Christmas on the beach

It's been so nice to have a totally low-key Christmas. We didn't even exchange presents because we can't carry any extra stuff with us. That sucks for the kid but this is probably the last year that he won't really get what's going on so we thought we might as well make the most of it. We did head to the beach and witnessed the wonder that is the Aussie Christmas Day gathering in a public space. There were people there with all manner of stuff, including decorations, (even a fake Christmas tree!), sound systems and even a fridge powered by a mini generator. We felt like total amateurs with our cans of beer and bag of crisps.

We also paid a Christmas Day visit to the peacocks.

No longer number one

One of the hardest things about this year has been coming to terms with the fact that I'm no longer my son's primary and preferred caregiver. I spent ten months at home with him on maternity leave, during which time he was definitely more attached to his Mummy. Now, though, it's all about Daddy. This of course makes perfect sense: A is on leave this year and caring for E full time is his job. Plus toddlerhood is a really fun age for a child and parent to spend together. There is so much interaction and activity at this age and E clearly derives a huge amount of enjoyment from the fun and games they get up to (exploring local playgrounds and so on). The weather might play a part here too. My enjoyment in taking E to music classes last year, for example, was somewhat tempered by having to bundle both him and me up in multiple layers and haul ourselves through the snow to get there and back. The "year with no winter" that we have planned has many advantages! Nevertheless, it does sting a bit to no longer be the favourite. I've read enough on the internet, however, to know that attachment shifts back and forth and can often be unrelated to who is the primary caregiver and I imagine I'd feel exponentially worse if this was happening to me as a stay-at-home mum. And, honestly, one of the best things about this year has been watching these two fall in love with each other.

I mean, this is pretty much the cutest thing ever.

Things I did in Sydney

In roughly chronological order...

Gave a paper and received an enthusiastic response and some excellent feedback.

Attended a really great eighteenth-century conference where I reconnected with old friends and made new ones.

Fulfilled a long-held dream to see Nick Cave perform live.

Spent time with one of my dearest friends from Montreal.

Injured my shoulder.

Reconnected with a friend from MA days who I hadn't seen in over seven years and met her lovely children.

Watched helicopters circle over the CBD while we were on a ferry during the Lindt cafe siege.

Fed a giraffe at Taronga Zoo.

Saw a very cool manuscript relevant to my research at the State Library of New South Wales.

Took another selfie with Shakespeare and some of his characters.

Went to the beach and shivered a bit.

Explored the history of Cockatoo Island.

Took a poorly E to the doctor.

Enjoyed the incongruity of Christmas decorations and warm sunshine.

Speaking of which, we also got to ride this insanely festive bus. Twice.

 

Melbourne

It's pretty great to be in a real city again. There are people on the streets after 7 pm! We're staying just off Lygon Street which is really vibrant, with lots of Italian cafes and restaurants. A local introduced me to the dual pleasures of the independent book store Readings and the delicious cakes of Brunetti's opposite. And there are trams here! It's also rather grey, so reminds me of London. Of course I've also been working. I gave a talk at the University, where I discovered what must be the most ornate entrance to a car park ever.

Nothing to do in Perth?

This is what people keep telling us. I'm not sure if it's true but we've decided that we like it here. In fact, we asked to stay on for another month until our visas run out and I'm happy to say that the Centre agreed. So we'll be here until mid-January (with visits to Melbourne and Sydney in December). Perhaps it's just that the quietness of Perth is a welcome respite after the business of our time in London. I'm also craving a bit of routine after moving around quite frequently. And while this city may not be all that vibrant (everyone gets up early and goes to bed early, apparently, so mornings are very active but there's little nightlife) it's great for kids. Oh, how my life has changed!

One of the things I like most here so far is the fact that a) there is a replica of an early modern theatre in the courtyard of the Arts building and that b) it is inhabited by peafowl. These birds stage their own drama to try to compete with what's going on on stage. Here they are upstaging a lunchtime performance of Titus Andronicus.

E wasn't sure about them at first but is coming round to the idea. And he's developing a pretty decent peacock call impersonation!

