Popping over to Preston

This past week I traveled from Berlin to Preston, England, to attend a conference on the history of food and drink. I had originally thought I might present some of my current research, but the deadline to submit an abstract came much too early for me to get a handle on my dissertation research. But I figured I was close enough to "pop over" for a visit, which is how I found myself on an U-Bahn, a Berlin city bus, an airport shuttle bus, two Dutch (KLM) Airlines planes, a Birmingham city bus, and a Virgin train. Tuesday evening I flew through Amsterdam and spent the night in Birmingham before arriving just in time for the conference to begin Wednesday morning. I was reminded that the English apparently like their public transit the way they like their sports: complicated and incomprehensible to outsiders and newcomes (think: tennis, cricket). Even at the airport there are few transit maps, there are no signs or announcements on the buses, and you can't read the stop signs as you go whizzing by. Thankfully fellow passengers changed my 5-pound note and rang my stop for me. The bus driver was singularly unsympathetic, even while I carefully examined each coin on both sides in order to drop exact change in the till. (They still have shillings and pences, remember, not the Euros I'm used to.)

The hostel in Birmingham was literally a bright spot in an otherwise questionable neighborhood of warehouses and empty buildings. The insides were painted in multiple colors, and the reception desk/bar was hung with strings of lights and star-shaped lanterns. I spent just 7,5 hours there, so the only photos I got are of the light switches, my technology fetish for the trip. The one on the left is a stiff, bronze-colored lever; the one in the middle is shaped like a joystick (it only went up and down, though). On the right is an example of the power outlets. Alas, my "universal adapter" turned out to be not quite so universal, and I was without electrical power for my laptop for the duration of the trip.

Preston is a former cotton-milling and -recycling town and the county seat of Lancashire*, a northwestern region famous for Liverpool (The Beatles) and Manchester (a capital of the Industrial Revolution; also, I hear they play football there).** Today Preston is home to the University of Central Lancashire, which is one of the larger employers in the area and attracts mostly adult and commuter students. Because really, what young people want to live in a formerly industrialized provincial town? There's lots of brick: brick rowhouses, brick warehouses, brick chimney stacks. The Travelodge I stayed at is located in an old brick warehouse from 1895; in the courtyard is one of only three chimney stacks left, the rest having been torn down a couple of decades ago in a fit of heritage-unconscious civic improvement.

Above you can see the building that houses the county government; I added the smoke so you could see what it might have looked like in the nineteenth century. The lead image is a close-up of the memorial shown below, in front of the (former) Corn Exchange (corn = grain). The text reads: "In Lune Street, Preston, four workers were shot and killed by the military during the General Strike of 1842. / Several thousand Preston workers were demonstrating against wage cuts, and for the 'charter' of democratic rights." Many were shot and four were killed. There is also a poem:

"Remember, remember, people of proud Preston/ That progress towards justice and democracy/ Has not been achieved without great sacrifice.

"Remember, remember, people of proud Preston/ To defend vigorously the rights given to you./ Stribe to enhance the rights of those who follow."

And a dedication: "This plaque is dedicated by the trade unions of Preston to the memory of all workers worldwide who are killed, injured, suffer ill health or detriment as a consequence of work. / Remember the dead, fight for the living."

Interestingly enough, a local told us the memorial is wrong-ways around from the action. The army actually shot from left to right, and until some road construction a few years ago, you could still see the bullet holes in buildings to the right.

The weather was--surprise!--cool and rainy. Wednesday evening there was a total eclipse of the moon, and I had every intention of looking for it. Unfortunately, by the time we got out of dinner it was raining; and the morning news said much of the sky had been too cloudy any way. The rainbow amid the rain was, in fact, a faint rainbow on the way to a really excellent tapas dinner Thursday evening. Then, while walking back to the hotel in the drizzle, we saw a complete rain-bow! As if that weren't awesome enough, there was even a faint double rainbow, with a short stretch reaching up from the lefthand side. None of the photographs I took do the sight justice, however.

Speaking of photographs, I'll leave you with this one, which I borrowed from Yahoo! It was Royal Week at the Ascot Racetrack, and Thursday was Ladies' Day, which means they all came out in their fanciest or most flamboyant millinery--even Amber, who is sporting the first-ever horse hat haut couture in Ascot's 300-year history. Friday I read in a free paper from Birmingham that at one point, fisticuffs broke out among eight men, who were definitely soused and who may have been fighting over one of the "ladies." Then I hopped on two Virgin trains, two KLM planes, a Berlin city bus, and the U-Bahn and finally arrived back at my Wohnung in Berlin.

Although the trip took time away from my library research, I am glad that I went. Conferences remind me that grades and a dissertation are not why I went to graduate school: rather, it's the unique and privileged opportunity to meet interesting people, learn new things, and discuss ideas with them. Preferably while enjoying good food and drink, of course!



* The emblem of the University of Central Lancashire is two red roses, like from the War of Roses. I keep the Houses of York and Lancashire separate by thinking that opposites attract: "York" has fewer letters than "Lancashire," but "white" has more letters than "red." Really, it makes sense in my mind.

** Wikipedia informs me that both Liverpool and Manchester were made into their own municipal units in 1974.