A Don’s Life

Should May Balls be banned?

Every year the local Cambridge paper runs a story about local residents complaining about May Balls --  the conspicuous consumption, the binge drinking and, most of all, the noise. May Balls were presumably (like most other things in Cambridge) a nineteenth-century invention, though they now come in various more or less politically correct forms.... those where you can buy a single ticket, for example, or those that call themselves a  "June Event" not a "May Ball".

But the basic principle remains the same. A lot to drink, a lot of noise, and a very late (or alternatively 'early') finish.

The campaign against this style of jollification has been led this year by the esteemed Professor of Palaeography at King's College London (who happens to live in Cambridge -- who would like all May Balls to end by 1.00 am).

There are some arguments against May Balls. Sure, this is after the end of our students' exams -- but there are still school students struggling with GCSEs etc. Why should they be kept awake by the uni students having fun? And it is also true that the DJ style (as pictured above) doesn't do much for out non-socially-elitist image.

But hang on. Can't the middle aged get a bit too curmudgeonly about the whole thing?

The Much Wenlock Olympics

I have only just caught up on the 2012 London Olympic mascot called "Wenlock" (on the left). Truly ghastly it is (what designer could really have been proud of this, and what insult to children who are, presumably, the intended audience/market?) But it still strikes a bit of a chord with me, as this horrible creature is named after Much Wenlock in Shropshire, where the first modern Olympics were held (and where, as it happens, I was born -- in the Lady Forester Cottage Hospital, pictured below).

When I was growing up there (after an early spell in Church Preen -- compared to which Much Wenlock  seemed cosmopolitan), we always went in for the Olympics. Not the athletic events which brought rather glitzy runners to the village), but all the peripherals that made the "Olympiad" (as we  called it) much more like a local fete: I mean the prizes that went for the best animal made out of felt, or the best face made out if a potato (I still remember the agony of making a potato face and not realising that you had to put salt in the water to preserve it, and discovering the next morning that it had all gone irrevocably brown).

Jane Asher wears the Villa of the Mysteries

 

This one is thanks to the husband, who spotted it online: a pity, as he said, that she didn't know what she was wearing.

The Daily Mail headline ran, "I cant remember how wicked I felt the first time I wore red". And the main featured red item in Jane Asher's wardrobe (for  this estimable actor  was the subject of the piece) was gorgeous Isabelle de Pedro dress. "It's red with short sleeves and is covered in art prints. It’s a real conversation piece."

Yes, sure. But it isnt just "art prints", it's the most famous set of Roman paintings from Pompeii, excavated in the early twentieth century and studied intensively ever since. (The lustrous red colour is at least partly due to restoration efforts - with petroleum jelly - soon after the building was discovered.)

Asher's dress is taken from one of the grandest reception rooms of a "villa' just outside the walls of Pompeii -- featuring flagellation, the revelation of a phallus, a female "Pan" suckling a goat and (probably) the god Dionysus with Ariadne on his lap.

Quite what they represent, who knows?

The cess-pits of Herculaneum

I have to confess that I quite enjoyed filming the TV documentary in Pompeii. You, oh readers, may not be surprised at that (imagining that there would be nothing that the don would like more than preening herself in front of a camera). But the honest truth is that I hadn't expected to enjoy it at all. I thought it would be a combination of hours of waiting around and being made to say things, on the record, that I didn't quite believe. In fact there was rather little waiting and no one made me say anything I didn't want to. So if things are wrong, I (and you) only have myself to blame.

What is more, we saw lots of amazing stuff. I'm not going to give the secrets away now (you'll have to wait till the autumn and watch). But one of the highlights for me was a trip down the excavated sewers -- or more correctly "cess-pits"  -- of  Herculaneum, in the company of my old mate Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, who used to be Director of the British School at Rome, and is now Master of Sidney Sussex College, here in Cambridge (pictured in his hard hat above).

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.

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. 

Desert Island Discs -- the verdict?

No, I couldn't listen to the Desert Island Discs while it was actually broadcast. And for most of today, I just tried to judge how it was from what other people said.

Bluff and double bluff. I went to a meeting of our Leverhulme project (yes at 6.00 pm on a Sunday) -- and there was a good bit of ribaldry. Oh yes, they said (when I confessed that I didn't remember a thing I'd said), we loved it when you said what a silly c*** the Vice Chancellor said... brave to do it on the radio (isn't there a Dorothy Parker poem on these lines?) .

Anyway the programme is here (for a week) and the records, not in the right order necessarily, were:

University cuts, redundancies - and bye-bye palaeography at King's College London

Last week we had 'Two Brains' Willetts come to talk to us at Newnham. He was clearly a smart guy, but between the lines the prospects for universities looked gloomy. "Autonomy" (one of Willetts's catch words) was pretty clearly a euphemism for "find your own money -- no more from the government", not even the next one.

It would be nice to imagine that university cuts means just  larger class sizes. In fact it means redundancies and the end of crucial, but minority, subjects. There has already been a round of compulsory redundancies at Sussex.

Now it is the turn of King's College London - which is planning (very confidentially, so far) to lose up to 22 posts in Arts and Humanities by the end of the academic year. This means that at least one subject (which ought to be a protected species) will disappear.