On babies and safety

En route from London to Perth, we stopped overnight in Abu Dhabi. We're travelling with a portable crib but it was in one of the suitcases that was checked through to our final destination. So at the hotel we asked for a crib, which was brought up to our room. It was a drop side crib (illegal in North America). There was no mattress so the hotel staff had helpfully put a folded duvet on the bottom. This was topped with a blanket and a small pillow. Basically, the thing was SIDS central. We took out all of the soft bedding and placed the duvet cover as a sheet over the bottom of the crib (even though it was rock hard). But the panel on the bottom was covered with some kind of plastic (like it was new and hadn't been properly unwrapped) that I couldn't remove. Almost as soon as I fell asleep, I heard rustling as E flipped over in the crib and I sat bolt upright in bed, paranoid that he was going to wriggle the sheet off the bottom of the crib and suffocate in the plastic. Somehow, however, we all survived the night. The next day we took a taxi into the city. Of course there was no car seat and E wriggled around on my lap, desperate to see (and perhaps climb) out of the window. We all survived this cab ride, and the return journey, too.

My intention here is not to be critical or snobby about safety standards and practices in other countries. What surprised me was in fact how accepting I was about these two scenarios. For E's first year, we followed the SIDS guidelines to the letter: he was in our room for 6 months, always in his own sleep space, always with the right bedding. When he learned to roll over and started to sleep on his stomach I even fought that for a bit and would gently try to flip him onto his back. We don't have a car but always used a car seat in taxis, even though it's not legally required. I felt that his life, and therefore my happiness, depended on these things. I'm sure that we've greatly reduced the risks of various types of harm befalling him. But every day babies ride without car seats or sleep on soft mattresses and most of them are perfectly fine. The strategies and technologies that we've developed to protect our babies have the side effect of creating some paranoid and overanxious parents (speaking for myself here). All of this is much easier now that E is older. He's at a lower risk for SIDS now and my gut feeling is that it's slightly less dangerous for a 1-year-old to ride "loose" in a car than it is for a newborn. 

I'm not saying anything here that millions of other parents haven't thought or felt. But I'm deeply glad not to have undertaken this sabbatical trip with E in his first year. The truth is, sometimes you just have to make the best of a dodgy crib or suck it up and go somewhere without a car seat. I investigated the logistics of bringing a car seat with us around the world and it was going to be extremely complex (not only would toting it around be a hassle, you can't legally use a car seat from one country in another place as they all have different safety standards). So let's just say that this is one of many ways in which the timing of this sabbatical is good for us.

E, of course, is not bothered about any of these things. Here he is chilling out by the hotel pool in Abu Dhabi.

When in London

A list of performances I saw in London:

1) Handel's Xerxes at the English National Opera. Verdict: Pleasure-garden-tastic! Impressed with my own stamina. Green is very soothing to look at. I think I want to be Alice Coote.

2) Richard III at the Trafalgar Studios with Martin Freeman. Verdict: You do not need a horse in a 1970s office! WTF was Margaret doing?

3) Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies at the Aldwych Theatre. Verdict: Henry, you are a complete and utter idiot. But somehow quite loveable. And I never had Cromwell down as an Essex boy!

4) Electra at the Old Vic with Kristen Scott Thomas. Verdict: KST, you are not too old for this part! Also, not a lot happens till the end. And then stuff really happens.

5) A Christian Turn'd Turk as a Read Not Dead staged reading at the Globe. Verdict: Pirates! And the new indoor Sam Wanamaker playhouse is gorgeous.

And let's not forget, the last night of Kate Bush's Before the Dawn tour (thanks to my wonderful friend, Steve, ticket snagger extraordinaire). Verdict: Fish head people! The moon! Beautiful birds! The jury's still out on Bertie.

A and I also got a night out together (courtesy of Granny Babysitting Inc.) to see one of our favourite Canadian bands, the Besnard Lakes.

Archival relations

This summer I started a major new research project on women and regional theatre in Britain in the long eighteenth century. Nobody has done much work on theatre outside London in the period for a number of years: Sybil Rosenfeld published a book on it in the 1930s and much of Kathleen Barker's career was concerned with it but she died in 1991. That either means that a new study of the subject is long overdue or that I am completely nuts for attempting to synthesise material from lots and lots of disparate record offices and archives across the country into something coherent. The wonderful Jane Moody was working on this topic before she died (although she wasn't primarily concerned with gender). She would have produced a much better book on this than I ever will and it's a huge loss to academia that she didn't get the chance to do so. Anyway, I got a fairly large grant from SSHRC to pursue this and one of the goals of my sabbatical is to make a start on the project. The plan is that over the next five years I'll travel to a selection of cities to explore their archival material (Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Norwich, York) and eventually write a book about women's contributions to theatrical culture as actresses, managers and so on. I thought, why not start in Bristol since I know the city and since the University's Theatre Collection has a lot of material to explore.

