I’m feeling strangely contented tonight, despite the pressure of work and the mountain of reading I have to do. Coming home after an evening seminar puts me in a good mood, I suppose because I feel I have been very virtuous and hard at work and now it’s time to relax and put my feet up.

It’s bitterly cold outside; the wind is howling and my fingers are tingling with the sudden change of temperature. It’s gloriously warm inside, and the light is low and soothing. I have a drink on the coffee table, music playing in the background, the smell of food wafting out from the kitchen, where Lori is concocting a very exciting new recipe which involves everything from strawberries and marscapone to sautéed triangles of sun-dried tomato risotto and turkey breast. I’m sure it has a much more impressive title, but it smells good and I’m pleasantly hungry. Last night was my cooking night, and I made pork escalopes with red wine and balsamic jus with garlic and shallots topped with baked apples and served with huge baked potatoes and baked asparagus with parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar sprinkled on top. It’s become one of our favourite meals ever since Lori discovered a recipe, and since then we’ve added and taken away a few things. The recipe was so complicated, but I’ve simplified it quite a bit since then by sticking all the ingredients in a covered casserole dish and baking slowly so that the escalopes soak in the juices.

On a side note: the best baked potato recipe. Wash and poke large baking potatoes, melt some butter –not too much, just enough to be easily pliable- and (here comes the messy bit) roll up your sleeves, dunk your hands in the butter and rub liberally all over the potatoes, rolling them one by one after the buttering process in a plate of rock sea salt (kosher salt works best) before sticking straight into the oven and baking on 180 Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) for about an hour and ten minutes, depending on the size of the potato. Put them directly on the oven shelf with a baking tray on the shelf below to catch all the drips. Before serving, brush off the majority of the salt. Then cut open (I’m very picky about this – it has to be cut just a certain amount, not so much that it cuts in two, and then pressed from both ends to make it open like a mouth) and fill liberally with margarine or butter, salt and pepper (and sometimes a bit of Tony’s!).

No one is going to read that.

Anyway, I’m obviously letting my appetite talk. We’ve been watching West Wings every night over dinner lately, although we have run out and we’re waiting for the ScreenSelect DVD rental system to send us more. They won’t arrive until Friday, at the earliest, because I only posted them today.

I really wish we were able to work effectively enough during the day to have evenings off. It would be so wonderful to think there was no work to be done this evening. I was quite productive today though: I read half a book this morning to finish it before today’s seminar (Blake Morrison’s Things My Mother Never Told Me), did some research for my Narrative and Subjectivity essay topic on Ebsco, read a few pages of Tristram Shandy and skimmed over the articles Jane suggested we read for the class tomorrow. I really feel terrible about not having properly read Tristram Shandy, especially because we’re spending two weeks discussing it. I just do not have the time. I suppose that’s a lie, because I could be reading it right now, but, well… I read the whole of Clarissa, and that’s more than most people in the class did. Besides, I’ll make up for it over the next three weeks: Wollstonecraft’s Maria and Austen’s Emma and Persuasion are the texts for the last three weeks, so that’s not bad at all.

Someone said today that it is exactly five weeks until the essays are due in. *Trying to have faith.* That’s actually two days less than five weeks for us, because we fly to the States on the 28th (essays are due on the 29th) so we’ll have to hand them in on the 27th and then drive to my parents’ house ready to leave. I’m really looking forward to that flight. We’ll be exhausted after all this work, but at least we will have handed the essays in and we’ll be able to look forward to a vacation. I can’t wait to go back to the States. It’s been a while now – I left at the end of July, I think.

Lori and I have had a long discussion about education the other night, about the importance of teaching kids more than information. Education is more than building blocks; it’s about designing monuments, giving them foundations, discussing their significance. We were debating teaching certain philosophers and writers to children at an early age. There is a danger, we were saying, that children will skim the surface but not understand, therefore taking it for granted that they are not interested in Shakespeare because they don’t understand it or that Austen is boring. They might grow up remembering their education as something that taught them what not to enjoy. Generally, though, I think that’s a risk worth taking, and one that can be overcome with a good teacher who is able to teach on a level that the students can comprehend. How much more important is it that you have read Shakespeare and Austen? That’s a very specific case in point. But, while you do hear about child prodigies from unprivileged areas of society suddenly discovering a love for learning when they go to college, that is not very typical. First of all, many kids from underprivileged backgrounds never make it to college. Perhaps they’re taught it’s not worthwhile, but more often they are just never taught that it is worthwhile. Far better to attempt to instil something or inspire something early in a child’s life, to give them a chance to choose what they appreciate for themselves.

