boat ride

Nicholas' co-worker Roland lives on a canal boat! Last weekend was smoking hot -- perfect weather for a boat ride.










The canals run through London, north of the Thames, and quite close to our new place. Although we won't often be navigating the canal by boat, there is also a lovely footpath.

raising the dead

For the last few weeks, Nicholas has been working with London Stone Conservation, restoring heritage listed monuments in Highgate Cemetery.


He works in the Western half, an area not open to the general public unless on guided tour.

These are his pictures of the Cemetery. I haven't been up there yet, but he's hoping to secure the keys someday.

Work starts at 8am, so we've been getting up just after 6am every day. This is a huge adjustment, but it is nice to have some punctuation in the day.

the circus

We usually avoid Piccadilly Circus, and other tourist haunts, but it was a nice night for a long walk and like flies we were sucked in by the lights.

lost in translation

Claire arrived bearing gifts: these wonderful London Tube map mugs.


Although it may seem crazy to bring Tube map mugs from a second hand shop in Vancouver to London, but these are no ordinary mugs. They are awash with spelling and punctuation errors.


South Kensington became Soutn Kensington, Toane Square became Toane Squane, Euston became Eustom, Holborn became Hclborn, and check out that comma in St. James' Park:



And our favourite: We to minstet for Westminster


There is a PhD project in these mugs somewhere.... or post-doc? Thanks Claire!

Claire

Nicholas' sister spent a week with us on her way to Bangkok from Vancouver.

We had a great visit and even recreated the Mexican Christmas dinner we had here with Max, complete with the Mexican chocolate cake with pecans. Mmmm.... We were so in the spirit that we listened to "Dave Cooks the Turkey", the Stuart MacLean story from the Vinyl Café. Oh Brother!


They went to Glasgow for a few days to visit family. Upon their return, we all went to Hyde Park.






It's a place we'll get to know much better soon, as we just accepted a place by Paddington Station. We'll be living there until our building in Bloomsbury is through renovations. We won't tease you with photos of the new place now. All will be revealed in mid-September when we move into the place currently dubbed "the bunker".

Summer School

The material and visual nature of my PhD project necessitates image-making. To help develop my visual ethnographic methods for my research, I applied to an Urban Photography Summer School at Goldsmiths University. Check the course out here.

Here are the pics I used for my portfolio, some which may be familiar:

Material road kill in London


A perfectly mundane landscape in Domaine Forget, Quebec


At a "tent city" in Portland. (I particularly love how the American flag and gnome are placed on the window sill of this semi-permanent building.)


Bench people in Toronto


Bus people in Portland, who are also ex-colleagues from UofT


Ah, that mushroom again. Talk about texture of place!


An incredible window display in London's Chinatown


I've been playing with typologies of objects in everyday urban spaces to highlight difference (not sameness)...


... and manipulating the images digitally to create new meanings.


Huge thanks to Peter for helping me tweak the photos with his fabulous new photo software. Yup, I'm in.

My wonderful Department is giving me some support for the School and also letting me borrow this:


I have this beast through the summer and will have to figure out how to use it for the course, which starts July 11th. (More on my project soon).