Victorianitas

The politics of sharing a desk, one moment among many:

"Have you got the bottom drawer? What's in the bottom drawer?"
"Scissors."
"Middle drawer?"
"The other scissors."
"Top drawer?"
"Stolen stuff and crisps."

In the library, we are moving boxes of books. Heavy boxes of books. Seventy-nine heavy boxes of books. In the world below stairs, a strange land of Escher-like corridors stacked with faded posters, ancient dust-covered boxes of type, and something we think is a machine for binding books, I'm both the only woman and the only person under five foot nine. My colleagues have mastered the art of saying in a very gallant way "Oh, you shouldn't be carrying that! That's heavy!" as they neatly sidestep out of the way of me and the painfully heavy box of books I'm juuuuuuuust about balancing.

My forearms are bruised from carrying the damn things, and my forearms are not looking wonderful anyway after the bad sunburn I got a couple of weeks ago. Still pink, especially under the library lights, and still peeling off in little flakes of gruesome. It's gone beyond "ouch!" to "ew" to "Wasn't that an X Files episode once?"

In better news, I now have 1,624 words of the article I put on hiatus in spring while I was finishing some other stuff. At least 75% of them are good words. I feel very productive.

(I should add that the stolen stuff in the conversation above referred to stuff sneaked from the stationary cupboard, not, you know, actually stolen stuff. I firmly believe that most office-based work is one long drawn-out episode of stealth warfare over the good stuff in the stationary cupboard.)

Now that Article One - my baby, my firstborn - has gone back out into the world to try its fortunes once again, and I can step back and think about it without a miasma of nail-biting guilt settling over me, I've realised something strange. The part of the article I liked best, the one part I was happiest with when I finished it the first time round, was grumbled at in both readers' reports. This in itself isn't surprising, but the part of the article I hated, the part I knew was weak at the time, didn't know how to fix without a major overhaul, and cringed at on re-reading, was received well. I know I'm not the most objective judge of my own work, but still, I can't help thinking that this is the academic equivalent of reviewing Return of the Jedi and telling everyone that the Boba Fett character was an unnecessary and irritating bit-part novelty, but the Ewoks were just great.

My patchwork blanket of summer jobs is still holding together well enough to keep me warm. At the moment, two of us are moving a large quantity of withdrawn library material into boxes and sending it off to loving homes in various departments, which involves a whole lot of stamping things with a 'Withdrawn From [Such-And-Such] University Library' and a small amount of making boxes. (Me and Dr K have agreed to ceremonially stamp each other's foreheads with that very same stamp when we leave here for full-time academic positions.) Because it's noisy and we need space, we get to do this in a gloomy area at the back of an old bindery.

Dr K got there before I did. When I met him there the next day, the gloomy area at the back of the old bindery featured:
- a desk,
- a decent swivel chair, on which Dr K was sitting,
- a computer, connected somehow to a network socket I didn't even know existed,
- a desk-tidy, filled with stationary that looks suspiciously purloined,
- and a phone. ("I feel like we're more important if we have our own extension," as he explained it.)

We might still be minions, but now we're minions with our very own in-tray.

List of things that are not working this Sunday morning:

• Student e-mail servers
• WebCT
• Intranet anything
• On-campus internet access (which has, luckily for my sanity, now been restored)
• Library catalogues
• Library systems
• Printing systems
• Photocopying systems
• All the tills and systems at the sports facilities, apparently; it's difficult to tell from all the distressed wailing, but they're certainly Not Happy about something over there
• The big flat-screen monitors that give students various bright-coloured and blinky bits of information
• The 'systems currently having problems' status page. (Helpful.)

And because it's a Sunday morning, the campus is not exactly crawling with technicians or helpful-looking senior people or indeed anybody who knows what the hell's going on. Reducing weekend mornings to a skeleton staff probably looked like a great decision from a budgeting perspective for a university anxious to set up various new projects for attracting new students; the reality, it turns out, is a constant stream of the students we've already got winding their way into the library, to be greeted by a staff of underpaid, disaffected minions whose best guess on the whole matter is "I dunno. EMP grenade?"

SCENE: Library circulation desk, but a short space from where I currently sit.

"Um, hi, I'm, um, looking for Thomas Aquinas?"
"He's not in today. Can I take a message?"

