Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Damp Durham


The hotel that I'm staying in for the conference has a very confused identity.  On the one hand, part of it looks like a Victorian saloon bar.  On the other - in its most recent pre-hotel incarnation, it was a university admin building, and it feels like I'm staying in Bovard.  I'm sure my room is full of the ghosts of spread sheets.


Outside, it's between damp and pouring, depending on the time of day. And it's an uphill twenty minute walk to the conference.  Two consolation points, however: one is that the conference (International/Interdisciplinary/Intertemporal Nineteenth Century Studies) genuinely is all of those things, and I heard some great papers today; and two: graveyards. This is the churchyard of St Oswald's parish church,


and this - well, it was probably once part of the same church, but now is a very low key and grassy recreational space, with a couple of old memorials remaining in place, and more lined up against the back wall.  And there's also a surprisingly large squirrel mural.




 

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