PhDlogue, part I: Suddenly, Nottingham
So I thought some people may be interested in hearing how I am doing in the faraway and not at all sufficiently cold land of the UK. For this reason I have compiled a handy guide complete with photo references. This is not, alas, a proper travelogue, but in my defense most of my traveling so far has been to IKEA. So here you have it.
My apartment, the exact location of which I will with your permission not disclose on the instanets, is a one-bedroom dinky shoebox in the neighborhood known as Lenton. Within handy biking distance of uni, if you happen to be handy with a bike. When I came into it, it was empty but for a few kitchen cupboards and an oven/gas cooker that I did not know how to operate. Naturally, Sister and I went furniture-hunting. We found IKEA. Tragic as it is, no other furniture shop in town is cheaper than IKEA. And I looked, believe you me. For some reason I had been under the impression that Nottingham is just choke full of second hand and charity shops, all of which sell furniture. It isn’t and they don’t. IKEA, in the meantime, is an hour away by two buses and quite a bit of a walk. Adventure!
We got a bed and a nice foldy dining table. Then we got an inflatable mattress. Then we went to the charity shop and got a beautiful green sofa. Then the sofa would not fit through my door. It was pretty funny in retrospect. With profound grief, we were forced to return the sofa and get a couple of chairs instead, and then go to IKEA again. All this was accompanied by such hilarious incidents as doing battle with the bed for three days to the tune of excessive Queen before despairing and calling in an assembly guy. He had a drill, you guys. I had a drill, but then I tried to use it as a hammer and it got very sad.
And then we got the BEST THING EVER. It is green. You’ll know it when you see it.
Currently, walking into my apartment, this is what you see:
Isn’t it just cozy? Here’s the kitchen end:
And here is the view from the back window:
The space is rather small - it’s hard to judge whether it’s smaller or bigger than it seems here, but it’s perfectly sized for one not particularly active person. Gets a touch crowded in two. The sun travels nicely from the back to the front window through the day so that there’s almost always a patch of sunlight. Now if someone could just explain to me just what is sunlight doing in Britain in October. It’s been dismally hot for the length of my stay here so far. I am haunted, cursed.
(That thing in the corner is a laundry tree. Please excuse it being in full bloom.)
Also, a bike:
Bikes are hard, man. People zip past you like nobody’s business and you think, oh, isn’t this convenient and sportsy and energizing! But the truth is that biking is just like running except that your ass gets sore. There are two hills in Nottingham - city center is built on one, the university’s main campus on the other. My house is in an elegant and ideal location right between the campus and city center.
The bedroom, in the meantime:
Was distressingly closet-like until I got in all those books and that gorgeous blanket. Now it’s rather nice, although still somewhat bare. Shelves and pictures TBA. I am after all going to have rather more books than that. Seriously, that is pathetic, it makes me weep to see it. I do however have about a billion houseplants:
And among them, cleverly hidden:
Fuck yeah.
I’ll spare you the bathroom. My bathtub is the color of somewhat less than fresh avocado. I don’t know, okay.
However, by far the most important feature of the house is:
This, ladies and ladies, is Princess Tilly. She is a six years old ragdoll cross with the most hilariously awkward habits whose hobbies include sleeping under the sofa and breaking into earth-shaking purrs whenever someone as much as yawns her way. She is the most affectionate cat I have known in my life and I am, as I may remind you, me. I adopted her some ten days after arrival and that was the absolutely right decision; I’m now considering getting her a sibling. A house without a cat can never be a home.
Some ten minutes’ bike ride and fifteen more minutes’ desperate panting away, we have the University Park, which is not named in vain:
My university does in fact lie smack in the middle of a huge park complete with such features as a lake, waterfowl included, and some dozens of not hundreds of these guys:
In case you don’t recognize it, that’s an honest to god real live magpie. Everywhere you turn your head, they’re going frrrrrrrrrriut at each other. It’s very distracting. The university also has a herd of geese, as apparently this is the kind of thing that a UK university needs. They hang out on campus, browsing in peace among the grass, with occasional breaks to terrorize passersby for fun and profit. I’ll post a picture of them someday, when I mount up the courage to come closer than frantic fleeing distance of them.
My illustrious faculty is located in the Trent Building, which you can tell is extra respectable because it has a clock tower:
Right there in the distance. I’d post pictures of the inside but I suspect that some respectable academic or other will not approve of me wandering dazedly about in his hallowed halls with a smartphone camera. Also I have not yet actually begun to study. First guidance session is scheduled for this Wednesday. Worry not, I shall keep you all afoot and abreast and a-body-part-of-your-choice of any developments in my bold quest to understand just why the hell they remade Conan.
