14- 20 Feb

19 Feb 2007
The mayor and the skirt

The Skirt made another appearance yesterday. The mayor of our borough came to church, which precipitated the same type of comments as the bishop's visit - i.e. "what are you going to wear?" Not sure if I mentioned this in the post about the bishop's visits, but my role in the church means that when the bishop visits I have to walk in front of him into and out of the church. Even worse, I have to do this carrying a large stick - not only do I feel like a bit of a prat, it's also quite a feat for someone as uncoordinated as I am. I have visions of accidentally tripping over the stick, falling backwards and knocking the bishop unconscious, and then in the kerfuffle standing on the hem of my skirt which would fall down and/or rip from bottom to top - resulting in me standing half naked over an unconscious bishop, in the manner of a dodgy french farce. Unfortunately I have to do the same thing for the mayor, but I'm pleased to say I remained fully clothed and the mayor remained fully conscious (as far as I could tell).

The visit of the mayor reminded me slightly of what I imagine a visit by the Queen might be like. She sails serenely through the event, while everyone else is running around panicking and painting things so she doesn't have to see plebian scuffed paintwork. We didn't quite go as far as re-painting, though I wouldn't really have been surprised if someone had suggested it. We even sang the national anthem, during which I was standing at the front of the church, next to the mayor, with the stick. Being on display at this point created something of a dilemma - I don't normally join in with the national anthem, but stand with my eyes shut, in an attempt to look respectful without actually having to sing the words. Didn't think that would work this time, and since I'd capitulated on the skirt figured I might as well sing along with gusto... Don't think my expression could possibly have been construed as anything other than 'I'll tolerate this but don't expect me to like it", though I was impressed to note the person standing opposite me knew all 3 verses by heart. Not sure I even knew there were 3 verses... although I can still do you a passable rendition of my school song, which we learnt from cards so old they still had god save the king printed on them.

Am not exactly a republican, but my politics started out so left wing they were practically communist, so even now I've mellowed a bit politically, singing the praises of a hereditary aristocrat is never going to be comfortable. The 'eyes respectfully shut' number has been used in various situations incl churches of wildly differing styles when I've been expected to sing along with praises of (amongst others) St Mary and the jesus army.
10:34 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

17 Feb 2007
harley street

Another quasi philosophical thought... (as an aside, my philosophy tutor had the habit of replying to what I thought were interesting and deep thoughts with "yes, that's trivially true". Possibly the same could be said for most of what's written on the internet?)

Abortion rights have been in the papers the last couple of days, because the owners of Harley Street (you can own a street???) are trying to stop what they call 'lifestyle abortions' (compared to 'medical abortions') happening there. I have complicated feelings about abortion, but clearly in this country there is a legal right to abortion. Officially the abortion has to be for 'medical' reasons - usually the mental or physical health of the woman, but also if the baby will be 'seriously' disabled - but as it stands now, in the 1st 3 months of pregnancy it's always more medically risky to carry on with the pregnancy than to have a termination. So any early pregnancy can be terminated on medical grounds. People have been saying there's a right to abortion, and (in a trivial sense?) that's true in this country- there's a legal right. But can there really be a fundamental human right to have an unwanted pregnancy terminated, in the same way that there might be a fundamental human right not to be killed? I can't really see it - the most I could imagine would be a right not to be prevented from obtaining a termination if one was possible. That would amount to the right to do what one liked with one's own body, assuming that the fetus didn't have rights. Surely there can't actually be a (fundamental) right to be supplied with an abortion that would apply in every culture, every human circumstance? What if there was no-one who could do a termination, how would the 'right to abortion' work then? And this is without even starting on the question of whether the fetus should be given rights...
11:25 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

It is not only right...
This comes from a discussion I had with some friends the other night. We were talking about making choices, and got on to whether there's a difference between right/wrong and good/bad. They're often conflated, but are they really just the same thing? If you do something that's 'right' but for the wrong reasons, does that make it the wrong thing to do? Or a less good thing to do? And when people make the 'wrong' choice, could they really (given their background, personality, brain chemistry etc) have made the alternative choice? And if they couldn't, then how could it be the wrong choice? And following on from that, when we say something is right and/or good, what do we mean? How are we defining right and good? Is it good because it's fundamentally good in some way, or because god says/made it good, or because it has good consequences? If we go for 'because god says it is', doesn't that make goodness arbitrary? But if it's not arbitrary and there is some fundamental state of goodness, doesn't that take god a bit out of the equation? All getting a bit too philosophical....
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16 Feb 2007
procrastination, that's what you need

The phd process seems to have unleashed my inner procrastinator. Without the restraints of imminent deadlines, immediate colleagues, or any sense of what the heck I'm doing, the inner procrastinator is thriving. Pretty soon she's going to be demanding a name, passport and blog of her own, or at least she would if she wasn't too busy 'checking' on important things. Current preoccupations include email (of course), website updates, the goldfish to check for gill movements (don't want him to die on my shift), my touch typing speed (abysmal but at least I no longer look at the keyboard), and the current favourite, tracking the progress of an e-bay purchase that's being delivered from the States via DHL (news flash- it's now reached the east midlands).
19:40 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

14 Feb 2007
Presentation

The presentation was fine in the end, the audience came to a grand total of 4, which I'm not sure even counts as a presentation. No sobbing in the toilets required. It was, however, without a doubt the most boring presentation I've ever given. The previous holder of that title was my heroic 50 minute attempt on "the mental health impact of the draft wandsworth borough strategy". I was only doing it because my manager didn't want to, and I think the organisers thought we might have some special insider knowledge. In fact I didn't, and my learning point from that presentation was if you don't know what you're talking about, boring the audience to tears with a blow by blow account of a local government strategy is a really good way to ensure you don't get asked to do it again.

I was, however, surprised to be introduced as 'an eminent speaker'. The 3 other audience members just looked blankly at me, I could virtually see them thinking 'but we thought she was just a phd student, maybe she did something interesting before...' Have no idea why he chose that introduction, and this is not false modesty or british self-deprecation. Am genuinely not eminent in any plausible sense of the word - perhaps he meant to say 'emigrant' (am not that either, but it's more likely), or 'ignorant' (closer to the truth, but less likely he would chose that as an introduction)??
13:50 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

Postscripts
Couple of postscripts needed on yesterday's posts.

1) The reason the fish is still in the tank is that he's still alive. Seriously worried about my observational skills (animate? inanimate? apparently I can't tell the difference), but at least I haven't been reprising the feeding a dead fish scenario.
2) The presentation is in 20 minutes, I've read it through and then read it through again, and I've checked that the projector works. Now I'm in that 'I've got nothing to do except worry' zone. Reasons to worry are that it's the most boring presentation I've ever given, closely followed by the fact that it's the first one I've done in front of my supervisor. I might post an update later, depends on whether I'm crying in the toilets...