The August bank holiday weekend was spent in Wales, which turned out to be very pretty, very fun and very interesting.

Getting there and back was a little bit interesting - a mammoth train journey with a taxi added on, not helped by the fact that apparently if you’re in Lampeter on a Sunday you need to phone the bus company otherwise they won’t run the service. It really is a long way from anywhere, really. It was extremely pretty - I didn’t get much chance to look around the town but it seemed nice, and the university itself (3rd oldest in the country, 1000 students) was essentially a big country house someone had added some student halls onto and made into a university. An absolutely lovely place to spend a weekend, and probably a few weeks. I don’t think I would make it through three years though. Maybe one, if I had a car.

The talks were all incredibly thought provoking, and I’ve some notes to follow up on later from various discussions. My own paper went quite well, I think; presentation wise I think there were no difficulties and the topic was interesting and, with Kate Newey’s, had a very good discussion which had to be interrupted to go for coffee which I always think is a good sign
Being on the subject of adapting the nineteenth century, there was a tendency to be Sarah Waters heavy (including vaguely in my own) which I found a little bit of a shame; interesting as Waters is, there are a lot of contemporary writers writing novels either set in the nineteenth century or connected in some more ephemeral way - I would have liked more discussion on, say, Peter Ackroyd’s London and the similarities between its style and Dickens, perhaps. Not strictly a nineteenth century imitation even, there are still connections which are interesting to explore. Sometimes (and I was discussing this with a couple of people) I think Sarah Waters tends to command attention because there’s an assumption that, as someone who’s studied Victorian literature reasonably extensively, there must be somehow something more to her novels that makes her more worth studying than some of the other contemporary authors. Not that it isn’t there, but I suspect it is in some of the others, too
There was also only one that I saw on the nineteenth century adapting itself which would have been a good topic for more discussion. One of the most entertaining, in idea and in the end in itself, was Serena Trowbridge’s paper on Playboy’s adaptation of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market - but not quite as entertaining as hearing her describe the reception she had from the document supply unit trying to get a loan of 1973 Playboy from the British Library!

As usual, I came away with a lot of ideas, a lot of books to read (many of them on a tangent, so firmly in the ‘one day’ pile) and a high that lasted a week, as well as renewed enthusiasm and belief.
Highlights of the weekend:
* Meeting Serena and Louisa, Birmingham City and Chester - fantastic talking with them throughout the weekend, and on the train back (we’d arranged to share a taxi on the way in as well), especially on Saturday night sharing wine, feminist thoughts and general musings. I particularly appreciated their advice on my current course.
* My paper - went well, which I was thankful for, and people seemed to enjoy it.