Today was one of those days mentioned on Tuesday; inspiration had to be found from indoors. Fortunately the wife has recently engaged in one of her shredding binges. There is a whole landscape of information contained within half-a-dozen blue waste bags, ready to be recycled into…. well, toilet roll quite possibly. But not by us.
I don’t do “retail therapy”. I just needed a new pair of shoes. There’s a wedding coming up and certain standards are expected.
There are nine Muses, at least according to most classical mythology. Sculpted representations of three of them currently occupy the lobby of the Weston Library, while the building across the road has some cosmetic surgery undertaken. I’d like to think I have engaged with eight of them at some point in my life although I must have done something in my karma to upset Terpsichore as she and I have never really got together.
Lately if I am to be found in either Oxford or Kew then I’ve gone back to the archive. These days I much prefer making enquiries of archives than of actual people. I don’t have to go through the university ethical approval procedure, and believe me, that is reason alone.
Besides, if looking back into history, any written record is an insight into the minds of the people who made it and so much more reliable than asking someone what they remember about events some 50 years ago. This document was part of a big file recounting the saga of Tony Thornton and the short-lived St Helena Labour Party (1974-1976) is a fine example of what can happen to you if you piss off the British Government too much (and don’t imagine it’s some anti-left-wing thing: in fact, Mr. Thornton was more like what we would now call a libertarian): here is not the place, but see the entry for Thornton on John Turner’s web site.
You may or may not have gone to university but if you did, and lived in a hall of residence, unless you did in fact go to Oxford or Cambridge I will bet it did not look like New College, or indeed any one of the other medieval halls that lie around this great seat of learning. Statues, cloisters, that kind of thing. It says a lot that this can be called “New” when it was founded in 1387.
Our journey home from Bristol is being done via London, as we had cause to visit the capital for the David Bowie archive and exhibition which has recently set up home in the V & A’s ‘East Storehouse’, built on the former Olympic Park site. And here it is. It is like some giant retail warehouse, a huge Ikea or B & Q, only for art, not flatpack furniture or tins of paint. And, in fact, B & Q might well be more clearly organised. Obviously there will be some logic behind it (I guess the people running the V & A do know what they are doing after a century or more of professional work in this area) but it’s certainly not obvious to the casual visitor. All the various stairways and walkways just add to the impression of this being some giant labyrinth, a massive Escher print.
Having bummed around at home for two days I felt a need to broaden horizons, and the remainder of my break will be spent somewhere else: the first destination being somewhere I have never been before, and over the next few days you can find out where. We arrived there in time for dinner, only, but it was a good one, in a style of cuisine that might or might not be apparent from the crockery above and the kebab cooking away on the left.
I’m on holiday. Even the chores can wait. Meanwhile, a movie marathon: four Kubrick movies in one day, starting with Eyes Wide Shut (which would be better if Mr. Kubrick had lived a little longer to edit down the last three-quarters of an hour, but that’s just opinion). Everything except Ms. Kidman stayed in this position the whole day, more or less. (And the others? Dr. Strangelove, 2001 and Barry Lyndon, in that order. Finishing time around 10pm.)
I still like visiting the library, whether the one on campus or ‘the library’ as a more generalised phenomenon. The scholarly work, reading, writing, thinking: these are parts of my job I still enjoy.
Sadly there are other parts of the job I no longer enjoy; which is why it is a good thing that I am now off work for 11 days and need not give the place another thought for that time — after typing this and pressing ‘Publish’, anyway.
I’ve done plenty of work in archives, whether those of governments, companies or individuals (take Trevor Hearl‘s for instance: which I intend to revisit next month). Here’s mine. When I pass on, it’s this little tin that will contain my digital ashes.
Being 42 