My entire day has been devoted to obtaining library cards. You might imagine that it would be possible as a student to obtain one library card for at least all the libraries in the federation which makes up the University of London; you would be incorrect there. Ahh well. We all have our crosses to bear.
I started off at the Courtauld with a library tour of a library I had already enthusiastically explored. Never mind. Took out some books which I need for my first essay (due a week on tomorrow on the topic of the concept of the 'viewer' in Roman and Byzantine art). It's pretty much a non-question, or rather a question with no real answer, so obviously I'm looking forward to spending the weekend dealing with that.
Post-Courtauld, some of the girls on my course and I ran along to the Senate House Library where we found an absolutely enormous line of people all waiting to get their Senate House Library cards. I find having my picture snapped (normally at very short notice) very distressing. In my SH photo I'm making a strange pursed lip face which I refer to as my 'research' face. It's actually just my 'please don't take the picture yet, I'm not ready, but I'm too afraid that I'll sound vain if I actually ask you to wait while I put on some lip gloss' face. No, a photo of the photo won't be making it onto the blog.
Then I went to the absolutely fantastic British Library which bizarrely pretends to be a welcoming open institution but which is, in fact, a very well-protected fortress full of books guarded by bossy dragon-lady receptionists wanting to know exactly why you need to use their collections and why you haven't consulted every other library in London before bothering the poor staff at the BL. Managed to side-step any unpleasantness by insisting quite firmly that I needed to see two 8th century manuscripts which I then did not bother to stay and see. Well, there's always tomorrow. And the entire rest of the year.
In my next post, I intend to discuss a rather strange phenomenon which I have encountered recently while walking along the Embankment on the way to the Courtauld - middle aged men in short shorts jogging in packs during their lunch breaks. I intend to provide pictures; this may very well involve actually pretending to also be a runner so as to capture them in their natural habitats. There may even be video. Until then!
