Friday 5th February

Well here I am again, well gone midnight and not a yawn has passed my lips. I have a new secret weapon though, a Valerian tea that I picked up in the supermarket today. Valerian is a herb that's long been associated with getting people off to sleep - although it's supposed to take an hour to work and I've only just brewed it, so I'll report on it's efficacy at a later date! Mind you I have to say that anything you buy off the common shelf in the supermarket is probably not going to be of the knock you out strength that may be required (two teabags perhaps? mm.. )

So what else has been happening - I have a working first draft of my presentation for Monday. This has been something of a struggle. Augustine is not the easiest of theologians to be doing battle with, he's not one of those chaps to use a single word when he can think of fifteen that would say the same thing only make you think that little bit harder before you get to where he's wanting you to go. And my first draft is something of a mess, and won't be anything like what I expect to end up with - but it's only late on Friday and it's not due till Monday. Plenty of time. I'll not be panicking until say... midday Sunday. Ok, well maybe there will be a slight frisson of the p word coughing quietly in the wings from Saturday night onwards. But what I have got, I can hear myself saying - which frankly is not always the best of signs. To wit, the RRSH lecture on Thursday evening when Stuart Airlie is trying to draw out a bunch of near silent post grads, stunned witless by his oratory, to whom he is demonstrating the prejudices of nineteenth century editors of the Monumenta Germanica. He has highlighted the fact that they have printed 'father' in the place of a word which another edition of the text has as 'mother'. Why, he is saying, did they choose to say Father when Mother could have done just as well. Silence. (I should point out that there's not a man jack of us that's not perfectly well aware of exactly why they did it.) Cue me, first thing that comes to mind as usual - 'Because he's a man!' Not gender theory, Tess, not an elegantly turned phrase to make it sound like you have historiography on the tip of your tongue. No, you come out with because he's a man. Typical. It's my problem you see, I open my mouth and out comes whatever's on the tip of my tongue. Happily I can usually substitute a more elegant phraseology when I'm writing.


Ah the Valerian tea is fit to be drunk. And yes, it is truly revolting. It's cats piss. I'm sorry but it's vile. It'd better send me to sleep or I can't see myself drinking this very often. The smell alone is just revolting. Have you ever tried drinking whilst you hold your nose? Actually it tastes a lot better when you do this, and I can live with the chance of choking. But oh my God, it's revolting.

Sunday 31st January.

At any rate I got through a good deal of work yesterday, and another load today - although I think I drew the line at linguistic ritual theory. I think my eyes pretty well gave out at that point, so I took the rest of the evening off! Since this gave me a chance to watch MOTD 2, I think that was more than enough work for the day. And on top of this I've sold a bookmark, yay!
I don't have very much in the shop right now, I'm trying to keep my costs down by not listing a lot. I'll let it build up rather than overload it with stuff right now, although I've got some done that I was going to get listed this weekend and promptly forgot. Maybe I can squeeze them in at some point tomorrow. What else have I been up to - had a nice chat with Martin on the phone, who was chatty for once. Always a good sign. Maybe because Jo & Ken were both at work, he fancied having someone to talk to.
Anyhow, I have a date with a library book first thing tomorrow, so I'd best get myself off to bed in the hope that I will get some sleep tonight, and maybe get up on time tomorrow. Here's hoping!

Saturday 30th January

I can't believe it's the 30th already. It's like every year speeds by faster and faster. Anyhow today has started off really really well - I had a great chat with Nina, who was filling me in on all the details about Lucy's baby which arrived on Friday evening. Sounds all very traumatic, but all is well, which is a huge relief. And he's going to be called Finlay! Fabulous Scottish name there, way to go guys!
And.. yes, I can now confirm that I actually have passed Latin. The mark is up there on Websurf, which is where they put all of your recorded marks and stuff, so I'm subtly chuffed with myself. I'm never going to be any good at it, but with a little effort and so on, I can just about translate a sentence or two until I finally get to the point where I'm managing the odd passage - but who ever would have thought a woman of my age would be able to do this? Just goes to show sometimes you can really suprise yourself. It's a mute (moot?) point as to whether mentally I'm constantly saying to myself you shouldn't be able to do this really, and hence creating the 'difficulty' with it mentally so to speak, but the fact of the matter is I got there and got a passing grade. Perhaps this means that I can be a bit more confident about it, and the internal debate about whether I should or should not be able to do it will slacken off, and I will get better at it. From what I hear from my classmates, it's got really really tough this term. Or rather as I should say, semester - everything is so American these days. Why we have to have semesters I'll never know.
Anyhow, yesterday I reamed Van Gennep's Rites of Passage - fabulous book this. I remember it so well from when I was studying Anthropology. It's one of those books that you pick up and read, and then say Yes, I knew this, I just didn't have the labels for it. You know how sometimes you come across things that just feel so incredibly right that you've somehow known them all along? Anyhow Rites of Passage is one of those books. I've been reading it for my upcoming presentation on Death and Liminality for Constructing Faith. This is based upon St Augustine's On the Care to be had for the Dead, which sounds ghastly, but actually isn't.
So anyhow at some point I should really go and get dressed (ok, I've been watching Football Focus) and get myself off down to the supermarket then I can come back and do some more reading... it's a neverending circle of read this, do that, read that, do this. But that's what masters are all about I guess. It's quite a nice day out, definitely rather chilly, but most of the snow has gone -we had a light dusting of the stuff yesterday. I'm over snow. Very nice, but I'm done with it now, and I'd like a few crocus - well, that's not going to happen for a few more weeks. Remember you're in Scotland now girl.

