new old acquisitions

Digging around the dusty corner shelves of a second-hand bookstore in Winchester this week I discovered a lone bound volume of Dickens’s journal, All The Year Round, dated 1861.  This musty, densely-typed Victorian tome taps into my latent materialism: I love getting my hands on (and, admittedly, owning) these little pieces of nineteenth-century print history.  Since no author names appeared in the issues, it takes a little learning (or a 3G phone and Wikipedia!) to identify the lesser-known works in these periodicals.   This one includes the complete serialization of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s aptly-named A Strange Story.  The real treat, though, is the Christmas issue in the back: Dickens’s “Tom Tiddler’s Ground.”   I handed over £20 and promptly went home and went shopping… online.  Two days later a nicely preserved 1865 volume of Cornhill Magazine including both a few numbers of Wilkie Collins’s Armadale and Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters arrived, a score for £10.  And I’m holding my breath for that 1856 Household Words on ebay.   Oh dear…

a day at the fair

Today I took my parents to the North Carolina State Fair.

Now, from an American perspective, I can imagine it could be a little tough to really appreciate just how different this country can be.   A State Fair — or any type of country fair, for that matter — is a breathtakingly strange cultural experience.   As a child, I watched Templeton the rat scurrying around the fairgrounds after dark, gorging himself on leftover corndogs and the like (wondering to myself, what is a corndog?), and returning to Wilbur’s little livestock pen.   But I had no idea how weird and wonderful a State Fair could be.  I have had my own share of culture shock in the nine years since I first began living in the U.S., but today I got to be the insider, the almost-American girl introducing her British parents to the wonders of the American midway and livestock exhibits.

The North Carolina State Fair has apparently graced the Raleigh area since 1853.  It now attracts some 800,000 NC residents to its 344 acre grounds for 11 days of cow-gazing and fried foods.  I first went two years ago with M, who took me up in on the Ferris wheel (my first time, unless you count the London Eye!) and indulged me in my love of furry creatures with big ears.  We even came home with the obligatory cheap-and-tacky stuffed toys, the dubiously happy result of an I’ll Guess Your Age guy with poor skills (hmph).  This time, there were no stuffed toys.  We elbowed our way through crowds of macho guys holding penguins and huge women eating huge turkey legs and headed for the livestock exhibits.

I love pigs.  I love how they smile when they’re sleeping.  And how content they seem in their little swine worlds.  We watched a pig auction (Be careful not to nod, cautioned my Dad.  I don’t want to go home with a piglet).  And then on to the cattle judging, where shiny black cows were patiently enduring what looked like a cross between a car wash and an up-market salon. Happy farm hands were combing and blow drying their cows.  My parents were incredulous.  Even more incredulous when we saw the winning cow’s price tag: $7000.

As we trudged out of the fairgrounds, carried along by a wave of well-fed North Carolinians carrying stuffed penguins and Nemos, my parents tried to sum up their impression.  ”Well, that was an experience.“

playing with pictures

Tonight was the last night of a four-week photography class at the Durham Arts Center.  I don’t think I really learnt all that much, but I did have a little fun playing.

gateway to the west… and baseball

Three weeks ago, M and I took another quick trip and added two-and-a-half states to my fridge.

Two and a half.  Because I refuse to credit a ten-minute trip across the  Tennessee-Kentucky border a year ago as a true state experience.  Even if we did get out of the car to buy a lottery ticket.  This time, we actually drove through a chunk of Kentucky, and Indiana, and Illinois, all the way to Missouri.  St Louis, to be exact.

M picked me up from the airport in Nashville after a full day’s work and — after a stop at the best barbecue place on earth (Jack’s on Broadway) — we headed for the arch.  Actually, to be more precise, we headed for a Holiday Inn Express in Evansville, Indiana for a sleep before a whirlwind day of southern Illinois corn fields, great pasta, and baseball.

I was grateful to even make it to Nashville.  All those nightmares about desperately stuffing things into bags to make a late flight came painfully true as I realized I had mistakenly remembered the arrival time in Nashville as the departure time from RDU.  There I was, leisurely sipping a cup of tea in my study while I checked to see whether my flight was on time.  Two minutes later I was a dragging a half-open carry-on case down the stairs, muttering not-so-pleasant words under my breath.  Forty minutes later – I kid you not – I was on that plane.   Thank the dear Lord for proximate short term parking.

So… we made it to Evansville, where we slept soundly, breakfasted with a group of seniors who were planning a big day at the slots and/or golf course, and then headed for the gateway to the West.

M had managed to score the best room in St Louis, I’m sure of it.  Our hotel room had a picture-perfect view of the arch.  After a fabulous meal at a grill called Calicos (M: ribs; Me: awesome bacon pasta), we joined the crowd and headed for Busch Stadium.

