Your paper pushed us back the furthest in time of all the papers given at the conference. I’d like to hear more about your research and what you might have thought about trans-Atlantic and trans-century insights you might have gleaned from the sessions and conversations at the conference.

As for K’zoo vs. Leeds, I’ve always found K’zoo too large, too literary, too hot and humid, poorly timed (May, just before final exams) and too devoid of sessions on Anglo-Norman and Angevin history–which prompted my complaint to Tom Keefe and Vicki Chandler in 1982 when we were relaxing one evening at K’zoo. In the resulting conversation, Tom proposed a more focused conference loosely modeled on the Battle Conference in England. That became the germ of the idea that blossomed into the Haskins Society and Conference. I prefer Leeds to K’zoo, but have learned that many non-Americans prefer K’zoo.

(Alas, Tom and Vicki are no longer with us, both victims of types of cancer in their 40s. I miss them greatly.)

If you’re not the same Linsey I now look a right muppet, of course.

The best cheap food I’ve ever had in London has been Italian or Chinese, so I think you may have a point there.

And yes, free wine and beer.

Well, remember that I am often happy with beans on toast, and am perfectly happy with stuffed jacket potatoes in a pub. And I tend to eat mostly with the in-laws, where the food is superb, and mostly Thai.

Having said that, and ignoring the exchange rate, which makes even a plate of noodles expensive, I think the only affordable and good meals I’ve had in England are in Asian or Mediterranean restaurants. I know there is excellent grub to be had, but it just seems so spendy (for me, meals like we had in DC, even, are a bit more than I want to spend, but I think I’d have to spend a bit more for the same in England?).

OTOH, ready-made sandwiches in England are just fantastic, compared to in the US. Actual! veg and lettuce and prawn, etc. :-)

In general, though, I love good, solid English food — roast dinners, basic meat and veg, excellent cheese, and entirely unhealthy meat pies? Yum! No mushy peas for me, though.

Be happy.

Kishnevi, I won’t use Starbucks over here since the last time I tried they gave my drink to the wrong person and then scalded me with the replacement. Yes, that was just happenstance, but the one junior person running a busy London shop with two trainees so that such things couldn’t easily be avoided, that was bad management and a position I’d have hated to be in. In a very mild way I’d like to see them go bust. Also, there are approximately a thousand better coffee shops than Starbucks in North-East London, but only Costa Coffee and AMT Espresso seem to teach their people how to make tea, which is important to me.

My department cares about good coffee. This is one of the things that keeps me going in the working day.

Your comment about coffee may the understatement of the year. I’m not a great traveller, but I have yet to meet any European version of coffee that is anything near the level of even a bad Starbucks.

But then the only good meal I had in the UK was a giant bowl of pea soup one evening in Cardiff (in a hotel dining room, no less: the Angel).