Summer in Ramona, and a Trip to England

     I had to spend the next few weeks after Abigail’s graduation getting ready for my upcoming trip to … England!  I was accepted to present a paper at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds University.  My proposed paper was to look at Thomist natural law theories in the fourteenth century, particularly after the philosopher William of Ockham.  There is a lot of scholarship on the Thomist natural law theory of Aquinas himself, and a lot of scholarship on Thomist natural law theory at the School of Salamanca in the sixteenth century.  But there is not a lot of scholarship on the way Thomist natural law theory developed in the fourteenth century.  One reason is because there were several philosophers who were very critical of Aquinas during this period, and so the majority of the scholarship has been on them.  In my paper, I wanted to see which philosophers might have been defending Aquinas during this period, and how they might have been developing some of his philosophical positions – particularly regarding natural law - in response to his critics.

     So, all I had to do now was write the paper.  Of course, it was harder than I thought, and it took much more time to write it than I had originally planned.  But that seems to be the way of things with me and my academic projects. 

     I juggled writing the paper with ballet recitals, scout camps, Young Women camps, and the usual summer stuff.  Indeed, I have very distinct memories of translating Jean Buridan's Commentary on the Ethics whilst sitting (suffering?) through hours of rehearsals for Georgie and Verity's ballet recitals.  They both performed beautifully in their respective recitals - but how could they not with these lovely costumes?

Georgie and Verity - the Bleakley ballerinas!

     We also had an unusual treat this summer in that we got to go visit Samuel up at scout camp on his last day.  I had heard very good things about these parent/family evenings at scout camp - tales of elegant dining with your son, and enjoying an edifying program afterwards.  So it took a few minutes to re-orient myself to the real world when we arrived at the parent evening to be received by a son who had not showered, or even changed clothes, since the last time I saw him.  All the boys were covered in a thin, shiny film that managed to accent their acne and the unwashed-ness of their hair.  Samuel's scout leader, Stephen Worthen, rather sheepishly explained that although the boys had gotten wet several times during the week, the wetness had never been accompanied by the use of soap.  Apparently Brother Worthen had extoled the benefits of soap usage to the boys, but for whatever reason they were singularly unmoved by these particular hymns of praise. 

     Thus, one often had to redirect one's nose throughout the evening, depending on one's position relative to others, as well as to the movements of the air.  But this of course was all done discreetly, and it was lovely to see everyone having such a good time.  Indeed, every boy scout leader that saw Samuel made a point of stopping us, asking if we were his parents, and then going on to say wonderful things of Samuel regarding his abilities, his sportsmanship, and his wit.  Maybe that was the sentiment behind the glowing reports of the scout camp parent evenings.



Scout Troup 635, from Ramona

Getting ready for some sort of fire side something or other

      I left for England a few days after scout camp.  It just so happened that I left on the night of the 4th of July.  The plane took off over a show of spectacular fireworks over the harbour in San Diego, which was fabulous to see, so I do recommend travelling on this particular night of the year if one has the opportunity!

     When I got to London, far into the afternoon on July 5th, I had to get straight up to Leeds.  I found myself with an hour to spare in Kings Cross Station whilst I waited for my train, so I sat and did some people watching and some last minute panicked paper writing. 

Kings Cross Station - a welcome, familiar sight

     I got to Leeds about 8:30pm, and realized that I had forgotten about how light the summer nights are in England, particularly up north.  My hotel was a fair way from the train station but I felt no fear in walking rather than taking a cab - there was still plenty of daylight left!

    The next fifteen hours were spent in an anxiety-ridden emotional rollercoaster, with alternate episodes of alarm and panic at the state of my conference paper, self-loathing at my characteristically slow and depressingly unfruitful approach to my philosophical work, and attempted self-consolation as I reminded myself that studying 14th century Thomist commentaries on Aristotle's Ethics is highly specialized stuff, and that if my paper was rubbish, there are probably only about 50 people in the world who would be able to tell.  In the midst of all that I did manage to get some sleep, and get myself to the conference the next day.



Great to be back in England, and in the North, for the Leeds International Medieval Congress



The Parkinson Building at the University of Leeds, where I gave my paper

     In the end, the conference went very well.  I had organized the panel session of which my paper was a part, which meant I had invited two other academics to take part in the session  - Professor Richard Cross of Notre Dame, and Anna Milne-Tavendale, who is a graduate student at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.  The panel was entitled 'Thomism in the 14th century:  Dearth or Development?', and both Richard and Anna gave wonderful presentations.  Richard's paper was entitled 'Hervaeus Natalis and Scotus's Theories of Sameness and Identity', which was about Dominican and Franciscan theories of the Trinity in the early 14th century.  Richard is an extremely erudite philosopher and historian of philosophy, and he also happens to be very funny.  So his paper was not only most instructive on a difficult topic, it was also very entertaining.  My paper was next, entitled 'Thomist Natural Law Theories After Ockham:  Concerns and Contexts'.   Last but not least was Anna's paper, entitled 'The Dominican Charism in the Canonisation of Thomas Aquinas.'  She gave a fascinating presentation on the historical and philosophical context behind Aquinas's canonization in the 14th century, arguing that the Franciscan dispute with the papacy over their practice of evangelical poverty played a significant role in singling out Aquinas (the Dominican) as a candidate for sainthood.  The session was chaired by Dr. Chris Jones from the University of Canterbury.  Since I'm sure there's not a kinder, more judicious man on the planet than Chris, we were very lucky to have him join us.

