Apologies and two month summary

Hello! I want to start by saying I’m very sorry it’s been so long since I updated, but as I go on you’ll see why! I’ve been ridiculously busy with various different activities, but most of all with my exhibition, which is safely launched now and thus out of my hair!

So, as it would take a post longer than a Joyce novel to properly dissect everything I’ve done over the last couple of months, I’m going to bullet point it all in order (and if something merits explanation or expansion, that can be included too). So bear with me, and enjoy!

May 5-11th

• Lots of exhibition preparation, including going to visit Bill Steen, who takes care of the College’s photographs, pictures and portraits in the picture store, which is in New Court up a spiral staircase! Got lots of useful pictures of various people and places from him to put in my cases.
• I also wrote a letter to America after receiving an airmail letter with photographs from an alumnus out there, including pictures of him in the RAF during WW2, which were really cool. Definitely going in my alumni section!
• Had Thursday afternoon and Friday off to travel back to Derby, both for my grandma’s birthday and for regional barbershop convention – my first in about 6 years, which was really exciting! I watched my old chorus Lace City win the championship, which means they’ll be competing in Las Vegas at the internationals in 2015! Maybe I could be with them…

May 12-18th

• On Monday I went to see the College silver with the Honorary Keeper of the Plate, Dr Rosemary Clark. It’s all locked away in a safe which requires two separate sets of keys to access, so very secure, and it was all very impressive! We got out the silver-gilt steeple cup donated by John Pierpont Morgan Jr. and a gold prize medal, so I could photograph them for the exhibition.
• As this suggests, still cracking on with exhibition work – the plan is to get all my captions finished before I leave for Cyprus in a couple of weeks.
• Meeting with the Development Officer to talk about the delicacy involved in advertising donations, as I’m talking about College donors in my exhibition. I had to change part of my case to appease her, as it turns out I can’t just pick and choose who I mention – of the ones who are still alive, I have to mention all or none! But it’s a good crash course in diplomacy.
• Museums at Night 2014 – on Friday I popped along to the Museum of Classical Archaeology with Emily to enjoy some glasses of wine with the casts, including meeting the most enthusiastic Classics Professor ever – he almost made me want to swap disciplines! Then back to Emily’s to watch SHIELD.
• Then on Saturday the Oxford trainees came for their return visit, which was luckily a gloriously sunny day! A good time (and pizza) was had by all, and hopefully we’ll see some of them again soon.

May 19-25th

• More exhibition prep – manically trying to finish my captions as well as shelve, music catalogue and answer all the queries in the busy exam term! A balancing act…
• Then at the weekend Jemma, Becky, Tom, Matt and Josh all came to visit from Birmingham, which was absolutely lovely! Unfortunately the weather was appalling, but that didn’t dampen our spirits! I showed them around the city centre and then we headed off to the Beer Festival, which was good, although they ran out of everything and chucked us out early! Then, after a quick stop at Sainsbury’s for supplies, we headed back to mine and played Cards Against Humanity for about 5 hours. Perfect.

May 26th-June 8th

• So this first week was VERY manic. I was due to leave for Cyprus on Friday and then also had a trainee trip to the British Library and the Linnean Society on Thursday, so it was all a bit of a rush to get everything ready before I left! I unfortunately didn’t get to finish all my captions, but I got 3 cases done, so I passed those on for inspection while I was away, and then handed over the list of other things everyone could be getting on with while I was gone, including mounting the Declaration of Independence on a dangler to hang in the Old Library, and putting together the Powerpoint presentation, as I hadn’t had time to do that!
• Then Thursday was the BL and Linnean Society, both of which were amazing, although we were a little disappointed not to get to go in the King’s Library at the BL! The Linnean Society was really interesting, and we saw lots of cool things, including a pressed fish! I might do a separate post on this if I have the time.
• Then on Friday I flew out to Cyprus for a lovely week of museums, sea, sand (a little too much at times, as it was pretty windy!) and a proper Greek-Cypriot wedding! Seeing my friends Tash and Barry get married, with all the ceremony and family involvement, was absolutely lovely, and I had an absolutely amazing time, including lots of Greek dancing and SO much food! I got back to England on 7th June, and back to reality!

