Oxford Day 1

I made it through the process of finding my way to another library and getting registered! It's funny how the procedures are so different but some things are the same. For similarities, at neither library so far has anyone really bothered to check my references or read the application paperwork thoroughly. Also, both id photos are ugly, although I gotta say the one for the Bodleian is worse. No, I will not be sharing them here. Library security is also different. The British Library is wide open, free, and publicly accessible. You have to show your reader card to get into a reading room, and they might hold on to it at the desk if you've got something particularly rare or valuable. They actually looked at my letter of reference too. You have to pay to get into the reading rooms at Oxford, either for a tour or as a reader. It's not expensive but it's a noticeable difference. You also have to swipe into the library building (not unusual, we do that at MU) and swipe out of the reading room.  On the other hand, no one has checked my letter of reference or my explanation for why I need to see actual manuscripts that was required on the admissions paperwork (unless they do that after you leave admissions?).

Because the main Bodleian is under construction, special collections temporarily "has been exiled to the basement of the Radcliff Science Library". This is a quotation from the Special Collections Reading Room Superintendent who seems to have been forced to make the temporary reading room his office. He was on the phone trying to explain to someone why the staff member they were trying to call was not even on campus a the time. He also had to tell someone at the BBC (again over the phone) why he couldn't immediately grant them access to Graham Green's papers without checking arrangements and permissions, and they could "bully us all you want" but that wouldn't change the situation. He's really a nice guy though, and he helped me find a reference book that I'd been having trouble locating.

Another nice thing about the Oxford library is that you can have a bunch of stuff on reserve and pre-ordered, which they don't do at the British Library.

I will have to post pictures later as for some reason uploading them isn't happening right now. To be continued...

Weekend Points of Interest

This weekend I did not do much running around. I had notes that were begging to be converted to argument, so that happened instead of a lot of touristy wanderings. Tomorrow will likely more of the same, and some prep work for the week to come.

I did however spend part of the morning going around the Brixton markets, which I had not been to before.
Most stalls don't open before 10am. Here's one of the few that was open around 9 when I got there:

The coffee was good. Out side of the tube station nearby there was a branch of all the local chains, but I can go to those places almost any time. Like this sign suggests,

For reference, this sign lives outside of a local little place around the corner from my studio.

Anyways, back to Brixton. there were lots of interesting ethnic food stalls, but the 'retro' themed market street was kind of disappointing. It looked kinda like a a bunch of mini-rummage sale tables.

I did however find this:

In case you missed it, please note the street name above the Boots (Pharmacy) storefront. I hope everyone can guess the mental sound track immediately started in my head.

For info on one of the best stalls in the whole area, see the following website: www.imnottelling.com. Note that the address here is not actually where the link will take you. You'll have to click to find out.

Since I wasn't out and about a lot this week, I don't have many pictures. I'll make up for that later. I will end for now with a notebook that I saw in the BL shop and the question, should I buy it?

Last Full Week in London exclusively

This weekend marks the last London exclusive week of my trip. This coming Monday it'll be off to a new adventure at Oxford, and a new system to learn. I'm a little disappointed that I won't get to work in the classic Bodleain manuscript room, the Duke Humphries Reading Room, but it can't be helped. Their special collections temporarily lives in the science library building while the usual building is being renovated.

The latter part of this past week I've been going back to certain manuscripts at the British Library  for details and confirmation or not of ideas that came up while going through them the first time. I will likely go back for some further such work Oct. 4-6 once I'm done at Cambridge.

Today I did get the majority of the writing that I wanted to finished up, but there's still some places that will need filling in once back in Milwaukee. One thing that I noticed when I started going back to manuscripts was that at times they were getting easier to read. A lot of the details that I realized I was going to need dealt with needing the specifics of marginal notes and comments whose existence I had previously noted. This was the period when I really realized how hard this kind of work can be.

We should all say a prayer of thanks to the scholars who put together all those nice editions of critical authoritative texts that we love to fuss about dragging around Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc). The originals are not easy to read. At all. Even after trying for hours there are still a few places that I might have to quote using daggers because I can't read part of the notation. Unless I can find a full transcription in a reference book; that would be nice. But it won't be as satisfying as figuring it out myself. That kind of ability probably comes with practice, and lots of it.