This turned out to be a brilliant plan. The Theatre Collection holds Kathleen Barker's archive. It is enormous. Throughout her life she meticulously collected material relating to theatre outside London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And she kept everything. In the days before photography was allowed in libraries and record offices (and it's still not possible everywhere), her method was to go to the archive with her typewriter and transcribe whatever she found. This includes playbills, newspaper references, account books, minutes of theatre management committees, etc, etc. As far as Bristol is concerned, she has saved me a lot of work. For example, she went through every extant newspaper from the city and typed up any descriptions she found of theatrical activity. I cannot even begin to say how grateful I am that I do not have to attempt this kind of work. It must have taken her years and played havoc with her eyesight, especially if she was working from microfilm.

The funny thing about working with someone's archive is that you begin to develop a relationship with that person. This started out as an interrogation of Barker's methods: what do all these abbreviations mean? why does she sometimes type in red? why has she left that part of the report out and only described it briefly instead of giving a full transcription? why does she seem to privilege one newspaper over another? If only I could ask her! But as time went on I became more and more interested in the personal dimension of the archive. I've started to understand what catches her interest and what amuses her. And I'm completely in awe of the fact that this was work that was never finished for her. For example, she has created a performance calendar for the Jacob's Wells theatre where she lists which plays were performed on each night that it operated. It opened in 1729 but there's no real information about the performances that took place there until the 1740s (when there's an extant account book - more on that another time). Nevertheless, Barker has left blank pages for the 1730s and has taken the time to write out all the dates on which performances would have taken place (the theatre was only open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays), leaving a blank space next to each date as if she planned to go back and fill in the details once she had tracked them down. It's both inspiring, in that her hope of one day finding missing details is infectious, and poignant in reminding me that our work as theatre historians is never finished. 

Here (slightly sneakily) is a page of Barker's typed notes, chosen at random.

Thank you, Kathleen, for your thoroughness and attention to detail and for showing me how rich the Bristol theatre scene was in the eighteenth century. I could write a whole book about this city but only because your archive has made so much material available. But, like you, I'll continue on to the next destination. (Cue imaginings of the theatre historian as Littlest Hobo.)

On returning to whence you came

After some family time immediately following the Shakespeare conference, it's on to Bristol for some archival research. Bristol is where I grew up from the age of 6 until I left for university at 18. Coming back is deeply weird. Everything is both eerily familiar yet completely alien. A case in point: the Watershed cinema and bar, where I spent quite a bit of my teenage years, is still there. Nothing much has changed. It still has the same arty and slightly scruffy clientele and even the same posters on the wall (hello Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction!). But the area around it in the harbour is awash with new places to eat and drink. New build flats with views of the water abound but I have no idea who can afford to live in them. The image that the city presents of itself is somehow at odds with the people that I think inhabit it. But what do I know. I never lived in the city itself anyway and I haven't spent a sustained period of time here in years. Being back is marvellous. I get to explore the city anew and see what's changed. And I get to go and see my Nana on a regular basis. Oh, and we have this amazing view from our flat at the University in the building that used to be the Principal's House (excuse the weird reflection of my hand).

Stratford means Shakespeare

Seriously, he's everywhere in this town. Even the local initiative to reduce alcohol-related violence in pubs has a Shakespearean name.

It's the first time that I've been to the invitation-only conference held at the Shakespeare Institute every two years so I sort of feel like I've made it. And it was cool to see my book on the publisher's table (after I shamed them into getting hold of a copy from Cambridge as they hadn't actually brought one!). But my next project is not specifically Shakespeare related so I'm a bit of an interloper, even a fraud. Nevertheless, I have a strong sense that these are my people - so many lovely friends that I've known since PhD days. It was truly wonderful to be there.

Some highlights of the week-long conference.

1) A very casual book publication celebration in the pub with my partner in crime in book writing and tenure tracking.

2) A late night game of table football at the house some friends were renting in a nearby village.

3) This selfie that a certain eminent early modern drama scholar and I took with Hamlet (moody b*st*rd!) - photo stolen from her Facebook page.

First sabbatical

I've started this blog to reflect on my experiences on my first sabbatical during the 2014-2015 academic year. On 1 August I left my home in Montreal with my husband and one-year-old son. We said goodbye to our friends and our lovely cat (sniff!) to embark on a 9-month adventure. I will be carrying out a variety of research projects in various locations. My husband will be primary caregiver to our son. This blog is so titled because I hope for many more sabbaticals!