Three countries, two students, one blog post

March has been a busy travel month. On the last day of February, Isaac headed back to The Homeland, and I am--on the last day of this month--currently back at the Great Repository of Books located in central London:

[This is an old photo, and one that I've used on this blog before, but, really, the British Library doesn't change much from month to month or even year to year].

I'm finally in the really fun stage of my thesis--not that the past eighteen months of work haven't been delightful, rewarding, and just plain wonderful--and I've jumped back into the world of seventeenth-century manuscripts. I'm loving this, and the knowledge that I have about six months of dedicated manuscript research awaiting me is unutterably exciting. Today I'm reading two poetical manuscript miscellanies from the 1620s-30s, and have been enjoying similar tomes all week.

And, well, not to bore you all with the intricacies of seventeenth-century secretary hand and poetic revision, in between Isaac's trip to Amerikaland and my brief and current journey to England (a very-early-morning train adventure of this past Monday), we've also recently celebrated Pi Day.

For our Pi Day festivities, Isaac took me to a wonderful little town called Blair Atholl, just a few hours' train ride from St Andrews, where we enjoyed the snow-covered hills . . .

. . . walked along forest creeks and snowdrop paths . . .

. . . enjoyed some random decorations . . .

. . . and sampled local blended whisky (as well as some local beers, not pictured, from a charming one-man microbrewery).

We also read books by the fireside, wandered around the outside of a castle, tried on lovely woolen garments, walked across the River Tilt, ate breakfast in an enormous old baronial hall with stuffed hunting trophies on the walls, played puzzle games in a pub (near another roaring fire), and took several lovely walks. It was a delightful holiday.

Inside, Outside, Upside-Downside

INSIDE
From 30 January to 27 February (four consecutive weeks), neither Isaac nor I ventured more than one mile from our home. I'm not sure that I have ever attained this feat before in my life, and I'm not sure that I ever wish to do so again, but it has made me think a lot about the luxuries I enjoy and take for granted, such as travel and hiking (neither of which we did in January, obviously).

UPSIDE-DOWNSIDE
However, perhaps the world (yeah, the same one that hosts the British Open Golf Championship here every few years) decided we were too caught up in the "bubble," as St Andrews is occasionally called, because on the last Friday of the month, some figuratively important people came to town.

Their visit caused many exciting things:
Our lovely quad was off limits for an entire week.
Many, many streets were blocked off for a day and a half.
Policemen patrolled every street quite regularly for at least the day before they arrived.

Here are some policemen guarding the street from the evil schoolchildren:

And the snipers atop the chapel tower:

And the protestor with his sign (just outside the building where I work):

And the (presumably) future queen of the British Isles, though with the life spans of monarchs these days she probably has a good long time to wait:

And a few of my friends hanging out the windows of our office building:

OUTSIDE
ON the next-to-last day of the month, we finally escaped lovely but sometimes claustrophobic St Andrews and went to Edinburgh. There we enjoyed a relaxed and ambling sort of day: we checked into our hotel (with a proper old-fashioned four-poster bed), then had lunch at one of my favourite places in the world, then strolled around the city till we were ready for afternoon coffee, and then enjoyed the sun set.

Here's our view over the Firth of Forth as we sipped our coffee:

And this is the sunset, reflected in the amazing shop windows set up at Harvey Nichols. (The hammer in the latter one is pretty awesome, being made entirely out of nails and hammered-flat heads of nails).

. . . and that's about all for now, folks.