A final note on the British Library: I finally went through the Treasures gallery on Thursday when I had some extra time due to the fact that someone else had a manuscript I had hoped to review (I fell very lucky that only happened once, and then after I had done an initial run through). It's really cool to be able to see the only surviving manuscript of Beowulf and one of Jane Austen's teenage journals. I don't quite understand why all of these things share a big room and the Magna Carta gets its own display room. Yes, I do realize that it is a very important historical document, but how it's more influential-important than Shakespeare or Austen I don't get.

Random Stuff Week 2: Yet another photo essay of sorts

Noted not to far from my little studio. To explain somewhat,

Part of me is tempted to just leave it at this. But because I'm nice :) if curious, please see this link for full(er) explanation.

Random "so-and-so-famous-person-was-here" sign on the way back from the library:

Equally random: Powerful stuff I never remember is so strong until I overdo it the first time:

Seriously, this stuff is incredible. One little squirt really can do a whole sink-full.

And now because I can't see the real thing for another three weeks:

Although this can be problematic at the time, right now I kinda miss it.

I will conclude for now with some more random thoughts and observations:

1) Being forced to use YouTube as television is sort of annoying. For example, you might get into a series only to find out that YouTube GB only has episodes 1-12 out of 60 something, and none of the American versions will work because of copyright-licensing stuff. NB: There is a tv in my studio, but it only gets 'the security camera outside the front door and in the hallway' channel and the 'if you had a tv license, you could be watching....' channel.

2) Black Staples brand clicker pens are not reliable.

3) Non-rhetorical, seriously please answer this question: Can-ought I pass up the opportunity to get someone one of the "{insert relationship here} went to {insert cool place here} and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" t-shirt? I've never actually done that before, and I am tempted. This will be re-posted on Facebook for ease of answering....

4) London weather may be at times almost if not more unpredictable than the Midwest. Example: On Monday as I walk back from the library I encountered the following sequence <light rain, hail, pause, downpour, mist> in the space of about a half hour. I also learned that Londoners seem to have no problem a) pushing you aside into a puddle or bus splash zone b) decapitating you with an umbrella c) just plain running you over d) any combination of the above, when in a hurry. Not that people in Milwaukee might not do these things too, but at least they pretend to slow down or turn a little out of the way before contact occurs. It's possible I'm just a little bitter about getting wetter than I had to (two days after the fact).

Scholarly Stuff: The Middle of Week 2

As it is now mid-week, I think I can now say with a reasonable degree of certainty that yes, there is indeed a pattern of crowding and dwindling in the Manuscript reading room at the British Library. Once again on Monday, the room was almost full within an hour of opening. Tuesday, by the same time, it was maybe half full. We'll see if it ends up being around a quarter full by Friday.  On a related note, I met an older scholar while waiting outside the library on Monday (this being the day the reading rooms open half an hour later), and he (being a member of the Friends of the British Library) was wondering what I thought about the hours of operation. Apparently, there is a movement going on that would like to see the hours of the library change to what the hours of the reading rooms were in the British Museum when it had most of the cool book stuff (this being 9am, as opposed to 9:30 T-Sat). Interesting....

Today I took off from the library in order to do some writing and organizing. Progress was made, although not as much as I would have liked. Part of this was to the the fact that I am currently forced to use digital versions of most of the texts I am working with, and I gotta say this really makes the case for why we must all pray that printing of books on paper never stops. Yes, digital texts are handy for portability, but it is really irritating (and much slower, or at least it feels slower) to have to switch back and forth between the text onscreen and the word processor. I also realized that for some reason I have a problem spelling the word 'label' accurately the first time around (it always seems to end up coming out as 'lable') which is a problem since I use the word with some frequency (at least in this part of the chapter-draft). I must however profess my new-found appreciation for the DIMEV (if you don't know what this is, it's my new best friend The Digital Index of Middle English Verse) which until a few days ago, I did not know existed. this is one digital thing that I will allow to exist without ranting.