Naturally there is more - a canal and a bridge right by my house, for once, and the bizarre British tendency to orient everything to the left, and the local geekery clubs, and so on an forth. I imagine I’ll get to it all, one update at the time. There is, expectedly enough, existential angst now and then, but I suspect it’s rather too generic to waste words on. You know. The meaning of change, the alchemy of comfort. It all passes when I eat well, and I do make a point of eating quite well, thank you. So if any of you are worrying, please, go eat something nice instead. The management of one’s brain chemistry is really a peerless art. And so to close this update, have a picture of tonight’s dinner. I made it myself:
My apartment, the exact location of which I will with your permission not disclose on the instanets, is a one-bedroom dinky shoebox in the neighborhood known as Lenton. Within handy biking distance of uni, if you happen to be handy with a bike. When I came into it, it was empty but for a few kitchen cupboards and an oven/gas cooker that I did not know how to operate. Naturally, Sister and I went furniture-hunting. We found IKEA. Tragic as it is, no other furniture shop in town is cheaper than IKEA. And I looked, believe you me. For some reason I had been under the impression that Nottingham is just choke full of second hand and charity shops, all of which sell furniture. It isn’t and they don’t. IKEA, in the meantime, is an hour away by two buses and quite a bit of a walk. Adventure!
We got a bed and a nice foldy dining table. Then we got an inflatable mattress. Then we went to the charity shop and got a beautiful green sofa. Then the sofa would not fit through my door. It was pretty funny in retrospect. With profound grief, we were forced to return the sofa and get a couple of chairs instead, and then go to IKEA again. All this was accompanied by such hilarious incidents as doing battle with the bed for three days to the tune of excessive Queen before despairing and calling in an assembly guy. He had a drill, you guys. I had a drill, but then I tried to use it as a hammer and it got very sad.
And then we got the BEST THING EVER. It is green. You’ll know it when you see it.
Currently, walking into my apartment, this is what you see:
Isn’t it just cozy? Here’s the kitchen end:
And here is the view from the back window:
The space is rather small - it’s hard to judge whether it’s smaller or bigger than it seems here, but it’s perfectly sized for one not particularly active person. Gets a touch crowded in two. The sun travels nicely from the back to the front window through the day so that there’s almost always a patch of sunlight. Now if someone could just explain to me just what is sunlight doing in Britain in October. It’s been dismally hot for the length of my stay here so far. I am haunted, cursed.
(That thing in the corner is a laundry tree. Please excuse it being in full bloom.)
Also, a bike:
Bikes are hard, man. People zip past you like nobody’s business and you think, oh, isn’t this convenient and sportsy and energizing! But the truth is that biking is just like running except that your ass gets sore. There are two hills in Nottingham - city center is built on one, the university’s main campus on the other. My house is in an elegant and ideal location right between the campus and city center.
The bedroom, in the meantime:
Was distressingly closet-like until I got in all those books and that gorgeous blanket. Now it’s rather nice, although still somewhat bare. Shelves and pictures TBA. I am after all going to have rather more books than that. Seriously, that is pathetic, it makes me weep to see it. I do however have about a billion houseplants:
And among them, cleverly hidden:
Fuck yeah.
I’ll spare you the bathroom. My bathtub is the color of somewhat less than fresh avocado. I don’t know, okay.
However, by far the most important feature of the house is:
This, ladies and ladies, is Princess Tilly. She is a six years old ragdoll cross with the most hilariously awkward habits whose hobbies include sleeping under the sofa and breaking into earth-shaking purrs whenever someone as much as yawns her way. She is the most affectionate cat I have known in my life and I am, as I may remind you, me. I adopted her some ten days after arrival and that was the absolutely right decision; I’m now considering getting her a sibling. A house without a cat can never be a home.
Some ten minutes’ bike ride and fifteen more minutes’ desperate panting away, we have the University Park, which is not named in vain:
My university does in fact lie smack in the middle of a huge park complete with such features as a lake, waterfowl included, and some dozens of not hundreds of these guys:
In case you don’t recognize it, that’s an honest to god real live magpie. Everywhere you turn your head, they’re going frrrrrrrrrriut at each other. It’s very distracting. The university also has a herd of geese, as apparently this is the kind of thing that a UK university needs. They hang out on campus, browsing in peace among the grass, with occasional breaks to terrorize passersby for fun and profit. I’ll post a picture of them someday, when I mount up the courage to come closer than frantic fleeing distance of them.
My illustrious faculty is located in the Trent Building, which you can tell is extra respectable because it has a clock tower:
Right there in the distance. I’d post pictures of the inside but I suspect that some respectable academic or other will not approve of me wandering dazedly about in his hallowed halls with a smartphone camera. Also I have not yet actually begun to study. First guidance session is scheduled for this Wednesday. Worry not, I shall keep you all afoot and abreast and a-body-part-of-your-choice of any developments in my bold quest to understand just why the hell they remade Conan.
Naturally there is more - a canal and a bridge right by my house, for once, and the bizarre British tendency to orient everything to the left, and the local geekery clubs, and so on an forth. I imagine I’ll get to it all, one update at the time. There is, expectedly enough, existential angst now and then, but I suspect it’s rather too generic to waste words on. You know. The meaning of change, the alchemy of comfort. It all passes when I eat well, and I do make a point of eating quite well, thank you. So if any of you are worrying, please, go eat something nice instead. The management of one’s brain chemistry is really a peerless art. And so to close this update, have a picture of tonight’s dinner. I made it myself: