St. George's Field

On Thursday I stopped by that St. George's Field on campus before I went home--it's so nice and quiet, and I love the Victorian tombstones.

Golden Acre Park and Skipton

Golden Acre Park

Tea Room


The pond at Golden Acre


Skipton's Library

Lovely old church, Holy Trinity, right at the end of the High Street. Original wooden church stood on this site in the 1100's, then the stone church was built and extended in the 1300's. It was damaged in the Civil War (1642-1651) and restored in the 1650's.


Skipton Castle

On Friday night we went out to dinner at Viva, a lovely family-run Italian place near Call Lane and the river Aire. It was great, and afterwards we went to Adelphi, a very cool, traditional old pub across the river. On Saturday we went around Golden Acre and had a picnic lunch, and then in the evening we went to a cool little movie theater in Headingley to see "Made in Dagenham". It was a really great movie about the women of the Ford Dagenham factory who went on strike for pay equality with men in 1968. On Sunday we went out to Skipton and had a wander around the canals and shops. Another good weekend!

Postgraduate Research Room

The new Postgraduate Research Room in ICS (this only shows 1/2, but the other side of the room is a mirror-image)

Trying out my netbook's webcam

I brought the netbook in to the office today, so I thought I'd try out its built-in webcam and post a couple of pictures of the office. It's such a lovely place--all open-plan and airy, and the skylights really make it a great room to work in. We have about 35 desks and computers, but there are usually only a dozen or so of us in here at a time, so it's nice and quiet. Apparently, the PhD's used to have a small office with about 8 desks in it, and it wasn't used by very many people. I definitely lucked-out starting my PhD this year in the new building!

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

There were these lovely vines over an archway--looked great with the sunlight behind it!








Part of the park is an actual farm, where you walk across this pasture land with cows & sheep



On Friday night Richard & I went out for Light Night, an annual art exhibition that's held at various locations around the city centre. We got to see the Victorian-era prison cells underneath town hall, which were very creepy & dank & small. We checked out a display at St. John's church, too, which I'd always been curious about. It was built in 1632-34, restored in 1866 (so even the 'new' pieces are old!), and it's really gorgeous.

Today we went to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and we really lucked out on the weather--gorgeous, clear sunny day and very mild. The current exhibit in the hall was a collection from this wood sculptor, David Nash, and it was really fantastic. His pieces actually look like something (unlike a lot of contemporary artwork...), and he had an interesting section about 9/11.

We had a lovely Sunday roast lunch at West End House (got very lucky finding lunch there, as it was getting late & most places stop serving at 3--but they go until 4!). As it's right next to Kirkstall Abbey, we had a nice walk around the Abbey grounds, too. It was still really nice and light out, so we went to Starbucks in town before going home. Lovely weekend!

Light Night

Civic Hall with a kaleidoscope projection

Millennium Square


Leeds City Museum with choir on front steps (Leeds Festival Chorus)

Ceiling of Town Hall

Queen Victoria in Town Hall

Albert in Town Hall


Thornton Arcade exhibit

Little Update

It's Bubbles, dahling!

Hyde Park on the walk home

Back to School

The new home of the ICS--isn't it gorgeous? It's part of the original old Yorkshire College buildings, and it's just been renovated (the dept moved in 3 weeks ago). Those tall windows above the entrance are Prof Taylor's office, and the Postgrad research room is just across the hall.

There's still quite a bit of construction work going on, but it's getting there!

The new pedestrianized area in front of the Student Union.

It's really nice to be back at ICS :) Last night I had my first research seminar and it was great to see everybody again (and meet some new people, too). Today's been my first day of actually working, and I've gotten a lot done. I'm going to try to stick to a 9-5 schedule for most days (although I did take an hour long coffee/lunch break...). We'll see how we get on, but so far, it's going really well!