back from the edge of the roman empire

[bedlamsbard]

I am back from Hadrian's Wall! I will upload and post pictures later -- I don't have many, since I only took pics one day out of the three we were there, since on Friday I didn't want to try and find my camera in my backpack and also it was spitting snow and rain at me and today it was raining and cold and miserable and as cool as Vindolanda is, I didn't feel like taking my camera out. Or my (gloved) hands out of my pockets. But I did take pictures Saturday, which was cold but clear and not raining or snowing, and also fortunately the day we hiked a portion of the Wall, so I've got some pretty cool pictures from that. We visited seven forts -- Vindolanda is the most impressive archaeology-wise and Housesteads has the best view (up there was the first time I got the ~Hadrian's Wall feeling of looking out at the end of the known world), but I have a soft spot for Birdoswald because I did my report on it and also steel bonnets! And it also has a great view. I am pretty much done with Roman military forts for now, I am just saying.

Also had a really great steak pie two nights in a row at the Twice Brewed, which is the pub right next to the Once Brewed YHA we stayed at. Great steak pie. Must find recipe and replicate.

Still trying to figure out if I managed to utterly shame myself in front of one of my professors (who is little and cute and adorable, omg, I love her. She is also the Greek Club tutor, and she is so enthusiastic! I just want to put her in my pocket) when she came into the room the five women were sharing and I was talking about Victorian porn. "Do you know what the boys are doing? The boys are studying! And you're reading porn!" Then I tried to make it academic, so, uh...I think I might have actually succeeded, thank you, English minor, for making me really good at BS-ing about literature. And for actually having thought about it beforehand.

One of the other girls in my cohort was fannish. We had that initial delicate dance around, "Do you know what fanfic is...? Oh, do you read...? Back in Stargate Atlantis -- OH MY GOD DID YOU READ THIS FIC AND DID YOU SEE THAT VID AND --" while the two guys in the cohort were watching us go back and forth with expressions of varying puzzlement and horror on their faces. And later my course tutor said something about the 1745 Rising and we looked at each other and said, "Outlander!" Then had a discussion about Jamie Fraser versus Roger MacKenzie. (She likes Jamie, I like Roger.) It's nice having someone who speaks the same language as you!

It's really pretty country up there. Yes, I am posting pics! When I get 'round to uploading them.

Comments

[highlyeccentric]

*grins* Bit belated, but yay, you made it to England! Yay, excursions! Yay, fannish people! Yay, Victorian porn!

[bedlamsbard]

I have! I did! I read that and talked about it! (Fortunately the one piece of Victorian porn I talk about is one that is off-center of the rest of it, so I can talk about why.)

[cofax7]

That sounds like great fun!

[bedlamsbard]

It really was! I mean, aside from the cold and the rain, but that gives us all something to bitch about together.

[sara]

Honestly, given the wacky I've seen baby grad students pull so far this year, I would be completely tickled to walk in on a bunch of 'em discussing Victorian porn.

(I did a brisk round of lifting the curtains and showing the kids how the sausage is made, earlier this month, with the incoming cohort at Local University's program in more-or-less-my-discipline. By the end of the week they were all giving me these little dazed looks. The little hipster dude with the cuffed red jeans who couldn't believe that there "is really nobody to report people like that to" was particularly adorable.)

[bedlamsbard]

I suppose it might have been more legit if we'd been talking about Roman porn, but Victorian porn! Is just so wacky! And I like traumatizing people, which is why I've talked about classical representations of phalluses to my poor flatmates before. (There's one in Pompeii where the guy's dick TRIES TO EAT HIM. I think, if I remember correctly.)

HEE.