Culture is as culture does.

I'm very happy to be writing from Bristol tonight after a long weekend in Liverpool for the annual Classical Association conference. The conference itself was pretty good, and it was a fun weekend, don't get me wrong; the fun just came from different places than we students had imagined. Expectations were high because Liverpool has recently been crowned European Capital of Culture for 2008, and we were looking forward to spending our free time touring the docks and browsing through galleries and museums. Through no fault of Liverpool's, the weather pretty much put the kibosh on those plans. Apart from brilliant sunshine as we arrived and left the city, the weekend was solid rain, varying from annoying sprinkles to a full-on downpour complemented by high winds that washed out our free afternoon yesterday. So, if you want an assessment of Liverpool as a cultural Mecca, I can only say that if by culture, you mean vast quantities of mediocre coffee and cheap wine, then Liverpool has a lot to offer.

The weekend did feature one genuinely impressive cultural experience. The conference dinner on Friday night was held at Liverpool Cathedral (Anglicans apparently don't mind allowing crowds of indeterminate religious persuasions to chow down in their sanctuary, apparently, if they can cough up the appropriate fee). The Cathedral is absolutely massive and looks ancient (that is, less than a millennium later than anything classicists study) although it's actually a Gothic revival, finished in the 1970s. Everyone came all fancied up for an opening wine reception, after Robert Harris (author of Pompeii, Imperium, and other historical novels) gave a very good presidential lecture, in the very back of the Cathedral. Afterwards, we proceeded to our tables in the sanctuary proper for a three course dinner with a more bizarre program of entertainment. After the main course, a hush fell over the crowd as a man and a woman in dressed in gold-and-silver ornamented robes came striding slowly and deliberately down the aisles, addressing to the audience in measured and mellifluous tones what was, by general consensus of the diners, absolute crazy talk -- distinctly creepy pronouncements about love, marriage, sex, childbearing, etc. We soon took note of little notecards on our tables that clued us in to the explanation that these were a husband-and-wife team giving a realistic performance of ancient Sumerian proverbs, shortly to be followed by a performance on the Golden Lyre of Ur. Somehow this did nothing to mitigate the creepiness of the situation which only intensified during the lyre playing and a monologue in which the woman acted out participation in a mass suicide. The conference organizer was heard to be apologizing profusely to as many tables as he could when dessert was finally, mercifully served. A fantastic demonstration of the Cathedral's organ after dessert went a long way towards taking our minds off the earlier entertainment, and we all left in good spirits. (For those of you keeping track at home, I would put the evening's programme somewhere in the top 10 on the list of Things That Would Only Happen in a Catholic Church Over the Pope's Dead Body).

In any case, the Cathedral was a pretty impressive backdrop for the conference dinner, such as it was. The weekend went downhill in the culture department from there. We students (there were four of us total, and we had a great time together) bravely ventured out into the downpour yesterday afternoon to go get a look at the Albert Dock area, but by the time we made it to the city centre, we were soaked head to toe despite umbrellas and ducked into a huge shopping mall to wait out the rain. After some dry-sock shopping and a greasy cup of coffee, we did finally make it to the waterfront and walked through the Tate Modern, but weren't overly impressed with the whole area. Luckily, though, by the time we left the museum, it was a respectable hour of day to commence what one must always turn to when weather and culture fail: eating and drinking as a form of entertainment. We knew just where to turn: a friend and I had had a delicious meal at a cute French bistro on our first night in town, so we hiked back up the hill and had a long, warm, dry, relaxing, fun meal, then continued the festivities at a pub in town with another friend. We ended the evening with spontaneous stops at a kebab shop and (enticed by free drink coupons) a dingy club populated by freshers from Liverpool University. It may not have been classy, but it was our best night in the city.

So, grateful for my first-conference experience and a taste of the Capital of Culture, I am even more thrilled to be relaxing in my own room tonight in lovely, lovely Bristol. I'm glad to be done with traveling for a while, but I have enjoyed noticing that every time I return home that I've become even more attached to the city. What's more, I'm absolutely stoked (and I am not kidding) to be able to throw myself into a straight month of uninterrupted work starting tomorrow morning after all the stressful distractions of the past six months. I've almost forgotten what it's like to work with a clear head.

Entertaining pics of Liverpool later. But now, I'm going to bed.