    After the session we all went out for drinks afterwards, which was lovely.  Before leaving the conference I did manage to get a glimpse of this wonderful creation - a Bayeux Tapestry cake.

The Bayeux Tapestry cake - it doesn't get any better than this.

   
       And the day ended in the best way possible - meeting up with the Dyson's in Sheffield.  It doesn't seem right to call the Dyson's my 'dear friends'; they are more like my 'second family'.  They greeted me with a Nigella Lawson chocolate pavlova, and elderflower cordial.  They were all there except for Emily, who was sorely missed.  We talked until midnight about everything from California to philosophy to Brexit and everything in between, until I remembered that the British still have to go to school in the first week of July, and then I was mortified that I had kept them up with no thought of their commitments.  It didn't help that I was on California time!  Sadly, and stupidly, I didn't get a picture with them.  So we will have to content ourselves with a picture of the Coupe, one (to my mind, rather unimportant) connection between us.



Tim's old car, now in good hands.
 

       The next day I made my way down to Tunbridge Wells to see Dave and Shirley.  I went via Kings Cross Station, and now that the conference was over, I found myself very easily distracted!  I noticed the Harry Potter '9 and 3/4 Shop', and obviously had to make a pilgrimage there.  The Harry Potter people - whoever they are - have set up half a trolley with Hegwig, a trunk, et. al., going through a wall labelled '9 3/4'.  I love the idea, but I don't love how one can only get one's picture taken with the trolley by waiting in a huge line, and then getting the photo professionally done, and then having to pay a high price for it in the shop afterwards.  This is because I can remember the days when there was a humble sign next to Platform 9 in King's Cross Station that simply read '9 3/4', and that was that.  You could take your own picture.  But I guess those days are gone.



The 'Going to Hogwarts' Shop.  More fun than I care to admit.



Lots of Dobbys everywhere, with Hedwig cages, travelling trunks, wands, etc.

     Once I escaped from Harry Potter fantasy, I wandered into more fun outside: a food fair.  I find food fascinating, so it was going to be impossible to 'walk on by', as the song says.  I started out with a sample of old school bread pudding. This is not to be confused with bread and butter pudding.  It's actually like a cross between Christmas cake and Christmas pudding. I hope that doesn't offend purists, but there it is.  It's a very dense, heavy, fruity, umm ... pudding. 

Bread pudding - I was advised to have this for breakfast!

      Then it was off to see the chocolate stand, where I was particularly impressed with the chocolate tiffin squares.  They were loaded with goodies - ginger biscuits, hazelnuts, walnuts, dried cherries, dates, golden berries - and that's not even everything.  I'm used to my chocolate tiffin squares consisting of chocolate and digestive biscuits, so I'm excited to try to recreate this at home.

 

     I also saw the Italian dessert stand, where I sampled some almond crème and pistachio crème - absolutely amazing!

 

 

Do the Italians have the best desserts?  I think they might!



     And last but not least, I tasted the best smoked fish in the world.  An Arbroath Smokie.  I couldn't take it with me back to San Diego, or else I would have bought as many as I could fit in my luggage.  Apparently this company does ship internationally (just like the Grasmere Gingerbread Shop!) so I must look into that.



Arbroath Smokies.  The day my life changed.  'I remember where I was the first time I had one of those ...'



      After the food fair, I made my way to South Kensington, where I was meeting a colleague.  Sometimes I write for the website The Conservative Woman, so I set aside some time to meet up with one of the editors, Kathy Gyngell.  We had a great discussion about - what else? - politics.  There was just so much to talk about in the wake of the Brexit vote and the ensuing leadership contest in the Conservative Party.

     On my way to see Kathy, I spent some time in the Victoria and Albert museum.  I haven't been there for years so it was lovely to go back.  They had a special display on musical theatre in the West End, and I headed straight for that.  Abigail's first love is musical theatre, and even though things are rough right now with her health, I'm full of memories of her singing West End songs, as well as full of hope that she will be able to do this thing in the future that she loves so much.  So it was bittersweet going through the exhibit:  sweet because it reminded me of Abigail, and all the times I had brought her to London to see the museums; bitter because she wasn't with me, and I missed her, and her future is more uncertain than I would like it to be.



 

 

Courtyard at the Victoria and Albert museum

Model of a West End theatre in the Musical Theatre Exhibit -  Abigail's natural habitat!

 

This was at the beginning of the exhibit. Since philosophy is it's own kind of creativity, I found this inspiring for my own work.

     And then, just as I was about to get back on the tube to make my way to Tunbridge Wells, I saw this in the window of an Italian restaurant and deli in South Kensington.  Billowy meringues swirled with raspberry coulis. This sort of thing is like art to me.  I went away very happy.

 

 

The Italian way of doing meringues - I must follow suit!



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