The knee has been healing slowly, although I've been mostly away from London for the past 4 weeks between r
esearch in Cardiff, a conference in Durham, and a conference in Manchester, and none of this has really helped things to get better. In fact, it was really not healing well at all and I've intermittently lost sensation on one side of the knee, so I ended up seeing a chiropractor in Durham to get it checked out. Seems the numbness is connected to some unhappiness in my lower back (which can be corrected through chiropractic, of course, if I were to have enough money for such things), but in the meantime, I'm afraid it's going to have to do its best on its own. I've also seen the osteopath who originally diagnosed it, and he's told me to focus on fixing the other knee (that caused the problem in the first place), so that's what I'm trying now. sigh.The conferences were absolutely fantastic, however. The one in Durham was a symposium called "The Body on Display: Renaissance to Early Enlightenment" and, although it was a bit heavy on medical history to be useful for my own research, the papers were still really interesting and I met some awesome people there (you know who you are! :). I also did the couchsurfing thing again, and had another fab experience with a woman who did her PhD in Medieval History and is now embarking on plans to become a chiropractor - really cool. It's inspiring to meet people who aren't confined to the world of academia (and who have managed to survive any sort o
f trauma that their program caused them in the first place!). The conference in Manchester was called "Museums and Restitution", and was just awesome overall, both in terms of the papers presented and the people I got to meet. My couchsurfing host there was a lot of fun as well, although my last morning of the conference he was leaving to go camping, and so I ended up having to hang about on a bench on email from about 6:30am. Not terrible by any means, though, and the
lack of sleep was totally worth getting to hang out with his cute little black kitten named Luna who liked to cuddle with me at night. :)Following that week, I went to the Forest of Dean near Gloucestershire and went to my very first (but certainly not last) Druid Camp!! It's put on by The Druid Network and is a fabulous 5 days of camping and Pagan Druid-oriented workshopping. It even finished with a ritual in which we symbolically burned a wicker man to sacrifice something that was holding us back from making good and necessary change in our lives (see dramatic photo!). So much fun, and I met so many amazing people. It was just so cool to feel as though I have a community again. :)
This week I went to Stratford-upon-Avon for the first time (yes, best known for its Shakespearean connections) and had yet another great couchsurfing experienc
e with a maths teacher named Pete who was a fun guy and likes beer as much as I do. :) We toured the tiny yet impressive Slaughterhouse Brewery, saw Kenilworth Castle, and then I tried 10 pin bowling for the first time with Pete and a bunch of his teaching colleagues who were all fun guys too. I then headed by bus about an hour away in order to interview Emma Restall Orr, who is one of my favourite Pagan authors and whom also founded an organisation called Honouring the Ancient Dead, which is very much connected to my research. She was lovely and inspiring and I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to share ideas and learn from her. :)From there I took the train up to Barrow-in-Furness, which is way up north
in Cumbria. My friend Deb, whom I met at Druid Camp, lives here with her family and invited me up for the weekend. We've had a really great time, and have had the opportunity to visit a few stone circles - just in time to celebrate Lughnasadh, too! It's all gone too quickly, though, and I'm heading back to London tomorrow to try to get my Oxford case study together, as well as prep for... DUN DUN DUN... my 30th birthday next Friday! Ack!! It's an Alice in Wonderland themed party at Proud Cabaret, a burlesque supper club, which I already know will prove to be an absolute ton of fun. I'm going as the Queen of Hearts... of course. :D Pictures to be posted afterwards!
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