One step at a time, I’m making up for my lack of an American childhood.  This was my first baseball game.  I don’t mean my first pro-baseball game.  I mean I actually asked M to tell me the basic rules in the car on the way. (Before answering he glanced over at me from the driver’s seat, open eyed, incredulous.)  Turns out it’s a lot like rounders, which seems to be a sissy version we played in my private English girls’ school…

So… my verdict?  Well, they don’t hit that ball very often.  But they look pretty cool while they’re not hitting it.

And there’s nothing like a whole stadium filled with forty thousand folks all wearing the same colour (Cardinal red), all cheering at the same time, and all consuming hot dogs, French fries, and beer.   The fact that the Braves won just made it even better (I just feel a closer affinity to Atlanta.  Why, I don’t know.  My default experience there has involved misery, exhaustion, and airport waiting areas.)

That night, we had a perfect hotel-room evening.  We ordered pizza from a nearby speciality pizzeria and snuggled down to watch an extortionately-priced pay-per-view movie — State of Play.   Next day — Sunday — it was back to Nashville for a flight (for me) back to RDU, but not before we had scaled the arch in tiny 70′s futuristic moving pods.

Added to the refrigerator: Missouri, Indiana, and Kentucky.  They’re magnets, courtesy of M, and they raise my tally to 26.  Over half way there!

four simple pleasures

1. Last night, I made a meal I hadn’t made in over two years — something involving pork chops, cider vinegar, shallots, and slices of tart Granny Smith apple.  It was better than I remembered.

2. M and I had a lazy Saturday.  We stayed in bed until gone 9.30.  We had a lazy summer lunch on the porch at Parker and Otis.  And in the evening we watched two movies back to back.  He introduced me to one: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Verdict: better than I’d expected.  I introduced him to one: The Notebook.  Verdict: ridiculous, stupid, critically terrible movie that everyone must endure.

3. Tonight I made pasta with the basil I’ve been growing on my porch.

4. L is on her way over with a batch of blueberry muffins.  She said the blueberries are too tart this time.  Perfect.  It makes the roof of my mouth tingle to think of them.

(It seems most of my simple pleasures involve food.  Or M.)

end of summer

Fall 2009 has officially begun, and I need to come to terms with that.  As do my plants, incidentally.  Despite a morning drink, they are still shivering in the heat, surrounded by dry, dry soil when I get home.  This is definitely still summer, they say.  I wish it were true.

This weekend, I tried to do things that would lull me into a false sense of continued summer.  Went to the farmer’s market and bought happy bright red flowers.  Had Sunday brunch with L at Guglhupf.  Had tea with A & C at Parker and Otis (incidentally, P&O’s Bangkok green tea and sticky macaroons are a coconut-flavoured dream).  Engaged in random frenzied apartment-cleaning session.  Watched Julie & Julia with L (cooking + writing + Meryl = time very well spent).  Drank wine.  Read Dickens.

But today summer ended.

It began with a tutoring tutorial. (I’ll be working in the Writing Studio this semester.)  Eight-thirty-till-four training will continue until the very-much-anticipated weekend with M (beginning with a literary-themed food party on Friday night!)  My sofa is a little shell-shocked from a pressure-free day.

Fall 2009.  It was freshman move-in day on campus.  As I negotiated for an early parking place on a side street near East (resorting to a mental “please, Mr. Traffic Cop; don’t enforce the two-hour limit today”), shiny SUVs unloaded Moms, Dads, boxes, laundrey hampers, and the Duke Class of 2013, sporting flourescent yellow freshman move-in t-shirts.  They wore their dorm room keys in plastic name-tag pouches around their necks and milled around with frightened eyes and heads held high.

I never did “Dorm Move-In.”  The most I could unload had to fit into two suitcases, and I lived in a small apartment in Mississippi with LNB, just off campus.  The closest I got to dorm-life was the semester in Pontlevoy, France; but LNB and I shared there, too, so there was none of that strange-new-roommate business.  The same story in Exeter.   Still, watching the scene on campus today brought to mind the familiar rush of that fresh new move, the smell of unpacking and adrenaline.   For me, it’s just another school-year starting; and, I suppose, if I stay in academia,  I’ll witness many more like it.   But even if there’s no substantial change, buying new pens and paper from the stationary store always brings with it a sense of possibility — a new leaf to turn.  I like using this time of year to refresh and re-think my routine.

Perhaps I’ll go to Office Depot tomorrow.

lust

Exhibit update:

Today I held in my hand a first edition of Sense and Sensibility and a first edition Jane Eyre.

And I discovered that I might be just a tad materialistic.

Tags: books