Education is not about pouring knowledge into a cup and hoping there is at least some that won’t spill over. Graduation shouldn’t just be about getting someone through school. It should be about developing an individual and encouraging them to aim for the stars: that anything is possible if they put their minds to it. Just because you’re an inner city kid from a poor neighbourhood doesn’t mean, for example, that you need to be content with your lot and accept it as a life-long predicament. Unfortunately, most public (or state) schools aren’t successful in giving kids this mentality, this attitude towards life. Of course, there is more to it than school. There’s family, community, friends, cultural group, etc. It just seems to me that all kids have potential in something, and that they need to be brought up in a way that allows them to develop that potential: to find what they love and follow that dream. Of course, not everyone is cut out to be a composer or a film star or a rocket scientist; not everyone can be a heart surgeon or a pilot or an engineer. But surely every kid’s education should be about encouraging them to fulfil their potential, to not take their fate for granted. I know this is all very idealistic. It’s not always possible to change attitudes like this, but in an ideal world it should be. There are some people who have succeeded in life despite their education, and that is all the more amazing for them, but a miracle. What if they hadn’t had that drive, that ambition to make it even though they had to face the problems of their education? It makes me feel almost guilty that my education has pushed me forward throughout my life, taught me to believe in myself, to aim for the sky. But I shouldn’t feel guilty, I suppose, but grateful, lucky.

*Steps off the soapbox.*

Why is it that my feet are perpetually cold in this country? The carpet is freezing. I suppose I’ve been sitting still here for a little too long and that cosy warmth that was wrapping me in contentment a few pages ago has waned a bit. Time to get up and move around.

Why is it that we are all striving to be certain versions of ourselves that we can never quite live up to, as if we have imaginary selves hidden deep inside but covered over by layers of something else: something made up of negativity. We might want to be the person who can speak out first but we are stifled by the outer layer of embarrassment. Or perhaps we want to be the person to say sorry but there is an outer version of ourselves who is just too proud. Sometimes I think that my inner me gets stifled by lots of layers of rubbish: the stress and work and to do lists of life. I had this vision when I was a child of a life that I would live without any regrets. I know now that that is a silly, unrealistic goal. We all have regrets in life. But there is still a little inner me crying out that it is possible to not have regrets. Perhaps it is my father’s voice inside: “You can do anything you set your mind to, Anna.” I wonder how long I’ll keep listening.

Well, now, that all sounds a little depressive, doesn’t it?! I’m not, at all; I’m just a little overwrought with work and deadlines and the inability to make time to do the things I want (and need) to do. In class today (Narrative and Subjectivity), Jane (the professor) told us that she would like it if we could read Lawrence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey this week as well as Tristram Shandy… and then she finished the sentence with those four vital words: “if you have time.” I almost laughed aloud. Oh yes, said a little sarcastic voice in my head, you have plenty of time. Lori said today that she feels sorry for all the paper that gets wasted in that class for all the handouts we get given to read if we have time. I always feel guilty at essay time when I print out various draft versions to go over with a red pen: think of all the trees I could save if I could edit properly on a screen.

I’ve been feeling happier lately about my Writing from Life course. I started out very dubious about the whole thing. Having never taken a creative writing class before I was convinced I would be surrounded by egotistical hippy-types who openly critiqued (erring on criticized) each other’s work and who would make me feel duly small, but I was wrong. They are, for the most part, a happy bunch of people who are really quite passionate about what they do. It is a breath of fresh air, in many respects, from the intense atmosphere of literary critical groups whose every intention is to out-intellectualize each other with their Foucauldian psychoanalytic deconstructionist ecocriticisms (and yes, I did just make that up. Although there is every chance this will become the newest, hippest critical approach).

