Gregynog

Nope, that is not a made up word describing what happens when Greg takes a nap -- its the name of an old Tudor manor and grounds in Wales (couple hours north of here, in the mid-section) which is owned by the U of Wales. They use it for conferences and such and a couple weeks ago I was there overnight for a U of Wales post-grad conference for lit.

Apparently part of the whole thing about being a PhD student is to go to these conferences and read your paper (tuned to the theme of that particular conference) and defend it (sometimes apparently the academic snipery is epic) and meet others and schmooze and make your name know and then you get a teaching job when you graduate, rather than a really really really expensive piece of paper that leads to a hot fryer ....

So I thought I'd "practice" writing an abstract, but they accepted it and then I had to write the darn thing--a 20 minute paper on my research, ie my novel and its critical and philosophical background--particularly relating to their theme which was ... (drum roll) "Beyond here lies nothing, the bounds of literature" .... very post-structuralist of them. Anyway my main argument for my paper was: "Los Angeles does not exist" ... And I went on from there to talk about its "landscape of erasure". Sounds pretty out there but there were talks using deconstructivist theory applied to Fantasy novels, about Ekphrastic poetry, comic books, a re-interpretation of the character of Ophelia, doping in the GDR, and apparently about Necrophilia ... (didn't hear that one). I know! Who knew lit conferences could be so bloody weird!

The drive in was an adventure in middle of nowhere country village driving--lanes the size of half a car, and NO signage. C and I always thought New Mexico was bad for signage, but country Wales is MUCH worse. You really just had to go by feel. I have a theory that I may actually still be out there driving around and around the same village.

The manor itself was pretty cool. I have not gotten used to the peppering of OLD buildings everywhere here and being used for all kinds of things. In the states an old building might be 50-100 years old (in L.A. 30!), here an old building is 400. The whole thing wasn't old, there had been additions--but the inside was all carved wood and impressive stately rooms and massive fireplaces. And one spiraling staircase with the banister carved into the stone--very cool. There was one toilet (wc) left in the place of the old type--a square board and a long dark tunnel down to .... The best feature by far was the bar down in the old wine cellar (think that was it). The ceiling was old brick, painted over yellow and red--but it was in this amazing pattern of arches--It was like a bunker/bar, something you'd see in a movie about Berlin during the war perhaps. I did not, however, stay to drink much--just a fizzy water thankyou, because I was on the 3rd day of a migraine and had my paper to present next morning. Ah well, too bad.

So, including a couple pics that will be self explanatory--the manor, me, and then a shot of some wood and sheep pasture where I went on a walk during tea time (yes, there was tea time the first afternoon--with about 10 kinds of tea, coffee, and about half a dozen types of cake and biscuits (ie, cookies).