A day off! a day off! An end to fourteen-hour shifts and dealing with bizarre student convictions over the phone! ("I couldn't return it over the weekend! You can't fine me when you're not even open at the weekend!" "Um, we are open over the weekend." "You're not open at the weekend!" "How do you think I answered the phone?") And a whole day to plan classes and work on my article.

I'm getting quite fond of this article. It's got nothing to do with my PhD thesis - which is probably reason #1 why I'm enjoying it, to be honest - and getting ready to write it meant hunting for books in the Philosophy section of the library, somewhere I haven't spent any serious studying time for a long while. My undergraduate degree was joint English and Philosophy; being back among philosophy books feels enticingly illicit, like cheating on a lover with an ex. I let my fingertips run over the spines of the Kant books on my way past their shelves and didn't even realise I was doing it.

There are problems with writing publication-worthy articles about medium-dense philosophy issues in thumpingly-heavy Victorian novels, though. Fourteen-hour shifts constitute most of them. When the library's quiet, as it is in the late evening, I can work on my own stuff in between students coming to the desk... but I'm tired. Or, I can turn on the home computer and work for a couple of hours before going to bed... but, again, I'm tired. It's not that I can't force myself to write when I'm tired - I wouldn't have got through the PhD if that was true - but I can't write well when I'm tired, and I certainly can't write well about really complex topics that require a lot of cerebral processing power. After a long, long day at work, my brain just can't do the kind of philosophical heavy lifting this article needs. You need publications to get a decent academic job, but because you don't have a decent academic job you need to spend your time doing the kind of time- and energy-consuming work that makes it incredibly difficult to work on your publications. I feel looped.

(And please, please, if you're tempted to leave a comment about how this is exactly what it's like for academic staff having to juggle their own research with their teaching and admin commitments, and how writing the PhD is the best time of anyone's academic life and never again will my days be so footloose and fancy-free, resist that temptation. That kind of free time and research-focused life was not a feature of my PhD years, either.)

And anyway, so. I was looking forward to having a whole day off to work on my article, but fate is cruel, and because I dawdled around and did nothing constructive all morning, it hit me with a sudden and hellish migraine in the afternoon. I would have spent the next few hours in bed if my bedroom hadn't been too bright; instead I curled up on the living room sofa with the curtains drawn and a blanket pulled up over my head, arms wrapped around my skull, sobbing, while I waited for the painkillers I didn't take in time to kick in. When the pain went away, I didn't dare move my head for an hour in case it came back. Literary criticism was not exactly at the top of my priorities list.

And now it's half past ten, and my brain's recharged enough that I probably can work on that article, for all of an hour and a half before going to bed in time to get up for work tomorrow. Damn it.

I'm sitting at the front desk of the library, by the gates. Technically this means I'm in charge of who comes in and who goes out, and so it holds as-yet untapped potential for entertainment - "Halt, brave traveller! To enter the stacks of knowledge, you must solve the following riddle..." - but mostly it's boring and uneventful, and I've been talking to one of my department's undergraduates about Masters degrees for the last ten minutes. Slowly, the clock ticks by.

Approaching from my left is an academic, although I don't see her at first. The student I'm talking to stops, mid-sentence, raises his eyebrows, and stands back, and I don't think there's any better way I could explain just how much energy this woman has radiating from her than to tell you that. Long hair, bright floaty clothes layered like plumage, ropes and ropes of beaded silver necklaces, all whirled around in her own private hurricane. "I ask at the other desk!" she says in what I think is an Italian accent. "The desk over there! They tell me to come to you for photocopying card? Is that right, is it a card?"

We do sell photocopying cards, in various denominations, but I get no further than "Yeah, w-" before she lifts three bags (one of which I swear to you is blue faux crocodile-skin) onto the desk and beams "Oh good!" at me. People are not usually this pleased about photocopying cards, to say the least.

"They're in different amounts," I say, pulling out the box of cards. "It depends how much photocopying you want to do."

She waves a few sheets of paper at me. "It is not much! It is only this! There is a student who needs to read this, you see, and I have myself only this copy, so I need to have one copy for him in my office, and I am leaving the campus now for a week and I cannot leave him my copy, so I told him I would...", and on in that vein for a while. As with every other low-wage job out there that involves dealing with the public, there's usually an unspoken good Lord, I wasn't asking for a biography, just answer the damn question floating around in such situations - but this woman is fascinating, so it's a quieter voice than it could be.

"Are you staff here?" I say. "You don't need to buy a card if you're staff."

"Oh, yes yes, they tell me this at the other desk," she says. "But they say I need account, I need to log on, it is all so much fuss! I think it will be easier just to buy the card now."

