The year got off to a good start, as I was continuing to work in Research & Enterprise at Hogwarts Glasgow University. Unfortunately, it was a maternity cover post only, so I was out of a job again at the beginning of July. (Bloody breeders…) I was unemployed until October, when I began working in the Faculty of Biomedical & Life Sciences. However, this was also just a temp post, 3 weeks' sickness cover: as it turned out, this was fortunate, though.

RESEARCH

In May, I sent off an article on Runciman's treatment of Conrad of Montferrat, and the perpetuation of one of his most egregious errors by 'popular' soi-disant historians, to the SSCLE, but I've heard nothing about it yet from the editors. (Grumble, grumble…)

FANDOMS & FUN

This year, I was delighted by the BBC's Being Human, a witty and exciting fantasy about 3 young housemates in a pink house in Bristol: a vampire, a werewolf, and the resident ghost. I remain immune to the appalling Twilight hype: I have a long-term fondness for vampires, but, robbed of subversiveness and sexuality, they might as well not be vampires at all, just generic immortals. No self-respecting vampire does 'Mormon family values'. Drac and Carmilla are turning in their coffins!

I also returned to another of my old fandoms, Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and rekindled a fictional old flame. (See my webpage on it!) I first read it when I was about 16: I picked up a cheap US paperback (which claimed to be "Complete and Unabridged", but was actually subtly bowdlerised, I later discovered) in the old W H Smith's bookshop in the station, on my way home from school. Of course, I loved (and still love) its intellectually brilliant, emotionally screwed-up, proto-Dostoevskian, tormented, tragic young hero, tearing down all he loves around him, even as he destroys himself…

Anyway, I've joined a few LJ groups devoted to it, and have been gathering up old French illustrated editions. I love these images of Claude by Aimé de Lemud and Gustave Brion:

I painted my own portrait in the style of Rogier van der Weyden (I took the composition from his Philippe de Croy):

I discovered the splendid Canadien musical adaptation (naturally, my favourite songs are Tu vas me détruire, Être prêtre et aimer une femme, and Un matin tu dansais), and the ballets. I'm especially fond of the Roland Petit one, in the DVD of the 1996 production by the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris, starring the gorgeous Laurent Hilaire and Isabelle Guérin.

I've also been revisiting the film adaptations. It simply baffles me that anyone thought it was a good idea to film this novel in eras of censorship by NAMPI and the Hays Code, or to Disney-fy it. Take away Claude's struggles with clerical vows of celibacy (taboo because the NAMPI and Hays Codes prevented the clergy being depicted in critical or 'disrespectful' light), and the whole story falls apart. I saw the 1996 Disney version (essentially an animated variant of the 1939 Hays Code-friendly bowdlerisation) for the first time this year, and it nearly gave me a nervous breakdown. See my IMDb reviews:

1923: A potential epic cruelly deformed by censorship and Chaney's ape-man
1939: For Ham the Bell Tolls
1956: “So come up to the lab…” for some spectacular cinematic alchemy!
1976 (BBC): 'The Philosopher-Playwright of Notre Dame'? Gringoire steals this show
1996 (Disney): If you love the book... this is a penance

Of course, I'm writing fanfic: Last Year's Snows, an alternative ending with fewer casualties.

HOME NEWS

Not long after I started my last job in October, my father had an attack of tachycardia, and went into hospital. I got mixed news at first as to whether he was going to need angioplasty or bypass surgery. Luckily, the job ended just after I had learned it was going to be a bypass. (There is no such thing as compassionate leave for agency temps. We are only paid for the days we work, and I hadn't been working long enough on this contract to have accrued any paid leave.)

I went down to Hull to keep an eye on my 84-year-old mother, thinking it would only be a straightforward procedure and I'd only need to stay for a couple of weeks. Dad had his operation on Bonfire Night, but I was called to the hospital that evening as he was critically ill, and we had to get him through the next 48 hrs. My aunt and I sat up with him until 1 a.m., and spent the night at the hospital. The following day, the surgeon (who has an excellent reputation and was very kind) told us that he had been in far worse shape before the operation than he had let on; that he was on the outer limits of what was operable, his heart had only been functioning at 10%, and he could have died any time within 6 months. So he has had a quadruple bypass.

Things were quite grim for a few weeks. Dad was on dialysis for a few days, and in intensive care for a fortnight, including his 75th birthday. My uncle and cousin took turns in ferrying me to and from the hospital. Mum wasn't coping well at all, and I was expecting to end the year as an orphan (possibly completely). I was glad to make a few trips home to Glasgow to sign on – and save my sanity drinking Eggnog Lattes in Starbucks with Elma and going to the Zoological Museum in the University, where we cooed over the stuffed animals and the real, live, impossibly tiny and cute Harvest Mice (their species name describes them perfectly as 'micromice'), running up and down their Kilmarnock Willow climbing frame.

However, Dad finally turned the corner and, after the addition of a defibrillator implant (so he's now sort of battery-powered!), came home on 11 Dec, the same day I came down to Hull again from Glasgow. I'm very proud of him, not least because we've got through all this without invoking any speculative beings, Invisible Pink Unicorns, Flying Spaghetti Monsters, Russellian Orbiting Teapots, & c & c, only my knowingly camp references to The Wizard of Oz: "Just click your heels together, and remember, 'There's no place like home'". (As Dad said re: Pascal's Wager, "Principles aren't worth having if you ditch them when the going gets tough.") He's doing nicely, though Mum is still in shock over the whole thing. I'm just plain exhausted, as I'm basically taking care of them both just now, shopping, cooking, & c. However, much delight is being provided by Furball (aka Mr Cheeky) the garden squirrel, the Rodents Of Unusual Size, which are huge wild/domestic rabbit hybrids who bounce around the adjacent school grounds, and the various birdlets. I've also grown an alchemical Christmas Tree: a multicoloured fluffy thing of potassium phosphate crystals on a paper base, which I got from a marvellous traditional toy shop in Glasgow!