A Launch in the Fens

[steepholm]

I'm still marking, hence my recent silence - and indeed, I should be doing so even now. If only I could train the two hemispheres of my brain to work on different tasks at the same time! Productivity - doubled.

Anyway, this is just a fly-by post to confirm that I'm still here in spirit, but I'll mention that I did take a quick break from marking to go to a book launch in Cambridge last week, for this book (to which I contributed a chapter on counterfactual histories). Here I am with the editors, Clémentine and Maria (plus mutual friend Eve), looking perhaps a little gormless but friendly enough:



I had lunch with Clémentine the next day, and mentioned that my Air B'n'B was cheap and central but pretty basic - which was reflected in the price. In particular it was rather cold, but I'd read that in the online reviews beforehand and packed an extra vest, so that was okay. "That's the most British thing I've ever heard," she said, or words to that effect. On reflection, though, I'm not sure whether she meant:

a) I am cheap enough to book somewhere I know to be uncomfortably cold
b) I wear vests in cold weather (and socks with sandals in the heat, no doubt)
c) I am always prepared - dib dib!
d) I am admirably stoic

Possibly all four. It was a nice lunch, anyway - Clémentine and I always seem to click - but all too soon I had to trundle my overnight case through the fenland rain back to the station, and thence to a trainload of marking.

Going down for the third time...

Comments

[shewhomust]

I thought Cambridge was always, unavoidably, cold: aomething to do with the east winds whistling in from Siberia...

[steepholm]

I lived there for 18 months in the '80s, and can confirm that this is often the case.

[cmcmck]

Ooh!

Scary! :o)

[calimac]

Well, sort of. An American would respond to the cold by turning the heat up, or by picking somewhere warmer in the first place. A Brit just packs thicker clothes.

[steepholm]

It seems simplest.

[calimac]

That's because trying the American solutions in Britain would be a road to frustration. You've been shaped by your environment.

[gillo]

£127.99

Wow. I knew academic books cost more, but that price made me gulp. Much as I love the subject...

Glad you had a good time, though.

[steepholm]

I spend a good deal of time these days telling people who can't escape that academic publishing is overdue for some disruptive technology. They get the content for nothing, the peer review for book tokens, they pay maybe £200 to the editors, which includes producing an index, and then they charge the same institutions who employ their free writers £130 a pop to have a copy of the book. (And no one else can afford to buy it who would want to.) Their marketing is negligible, nor can their books be found in 90% of bookshops. It's madness, and journals are no better. Then we have the market distortion caused by the demand for Open Access publishing, meaning that there are different versions of the same piece floating about, and - well, it's ridic. (That said, here is my chapter.)