As with every other low-wage job out there, mine grants the gift of the on-your-own-head-be-it shrug. "You could get that done with a £1 card."

The wallet she's searching through is surprisingly plain: black, simple, and organised. Somewhere in my bag, my own wallet, which has grown fat on old train tickets and buy-10-get-1-free cards for the bagel place at the station, creeps under a book in shame. "One pound?" she says.

"Yeah, but, we ask for a one pound deposit for all the cards, because we recycle the old ones. So that's two pounds now, and you'll get one pound back when you're done with the card."

"Oh, oh!" She laughs and holds up her hands. "This is all too complicated."

"Well, look -" I hold up the card "- this will cost £2. If you give it back to me when you're finished with it, I'll give you £1 back."

But she's shaking her head. "No, no, this is too much fuss. I think I will not bother."

And cardless, she sweeps out of the library and away, into a world that I fully believe is so much brighter and more interesting than any we'll ever know.

My Saturday library shifts now start before 9am, because what else was I going to do with the morning, sleep? Well, yes, to be honest. But sleep will not get me any money. So I go to the library first thing in the morning, and because the students don't, I get to spend the first few hours of my shift at the lending desk working on my own stuff, which works out all right.

The library is a better place to be on Saturdays. The senior people, the well-paid people, and anyone who's been there long enough to demand and get double time for working on weekends, all work on weekdays only, leaving the weekend to the gaggle of part-timers, students, recipients of please-give-my-boyfriend-a-job-boss negotiations, and broke PhDs with no academic jobs. Thus, the library on a Saturday is, let's say, not exactly the model of bureaucratic efficiency it aspires to be during the week. Last time my boss turned up on a Saturday afternoon, I was sitting with my feet up on the demagnetising machine and a scrambled egg roll in one hand playing Minesweeper, while Dr K, the Amazing D and some passing minion from IT crowded round another computer watching the rugby. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. We're here, aren't we?

Anyway, so. This was my first Saturday shift that included the morning, and bear in mind for the following that my boss explained to me with all earnestness that Saturday mornings - I quote directly - "can get busier than you think, you know!". Here's the sum total of my interaction with the students and staff of my fine university this morning:

- Two of my former students came over to comment on my newly-dyed hair. The verdict is guardedly positive. Another former student wanted to know if I knew anything about medieval dream poetry, and was sadly disappointed, and thus refused to say "anything nice" about the hair, since "I thought you knew stuff!".

- A very angry student wanted to know why a certain book was not on a certain shelf. There are only two circumstances which will persuade desk staff to run up two flights of stairs and search for a book for you, and most students have not yet cracked the first one, viz. as with most low-paid service jobs, people will often go out of their way to help friendly, polite customers. Luckily, the second one - being so damn irritating that nobody can resist going to see if the book's there just to interrupt you mid-ranting at a colleague with the "you mean this book?" line - can happen entirely by accident. And lo, the book was indeed on the shelf where it was supposed to be. As it is nine times out of ten in such cases, by the way. I have no idea why our classmark system sends so many students spiralling off into confused fury, and brings so many people down to the desk with despairing cries of having looked everywhere for hours and still not found the History journals because how are you supposed to find anything in this place - we have maps! we have leaflets! We have great big signs saying what's on which floor! We have library induction sessions! It's hardly The Name of the Rose in here!

- Me, Dr K and two Film & Media students had a short but productive discussion on the merits of My Own Private Idaho. (How depressing is it to hear a teenage girl saying "River who?", to someone of my generation? Very, is the answer. Very, indeed.)

- Two students brought their own (combined) weight in Management books up to the desk, looking like they hadn't slept for a week. I pity the MBA students sometimes, and will continue to do so until they graduate and start earning more than I ever will.

- An academic from Dr K's department dropped by to bitch about one of his students, a former student of Dr K's, who'd left the university under somewhat-less-than-optional conditions (I really don't know what the story is here, but Lord he was angry about it). "How the hell did he even get into the department?" "I think I wrote him a reference, actually." "WELL FOR FUCK'S SAKE, K."

- A bunch of us watched the trailer for the new Indiana Jones film and spent the rest of the time until lunch speculating on how well Indy would fit into the academic system as we know it. "Indiana Jones and the Archival Research"? "Indiana Jones and the RAE"? "Indiana Jones and the Poorly-Attended Conference Panel"? "Indiana Jones and the Wikipedia Plagiarist"? You can do this for hours, seriously.

