A Don’s Life

The pope joke -- have we forgotten the meaning of satire?

You can easily imagine what it must be like if you are one of the Foreign Office team planning the Pope's up-coming visit. First, there are the hours of meetings in which you try to work out a suitable timetable and a suitable guest list. That nice elderly cardinal looks ideal for the top table -- then whoops, there's another scandal about smacking/child abuse/cover ups (this time involving the said cardinal) and it's back to the drawing board. Then, there is the ground work. You think you have found the ideal nursery for His Holiness to visit -- but when you do a recce, you discover that the road to it from the train station goes right through the red light district, unless you go on a detour that will take at least three hours and will overrun on His Holiness's comfort stops that you have been told to programme in every 90 minutes.

Was this what you joined the Foreign Office for, you wonder.

Anyway, to keep up morale -- for you and the rest of the team -- you sit down one evening, after another hard day as His Holiness's travel agent, and bang out a spoof programme....the one with the Benedict brand condoms and the apologies for the Spanish Armada. And you circulate it, dead-pan.

It's what any clever young person working on that kind of mind-numbing stuff would do. Thank God they still exist in the Foreign Office.

Grounded -- with books

I had been going to New York this weekend, to do a serious piece of study on the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, which the husband hasn't yet seen. I had been kicking myself, because our flight out to New York was just after the shut down of Heathrow on Thursday -- but I now see that if we HAD gone, we wouldn't have got back by Sunday evening (and that would have been a nightmare for the first week of term).

If there is a moral in this, it is that British Airways fixed me up with a new flight in June (it was a sort of holiday, so that was fine), the hotel we had booked into (The Library -- ok we were splashing out) generously didn't charge us, even though we had technically been on a three day cancellation deal -- but our travel insurance (BUPA), from whom we might have claimed some incidental expenses, told us to bog off (act of god, etc...anyone know a good travel insurance company?).

Meanwhile I have to say that the husband, as often these days, looks righter and righter... couldn't the planes just fly lower, he asked on day one. And that is beginning to look like what they will do. (How can you tell the difference between sensible precautions and "health and safety" gone mad? But it is beginning to look as if this is "health and safety" gone mad, at the cost of billions.)

Anyway, what do you do with two and a half days to spare? To start with, it is hard to use the time you didn't expect to have, but then -- there are those books you've been sent.

And the prize for the worst manifesto goes to . . .

I spent a rather gloomy day yesterday reading the various party manifestos. I admit that this was not in the cause of my own political development, but because I was due on the Today Programme this morning to sound off about them, and about the 'Great Debate'.

Honestly, I thought that there was not much to choose between the three main parties in this respect, though Labour and Tory were worse than Lib Dems by a short head. It wasn't just the graphics-- though quite where both of the big two had found their left-over Eastern bloc propagandists, heaven knows. The Tory "people power" illustration really did have the tractor factory feel to it -- and the fact that it was indeed an ad. for the TORY party is just one hint at the ideological emptiness that you will find if you read these documents.

As I blurted on the radio, the worst thing about these documents is their oozing platitudes. Whoever has written them has not grasped the point that political messages only count as interesting and engaging and worth bothering with if the opposite point of view could conceivable be held -- if that is there is something to argue about. The mainstream parties give us almost nothing that most of the human race could possible object to. "A future fair for all" (Labour)? Sure, but the country isn't actually teeming with people who are demanding a less fair future. "Children should be allowed to grow up at their own pace" (Tories)?  Is anyone seriously advocating the opposite? "As Conservatives, we trust people"? Unlike who...?

Often different parties actually come out with almost exactly the same platitudes. "Get better politics for less" (LibDem) or "Good government costs less with the Conservatives" -- in this case not only vacuous but untrue as well.

Partly, you get the impression that they are all so keen not to offend anyone that they resort to anything bland. Partly it's the simple absence of ideology again. (Another nice example, the Labour Manifesto includes enthusiastic words on "Creating a shareholding society" -- admittedly on the John Lewis model.). Oh -- and don't mention the war. There is plenty of stuff about military equipment and hospitals, and a couple of pics of soldiers fraternizing with natives, in the Tory manifesto with a football. But not a word about whether we should be in Afghanistan or not. As the husband remarked, "People Power" clearly doesn't extend to the "people" of Afghanistan.

