(no subject)

[ellarien]

I had a bookstore accident today. It does happen occasionally; the really surprising thing is that it doesn't happen more often, when I go into the campus bookstore nearly every weekday. Usually I just look, but today I went in hoping for Throne of Jade, didn't find it, and came out with four other books instead, three of them by authors new to me. (The other one being Jared Diamond's Collapse; I own a slightly scrambled copy of Guns, Germs and Steel back in Sheffield, but have never gotten around to reading it.)

My latest Amazon order arrived, too; maps of Romania and Beijing. The Romania looks surprisingly densely inhabited, except for the mountains; a webwork of roads and railways and little towns. (Most of what I know about Romania comes from Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy, which I read after it was televized in the late 1980s).

The September conference in Romania is billed as Wednesday-Saturday, but it turns out that the agenda for Saturday is a (daylight) tour of Dracula's castle. Decisions, decisions; go home on the Saturday and go to church with my mother on Sunday, which isn't something I get to do nearly as often as I'd like, or indulge in a bit of once-in-a-lifetime tourism?

Comments

[ellarien]

I lived near Banner Cross from 1964-75, and went to Holt House Infants and Carterknowle Junior. My father taught at Abbeydale Grange after the three schools were merged into one comprehensive. In 1975 we moved to Bradway, where my mother still lives; I went to the High School, and my sister, later on, to Jordanthorpe. I remember being very impressed by the wide grass verges along Greenhill Parkway, when we first moved up there; the estate is on the bus route into town, and my mother still walks over there to shop if she doesn't catch the bus to the city-centre Sainsbury's.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

My Dad (he's 85 and widowed - my Mum died about 5 years ago) still lives on the estate, though he bought his council house way back when. We were practically neighbours for a while, because I lived there until 1981. I remember Holt House infants, too, though of course I didn't go there. My brother went to the Tech next door to Jordanthorpe (can't remember what it was called) and ended up much better qualified than me - and earning a good deal more money. When I'm up there, my housemate and I often go for a drink at the Swan.