- And I wrote five hundred words of an article. Clearly, there's something in that atmosphere that does my productivity good.

1. All library minions must now wear name badges. This year's recruits embraced the stupid flippy plastic things with a shrug and a smile, but we grizzled old veterans - especially we grizzled old veterans who used to work in retail - are Drawing A Line.

My boss spots me and Dr K, badgeless, heading down to the bindery. Sighs. Says "Oh, well - everyone knows you two work here by now."

2. And Dr K's been here even longer than I have, which is why it's Dr K, and not me, who's developed a habit of muttering "Books at Shawshank... books at Shawshank... books at Shawshank..." as he shuffles across the floor with the morning's book trolleys.

3. But it's our workaholic senior colleague, the Amazing D, who's giving us cause for concern. Technically, the Amazing D is part-time; in reality, D works 70-hour weeks at a mishmash of different jobs within the library. Has for years. Place would fall apart without him, if only because then they'd have to actually pay someone a reasonable amount to do what he does and cover all the odd-end shifts on half an hour's notice. Most terrifyingly enough, D actually likes it. In him, we see our future.

And today, sitting by the help-desk people, I heard this conversation:
Technician:"I take it that's just a generic voice?"
Librarian: "Oh, no. That's D."

We're one small name-badge away.

A student ambles up to the lending desk with a book. I check out the book and hand it back to him. He nods, puts his card back in his wallet, and then, looking as if he's suddenly remembered something, beams broadly at me. "Have a nice life!" he says.

Some questions come to mind.

1. Was it... was it something I said, O mysterious student? I mean, I know it was just a 24-hour loan, but I thought you knew that, too. Maybe you wanted something more? Were you hoping for a semester-long thing? Um. Gosh. Well, this is awkward.

2. While I have, I think, used the 'have a nice life' line myself a few times in my not-entirely-praiseworthy past, it typically comes with a more dramatic buildup. Shouldn't there be some kind of argument here? Hurling of crockery? Throwing of wedding ring into river while country rock chords crescendo in the background? All I did was smile and tell him when the book was due back. I feel a little wronged.

3. We're never going to see that book again, are we?

There is a post about the Many Woes of Being the Lowest Rung on the Academic Ladder* coming up (c'mon, you know the blogosphere needs another one). Consider this a trailer. Voiceover: "Somewhere, in the gutters of academia..."

SCENE: Library desk, late at night.

FRIENDLY LIBRARY PATRON: Don't they ever let you two go home?

DR K: If they're not watching the doors.

ME: We're only here until ten.

DR K: They appreciate us really. In a non-financial sense.

FRIENDLY LIBRARY PATRON: Surely you've got enough experience for a promotion now.

DR K: It's worse than you think. I've actually got a PhD.

ME: I only have a Masters, so I get the computer with the broken keyboard.

FRIENDLY LIBRARY PATRON: Well, they should let you be lecturers!

ME: Yes! Yes, they should!

DR K: To be fair, this is a lecture I'm writing now. For which I'm getting paid - oh wait, I'm not.

FRIENDLY LIBRARY PATRON: You need fresh air and sunshine, both of you. Like they used to do with pit ponies. You should get taken out to gambol on the grass once a year.

ME: I like this idea.

FRIENDLY LIBRARY PATRON: Maybe they can let you have a day off for the London Olympics.

DR K: If we're still doing this in 2012, I am actually going to kill myself.

(* - 'Being the rung', not 'being on the rung'. Those on the rung step on us. It is the way of things.)

At a university library, somewhere near you...

"I need to renew three books -"

"Okay -"

"- because my essay's due in next week, and I can't come in on Monday because I'm in London then, so it's those three that are due back tomorrow, I think it's tomorrow, it was after the lecture last week that I picked them up, and I returned the other ones already so I don't need those."

Interrupting patrons is frowned upon, even when there's a large queue growing behind them and all of them would thank you for cutting in with "You had me at 'renew'!", so it's best to smile. Scan card, load record, renew books, all in one smooth movement. (I'm good at this now.) "They're yours until next Thursday."

"What about the one I took out today?"

That one's a week loan too, which means it's also due back next Thursday. So I say "That one's a week loan too, which means it's also due back next Thursday." One of these late shifts, my mind-meld with the computer will become complete.

"Can I renew that?"

"Yes, if you still need it by next week."

"Can I renew it now?"

