Whilst Griet and I have both got our teeth firmly stuck into the Lancaster stint of our year’s fieldwork, I’m also very conscious that some people might be wondering why they’ve not heard from us, or wondering when we’ll be in touch again, or perhaps even be wondering if we’ve just completely disappeared off the face of Lancaster, if not the planet … One of the difficulties of doing research with all kinds of people, in all kinds of ways, in four different places is that – to be honest – it’s hard to keep in as regular contact with people as we’d like. Speaking frankly, it’s one of things I like least about what we’re doing … although maybe it’s only my perception, and most people probably aren’t actually too bothered, I do sometimes feel like I’m becoming the kind of professional worker I’d really rather not – the kind of person who only gets in touch with people when he needs them. Try though I do, I think there is a danger of that, and I don’t like it, and I apologise completely and unreservedly to anyone who experiences my/our ‘neglect’ in that way …
November continues to be mainly wet, windy and generally very grey. I fell off my bike (on the ice, late at night, whilst riding in the Yorkshire Dales – that’ll teach me for doing daft things …) at the beginning of the month, and have been nursing a cracked rib ever since … I’m still able to move around by bike and on foot; it’s mainly laughing which is a problem – wow it hurts! So not only has November been a bit grey, but I’ve also had to try hard to be serious, which I find rather difficult at the best of times … Hmmm …
Griet’s shouldering more of the ethnographic fieldwork at the moment, whilst I’m doing more of the household interviews and accompanied journeys, or go-alongs. We’re going days at a time without seeing one another, and then when we catch up we sort of splurge out our rapidly accumulating experiences … our meetings with very many very different people, all the stories of moving around Lancaster, Morecambe, Heysham and further afield which we’re so privileged to be being privvy to …
Christmas feels like it’s just around the corner, and we’ve a lot more fieldwork to do before then, as well as dealing with all the other aspects of our work … meetings, writing, developing ideas .. rather unfortunately ‘going into the field’ doesn’t spell the end of the rest of life, so that fieldwork sometimes feels like just one more (admittedly very big, in fact the biggest, by some margin) ball to juggle … We’re running a workshop here at Lancaster Environment Centre on the 16th December, ‘Ethnographies of Cycling’, and have to prepare for that, for example .. But hopefully, if you’re wondering where we are, you’ll hear from us soon. But if you don’t hear from us, and you are really wondering where we are, then please, do drop us a line or give us a ring … it’d be great to hear from you.
