Dear blog,

For those of you who don’t already know I’m stranded in Pisa. My flight was cancelled again today and now I’m booked on a new flight on Saturday. Fingers crossed… It’s very difficult to know what to do but the train will take three days (Pisa to Milan, Milan to Paris, Paris to London (or Paris to Calais then Dover then London) and then London to Manchester) and there are no available tickets online till Sunday. Of course if my Saturday flight is cancelled there will be no available train tickets till mid week next week so it was a tough decision trying to work out whether it was best to sit tight and try (again) for a flight or to start the long journey back.

One reason for deciding to stay in Pisa and go for the Saturday flight is that the University of Pisa’s English Deparment (thank you Prof Carla Dente!) have very kindly set me up with a computer and internet access. In fact I’ve been merrily working here since Saturday so that’s all good. I’ve even been able to buy English-language versions of the two books that I need to read for teaching (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the Portrait of Dorian Gray) because this is a great University town with a good English dept.

I have though missed a couple of important things now – one was the paper that I was due to give on Friday to the Council for College and University English AGM in Oxford (http://www.ccue.ac.uk/). I feel very sorry about that but it has been rearranged now for their December meeting.

As the days go by more important things will be missed, but there’s not much that I can do. It’s heartening though that the University system works to the extent that colleagues in different countries have helped me and I really am very grateful for that.

All best,

Sharon

Dear blog,

I’m so pleased to see so many blog postings already with people’s object descriptions up, and they are fascinating. The text-based description (rather than on-the-spot oral presentation) has really allowed people to reflect a little more on the object chosen and on the ideas raised by choosing objects at all. The questions after presentations on the final day of the event last week were really very interesting but we had such a short time for them that I’m hoping these blogs can really continue the work of the event and continue to pose questions and invite discussions. Please do read the blog entries and then write comments. I’d love it if we were able to use this social space to continue to talk over the ideas raised when we met.

Yesterday we heard that myself and two colleagues (Ben Harker and John Callaghan) had been successful in securing an extended programme of AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Awards, working with the amazing but in much need of funding Working-Class Movement Library <http://www.wcml.org.uk/>. I’m so pleased!  This means we’ll be able to fund a PhD each year for the next three years (the first student will start in October 2010; I guess the final student won’t be finished till 2015!). The Library has a brilliant collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century journals in its (still-not-quite-catalogued) archives and the first student, who I’ll be supervising with Mike Sanders from the University of Manchester and Lynette Cawthra from the Library, will be examining the appearances of Shelley’s poetry in Chartist and other radical periodicals. It’s all very exciting. Watch out for the adverts and tell any MA students who might be interested in applying!

Another colleague, Peter Buse, was awarded a Leverhulme research grant yesterday for his work on Poloraid cameras, so last night Salford English department was celebrating with glasses of fizzy wine all round!

Have a lovely Easter break all of you,

Sharon