DPP 24: Potato Peelings

Leek and potato soup.

DPP 23: The Light of the Church

As part of our life in our cold little flat here, Isaac and I have some locking and unlocking duties at the church that owns the property. A single oil lamp burns at the front of the church all week long, and a more modern light is kept on in the back of the church whenever it's open to the public (during daylight hours most days). This lamp is off to the side of the church, near the rooms in which the clergy and other servers prepare for services, but it is switched on only occasionally. I love the way the light cascades down the steps.

DPP 22: Pipe Envy

Since the original idea behind the December Photo Project was to capture the everyday stories occurring all around us during this hectic season, here's today's everyday story: one of our drainpipes, which descends from our top-story flat down the outside of our building, is frozen; our landlords are blissfully unconcerned; and the one plumber who actually stopped by first couldn't help us for lack of a ladder, and then (when a ladder was procured) suddenly remembered that he doesn't do external pipes.

On the bright side, our other drainpipe, which removes the smellier water from our flat, still works, and I managed to create an exciting chemical reaction in the stagnant water currently living in our bathtub.

DPP 21: Tundra Train

Our London adventure ended today. If all had gone well, we would have left our flat at quarter til seven, taken a direct train to St Pancras rail station (where thousands of unfortunates are currently queued hoping to get across the Channel before Christmas), and taken a direct train to Edinburgh before arriving home shortly past two o'clock. Instead, we ended up on an eight-train adventure that had us leaving our rented flat just after six, trekking along a the cold dark streets around St Paul's Cathedral before rush hour had even begun, dashing through tube stations, visiting Cambridge, and narrowly managing to get home in time to plan supper and then discover that our plumbing no longer drains water. It has been an exciting day. Here's a moment of relative stillness: our train speeding along the frozen British countryside.

DPP 20: Time-Travelling Warriors

On our third day in London, our familial trio visited one of my very favourite places in the world: the Tower of London. We were treated to a tour by a beefeater, and enjoyed many displays: a mixture of old things left looking as ancient as possible, new things built and constructed to resemble the originals, and some interactive displays. This archer crouches in the middle of an interactive display rigged to recreate one of the great battles once fought around the Tower. Below his arrow are the homes of some beefeaters who work in the Tower and live, with their families, in homes built into these eight-metre-thick walls thousands of years ago. Above his arrow, the bustle of modern-day London can be seen.

DPP 19: New Breath in Fresh Air

On our second London morning, our amiable trio set out to visit the Tate Modern art gallery and Globe Theatre, but were distracted en route by a wonderful market near Waterloo station. This garlic display caught my eye particularly.

DPP 18: A Historical Time

Isaac and I are freshly back from London, where we met his mother (visiting for Christmas) and spent a few days playing tourists. On our first full day in London, we visited the British Museum, where I was particularly impressed by the clock exhibit. This one was apparently used to announce feasts in days of yore.

DPP 17: Ironing for Jesus

I've been attending Anglican churches on and off since I was quite small, and it's only in the past week that I've become aware of the vast number of elaborately-named details that that are washed, ironed, and laid out before the services behind the scenes. This pile of linens, front to back, contains purificators, lavabo towels, linen veils, and amices, all freshly laundered and carefully ironed. They are not as well starched as they are supposed to be, but I've never learned to starch clothes.

DPP 16: Class Dismissed

Today I taught my last writing lab of the semester.

Actually, that's not entirely correct. Today I sat in an empty classroom out of a sense of duty and not wishing to have a student show up forty minutes into the today's session (an open period for questions) to find me absent.

Nobody came, alas, so the dude on the back wall helped me write the first page of a conference paper I'll be giving in just under three weeks. Yeah, procrastination! Woo!

DPP 15: The Soot Burglar

This morning the Chimney Sweeps visited our humble flat. From within our chimney, they removed more then ten gallons of soot (mostly sandstone that had crumbled off the inside lining of the chimney) and a mummified pigeon.

Here's one of the sweeps gathering up the last load of soot:

DPP 14: Repetitive and Evergreen

When I was a little girl, my grandfather and I took a trip every November to a Christmas Tree Farm a little ways from home. Together we roamed through a beautiful forest of woody-smelling evergreens, examining the dimensions, fullness, irregularities, and overall elegance of each before tagging a large tree for his house and a slightly smaller one for mine. We would return to the farm in late December to cut our trees and take them home, and somewhere amid the blur of working in my parents' bookstore, preparing Christmas gifts for my family and friends, and attending the Christmas Eve services that marked the end of the crazy retail shopping days, our tree would get both lights and ornaments.

