vivdunstan

Just finished my catchup viewing of the Tolkien Society Oxonmoot this year. And wrote up a blog about it. It's amazing how well it worked to make the event accessible even for me in very extreme circumstances. Thank you to all the team!

Been having a bit of a time travelling afternoon, rediscovering a whole load of bumf from the SHARP Antwerp book history conference I spoke at in 2014. I even found my husband's lanyard with wifi details on the back! He was accompanying me, free, as my wheelchair pusher/helper. Happy memories.

I gave a talk about Doctor Who and its fanzines, which was very well received, and entertained the audience immensely. Otherwise I slept a lot, on alternate days, and saw a bit of the conference, and some of Antwerp. Martin explored while I was sleeping. My over riding memory is of old buildings and cobbles. The latter are not fun in a not high tech manual wheelchair! But we had a marvellous time.

Belatedly following up a previous post about this to say I've resumed watching Bergerac. Though not helped by Britbox removing the programme recently (Britbox are in a bit of a transitional mess, with the part-way-through transfer to ITVX), alongside many other programmes (including Blake's 7), before realising that was a mistake and reinstating them. Though losing the records of where viewers like me had got to, including how far through individual episodes.

I'm not sure how long Bergerac will stay up on Britbox so am currently rewatching the many Philippa Vale episodes at priority speed. Also reminded by that blog post that I need to rewatch the Louise Jameson introduction episode, and also her character's final episode. And right now I've just started rewatching the episode with Michael Gambon and Connie Booth, which at the start has the most over the top introduction of a "computer conference" ever. Martin's mouth was on the floor when he came into the room at that bit. This episode was the last TV credit by renowned Doctor Who writer Robert Holmes, who died before it aired.

I am constantly being distracted by familiar faces. Also so many from Doctor Who. Eg apart from the very obvious in my limited rewatch I've already seen Richard Hurndall, Ian Marter (a glimpse and you'll miss it bit), Elizabeth Spriggs, and Michael Gambon in the current one. Plus many other familiar faces from the past.

I just hope I can get through enough, in case Britbox (or ITVX ultimately) do finally stop streaming it!

I've just started reading The Art Thief by Michael Finkel about a particularly prolific thief of Renaissance paintings and other art works. The first theft of his that the book describes was the 1997 theft of an ivory sculpture of Adam and Eve from the Rubenshuis in Antwerp. Martin went there when we were in Antwerp for me to attend a book history conference in 2014. He was pushing me around the conference in my wheelchair, but exploring the city alone when I was having my rest days in between. And he got to Rubenshuis. And yes, he photographed that stolen item! It had been returned to the museum after the theft some years earlier. Small world.

This is mainly a reminder to myself, but may be of use to others to know about these streaming options.

Edinburgh Book Festival offers online streaming access to many of its events. Which can still be booked, even after the events have taken place. You can watch recordings on catchup until the end of September. I have streaming tickets this year for:

• David Greig & Alan Warner: Scottish Legends Retold
• Denise Mina: 15th Century Culture Wars
• Katrín Jakobsdóttir & Ragnar Jónasson: Partners in Crime
• Kübra Gümüşy, R F Kuang & Irene Vallejo: A Short History of Language

All of which have now happened, and I slept through the live events, but I can access the recordings online through September. I also had a streaming ticket to see Greta Thunberg talk, but she pulled out of the festival, because of the festival sponsor's fossil fuels links.

This coming week the Tolkien Society's Oxonmoot event will be taking place in Oxford, and again online in hybrid form. I have an online ticket. Will sleep through the live events, but can watch recorded talks over the coming months, probably until nearly Christmas. The Oxonmoot team are really good at getting the streaming technology working well (I've had online tickets for the past few years), and the content is fascinating.

Goals for this coming week: get some chromatic button accordion practice in, listen to more SHARP book history conference talks, and work on some academic papers. Fingers crossed, in between inevitably much sleep.

Just enjoyed another pair of SHARP book history conference panels. Including a very exciting for me keynote on ebooks versus print books, their readership and perceptions of them. This touched on so many issues important to me, as a reader - and book historian! - who now reads with huge difficulty, and relies on ebooks for gigantic fonts needed for disability reasons. There is so much snobbishness against ebooks, which is also an incredibly ableist perspective. Many of the survey responses discussed in this keynote echoed these exact views, powerfully and clearly. Anyway good stuff. And a fascinating Q&A after.

This is not to say that there aren't problems with ebooks. Academic ebooks for example are a nightmare area in terms of cost and books often suddenly vanishing from those available for students and lecturers to use. There are also big concerns re the dominance of Amazon and their tax dodging habits. But for many disabled readers ebooks are life changing. And it's not surprising many like me get angry when this is so readily overlooked.

Just paid and fully registered for the SHARP book history conference which this year is streaming online via Zoom with recordings and catchup available. So good for chronic illness disabled academic me, who sleeps up to 18 hours a day now from progressive neuro disease. Also great for time zone differences, and zero infection risk. With luck I will be able to watch lots, if not always live.

Extremely relieved I decided against paying for a virtual access ticket to this year's Worldcon in Chicago which is happening right now. They are using Airmeet, which admittedly isn't Gather Town. But I anticipated problems. The conference have now emailed out a fulsome apology to Worldcon members for the accessibility issues that people are having. It is such a shame, and so extremely unnecessary. The New Zealand Worldcon a couple of years ago aced a purely online conference using Zoom and Discord. But yup, very relieved I'm not battling the tech! By contrast the Tolkien Society are hosting a hybrid Oxonmoot this weekend, in both Oxford in person and online via Zoom / Discord and later YouTube for catch up videos. They have handled this technology wonderfully for a couple of years. I have full confidence I will be able to access and enjoy this year's event too, though mainly on catchup. But yup, glad I dodged the Worldcon.

Feeling saddened reading about an upcoming history conference, that is going to be totally face to face, with no plans at the moment to stream anything. Given how knocked out I am, very unpredictably, I don't feel able to ask for specific things to be live streamed for me, even though there is an invitation there. The programme looks superb. But it just makes me feel we are stepping back to the elitist face to face situation, which discriminates against disabled academics like me. And also anyone extremely high risk who isn't happy attending a face to face event in what is still an ongoing pandemic.