"But... it's already due back next week, and it's only a week loan -"

"Can't you just renew it like you did with the other ones?"

"I can't give it to you for longer than a week at a time."

"No, renew it." (With a silent "you moron.")

"They're all due back next Thursday, I really can't -"

"What if I'm not here then?"

"I'm sorry, I'm confused. I thought you wanted the other books until next Thursday?" (With a silent "If you're not here, our tears will flood the sorting shelves, but your books will still be late.")

"I did! I don't understand why you can't just renew this one too."

"But it's due back - Wait, see." I hit a couple of keys and turn the monitor screen towards her. All I was doing was bringing her record back up on the screen, but she must have heard the clack of the keyboard as the sound of surrender, because as I point out that all the week loans are due back next Thursday, this one included:

"Ah! So you did renew it." And she looks at me with the kind of exasperation that would like to let me know what a long, long day it's been, and that if she wasn't such a kind spirit she'd have Words To Say about this kind of behaviour.

I've been here for eleven hours. I only had fifteen minutes for lunch. My indignation can't even be bothered to get to its feet. So I look chastised, and say "Yes. Yes, I did."

She leaves satisfied.

This is just to say:

I have reshelved
the psychology textbooks
that were behind
the sheet music

and which
you were probably
saving
for next semester's exams.

Forgive me
their own shelves missed them
and it's eight thirty in the morning
and since I can't blame you
for the weather
or my headache
or the dust in the Government Publications section
(which is now all over my jeans)
or the pizza
half-eaten
lying next to the microfilms
this will just have to do.

Amy at Textual Tangents sent me a link to this: library fundraising via Victorian porn. As a Victorianist and a library employee (though sadly not a librarian: they're the ones with useful Masters degrees and somewhere-close-to-decent salaries), I'm impressed. Why didn't we think of this?

On the other hand, if my employers were as budget-conscious as they claim to be, they'd have already tapped the huge market among our patrons for other services. Some kind of personal shopper service for those students who skipped library induction? ("Yes, I'm afraid all our books are shelved according to an esoteric code we're forbidden to disclose to the uninitiated. I'll just consult the gods of Class-Mark, and we'll be right with you.") Direct phone calls to the semi-mythical other librarian at the patron's last library, who always used to fetch my books for me, you know, because I'm useless with all these numbers and I just couldn't find them myself and she was so helpful, and on, and on... (It's always tempting to burst into tears when people try this one: "Well, if you loved her so much, what did you ever see in me?") Personal conscience for the weasel-minded Management and Law students, who are always hiding books in other corners of the library? (There's a John Grisham thriller in this. "He was a brilliant young law student who never looked back, until the day he finally learned: when you stare into the abyss behind the Fine Arts and Architecture shelves, the abyss behind the Fine Arts and Architecture shelves stares back into you.")

Both the departments I work for (the library counts as a non-academic department) are in the middle of major overhauls at the moment. The restructure of the English curriculum has taken a lot of work and about 570,000 hours of staff time in committee meetings to get into place, but it's mostly existed off the student radar, so even though the point of the revisions is to change things in a fundamental way for the students, the students themselves won't see it as a huge interruption to their studies. The library renovations, on the other hand, are going to affect everybody, even though the explicit aim is to cause as little disruption to students as possible. We'll be shifting to a mostly closed-stacks system for a year, which is annoying but unavoidable, and every single book we own will have to be moved somewhere else. (I look forward to finding all those missing law textbooks when the builders prise up the floorboards, though.) Since we foolishly neglected to set up a Victorian sex phoneline, the budget is limited, but we seem to have an infinite supply of money for Artists' Impressions of what the renovated library will look like.

Actually, you know what the Vienna library should spend their phoneline income on? Artists' impressions of what the library will look like during the renovations. I think we'd all be better prepared if we knew what was coming in the immediate, as well as the distant, future. "And behind that pile of rubble, the student in the green shirt is windmilling his arms about in fury because it'll take four hours to get the book he needs right now, I tell you! Now! God, the librarian at his last library would never have done this..."

