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.

January Amblings

With the hustle and bustle of Christmas past, I spent a large part of January in England, hopping first of all on a train (really, three trains) to Oxford, where I stayed in Wadham College whilst attending a conference hosted by the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Highlights of the stay included accidentally having a private and elegant breakfast on my first morning at Wadham, spending the first free morning of the conference shopping(!) at the five-story Waterstones that is around the corner from the college in which I was staying, receiving wonderful feedback on my paper, meeting the author of one of the most important books cited in my third thesis chapter, and enjoying a burrito from the finest burrito shop in Oxford.
Here's the main quad of Wadham College:

Perhaps the least delightful part of my Oxford trip was the grueling journey home, which took more than ten hours (once upon a time, an express train from Leuchars to St Andrews took just over six, though that journey has been discontinued). My first trains were delayed, causing me to miss connections, and by the time I'd reached Carlisle, a station remarkably without telephone facilities, it was sleeting heavily--and my ensuing wait of three quarters of an hour was too short for supper and too long for warmth. Alas. However, I arrived home safely, and Isaac had washed the dishes of his bachelor week in celebration of my return.
Here's Carlisle:

More recently, I attended another conference, this one in Manchester, a city I'd never visited and for which I had fairly low expectations (it's often compared to Birmingham). All anti-Birmingham prejudices aside, I had a wonderful time, spending my first day reading old books in the John Rylands library of Manchester University and the two subsequent days attending a conference held on the grounds of Chetham's, a music school which (more importantly) boasts the oldest public library in the United Kingdom. I gave my conference paper in a Tudor kitchen, enjoyed conference lunches in a Baronial hall, and had this beautiful view upon exiting the building after the conference concluded:

A particular highlight of my stay in Manchester was the wonderful hospitality provided by one of my friends (a fellow PhD student at St A's) and her wonderful parents, who treated me like royalty for my entire trip. A particularly amazing highlight of this was watching them prepare proper Yorkshire Puddings for our last supper. Here they are, fully expanded in the oven:

A happy time.

DPP 24: Potato Peelings

Leek and potato soup.

DPP 23: The Light of the Church

As part of our life in our cold little flat here, Isaac and I have some locking and unlocking duties at the church that owns the property. A single oil lamp burns at the front of the church all week long, and a more modern light is kept on in the back of the church whenever it's open to the public (during daylight hours most days). This lamp is off to the side of the church, near the rooms in which the clergy and other servers prepare for services, but it is switched on only occasionally. I love the way the light cascades down the steps.

DPP 22: Pipe Envy

Since the original idea behind the December Photo Project was to capture the everyday stories occurring all around us during this hectic season, here's today's everyday story: one of our drainpipes, which descends from our top-story flat down the outside of our building, is frozen; our landlords are blissfully unconcerned; and the one plumber who actually stopped by first couldn't help us for lack of a ladder, and then (when a ladder was procured) suddenly remembered that he doesn't do external pipes.

On the bright side, our other drainpipe, which removes the smellier water from our flat, still works, and I managed to create an exciting chemical reaction in the stagnant water currently living in our bathtub.

DPP 21: Tundra Train

Our London adventure ended today. If all had gone well, we would have left our flat at quarter til seven, taken a direct train to St Pancras rail station (where thousands of unfortunates are currently queued hoping to get across the Channel before Christmas), and taken a direct train to Edinburgh before arriving home shortly past two o'clock. Instead, we ended up on an eight-train adventure that had us leaving our rented flat just after six, trekking along a the cold dark streets around St Paul's Cathedral before rush hour had even begun, dashing through tube stations, visiting Cambridge, and narrowly managing to get home in time to plan supper and then discover that our plumbing no longer drains water. It has been an exciting day. Here's a moment of relative stillness: our train speeding along the frozen British countryside.