Five to midnight, Saturday 10th October.

I'm off to bed in a minute, got to be up tomorrow to go shopping, and then, yes you guessed it, Latin.
I'll get there, I swear I'll get there, but there's no denying that Latin is tough going.
It's been a very busy few weeks, so busy that I've no time to be blogging - I've been rushing from seminar room to library to grab a bite to eat, struggling up and down that damn hill! The university is in Hillhead, a very aptly named district of Glasgow - yep, it is that Hillhead too, where I think it was the first of the SDP by-elections happened back in the 80s. Which brings me to another rather surprising aspect of moving here - I've moved into the old speaker's constituency and have - or will have, I don't think it's actually been moved yet, a by-election no doubt which will be hard followed by a general election. I haven't seen anything approaching an election poster yet, although there have been a few leaflets shoved through the door. However I should point out that whilst the uni might be in Hillhead, I'm not, so this is not a Hillhead by-election. It's just that every time I return from a Latin class I'm reminded of exactly why this place is so named, it's a very hilly district. In actual fact, the library is sat on what seems to be the highest point, and over the past few days we've had some lovely clear weather. I keep saying to myself that I really must go and take a few photo's, but it's not what I go to the library for, and I've been simply too busy. This week, not only have I had drills to do for the aforesaid Latin, I've also had an exercise to complete for RRSH. This nearly drove me round the bend, because I kept saying no I can do this better, and fussing and fiddling with it, until I totally lost patience with it and went and handed it in. I'm now sat here thinking I could have done it so much better.
RRSH - which is Research and Resource Skills for Historians, mostly seems to be about encouraging us to use computers. I'll get onto more of that in a minute, but the exercise was all about something called Reference Manager, which is a means by which you can keep track of what you've read, not just in general, but in practise for essays and so on, as you can use it to compile a bibliography and footnotes. The exercise was to make up a mini-bibliography and to produce a page of text that was appropriately footnoted. Overall, it wasn't a great deal of work, but you know what it's like when you have to use an unfamiliar system. I just know that in six months time I shall be spitting about how easy it all is, and bemoaning the no-doubt low mark I will receive in this that I could have improved had I hung on to it for what, all of 24 hours, and gone back over it again. Oh well it's too late to worry about it now, I keep telling myself, but this is a sharp reminder of one of my most hated things about uni - getting to the point where you can do no more to a piece, and you have to hand it in. If I had my way I'd be sitting polishing it now. Ah well.