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.

Tuesday 19th January.

Well having finished one load of reading another dawns, but somehow I'm not getting down to it today. I really must get started. As it is, I've done nothing but play those stupid games on FB, which makes me think maybe it's time to de-install them. But then what would I do when I'm bored and need distraction? Part of my brain is saying - that's when you change the book you're reading to another book you need to read. Oh well.
I have also got to go shopping and the sky is looking ominous, so probably something I'd best get done quickly. A breath of fresh air, a quick blast round the supermarket, back, and open the books. Today's task is Gender, a little light library searching - ha, fine task that is. I ordered 4 or so books the other day, and by yesterday I had an email to say they were ready to be collected. So after class I go to pick them up, to discover that they had disappeared from the 'hold' shelf. Perhaps they've been re-shelved, the girl says, why don't you go and have a look? Now this is very irritating, it takes a good deal of time to go and do this, but nevertheless I haul myself up to the 10th floor (thank God for lifts) search and find nothing. Down to 6, search, find one book. Aha, this makes me think, someone is in the process of reshelving my damn reserved books. As they've done that someone has come along - the odds being that this someone is one of my fellow course members - and has sprung on the book with great glee, thinking they've found something at last, and they'll just nip off with it. By the time I got downstairs to the desk one of my poor fellow students had arrived at the check out desk with one of my hold books and had had the sad news broken to him that alas no he can't have the book, it's on reserve for someone else. So out of my four books, I've got two of them, but am still missing two, which I can only hope turn up today when the library staff start to search for them. The whole thing has been a total pain in the neck - when your 'hold' email arrives, you expect to drift casually in, present your matric card and drift casually out, clutching your books. You don't expect to spend 45 minutes searching for the bloody things, missing Lord knows how many buses home in the meantime, becoming to tired and irritated to go to the supermarket, to wake up with no bread for toast the next day... Grr. Grr indeed. No wonder I'm not inclined to open a bloody book this morning.

17th January

I'm just taking a break from my reading - lots of stuff about Visigoths! Actually less about Goths of any variety than about the Arian controversy, which will be part of the seminar on Monday. It's all very interesting. I picked up my marked database exercise quite late on Friday, and it got a very good mark! I was dead chuffed.
Apart from the reading, I've been tidying up and doing loads of washing - you know that feeling that you're running the boiler at breakneck pace, and one more little thing will be the straw that broke the camels back. So I let the washing pile up a bit, and now I'm trying to catch up on it. I have to add that there's no possibility of my running out of clean clothes, even if I have to take to layering for a day or so!! But now I have the temptation of ultra clean jumpers for Monday which is always a secret thrill. You know the temptation of clothes that are not only clean, but were washed yesterday. Just so much more tempting than the jumper that's sitting there and has been clean for a week or so. It's the scent of the fabric conditioner I guess.
So what else have I been up to - nothing I was about to say but actually I've been running up a few new bookmarks, hoping to catch the Valentine market. I had some nice Swarovski hearts left over from before Christmas, so I've beaded them up - I've got some new glass hearts coming from America, where I buy quite a bit of my stock. These aren't crystal, but blown glass, which I'm hoping will catch a bit of attention. I only did six, but I'm going to put a few more together tomorrow, and hey presto, I will have Valentine stock. Whether it will sell or not lord only knows, but heart type bookmarks will actually sell throughout the year, so it's not a problem.
But apart from this it's been Goths and the Arian controversy all day. And alas, tomorrow must also be Goths and Arians, no doubt with a chunk of some additional secondary source material chucked in for good luck. This seminar is actually all about "Intuiting Gods", and I've yet to actually make sense of this in terms of the Arians. However - and here we go, it could well be something to do with Syncretism, which it turns out is about including symbols and facets of other religious beliefs into a newer form of religious belief. Although I've not yet finished this particular book, my guess is that some people believe this happens, and other's don't, which accounts for the title being Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism. Ulfila - a Goth bishop, not a form of plaster for walls, apparently included some facets of neo-Platonism in his theology, although I don't know much about Platonism, let alone neo-platonic thought. It's an entirely new field of knowledge every day basically and can I master enough of it not not make a fool of myself? I rather suspect that Platonism is one area where one should simply admit ignorance, although I'm pretty sure it's something to do with perfect forms now I've said that, and old Ulf was a sort of semi Arian, concerned about the substance of God (both father and son, the holy ghost didn't get a look in where Ulf was concerned.) So maybe I do know a bit more about this than I thought I did, or maybe I've already absorbed enough reading today to not make a fool of myself. What a life eh?
Just a quick ps here, you should see what the spellcheck has just made of this!!!!

Tuesday the what.. oh yes the 12th January

I'm off to bed in five minutes, so just time for a quick blog before bedtime. You'll have to excuse any spelling mistakes!
It's been a busy day, spent mostly in the library. Bitingly cold up here too, when I was walking home from the bus stop I got caught by this blast outside the house, took me about two hours to warm up from it. Most of the snow's gone for now, but I hear there's more due for tomorrow, and Jo was telling me earlier it was already falling in Wiltshire. Brr!
I found all but one book in the library for next week - I think this must be something of a record. I can't honestly say I remember this ever happening before! Anyhow I'm spending tomorrow wrapped up at home, and faithfully doing my reading. I certainly have enough of it. Ambrose of Milan I think, and I have to tackle a book called Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism. No, right now I have no idea what syncretism is, but if you're really, really lucky I might be able to tell you by tomorrow.