Why "good practice" can ruin good practice

When I was a graduate student, things were different. I didn't have to fill in many forms -- in fact, I think I just applied for a British Academy grant (as it then was) to work on a PhD in nothing more than "Roman history". I wasn't given a code of practice. If I wanted to learn something (like a new language), I went off and did it; I didn't demand a specially targeted Faculty class in it (Turkish for Roman historians, or whatever).

My supervisor didn't bother me too much (though he did give me a few big kicks towards the end). Whenever  I wanted to see him I sent him a note (pre-email) and he would have me round, and I would stay for as long as it took to go over my work or my problems. If I wanted to talk to one of the other senior Faculty members, I would catch them after a seminar or in the library, and we would have coffee or (more often) a drink.

I am sure that this laid back, unregulated system let some students down (we all heard stories/urban myths about PhD students who had not seen their supervisors in 12 months). But it worked wonderfully for me and for many of my friends -- and probably much better than what we now offer to our graduates.

Now, if students want funding, they have to explain what they will discover before they start (the best applications are, as most of us suspect, written by the supervisor). When they arrive on their course, they are given codes of practice up to their ears -- they know how often they should meet their supervisors, they have regular reviews with other members of the Faculty, they have a secondary supervisor (in case their first one isn't good enough), and they even have log books in which they can register their contact with their supervisor (in which I fear a jolly good, intellectually productive,  discussion in the pub doesn't quite count -- how wrong is that?).

All these initiatives were, I am sure, very well intentioned. They were intended to make sure that PhD students didn't go for 12 months without seeing their supervisors, or didn't take seven years to finish their theses, or, worse still, didn't fail at the end of the process. But I do wonder if the baby hasn't been thrown out with the bath water. To put it another way, despite (or because of) our good intentions, I suspect that most graduate students now have a worse "learning experience" than we did -- at a time before we knew what a "learning experience" was.

A ride up Vesuvius

As I have  been hinting from time to time, I am currently making a documentary about Pompeii. When I say "making", I mean presenting and having quite a lot of content input -- it's actually been "made" by an assortment of excellent producers, directors, camera- and sound-men. Two of these, Daisy and Paul, you see in the pic, over last night's pizza -- because we are now filming and today was our first day.

I am still amazed that it takes a weeks solid filming to make a programme that will run for 59 minutes on television, but I am beginning to see why. I'm also beginning to see the skill of imagining a programme in your head, but actually filming it in a completely different order

This morning we went to the Naples Archaeological Museum, to look at various things, especially some jewelry kept there. Television certainly lets you do things that you don't get away with usually in academic life, like trying on the rings and the bracelets. I'm not sure I wholly approve - but it was certainly a buzz. Who could be so cynical that they did not feel a buzz slipping on an armlet once worn by a dead Pompeian? Not me.

And in the afternoon we went up Vesuvius to get a look over the area once submerged by the eruption, and out over the sea (plus back into the crater, which was steaming slightly).

Orwell Prize

I am posting this on the way to Pompeii.

Just to give the good news that "A Don's Life" (along with 13 other excellent blogs - congratulations all) has just been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, blogs division. Here they are, courtesy of Nick Thornsby.

The Don is realistic and does not even speculate about reaching the short list. Indeed she is taking her own medicine -- when students get shortlisted for jobs, she always says "celebrate now, just for that -- anything else is in the lap of the gods". 

She also knows that a good part of the pleasure of this blog is all you commenters. So thank you.. lets all have a pat on the back.

Last year the Orwell blog winner was a wonderfully eloquent policeman. I am delighted that a jobbing Classicist gets to the foothills.

More from Pompeii soon.

Do we need a written constitution?

Yesterday evening I went to London, first to go to a book launch/colloquium on the idea of a written constitution for the UK -- to celebrate the publication of Richard Gordon's book, Repairing British Politics, which not only argues for a written constitution, but has a go at drafting one. I haven't read the book yet, but there were plenty of arguments last night on and around the British Constitution (for and against a written version) from 14 speakers, who miraculously kept to time.