Life is less idyllic now, and we bought our modest little tree pre-cut and at a discount on account of its many irregularities and "holes." It has exactly twelve ornaments (five from last year and seven from this) two garlands, and one string of lights, which is exactly right because there's not much room for more--and taking the tree down after Christmas will be simpler. Some of these ornaments will go back to the charity shops from whence they came when we move back to the States, and a few will indubitably make the journey overseas with us, to remind us in years to come of our happy days overseas: exhausted and busy, but without the demands of children and long-term employment.

Ah, these will be the days . . .

DPP 13: Noses and Grindstones and Sonnets, Oh My!

My cold somewhat alleviated, I spent today sticking my proverbial (but now clear) nose back on the not-so-proverbial grindstone. Here's my desk setup for a hefty revision session, which occupied the better part of my day and was still less fruitful than I'd hoped. Alas.

DPP 12: Going A-Caroling

In mid-December of each year I have been at St Andrews, the University has sponsored a carol service for as many students and staff members as are able to fit into Holy Trinity Church without breaking the fire code. This was the first year that I've actually made it into the building (I didn't try during my M.Litt year, being at that time slightly more concerned with three essays with looming deadlines and a laptop cord that was trying to light itself on fire). This feat of entrance was accomplished by arriving at 6.45 for the 8.00 service and waiting in the queue until nearly half past 7 (we were joined by friends for the latter half of this time). Tonight I offer two photographs: the interior of the church, decorated for Christmas and filled with eager young students, and a random cupcake Isaac and I were given while we queued. Great elegant things, and small delicious ones: neither Isaac nor I could decide between the two; both blessed us very much tonight.

DPP 11: Life's Better With Books

Today was frantic and crazy for a whole host of reasons, one of which has unfortunately contributed to the very late blogging of today's photo. A brief moment of respite, however, came during a Christmas party hosted by two very dear friends, at which we enjoyed (left to right on the lower shelf) mulled wine, spiced apple cider, and a White Elephant Book Swap. Isaac and I came home with two books I'm pretty pleased to have won, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

DPP 10: Coffee Love

As my husband likes to say, "Coffee is the beverage of the people of God, and the cordial of his servants who thirst for wisdom. When coffee is infused into the bowl, it exhales the odor of musk, and is of the color of ink."

I don't know the origin of this quotation, but I'm pretty sure it can be abbreviated to "I like coffee. It tastes good."

DPP 9: Book Wall

Today I spent more than half an hour at the Evil Bank having a cashier's cheque made up (because foreign postgraduate students aren't allowed to have cheques at the Evil Bank) and then more than half an hour in the Post Office (located in an office supply shop/bookstore since the real post office closed) getting said cheque mailed. While in my tedious wait at the post office, I enjoyed a browse through the office supply shelf and a nice view of this wall of cheap books. They have about six similar sets, including books on "romance" and "killers," but I found this wall by far the most intriguing.

DPP 8: Luxuries

I've spent today mostly in bed (and briefly out, when plumbers came to help with the waterfall intermittently cascading down our steps) and have been fairly uninspired to do anything more strenuous than sleeping or reading. These three luxuries currently adorn the mantel in our bedroom, and have done a lot to keep me cheered up while my throat has been panging persistently.

DPP 7: Roast, Sweet Roast

A significant benefit of living in the UK has been the discovery of some truly amazing foods and cooking styles, some of which are delightfully simple.

Take, for example, the Roast:



One bird, plopped atop a few vegetables; sprinkled with olive oil/butter, salt, pepper, and perhaps a dash of vinegar, covered with tinfoil; and stuck in a hot oven for an hour or two, becomes possibly the simplest supper I've ever prepared. Perfection on a platter.

DPP 6: Snow Daze

Today a friend and I had planned to go to Edinburgh for an interview and library day, respectively, but our ambitious plans were foiled by a few more lovely inches of snow, which stopped nearly all the public transportation in Fife (if not the whole of Scotland). Snow being very beautiful, here's half the view from our kitchen window this morning (the sea is the grey patch in the middle right).

DPP 5: Soap Bubbles and Sweet Grace

Despite the fact that I'm married to one of the most gracious and considerate men in the universe, I still find marriage incredibly difficult. Recently, however, I've had occasion to notice that I am among the most blessed wives in the world: my husband loves me, and delights in the interests I pursue outside our home, and helps out both when I'm too exhausted to move as well as when I'm just being lazy. He is my rock on so many occasions . . .

