Comment moderation begins.

It's not that I get a huge number of spam comments. But one of them today was of an obscene nature. And I don't have to take that, or have it sitting on my blog until I can get to it and delete it.

So from now on I'm moderating comments. I don't think there'll be much of a delay between your posting and my releasing it. And a little delay is better than your reading filth in this place.

That is all.

The slowness of waiting, and writing

The week without teaching is disappearing. We arrived at the hospital this morning for a 9.30 appointment. We waited several hours, then when we finally got in to see a doctor, they removed J's cast to check the wound. Whereupon, seeing the pins sticking out of his wrist, he promptly blacked out, so we had to help him onto a gurney so he could lie down to have the new cast put on. By 3.00 he was back home, dozing on the couch, watching Scrubs with the cat...

Actually, typing that, I'm starting to feel a bit faint myself.

When not waiting around, this week, for various systems to work (the council busking permit yesterday; the hospital today; the university's wretched email all the time), I have finally prepared my response to the readers' reports on my book. They both say yes, the book is publishable, but each also seems to want it to be a slightly different kind of book. So I've tried to take a middle way, accepting some really good suggestions, without signing up for a major structural re-write. Fingers crossed the editor will agree with me... It took me ages to process the reports and write the response: everything seems to be moving in slow motion at the moment.

The "pointy bits" at the gym

If Sophie, my lovely trainer at the gym, is sick, I get to work with one of the other trainers. It's always a bit scary, and I'm never sure if that's because Sophie and I have such fun laughing and gossipping that I don't realise how hard I'm working, or if her method is gentler, or if the others make a special effort to work me hard. Yesterday was one such day, starting off with some aerobic work that had me breathless from the start...

But the funniest thing was hearing Leanne telling me how to stand, with the bar of the Smith machine on my shoulders, ready to push it up, with my feet positioned below the "pointy bits" of my hip bones. Looking at her own youthful, strong and lean body, I could see what she meant, but it has been a very long time since I could describe any part of my hips as "pointy".

Rehearsal

So the Blue Manoeuvres are rehearsing at our place today. Everyone sets to with a will to bring in the drum kit (kudos to the drummer's mother: roadie par excellence). They are on their third run-through their first number, taking turns to improvise and 'comp' when it's someone else's turn to solo. I can't help but admire their work-ethic (they have set aside three hours for rehearsal) and their co-operative spirit. I'll send them out for hamburgers for lunch later.

Best of all, for me, is to hear J playing (even if one-handed), and to hear the happiness in his voice. Right now he and the bass guitarist are making a little duet (R. plays double bass when he can but the guitar is easier to transport); and now it's piano and drums. The sax will kick in the melody soon - ah yes, there he goes!

They are working towards making a recording for an audition in the next few weeks; and may also be applying for a busking licence. Watch this space for their next appearance (and for the corrected spelling of contemporary. Any day now).

bedding down

If things have been quiet around humanities researcher lately, it's not because I recently joined facebook (I can see how it might be addictive, but I hope I'm not going to be sucked in too deeply), but for these reasons:

(a) there is not much research being done around here lately. It's the pointy end of the teaching year for me, with two new subjects to bed down and a bunch of additional lectures; plus the whole getting-used-to-being-head thing and the business of bedding down our teaching for next year.

(b) there has been a lot of fussing (much of it on my part) about our large Centre of Excellence application (actually based at UWA). I have some excellence in some areas: budgets are not one of them. But finally the draft letter and draft budget of the Melbourne end of it are completed. It seems they all may have to be done again, but at least, now, there are some senior people in some senior research offices at two ends of the continent working together. It's working with an inadequate sense of what might be required that is very difficult.

(c) Finally, about two hours, on Wednesday, after the very successful inaugural recite-the-first-18-lines-of-the-General-Prologue competition (with appropriately Easter Lindten rewards [there's a good joke in there somewhere trying to get out], with first prize going to a beautiful solo rendition from memory; and second to a team effort, acted out with sun, winds, plants and birds, ending in a tableau of poor St Thomas with pilgrims kneeling at his side), I picked up a telephone message from my boy, rather apologetically saying he thought he had hurt his arm when he went over the top of the handlebars of his bike when braking suddenly, and might need an x-ray.

Thus began a two-day saga: I took him to emergency and after a couple of hours he was x-rayed; and then began the question of admitting him, and finding him a bed. Too young, really, for adult hospital, but unwanted by the Children's, he was in limbo (another incipient joke: if only I wasn't so tired) for several hours. It was becoming a political question, which would be resolved only by measuring the extent to which particular bones had finished growing. After P arrived, I left to attend my student's graduation: the hospital said they would send him home and admit him the next day. But because I went straight from hospital, after riding home, I was still in jeans, flat riding shoes; no make-up, and not even a hairbrush. I felt decidedly undistinguished sitting on the stage of Wilson Hall as a procession of beautiful shoes paraded in front of me to take out their degrees. I was very glad of my long robes. I was home by 10, but there was a note from P saying they had admitted Joel to St Vincent's, but because he was under 16, an adult had to spend the night with him.

