I can already see that my blogging plans for this week are going to fall by the wayside, so I thought I should at least offer an explanation. It’s basically the one of the title: at some point over the summer, perhaps emboldened by the union-mandated freedom from marking, I started thinking about things like Rethinking the Medieval Frontier again and getting in touch with colleagues elsewhere and so on. And this is always risky, because the likelihood is, as we have noted here, that doing that will get you asked to give a paper. In recent years I have been saying ‘no’ to such requests, yea even unto the International Medieval Congress itself, but I must have had some sequential moments of weakness or over-confidence and now somehow I am giving two papers next week. One is good to go, the other not so much, and so I must spend the remainder of the weekend on it, good old unpaid research… but even that is a step forward from where we have been.
Composed screen-shot indicating what is currently taking up my metaphorical screen
Still, I can at least tell you about the papers. First up is an online paper for the University of Leicester’s Medieval Research Centre, this Tuesday coming at 17:00, on Teams. My title is "Frontier? Who Says? (Early) Medieval Classifications and Exploitations of Frontier Spaces in Iberia and Elsewhere", and if that interests you there is a link to join it, as well as the rest of their interesting-looking programme, here.
Then, on Friday, at the good ol’ University of Leeds, there is a full-day workshop entitled The Myth of Barter: Perspectives from the Global Middle Ages, organised by our Affiliated Research Fellow Dr Nick Evans. Here there is no webpage to link to, since it’s a closed event (mainly to protect Nick’s catering budget!), but if you are desperate to come along and hear, among other things, me unwisely talking to the title, "Exchanging Goods in Post-Monetary Societies: Back to Barter?", then a mail to Nick might still be effective. Other speakers are Nick himself, Professor Caroline Goodson and Dr Robert Bracey. So that’s why I have to come up with something good… I’ll check back in with you about some other stuff which happened at Leeds already, once this too is in the past!
A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe 
I don’t think I’d be able to make it up this Friday, but Nick’s barter conference sounds promising.
I am going to have to read your new book before I risk going into print with anything I come up with from it, so perhaps it’s as well for me if you’re not there! Though, to be honest, I’d rather learn where I’m wrong the quick way…
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