. . . and tonight is one of them.

Thank you, my love, for doing the dishes just to bless me, and thanks, MP, for raising a man who knows how to wash things.

DPP 4: Cocoa & Conversation

I fully meant to post a photo of this morning's Farmers' Market, but was for the most part so busy wading through snowdrifts to get to the stalls of the few merchant-farmers who were able to make it to Fife that I took barely any photos. It's pretty cold still, and after a busy morning of shopping and errands my wonderful husband took me first to the library and then out for wonderful warm cocoa and conversation.

DPP 3: Water and Wine

Tonight Isaac's research group went out for an elegant Christmas dinner (to which I was also invited by association). We had a wonderful time and left sated, happy, and quite ready for bed.

DPP 2: Where Words Wander

This is a street I love in a city I love. The owner of this bookshop is a retired English teacher and a really delightful man, and I've parted with vast sums of money on account of the treasures his shop once contained (until I bought them).

Also, this is St Andrews at 4 pm in the winter (it's about this dark at midnight in the summers). We still have a little snow on the ground!

DPP 1: The Church is Cold

Day 1: St Andrews Cathedral under a blanket of our most recent snow flurry.

Winter Wonderland

One of the unusual things about St Andrews is its comparatively balmy weather. A former professor of mine described the Kingdom of Fife, in which St Andrews is located, as the "banana belt" of Scotland. On account of its amazingly close proximity to the North Sea and Gulf Coast, the temperature in St Andrews only rarely drops below freezing, and--as I was told shortly after I moved here for the first time--it never snows.

This claim that it never snows, which I dutifully repeated (with great chagrin) to friends and family alike was fully borne out by my first winter in the UK, when it was cool but rainy for most of the winter months. It was repeated to my parents before they came last winter, narrowly missing an airport closure in Edinburgh and barely able to visit Stirling Castle because of road closures (Stirling, incidentally, is further inland and closer to the Highlands, so it was perfectly acceptable to have had snow there). However, we also had a mostly white Christmas here in St Andrews, by the North Sea despite the Gulf Stream. (Here's my Dad by said North Sea and Gulf Stream:
).

Right. So last year was an unusual winter--one of the coldest in recent UK history. It was a lovely and beautiful change from what I'd expected, and I figured that few people would ever get to see the lovely glory of St Andrews covered in snow as I had.

Until now.



This is Isaac very early on Sunday morning, after we both saw the amazing snowflakes drifting across the windowpane and dashed outside for an impromptu midnight hike, snowball fight, and snow angel creation. Please note the large gust of snow being blown up out of the sea towards his head. It was just that windy . . . and much glorious fun.

We've had flurries every day since Friday, and only the fact that we live so close to the Gulf Stream has kept us from getting the two or three feet of snow present in towns only a few miles further inland. Ours has mostly turned to ice and slush, but it's beautiful during the flurries and immediately afterwards!



Also, I'll be trying something new for December. A friend of a friend is sponsoring the December Photo Project, in which one blogs or posts a photo every day for the first 25 days of December, and I'll be attempting this (we'll see how it goes). You may not get much explication, but you could potentially see some pretty photos . . .

Reading Away From Home

St. Andrews has a fabulous institutional invention they call "Reading Week," where students who aren't bogged down with their workload fly away to ski in some glamorous European destination, and students who wish to catch up on reading and research have a quieter town and library.

This year, a few friends and I ventured down to London to do some reading in the British Library, and then I journeyed over to Oxford (city I love above all others) to enjoy some rare manuscripts in the Bodleian.

Upon arrival in London, the girls and I visited the largest toy store in the UK, which was swamped with people and, of course, toys.


On Sunday, because the British Library was closed, we took a train journey to Hampton Court, former home of Henry VII and some other well-known monarchs.

The wine cellar:

The Great Hall, in which some of Shakespeare's plays premiered, I believe:

Possibly the most amazing bed I have ever seen in my life:

I think this is the more modern wing of the house, built by William and Mary more than a century later:

Part of the enormous gardens:

The tree on the right has enormous clumps of mistletoe:


Because I happened to be in London only a few days after Guy Fawkes Day, I had a chance to see some marvelous fireworks in Victoria Park with an old friend (and many new friends, most of whom kindly put me up at their home for a few days).


The weekend over, I settled down to work (taking a break one evening to watch the new cast of Les Mis put on a fine, if slightly less-polished, production).

