Thursday 28th January

Tired again, but mainly because my sleep pattern is shot to hell!!! I keep being woken up by birds sounding off at the oddest of times - I think they're clustering around the lamps in the street and getting mixed up as to when they should be asleep too. Anyhow...
I've been doing the usual battle with the library, but had a fab weekend last week - had an unexpected lunch with Helen and Adam, who were escaping from the work to install a new bathroom. That was just lovely, and also the weekend was brightened by Kay joining FB, Kay being an old friend from my first time round in Glasgow.
Then it was back to trying to get the reading done for my various classes. On top of this is now the added pressure of trying to get some reading done for my dissertation proposal. Although this doesn't have to be actually written until next year, the proposal for it has to be done this term - and a presentation on that proposal done too. I've decided that I'm going to write on Miracles, but I'm not 100% decided on exactly when my miracles will be - should I go for the later Gaul period when there's a greater amount of source material available, or should I stick with my love for the antique period when frankly there are fewer accounts. I may be able to make more out of those fewer, less 'pr' orientated accounts, whereas.. I dunno. It's all very up in the air at the moment, and that's another reason why I need to do more reading. I have a presentation to get organised too, well frankly, two of them, but one is in a couple of weeks whereas the other's still a month off or so. I've been searching out and downloading images for the handout, got some lovely stuff of St Augustine of Hippo's tomb and relics at Pavia. I went to a seminar on relics too, the Exeter collection done by Professor Smith. She gave us some amazing slides of what's actually inside the reliquaries - these are the caskets and 'pouches' that the relics are stored inside. Little packets of what - dust, bones, teeth, all sorts of stuff. She made a good case for her suggestion that the old English/Anglo Saxon relic list contained suggestions of the 'ceremony' held for Edward & Edith Swansneck when they visited the Bishop, Leofric, at Exeter. It's a bit too long to go into here, but it was very interesting.
So it's basically been rush, library, rush, reading, rush, class etc for most of this week. People around me are getting sick - odd bugs popping up here there and everywhere I think is more about people not getting enough sleep/eating properly than actually being sick. It's too early in term for that, but its the right time of the year for the flu bugs to start striking! Yikes. I feel fine though, apart from being slightly tired. Maybe I'm supposed to be feeling ill from all the work? Dunno, that's a thought.
Still no work either. This is becoming distressing. When I came up here, part of the reason was I thought that I'd be able to get some part time work reasonably easily, but so far, nothing. Mind you half the reason for that is that I don't have the time to go and look!!! Maybe when summer gets here. Oh god, there's an awful thought. Ah well I'm off to bed - I can at least close my eyes and pretend that I'm dozing, and one of these days, I might actually drop off.