I turned up at 8 the next morning to relieve P, who had an all-day meeting about his Centre of Excellence application (alas, we are rivals). They hadn't been admitted till 11 the night before; and had to wait and wait for a bed for P to sleep on. J was fasting since 6.00 am and was scheduled for surgery after 1.00. Well. He was bumped several times down the list as the afternoon went on (it's just a wrist fracture, but needed to be pinned), and so then it was my turn to stay overnight. At 3.00 this morning they were still planning to operate, so he had to remain fasting, while they put in a drip. At 5.30 am they wheeled him off to surgery, and nearly twelve hours later we are finally home. Everything went well enough, and apart from some nausea after the anaesthetic, he's feeling fine.

Oh. I forgot to say that the night before all this happened, I stayed up too late finishing the second Song of Roland lecture; and then after the graduation, came home to wrestle with the grant budget. I emailed it at 1.00 in the morning, and got a lovely personal message back from someone in the research office. The Perth people were up and on the case, too, but it was three hours earlier, there.

So while the doctors and medical staff lead odd hours (the orthopedic surgeon in particular often has to wait and wait for a free surgery while road trauma patients and knife victims are being treated), so too do scholars applying for research grants, and the research administrators who support them.

After three late nights and early mornings, then, I am just about counting the hours till I can go to bed again.

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.

The wo that is in lecturing

Once a year I manage it. I work hard the night before a lecture, typing up bits of text I want to focus on onto the Powerpoint slides, uploading pictures and links to break up the sound of my voice (a 90-minute lecture slot to 80 students) ... and then I leave the disk or memory stick at home. Today I didn't even download it from my computer. So there I was at 9.30, with nothing. Zip. Talk about self-sabotaging behaviour.

As I was preparing the slides last night I was thinking it was a bit wasteful of time to be typing up or uploading text when the students have the books. But since I don't really have notes any more when I lecture (on medieval literature, at least), I have come to depend on the slides as an aide-mémoire. But when you don't have notes or slides, it is certainly that much harder.

I thought about jumping on the bike and racing home, but it would have been a bit tight, and the wise Annemarie counselled me against it. So I sat in my office, found a link to an online Chaucer edition and a couple of manuscript pages I wanted to look at, and made myself a few notes.

It was ok. It wasn't great; it was a little short (for which I'm sure everyone was grateful). It wasn't brilliantly organised. But it was on the Wife of Bath's prologue, and while it shouldn't really surprise me that this should happen, I found myself more than once just mentally reeling at the genius of this poetry, the play of voices and textual traditions. One line jumped out at me today, in particular.

But — Lord Crist! — whan that it remembreth me
Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee,
It tikleth me aboute myn herte roote.
Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote
That I have had my world as in my tyme.
But age, allas, that al wole envenyme,
Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith.
Lat go. Farewel! The devel go therwith!
The flour is goon; ther is no more to telle;
The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle;
But yet to be right myrie wol I fonde.
Now wol I tellen of my fourthe housbonde.

It's that second-last line, with its determination to be merry — the willed nature of the emotion here, that leapt at me.

I was pretty tired the rest of the day: a couple of meetings with students, a Faculty meeting, a talk I had to give (how's this for irony?) on teaching practice, and then a seminar to go to on Coetzee's Disgrace.

But now I'm home. I have prawns marinating in ginger and garlic and dollops of all kinds of delicious sauces in the cupboard. I'm going to fire up the rice cooker in a minute and then sit down with Joel for a couple of episodes of Scrubs.

Hey, maybe one of the reasons I'm so tired is the single parenting I've been doing for five of the last seven weeks. J is no trouble, and helps with cooking, etc. but there's no doubt the household runs more smoothly when there are two adults in it. Just a couple more days and P is back.

(There's some weirdly ironic thing going on here about marriage and the Wife of Bath and P being away, but I'm too tired to untangle it.)

Maternal Pride

Work is still crazy busy. There is much to do, still. I'm messing about with our horrible online system for uploading lecture notes that doesn't seem to work very well; email keeps crashing; I've much to do on the grant application; and I must soon wrastle in a serious way with the two reports that have now come in on the six chapters of the Garter book I sent to my wonderful editor.

But in the meantime, how is this as an occasion for maternal pride? Four young musicians, all of 14 years, playing up a storm at a jazz club on Tuesday night. Joel's school sponsors a regular jazz evening at Dizzy's in Richmond. Three of these boys (piano, drums, bass) have known each other since they were at kindergarten, and here they are, performing their first gig together. They are the Blue Manoeuvres, and even though this video, shot by the saxophonist's uncle, has bass, sax and drums all lined up in front of each other so you cannot see the drummer's wonderful, intense face, you do still get a pretty good look at the flying hands of the pianist (how did my son learn to *do* that? I mean, I hear him practising and all, but there is something about an audience, perhaps, and the clank of plates and glasses that produced something quite new). Nor can you see the faces of the four mothers beaming with pride at our clever boys, but it was truly a watershed event for the boys and their families.



After this we took them off to hear Branford Marsalis, by coincidence on the same night, giving them a taste of other things that are possible with this combination of instruments. Highlights were a Joey Calderozzo composition, "Hope", and an extraordinary adaptation, for soprano sax, of Henry Purcell's "O Solitude", as performed by the counter-tenor Alfred Deller, and heard by Marsalis on late-night radio. But unsurprisingly, the tune I remember best from the evening is this passionate performance from our boys.

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.