England, part 4: The conference, a castle, random Oxford

The conference, an interdisciplinary meeting on the topic of madness, went very well. The range of presenters -- both geographically and in terms of the kinds of work they were doing -- was remarkable, and at the same time the conference seemed very coherent, as everyone was concerned with the same broad set of questions relating to mental illness and its troubled connections with agency and creativity. This is not an academic blog, though, so I'm going to talk more about the building and the food. The building was Oxford's Mansfield College, a late-Victorian neo-Gothic structure that would not look out of place on U of T's St. George campus. Dinner on the first day, and lunch on the subsequent days, was included with conference registration, and was served in a dining room with vaulted, painted ceilings, halfway up the college's central tower. The food was marvellous: roast lamb with mint sauce, chicken-and-mushroom pies, piles of steamed vegetables, golden roasted potatoes, and for dessert: bread-and-butter pudding with stewed apples and little pitchers of clotted cream. I have nothing bad to say about English cuisine.

Post-conference on the second day, some of us went for dinner at The Big Bang, "Officially the Finest Sausage and Mash in Britain." They serve nothing but mash (potatoes and/or turnips), and sausages. If you are vegetarian, you can have vegetarian sausages. It's a small place, and about a dozen of us descended on it unannounced and were served by a flummoxed but cheerful waitress who seemed to be channelling Emma Thompson circa 1990. I have no idea whether the sausages were indeed the best in Britain, but they were good.

What else did I do in Oxford? I visited Oxford Castle. Its central tower was built by the Normans in 1071, but as I learned on the tour, archaologists now believe there was already a Saxon structure on the site which the Normans took over and built up, and that the Saxons in turn had built on a pre-existing, pre-Saxon burial ground. So: Really old building. It was a castle & a keep, then it was used as a jail for 700 years, decommissioned only in 1996. Now it is partly a museum and partly a "hotel and leisure complex"; you can stay in a jail-cell-turned-hotel-room for up to £300/night, and there is a posh restaurant and a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

All my Oxford photos are up now. Next: On to London!

Sunday at the diner

Can there be a more generically-named eatery in Toronto than People's Foods on Dupont? It's a great place to go for a classic diner breakfast, though.



These vintage table-top jukeboxes apparently still work, although we didn't try putting a quarter in. Laura and Jake noted that every time they're in there (which is often), someone at one of the tables is listening to "Sweet Child of Mine" by Guns & Roses.

The part of Buffalo with people in it

I was in Buffalo again on Saturday with Jamie, Alison and Hilary. We didn't get to poke around inside Buffalo Central Terminal like we did last time, but we did see a fantastic exhibition by Jennifer Steinkamp at the Albright-Knox Gallery -- huge dim pillared rooms awash with gorgeously coloured, precisely rendered video projections. Many of the pieces use multiple projectors, so that odd things happen to your shadow as you move around the space. Go, if you get the chance.

Also, this time we saw a fair number of actual Buffalonians. They were out enjoying the sunshine in the Elmwood neighbourhood, which, as I'd been told, turned out to be a pleasant place to walk around, full of nifty shops like the vintage clothing place pictured above.

We also went back to that massive Wegman's we visited last time, because we cannot get enough of the strange exotic American groceries. This time we found -- on sale -- butter lambs, a Polish Catholic Easter tradition, apparently, manufactured every spring for nearly 50 years by the Malczewski family of Buffalo. Here is a photo of a lamb made of butter:



Click here for more photos from the supermarket and an enormous mall we also explored.

Making the best of January

It's cold and dark, I know. But there are lots of things to love about this month.

First of all: Robbie Burns Night!

I went to the Duke of York again this year. Tim, Jamie and Hilary came with me, as well as Nick, our token Scot, who, ironically, was also our token vegetarian, and had the veggie burger while the rest of us had the haggis dinner. We enjoyed the Address to the Haggis:



Nick pronounced it perfectly authentic, and was a bit disappointed: "I was hoping the Canadians would get it comically wrong and dress a man up as a haggis, or something." He did point out that a truly authentic recreation of a contemporary Scottish national holiday would involve a lot more public drunkenness, brawling in the streets, etc.

After the delicious haggis, the buttery tatties and neeps, and the sticky toffee pudding with lashings of ice cream and whipped cream, we really needed some exercise. Which brought us to another lovable aspect of January: Skating!

Jamie, Hilary and I headed down to the rink at Harbourfront. I hadn't been skating in about ten years; Jamie had never been on skates before. In the locker room, Hilary and I laced up our trusty old white figure skates, and Jamie rented a snappy black-and-red pair:



A few people had warned me that skating isn't like riding a bike: even if it was second nature to you in the past, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to get right back into it. I stepped out onto the ice, and my ankles wobbled. The ice was slippery! How was I even supposed to stand up? Hundreds of people glided effortlessly past: teenaged couples and groups of girls all holding hands, herds of boys chasing each other and laughing, a serene woman with her hands clasped behind her back. It looked so easy. I clung to a post, wanting to shake my fist and yell, "I skated the entire length of the Rideau Canal once!"

I remembered a beginner's trick, from years ago: keep one skate on the ice, and push with the other foot. I shoved off from the post, and began nudging my way along. And pretty soon I was able to push with both skates. It was all coming back to me! I joined the crowd and skated around the rink once, then again. I was pretty wobbly and slow, but I could still skate! Jamie was intrepidly making his first cautious attempts, aided by Hilary. Jude and Lynn were there too. Sean skated up and said hello: it was only his second time on skates, but he was doing at least as well as I was. He fell down, got up, dusted himself off, and said proudly: "That was my first time falling down!"



The Harbourfront rink is open late, and some Fridays they have DJ nights, with dance music and free hot chocolate. Go on, it's worth a try!

Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!

Leslie and I went to the Duke of York last night for Robbie Burns' Night. They piped out a haggis in the traditional manner, and a man in a kilt read Burns' "Address to a Haggis" over it. (I didn't get a good shot of both haggis and piper, so I'm experimenting with the Blogger picture option.) Here (left) is a picture of the piper.

And here (right) is the haggis, borne out by a server, in all its veinous glory. Yum! Seriously! People go on and on about how disgusting haggis is, so when I finally tried it for the first time a few years ago, I was amazed to discover that not only is it not disgusting, it's delicious. We ate big plates of the stuff, with neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes) and wee drams of Scotch. We may not need to eat again until next January.