Back to the writing class: We have to write a series of unassessed assignments—one a week—and then work one of them (or a portfolio of a number of interrelated pieces) into a 4,500-word piece, alongside a 1,500-word critical essay. The first assignment I wrote was pretty easy and I got positive remarks, but the second was entitled “Being Ten” and I found it hopelessly self-defeating. I spent hours working on it and became far too focused on manipulating every message that my comments focused on how it was highly intelligent but far too overwritten and intellectual. I think I was aware of that problem but didn’t know how to solve it. I tried to relax and wrote the next piece on the Mississippi sky and pre-9/11, and it went wonderfully. It was actually hard to figure out what I had done differently, but all I can point to is a far more laid-back approach. The next one was much trickier: we had to dispense with realism and work an element of fairy-tale into our own life writing. I wrote about my mother’s fairy – Fairy Lightfoot – and that night when I was little when she left glitter make-up footprints across my bedside table (my parents were very elaborate with their childhood fictions and stole the glass protector from my table one night when I was asleep to paint perfect little footprints leading to my pillow). I felt quite embarrassed in class before Margaretta handed back the assignments and she commented on the childhood naiveté of one of the writers in the class (apparently she meant that in a nice way… But I did make everyone laugh by relating a phone conversation I had with my mother the week before when I called to ask about the Fairy Lightfoot incident, and my Mum started stammering about where FL lives now!). The latest assignment was a biographical piece about my Nanna and her husband – 30 years her senior. It was quite an interesting one to do; it made me think more about the stories she used to tell me about her husband when I was little – the grandfather I never met – and how much I learnt about love from those morning question-and-answer sessions. In reality her marriage lasted for only a 3 year fraction of her 86 year life: he had a heart attack at 70 and died before she could get to a payphone to call for an ambulance. I thought I knew my Nanna so well, but I could never understand the pain that she must have gone through bringing up twins alone with her heart broken like that.

I don’t know why I’m rambling on about this class. This week’s assignment involves an interview with a family member, so I’m driving home this weekend to see my Dad. It’s a convenient excuse, actually, because I miss him and I’m looking forward to a Daddy hug. It’s rather ironic that I feel I see even less of them now that I’m living in this country. My mother’s going to Phoenix, AZ tomorrow for a conference. Something to do with meditation and positive thinking. I think I could get much more positive thinking out of a trip to Disney World, but there we go.

Here’s something about me: I love reading other people’s blogs. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but pressing that little “random blog” button is endlessly entertaining. Every now and then I check Lori’s blog and she’s got something new there. And then I read over Lori’s shoulder when she checks Amber’s blog. You wonder what makes people write what they write. Do they think about who might read when they write? Would I write anything different on here if I thought someone would read it? I often wish I had written more when I was in the States: set up a blog as a “keep in touch with home” tool to replace emails. Blogs make people’s lives sound interesting. Perhaps that’s why we write them: we like to think our lives sound interesting. To me, my life is just my life. But it’s fun to write.

Tomorrow I am determined to get a lot of work accomplished. Lori and I both forced ourselves to make appointments with Jane Spencer (Narrative and Subjectivity) to discuss essay topics on Tuesday (and Lori also has one with Angelique for her other class) so we have to really figure out what it is we’re going to do by then. To be honest, although I will most probably freak out a little about that closer to the day, it’s actually made me more positive to know there is a day there when things have to advance a little bit more. We will have to have draft/plans into our professors (I can’t stop calling them professors, even though the system is so different over here and the professors are only the really impressive ones given the title as a matter of respect which allows them to laud it over the mere lecturers) by week eight (this is the end of week six), so we really do have to get a move on.

I went to talk to Ashley (my advisor) about my dissertation proposal last week and she made me feel a lot better about things. I think she tends to have that effect on a lot of people; I’ve seen quite an array of smiling faces emerging from her office. At the moment my plan is to look at the brother-sister culture of the nineteenth century, particularly as it pertains to the sister. I want to look first at actual brothers and sisters, perhaps taking a psychoanalytic perspective (Kristevan, to be particular) of the brother-sister bond as it relates to the semiotic (that sounds like a foreign language to me, too) and unspoken communication. Then I might look at fraternal models of marriage, particularly in Austen, and the way they allow for the dominance of the domestic sphere, thereby making women the normative centre of her fiction. I’m determined not just to focus on Austen this time, but that determination is waning. I also might look at the implications of the idea of brotherhood and fraternity at this time, particularly in relation to the French Revolution idea of fraternité. So that’s that. It sounds more impressive and worked out than it does in my head. I still don’t know what I’m writing for my Narrative and Subjectivity essay, and that’s what I have to go and talk about on Tuesday.