On Wednesday, I was off to Oxford, city of my love and dreams and a home away from home. That this half the trip was marvellous despite the very little sleep I had each night should tell you how much I love this city and the amazing manuscripts it holds in numerous libraries.

The Old Bod, where I spent most of my last trip (though the manuscripts department has unfortunately moved since then):


I had supper the first night with a good friend (randomly also in Oxford) in the pub where the Inklings once met. My second day in the city was also Remembrance Day, celebrated with two minutes of silence in the reading rooms (differentiated from the other silence only by the ringing of a small bell!) and a trip to the amazing Christ Church College Cathedral, where I had a chance to hear Mozart's Requiem performed live by a rather amazing choir.


On Friday, I caught the sleeper train home . . .



(I think Isaac may have missed me).

Here We Fall Again . . .

Some of you might have heard that Isaac had another birthday last month (it tends to happen unexpectedly about once a year). Isaac was unfortunately just starting a marathon cold that has been alive and kicking for the past few weeks, so our celebrations were slightly subdued and I didn't make him pose for any photos (because the only thing worse than feeling sick and snuffly is feeling sick and snuffly with a camera shoved in one's face).

For breakfast, we celebrated in proper Southern fashion with bacon, biscuits, and gravy. Yummy. (Also, as compensation for not seeing Isaac's handsome face, here's part of our kitchen--fortunately for you all, the most attractive part).


We went out to a local Italian chain restaurant for supper (joined by our dear friend K.) and then came home for tea, hot grog (a la Prague) and presents. As you can see, Isaac had a round-themed present collection. Also, this is part of our living room.


We went to bed early in hopes of staving off further illness, but Isaac spent the next two days in bed anyway, which was tragic.

On the Friday after Isaac's birthday, we celebrated the end of September with an unexpected and beautiful surprise: a day of heavy rain followed by an enormous double rainbow that spread over most of the town (hence why I was unable to capture the entire rainbow in one image: you all will have to settle for two). These were taken from our "rooftop door" which literally opens out into empty space about six feet above the nearby rooftops.



Hope you all are well.

Farewell, Summer!

We've been walking around through piles of crisp and crunchy leaves for the past week or so--not glorious coloured leaves, but brown and crunchy ones that make beautiful sounds, instead of pretty pictures. Today I wore a sweater (British word: jumper) for the first time in months (and was then too warm, but, that's how it goes).

Anyway, in honour of the end of summer (and because I'm traditionally very far behind with my blog posts) here are a few photos from a picnic we enjoyed a month (or so) ago.

We hiked to the Rock and Spindle (a favourite) late one evening.

With the following stunning view of the sea,

we built a small fire in the lee of a rock, then roasted fish and vegetables over the flame.


As if this weren't enough, we topped off our supper by roasting marshmallows (they're firmer and come in pink and white) over the coals and sandwiching them between two chocolate-covered digestive biscuits.

The result:


A very delicious dessert, British style.

Term has begun (technically, today). I won't have a literature tutorial this fall, but will be teaching a Writing Lab of sorts for any students who wish to attend it. Although I'm very slightly disappointed, it will nevertheless afford me a pretty good opportunity to buckle down on my thesis, which is a very good thing. Life is still up in the air and pretty busy, so . . . you know. I'll stay occupied nonetheless.

[Edit: One more photo from our seaside cookout. This was the view of St. Andrews we enjoyed on our walk home . . .

God bless.]

A Belated Durham Conquest

So, also in July (you know, the one that was two months ago), I ventured to the absolutely amazing medieval town of Durham for a conference. I had a chance to stay in the keep of an 11th century castle, and this is the view from my bedroom on the first (I think!) morning:



This is a view from the steps of the dining hall, of said keep. My room was the single open window at the top of the keep:


Half the conference papers were given in a room decorated with 17th century Flemish tapestries. Here's one (the lighting was unfortunately a bit odd):


I had all my meals in this amazing Great Hall (did I mention it's about a thousand years old?) The armour on the far wall was left behind after Cromwell's army beat a hasty retreat from this same castle in the 17th century.


And the castle pub, where I enjoyed a relaxing drink (to help me sleep) the night before I gave my paper:


The castle also boasts an amazing sandstone chapel from the 11th century (beneath a very pretty 17th century chapel), but it was dark, and few to none of the photos turned out, so you will all have to visit the chapel for yourselves someday.

Also, the nearby cathedral holds the tombs of the Venerable Bede and St. Cuthbert. The evensong I attended was breathtaking.

Jealous yet?