« the sounds of silence | Main | a new analogy »
April 8, 2005
don't look back/forward
This summer, Middlesex is closing its Tottenham campus and a load of us are moving to Trent Park, which is where I was based when I first came here. So today I left Mark fixing the flood and leak (he was there working on a bunch of things including our still malfunctioning and now electrically dangerous central heating system when a huge amount of water fell into the hall having slowly built up from a leak in a heating pipe under the landing (the water had risen to just below floorboard level before it came through)) and Apoa and Rachel on their way to the swimming pool (are your linguistic processing modules still with me?) and travelled by train and tube up to Oakwood and on to my former workplace (the bike is still in the shop after a bit of confusion about a wheel yesterday*).
It's weird coming back. I started by standing at the wrong place waiting for the minibus up from the tube station to the campus and since then I've been bumping into lots of people whose names I used to know and wondering whether or not to reintroduce myself. I'm sitting now in a large open-plan computer centre which includes what used to be my office and I'm also more or less underneath what will be my shared cupboard after September. Trent Park is a lovely campus in a country park that has a lot of history (George III used to visit here, the Sassoon family owned it at the start of the twentieth century, it was a POW camp for German officers during WWII, etc.), lovely views and great walks and cycle trails. Still, I've always liked Tottenham, which is more 'street' and has buildings named after Jimi Hendrix, Jenny Seacole and Toussaint L'Ouverture rather than mad king's doctors (forgive the syntactic ambiguity) and things.
I came for an open day and spent it meeting some really nice potential students and staff (although I'm now being made nervous by the student next to me whose mouse keeps getting too close to my left hand). I particularly enjoyed chatting to my History and English colleagues about Leavis and the legendary William Empson scandal of the condoms.
B-)
*I sent it in for a service and spoke repair. I'm collecting it later today with a new chain, cassette, rear wheel and saddle. The holdup was because I told the guy working on it I had a spare wheel in the shed, only to find out too late that it was a front wheel rather than a rear one. Soon my bike will be like the axe that's had its handle and blade changed several times but has been in the family for generations.
Posted by Billy at April 8, 2005 4:20 PM
Comments
Yes, this was quite a challenge for the linguistic processing modules, but I made it through. One small catch though, I didn't really get the syntactic ambiguity.. so, should I start worrying about my linguistic processing modules? :)
Mai
Posted by: Mai at April 9, 2005 5:56 AM
I had to stare at the sentence for a long time, and then after reading it out aloud it dawned on me that the ambiguity might have to do with Hendrix' (Hendrix's??) doctor... does it?
Posted by: Hanna at April 9, 2005 10:59 AM
Sorry, guys. What I had in mind was that 'mad king's doctors' could be doctors who work for mad kings or it could be mad doctors who work for kings.
B-)
Posted by: billyclarkie 
at April 10, 2005 9:28 PM
How annoying ;-)
Posted by: Hanna at April 11, 2005 11:33 AM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)