On a related note, I was looking up something quite random today with the word “dissertation” in it and found a whole host of Web sites advertised on Google (the ones in boxes at the top and side which are meant to be very subtle advertisements) that provide custom-written essays and dissertations (some right up to PhD level) for paying customers. This one site I looked at even guaranteed a 2:1 or a First if you paid double the amount. For a 20,000-word undergraduate dissertation (you couldn’t get instant quotes on an MA dissertation so I put in the word-limit for the MA and went with undergrad for curiosity’s sake), giving the writer 30 days to work on the topic that you give them, guaranteeing you a First Class degree essay, they charge about £2,700. That’s about $4,500.

Lori asked: Where do I sign up to write for them?

These places guarantee that you won’t get caught, because they custom-write rather than have you pay for a pre-written assignment that hundreds of people will buy. But still, a good teacher can tell by writing style what is your work and what isn’t. Or at least that's the theory.

I have to pay the water bill.

Actually, I have to call up the water company and ask why, along with our bill, we were sent a bill for a Miss A Price. Hmm…

Tomorrow I’m hoping we’ll drive to Bristol in the evening to go eat at TGI Fridays (the things you’ll do for American food...) and watch Chicken Little at the movie theatre next door before driving to Hampshire to stay with my Dad for the night. I can’t wait to see my cats.

I received a copy of The Female Spectator in the post today—Chawton House Library’s journal. I had forgotten I’d signed up to be a member of the library… it was last year when they had an open house. I’d gone to work there in the summer I was writing my undergraduate dissertation and they had a lot of original copies of conduct books that Austen would have read, but they don’t really show you around when you work there. I dragged Mum to the open house and talked at her a lot in the car about Austen’s visits when Edward Austen Knight lived there. She didn’t seem too impressed until we got there and she saw how beautiful the house and grounds were. We had tea in the walled garden and walked around the house, wandered the gardens and visited the Shire horses in the stables next door. I had a conversation with an Austen specialist from the University of Southampton and started to kick myself for turning down the offer of an MA place there (I had accepted Exeter the week before)—although I have to admit there was a part of me that gloated a little bit when the woman advertising the Chawton MA programme condescendingly told my mother and me about the course as if it was far beneath our interests, and I was able to shoot back something about my interest in the course but my decision to turn down the acceptance I had received in favour of Exeter University. I hate thinking of myself as one of those big-headed intellectualists, but in that particular instance I was happy to put her in her place. The professor from the university was standing nearby, though, and, having overheard, made me feel quite stupid for turning it down as she prattled on about the wonders of the course. Glancing my eyes over the critical books sprawled out on the table I couldn’t help noticing that two of them bore the same name as the nametag she had pinned to her jacket.

Anyway, the Female Spectator (a wonderful journal title) lists a few interesting upcoming lectures, so perhaps Lori and I will make the trip. Or perhaps they’ll do another open day in the summer. The grass there smelled so sweet, I remember.

I must get some sleep now if I’m to have that productive day I promised myself tomorrow.

It seems such a pity that we have no time to go out and explore Devon. We had such plans. It also always seems that whenever we have a day off that we plan to use for non-work-related things it rains or it’s dull and depressingly cold outside. I keep deferring these planned trips until the summer, hoping for better weather. It’s astonishing how much the sunshine can improve your mood. I find myself pining for the blue skies of Mississippi despite the oppressive heat. It’s just so wonderful to peak out of the blinds in the morning and see blue.

When there’s a blue sky here you can tell with the blinds closed. Because we have a ground floor apartment we keep the vertical blinds closed most of the time. They’re wide and white and let in so much light that we don’t actually need them open. In fact, sometimes I think they let in more light than they would let in if we opened them. Perhaps the whiteness magnifies the greyish light on cloudy days. But when the sun shines the blinds glow pink around the edges and give the apartment a colourful radiance. I love opening the living room door in the mornings and seeing that glow.