conference junkie

This summer I've been a bit of a conference junkie (though only spoke at one). My travels will have included Leuchars, Liverpool, London, Lincolnshire and a few places not beginning with L.

For the next few weeks I'm in Cambridge, settling down to make a dent in a long reading list. Recently, with a little help from my friends, I'm come upon a much more focused question for my research, which now means I have a fairly clear idea where I'm going and what I need to do to get there. The task is still pretty big and perhaps daunting, but at least it's now definable and I can start to make tangible inroads towards the goal.

Back in April, I visited Chicago for a conference and stayed with my statistician cousin and his wife and two little girls. This was my first time in the US (or anywhere out of Europe) and I enjoyed the trip. One of the advantages of staying in a real home is that I was brought to earth each evening with a real family, who were very warm and accommodating. I think I was an object of some fascination for the girls.

Another advantage was that I got to see much more of Chicago than if I'd just stayed in the centre. Chicago is a very vibrant and varied city, as evidenced by the differing architecture: the corporate skyscrapers, the artistic installations, the elegant buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the earlier 20th century, the ersatz Oxbridge campus of the University of Chicago, the brick boxes of the ghettos, the gated mansions of the powerful. I got the impression that different neighbourhoods have their own character, being sometimes very different from each other even when bordering on each other. I started to get used to the grid system and it's handy on the bus, where you can figure out how close you are to the destination by the number of the street, and whether you are going the right way (which I wasn't always) by whether the street numbers were ascending and descending. I did once accidentally get the bus to the 'wrong side' of the park, but even this broadened my experience and provided some interesting photos.

The conference was the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, who cunningly gathered at the Renaissance Hotel. The conference was rather humungous, with about 1000 speakers, and I felt a bit lost at times, especially navigating the underground passageways in another hotel also used for conference proceedings about 10 minutes walk from the Renaissance Hotel. It was good experience, though, and I've since met people this side of the pond who I first met in Chicago, so it was probably worth it.

An American sandwich:

Some excitement was had in Detroit airport, when I was called over the intercom and told to report to security to collect my wallet. I spent the next twenty minutes scouring the airport for security, which I couldn't find as it didn't seem to be signposted. I eventually went to luggage enquiries, where a kind lady left her post to help me - it took her about ten minutes to track down security and to introduce me to some friendly police. I think there were three police officers searching the airport for me - I got my wallet back at 7 pm, just in time to get to the gate as people were boarding for my 7:27 flight. Nothing was missing.

Over the past month or so, my conferences have been in the UK. One was in St Andrew's, which is a lovely if odd place. It felt like a village, with about three main streets, but yet having a renowned university, a famous golf-course, a ruined abbey and a tranquil beach. But no railway station: the train takes you to Leuchars 6 miles away from where you will need to catch a bus or a taxi. The conference had 36 participants from 10 countries, which struck me as pretty diverse for a small conference.

Since then I did Liverpool and London in a week. Highlights of the Liverpool conference on Tyndale and More included the eminent historian Eamon Duffy leading a late night singsong and poetry recitation in the common room of our accommodation block, reaching a particularly lively pitch when it came to national anthems. I think the Irish won. London was the gathering of the world's Miltonists, where we were let out one day to roam on a rainy afternoon, when I saw Milton's grave before having a lovely coffee with Professor Coffey ;-) in the Barbican.

I've also been away to Dovedale, Derbyshire for a weekend for Christian postgrads, where our fortitude was increased by the practice of scrambling up and down mountains in the wind and the rain. Five us went in a car from Cambridge, from five different continents.

Life goes on in Link House, including barbecues and suchlike, though it's rather quiet now, as some are away for various lengths of time and the long series of goodbyes staggered over several months has begun. Sadly, one of those goodbyes will be mine. Though I will be carrying on in Cambridge, in September my residency limit of two years will be up and I will need to look elsewhere for abode. I look forward to seeing what turns up.

I hoping to start blogging little and often rather than with a sporadic splurge. We'll wait and see.