New thing about primary research learned: Having some extra time to go back and A) review and B) look for specific details and answers to particular questions is crucial to working with things like medieval manuscripts. I can only imagine (and pray I never find out for real) how horribly annoying it would be to realize after it's too late, that there is a really cool point to be made, only to realize that you aren't certain of the textual-codicological details that are necessary to make said point.

Some further non-intellectual stuff, and accompanying photos

I tried one of the British Library cafes on Friday.

In case you can't quite make out the name, it's "The Last Word". Clever for a library coffee shop. The espresso wasn't too bad either. The one problem I noted was that, after getting over my distracted amusement with hearing "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy being played on the radio, there was no sugar available, only Splenda. I could still taste that nasty chemical aftertaste through the a two-shot latte. The other even of note was that this is the location of the first dripping of coffee on my manuscript chapter notes. It took five days.

I have also made a few epicurean discoveries. Firstly, there is indeed such a thing as chocolate-orange spread, as in Nutella without the nut or any pretence at being healthy. Yes, I bought some. Secondly, I have discovered a new flavor of Fanta: peach-apricot. Yes, I bought some of that too. This happy discovery was slightly dampened when I noticed that the Tesco I was in had started setting out Christmas candy. Sigh.

On Saturday I was in the Camden markets. I noticed several stalls that highlighted how out of control the 'Keep Calm" meme has gotten. Some of the shirts were pretty funny though. I also found something a little mind-blowing:

Ignoring the fact that I look like a drowned rat, note the bubble tea, ordinary by all appearances. I have been a wee bit addicted to this stuff for just short of a decade, but it never crossed my mind till now that bubble tea could in fact be yummy HOT. How I never thought of this before I don't know.

This past Saturday also market another milestone. I have made it in and out of several Waterstones' and other bookstores totally unscathed. But Foyle's got me. Firstly, they had a display to celebrate the launch of Neil Gaiman's latest book.

And yes, I bought the book. And several others. I'd been so good until now, I guess it had to end sometime.

And now for the requisite touristy stuff of the week:

There is no picture of me here because it would be impossible to do without a bunch of other people getting in the way.

And for everyone's enjoyment, I will conclude with two images which highlight the fun that can be had in the face of technological incompatibility:

Notice in the left in the picture.

This is a surge protector connected to a plug adapter connected to a current converter sitting on top of a box of plastic wrap atop an electric kettle because the weight of the three together would not allow everything to stay attached to the outlet. The item this set-up is charging would be sitting on the box of teabags due to a slight risk otherwise of the cords not quite reaching. I call this one "An American Phone in London". To be continued...

The End of Week One of Research

Today I started trying to put together some ideas based on all the notes I have so far. I have some interesting possibilities, but I'm going to have to see what other research may have been done on some of the questions I've come up with. I've also got a list started of things that I'm probably going to have to go back and check in manuscripts I've already looked through. Tomorrow, it'll be back to the British Library to finish the last several manuscripts that I still haven't seen. There's one more after that on Tuesday, and then I'll start going back over some manuscripts to confirm or look for answers to specific questions that I think I might be using.

If there's time, I may have to go back to the following book, just because it's so pretty:

I had to retrieve this shot off the web as the BL does not allow personal-scholarly photography (grr). This is a page from Additional 22283, quite possibly my favorite manuscript so far. It's also the largest. It's probably almost three feet tall, and two and half wide. But it's really pretty.

Thursday and Friday are probably going to be designated as 'catching up' days, meaning that I'll be finishing an initial write-up, and going back to check any additional questions or details that might come up. I've been working through my reading and writing schedule with a few such days here and there from the beginning, and I've noticed that it's a very handy way to do things, at least for me. I recommend it.

All this means there might be a little change to the general routine that's developed for me. So far, in the morning, I've been taking the tube to the library, and working until 2 or 3. Around this time, I notice I start getting cranky with the books and not concentrating as well, so it's time to go for the day. I've been walking back to my little studio, which takes a little over two hours. I think that's the timing, but I've never just gone straight back. There's always some exploring, or shopping, or getting lost involved, but that's ok.

  This is the station I've been getting off the tube at. It's been made famous in recent literary history.

Yes, this is the real Platform 9 3/4.