Dunnett Readers Day - York 2004
Mar. 29th, 2004 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essayelI didn't mention this before because the last two of these things have been jinxed for me but I managed to get to the York day on the 21st March.
The venue was the St William College - a wonderful 15th century building just behind the Minster - so we were pretty much in period all day.
In the morning there was a lecture on life in a medieval manor house 1480 to 1580 delivered with great style by Jean Townsend, an expert on the period and a Lymond fan herself. I now know more about medieval intestinal parasites than I care to remember and have had a lot of admittedly shaky illusions shattered. Believe me, Dunnett doesn't tell us the half of it.
For instance, that ladies never ever washed their hair believing that it weakened it. likewise men never bathed except for recreational purposes. Lapdogs were kept so that one's pubic lice would crawl onto their warm little bodies and stop living on one's own body. Delightful, what?
Then we broke for lunch.
After lunch we split up for tours of York Minster and a visit to the stone mason's yard where they make the replacements for the Minster that has been damaged over the years by war, fire and acid rain. The beauty of carvings that will be so high on the building that they will only ever be seen by pigeons is unbelievable.
Of course, the best bit was being able to talk freely to other Lymond fans. Sadly there was nobody there under 40 - where are all the young readers? Surely there must be some out there somewhere in the UK?
People had brought things to look at and the best one from my point of view was a book "Gothic Portraits." This had belonged to Dorothy Dunnett herself and she had gone through it with post it notes labelling all the people she had used in her stories and also those who might be good 'faces' for her made up characters. So it fluttered with little yellow flags reading 'The greek with the wooden leg" or 'might do for Jerrott?'
There will be another one at the Wolfson College in Oxford in September. I may try to go.
The venue was the St William College - a wonderful 15th century building just behind the Minster - so we were pretty much in period all day.
In the morning there was a lecture on life in a medieval manor house 1480 to 1580 delivered with great style by Jean Townsend, an expert on the period and a Lymond fan herself. I now know more about medieval intestinal parasites than I care to remember and have had a lot of admittedly shaky illusions shattered. Believe me, Dunnett doesn't tell us the half of it.
For instance, that ladies never ever washed their hair believing that it weakened it. likewise men never bathed except for recreational purposes. Lapdogs were kept so that one's pubic lice would crawl onto their warm little bodies and stop living on one's own body. Delightful, what?
Then we broke for lunch.
After lunch we split up for tours of York Minster and a visit to the stone mason's yard where they make the replacements for the Minster that has been damaged over the years by war, fire and acid rain. The beauty of carvings that will be so high on the building that they will only ever be seen by pigeons is unbelievable.
Of course, the best bit was being able to talk freely to other Lymond fans. Sadly there was nobody there under 40 - where are all the young readers? Surely there must be some out there somewhere in the UK?
People had brought things to look at and the best one from my point of view was a book "Gothic Portraits." This had belonged to Dorothy Dunnett herself and she had gone through it with post it notes labelling all the people she had used in her stories and also those who might be good 'faces' for her made up characters. So it fluttered with little yellow flags reading 'The greek with the wooden leg" or 'might do for Jerrott?'
There will be another one at the Wolfson College in Oxford in September. I may try to go.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-29 09:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-29 10:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-29 10:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-29 11:16 am (UTC)I'm sure I have read that human hair is self-cleaning, if brushed or combed properly, and that after 6 months or a year of not washing (to allow the natural oils to equilibrate or something) it will be soft, clean-looking and in perfect condition. A friend of mine managed not to wash it for 6 weeks to test this, but then gave up because everyone she knew was avoiding her. Somewhere in his diaries, John Evelyn mentions washing his hair, concluding that the experiment seemed not to be harmful, and that he might try it again next year.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-29 11:52 am (UTC)Did Nikki tell you I bothered her? She put me right and sent me on my way pretty sharpish once she'd set my mind at rest, bless her.
Sometimes hiding is the best thing to do once the hexes start to fly - what's the point in being brought down by friendly fire? You're just as dead.