I have to say that I came away with the idea that British politics was in a right royal mess, but that a written constitution wasn't likely to be the panacea. 

There were some fascinating contributions, apart from Gordon himself. It was good to hear Antony King argue against an elected upper house, for example. And Andreas Whittam Smith was eloquent on the excess of legislation under New Labour: one new criminal offence for every day they have been in power, so no wonder so much of it is so sloppily drafted and under-scrutinized.

The problem for me was that those who advocated a written constitution didn't convincingly explain why that would actually help our current dilemmas. In fact, as Dawn Oliver pointed out, the campaign for a written constitution tended to become a shopping list for a whole lot of other things we'd like to change (and which didnt actually need a written constitution at all). And Colin Kidd had a good number of cautionary tales about the endless supreme court messes that can result if you do have one.

Then there was the question of whether you could compare our constitution to a tennis club. Vernon Bogdanor started off his plea for a written constitution with just that comparison. If you become a member of a tennis club, he said, and you ask what the club's rules are, you don't expect to be told that they are scattered through various minute books and that some of them are just convention, not really written down at all. So why do we tolerate that with the state?

Well it isn't actually that simple.

Ever heard of Google?

On Tuesday I went to an enterprising day at the Open University, organised by the "National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement" -- all about how academics and the media can work together in engaging publics (the plural is intentional) with the research being carried out in universites and elsewhere.

If you think that all this was driven by some kind of "impact agenda" then you would be right. But the day was also rather interesting,  because it brought together academics and media people who make programmes -- plus some who straddle the divide (that is, academics who make programmes, like Tristram Hunt).

I gave one of the ten minute papers, partly singing the praise of radio -- which (despite In Our Time etc) often gets left out when academics sit down to think about how to storm the media. We all imagine ourselves as the next Schama, Starkey or Hunt in front of the cameras, rather than the microphone.

I shall be doing my own bit in front of the camera over the next few weeks, which I'm quite looking forward to. But radio still has a lot going for it.

For a start, you don't have to bother about what you wear on the radio. There is no need for nice frocks. You can even pick your nose, so long as you have something to say.

Presidential condoms: the ultimate stimulus package

I have just been in Madison, Wisconsin -- giving a lecture on Pompeii as part of their Year of the Humanities celebrations. Was it sensible to go away from Cambridge for the last two days of term? No it wasn't. I had so little sleep that I was close to weeping at the very slightest provocation (like "how are you?") by the time I had left.

Was it worth it? Yes it was. And so many people turned up that we had to move to a bigger room. OK, a boast -- but, I promise, I have done my time turning up to lecture in rooms laid out for 250 to find some 20 faithful followers, most of whom were relatives. So I know what it's like when you don't get an audience.

I had last been to Madison something like 20 years ago. I remember, first of all, the cows. Wisconsin is the Dairy State and it's not hard to spot (one lunchtime I had some delicious deep fried curds, which were not wholly in step with the current diet). And I remember that State Street had been full of intriguing little shops and cafes run by left over hippies. I thought that these would have long since disappeared, with the hippies. But in fact they were still there.

How do people walk on high heels?

This evening the husband and I went to a preview of the Paul Sandby exhibition at the Royal Academy. Sandby (1731-1809) was, so it is said, 'the father' of English watercolour painting, and there were some under-stated little treats in this show. I was particularly taken with his clever little images of "London life" (below) and the big views of the Thames, west and east from Somerset House (showing how, before the Embankment was built, the Somerset House gardens stretched right down to the river).

So it was fun. But these parties are a bit odd when (it being Lent) you are off the booze. You find that you become much more observant of other people, and --  of course -- what they are wearing. On this occasion, I found myself with a fellow guest observing the various shoes on display. It seemed to me an achievement almost beyond imagining that so many women could actually function on heels quite so high. This is a skill (?) that I have never managed to acquire. I simply fall over if I try. And that is not just in later middle age and weight. I have NEVER managed it.