One of my favourite things about working in a university library, apart from the still-not-quite-tarnished glow of 'they're paying me to be in a library!', is finding the variety of things people use as bookmarks. I have my doubts about the rasher of bacon story (apart from its friend-of-a-friend nature, it seems to defy the whole point of emergency bookmarks: if you really needed to mark your page, wouldn't you have a knife and fork to hand? A plate to hold the book open? Why scavenge through your breakfast?), but the stuff I have found makes up for it: train tickets, plane tickets, family photos, photocophying cards with credit still left. Actual bookmarks, far too nice to lose, including a very sensible leather bookmark left in a very sensible Economics textbook, which, when removed, had 'HELP ME - MY BRAIN IS MELTING - MY BRAIN' written on the back. Credit cards, twice, both long past their expiry dates.

Scribbled notes become tiny short stories in their own right: 'Sorry, forgot I said I'd go out. See you soon. Love you.' Or, on an empty envelope, 'Thought you mind need these for Finals. Good luck! - S.'

Sometimes they're torn-up scraps from somebody's own notes, now and forever obscure: '24. Philosophers useless. Socrates', or 'Elspeth's birthday present!! Sparkles.' I'm guessing that 'Deuteronomy xxii5 as God's veto upon an actor wearing female dress' was only intended to make sense to its author, although a 3x5 index card with 'Titus 3:15 - Grace be with you all' in large, careful calligraphic handwriting seems to have been aimed at a wider audience. And sometimes, they're torn mid-word or mid-sentence, leaving things like 'The student of arithmetic who has mastered the first four rules of his art, and successfully striven with money sums and fractions, finds himself confronted by an unbroken' - which breaks off, right there. Or, my favourite piece of accidental poetry: 'The end / besides deconstruction / ends up v. well.'

The letters are the best, though.

A scrawled letter to an unnamed scientist:

I would like to get in contact with people who have some expertise in work with this to exchange ideas ref. and experiences. At end of PhD I ultimately would like to look at the impact house cats are having on prey population. I am aware that this is one of the main things you investigate with spotted Hyenas in the Serengeti and I would be very grateful if you would

...where it trails off into nothingness, which might or might not be the endless silence of 'my research will never be as cool as yours.'

A get-well-soon card:

With loving thoughts for your speedy recovery & that God may richly bless you in your service for Him.

Mrs Lennox told me yesterday that you were ill. As you continue the good work your dear husband began, may you be given good health and see fruit for your labours.

A typewritten letter dated 1936, from the Hon. Secretary of a Methodist Peace Fellowship to the man named as its president, beginning enigmatically:

No thanks, we do not want another President. I quite understand that most of these things must be regarded as "extras"; nevertheless your assistance has proved, and doubtless will prove, invaluable.

And the saddest, two letters together:

Dear Michael,

I hope you remember me, I'm Vicki's mum who married Jason.

I have enclosed a letter from me to Jason & it is about Rebecca his little girl. She is always asking me have I found her 'daddy'. She & her brother Adam are in 'foster care' at the moment. I thought Jason should know about this & if he is interested would he contact me or Joanne on [numbers]... I am enclosing a letter for Jason and would you pass it on please.

Dear Jason,

I am sorry to contact you under the circumstances I outlined in my letter to Michael. I fully understand if you decide not to do anything about Rebecca. I have no idea what your situation is or where you are living & I won't do anything to upset you or your family.

As I stated in my letter to Michael, Rebecca & Adam are in foster care at the moment due to Vicki's behaviour. Rebecca is a marvellous little girl, very mature & loving. She looks just like you & is of the same dispostion as you. If you want to 'talk things over' with me or Joanne please don't hesitate to contact us...

One letter being folded inside the other one would suggest that Michael never passed Jason's along, if he even received it in the first place, but I hope that's not what happened.

This one, written in 1941 from a - grandmother? godmother? teacher? - chose a holiday destination for me and some friends sixty-five years later, having been found the same day we were wondering where to go:

Well my dear Patricia, I am looking forward to going my holidays. My husband and I go off on Saturday to Dunoon for a week. Your Mummy and Daddy know that place well. We really wanted to go to Oban, but we could not get fixed up in any of the hotels.

You know Patricia where I would really like to go for my holidays, can you guess - Morar. Perhaps after the war I shall be able to take my husband there, and show him all the walks and places you and I know so well. I wonder if you are going up to Morar this year?

How are Michael and Carolina? I have been wondering if Hannie is still with you, I have not heard from her in such a long time. I wondered if she might be doing war work.

(Morar is beautiful, by the way.)

And finally this, last night, in a library book I'm reading for my thesis:

It's rather depressing but everything I think has already been thought & written. My only consolation is that my deductions are made rather independently - sort of a logical corollary to what I know I have learned.

I went to bed after that. You'd have done the same.