Richmond-on-Thames
I'm done now with the Cambridge work, and have arrived in Richmond-on-Thames, which is where I'm staying whilst working over at the Public Record Office in Kew.
Sure hope I can find the PRO tomorrow more easily than I found this B&B. You'd think I'd be used to confusing streets going off at odd angles, completely unmarked, since I live in Pittsburgh, but I got caught by surprise anyway. Turns out Church Street is the one with the church on it. Who Knew.
But I got here, and since there's phone in my room, I've got Internet Access! Hence, you may have some links.
So here you are; my current TV addiction. Yay, Channel 4! How tacky art thou! How easy-peasy to watch, after having toiled in the vineyards of the manuscript room all day! When I come home from a day spent EITHER thinking hard or reading Elizabethan Latin -- or both; sometimes these things are connected -- I don't want to follow difficult plot lines with a lot of meaning. No. I want trash. Thank you, Channel 4, for obliging. No redeeming value to this lovely show.
But it is keeping me amused. They will not be done, alas, before I come home. So I'll have to keep up with them via the web site. It won't be the same as it is here, though, as here there's a large big Brother industry attached to it, so you can read about them in the paper, and you can watch the auxiliary shows pretty much all day long. No, I tell a lie. Sometimes Channel 4 has movies. I got to watch, for instance, the original of The Ladykillers, which has recently opened here, and gone up the noses of the locals, cause the Coen brothers version is not, the pundits here tell me, as good as the original, which was English. I wouldn't know -- I haven't seen the Coen brothers version, though I do like them, generally, and I enjoy Tom Hanks. But the original was lovely -- amusing, and beautifully paced; and at the end there was a moment when I laughed out loud, it was so unexpected. And it had Sir Alec Guinness. So there was that. Also, last night on Channel 4 I got to watch Anaconda, which was one of the most gawdawful movies I ever saw, and therefore just right to have on while writing a paper. For The Ladykillers, I knit. Different process altogether.
Sam and the child, meanwhile, are amusing themselves much more profitably while I'm gone. They had a camp-out in the backyard one night, Sam emailed me: The child and I are really roughing it: got our little battery-operated TV operating (he's watching Wheel of Fortune), have the poker table, cards, and chips set up just outside the tent (just finished a few games), and have the Coleman lantern ready to light up (outside the tent, of course) when it gets dark enough. The Sterno stove is ready for cooking breakfast, as are the little frying pan, the sausages, and the Better 'n' Eggs. All went well. Apparently the child was very impressed with the breakfast; he wrote me about the sausage, and the eggs, and the fried bread. His mom never makes him fried bread. Dad's a Good Cook.
And I'm in Richmond, in a comfortable place that has a phone jack, which is good, but doesn't allow food in the room, which is bad. This means no sandwiches, which is what I was subsisting on all last week. Every new place is going to be an adventure. Now, I must leave here, in search of food.
Cheap food.
Good food.
with some vegetables.
and no, I don't mean chips...
Sure hope I can find the PRO tomorrow more easily than I found this B&B. You'd think I'd be used to confusing streets going off at odd angles, completely unmarked, since I live in Pittsburgh, but I got caught by surprise anyway. Turns out Church Street is the one with the church on it. Who Knew.
But I got here, and since there's phone in my room, I've got Internet Access! Hence, you may have some links.
So here you are; my current TV addiction. Yay, Channel 4! How tacky art thou! How easy-peasy to watch, after having toiled in the vineyards of the manuscript room all day! When I come home from a day spent EITHER thinking hard or reading Elizabethan Latin -- or both; sometimes these things are connected -- I don't want to follow difficult plot lines with a lot of meaning. No. I want trash. Thank you, Channel 4, for obliging. No redeeming value to this lovely show.
But it is keeping me amused. They will not be done, alas, before I come home. So I'll have to keep up with them via the web site. It won't be the same as it is here, though, as here there's a large big Brother industry attached to it, so you can read about them in the paper, and you can watch the auxiliary shows pretty much all day long. No, I tell a lie. Sometimes Channel 4 has movies. I got to watch, for instance, the original of The Ladykillers, which has recently opened here, and gone up the noses of the locals, cause the Coen brothers version is not, the pundits here tell me, as good as the original, which was English. I wouldn't know -- I haven't seen the Coen brothers version, though I do like them, generally, and I enjoy Tom Hanks. But the original was lovely -- amusing, and beautifully paced; and at the end there was a moment when I laughed out loud, it was so unexpected. And it had Sir Alec Guinness. So there was that. Also, last night on Channel 4 I got to watch Anaconda, which was one of the most gawdawful movies I ever saw, and therefore just right to have on while writing a paper. For The Ladykillers, I knit. Different process altogether.
Sam and the child, meanwhile, are amusing themselves much more profitably while I'm gone. They had a camp-out in the backyard one night, Sam emailed me: The child and I are really roughing it: got our little battery-operated TV operating (he's watching Wheel of Fortune), have the poker table, cards, and chips set up just outside the tent (just finished a few games), and have the Coleman lantern ready to light up (outside the tent, of course) when it gets dark enough. The Sterno stove is ready for cooking breakfast, as are the little frying pan, the sausages, and the Better 'n' Eggs. All went well. Apparently the child was very impressed with the breakfast; he wrote me about the sausage, and the eggs, and the fried bread. His mom never makes him fried bread. Dad's a Good Cook.
And I'm in Richmond, in a comfortable place that has a phone jack, which is good, but doesn't allow food in the room, which is bad. This means no sandwiches, which is what I was subsisting on all last week. Every new place is going to be an adventure. Now, I must leave here, in search of food.
Cheap food.
Good food.
with some vegetables.
and no, I don't mean chips...
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