C16/C17 person left last year to move full-time into administration, so that I am the only researcher working prior to the eighteenth century, our program, as such, is in debt, because we don't run any lucrative masters coursework programs. We have fabulous theatre people, and others who can also teach Shakespeare, but it would be wonderful to make a dedicated teaching/research appointment in early modern literature.

This state of affairs isn't so much the result of the "Melbourne model" — the dramatic reform of the entire university's curriculum — as it is a result of the funding model (the result of the progressive reductions in federal funding), and the move from departments into larger schools. As a result, although "English" used to be closely linked to other programs (Media and Communication; Cultural Studies; Creative Writing; and Publishing), we are all now disaggregated into discrete units in the larger school, which also includes cinema, art history, arts management, etc. etc. The funding model we inherit from Faculty breaks us up into smaller units, and so our challenge, as a School, is to find fair and equitable ways to think about cross-subsidising. Just as we expect the medical faculty to subsidise arts, for example...

There has been a bit of a shift, over the last ten years, in Australia, for universities to work much harder at attracting private donations. Areas such as medieval and renaissance literature have been the target of a number of donations in the past, donations that go to fund small postgraduate scholarships, for example.

My dream scenario? Some wonderful benefactor to endow a chair in Shakespeare/early modern studies at the University of Melbourne. I'm just saying...