 

June 9-15th

• I basically dedicated my life to the exhibition this week, staying late pretty much every night and even working 6 hours on Sunday, as it was launching the following Monday. There was so much to do – finish the captions, edit them, print them out, make sure they fitted, put everything in the cases, make sure they looked okay, add anything extra to improve them, prop and mount everything (although James had made all the book stands while I was in Cyprus, bless him) and ensure everything was the same – font, grammar, item captions and pictures! It was a mammoth job, but definitely worth it in the end.
• Apart from chorus on Monday night, I also went to Mary Beard’s book launch at Heffers on Wednesday night, which was pretty good! Her new book is on ancient jokes and humour, and what this can tell us both about classical society and our own society now, which was really interesting. I really like Mary Beard, even more so because of the way she’s dealt with the criticism and persecution she’s had over the last few years.
• Then on Saturday, I went to the May Bumps Picnic! My friend Lucy came to stay with me and came along too, which was nice, as it would have been very boring alone! In case you don’t know (and I had no idea till I came to Cambridge, so there’s no reason to!) the Bumps are a form of boat racing unique to Cambridge, as the River Cam isn’t wide enough for the traditional head-to-head racing. Instead, each boat, in an order predetermined by the last year’s racing, is positioned a boat and a half’s length behind the next boat, and the aim of the game is to catch up with the boat in front and ‘bump’ it, i.e. make sure your prow is level with or ahead of the next boat’s first crew member. The coxes then raise their hand to show they’ve been bumped, and then both boats have to retire from the race, making it nearly impossible to climb more than 1 place in the rankings per race. The only way to do that is if the boats in front of you bump, and then you manage to catch the boat ahead of them and bump that, which is known as an ‘overbump’. The boats aren’t supposed to actually make physical contact anymore (although we saw one do it!) so it’s very much a ceremonial sport, but it’s very competitive on an inter-collegiate level! It was actually quite fun to watch too.

June 16-22nd

• And then it was here – the big launch! Monday was a bit of a manic day, but after having spent 6 hours in on Sunday I’d sorted the captions so we were actually finished with about 30 minutes to spare before people started arriving at 4pm. It was so nice to have it finished, and to see people enjoying it – even the Master came, which was lovely. And the American-themed snacks went down a treat, especially the cheese puffs and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups! The Shirley Temples spiked with gin were also a big hit.

• On Tuesday, May Ball! They’d been setting it up for the last few days, and it was amazing to see the College transformed into a fairyland. The theme was the Wizard of Oz, so the committee had made a stage out of the house that falls on the Wicked Witch of the East at the beginning, complete with legs and ruby slippers poking out; Second Court was Munchkin Land, with enormous red tulips making you feel like a munchkin; every window in Third Court had a silhouette of a flying monkey; a car park had been changed into a fairground, complete with crazy golf and a laser quest maze; and the Fellows’ Garden was the Emerald City, complete with green-tinted glasses! The whole thing was just stunning – it’s literally one of the best nights I’ve ever had. There were hardly any queues for food or drink, the music was great, and even the chocolate fountain was green!

• On Wednesday, complete with hangover, it was time for the trainee trip to Ely. Theo picked us up from the station and gave us a tour of the King’s Ely School, where she is one of the librarians, complete with school history. Apparently King’s Ely is the home of Fives – not the drinking game but the squash sport variant! Theo gets to live on site, in the Bishop’s Palace no less – pretty posh! Then we went to the Stained Glass Museum at the Cathedral, which was much better than it sounds! I found a few pieces from Derby, which made me happy.
• I went straight back to Derby from Ely, as I had a job interview at Sheffield the next day. This interview had been the cause of some consternation, as I found out about it when I was in Cyprus and the original date was the same as my exhibition launch, which meant I had to orchestrate the change of date using the wifi in my hotel room, not easy when you have an email app that sometimes takes half an hour to show you one email! But anyway I sorted it, and the date was changed to Thursday 19th. So I travelled to Sheffield and managed to find the Western Bank Library, a grade-II listed building. The tour was really interesting, as the building is a bit of a labyrinth, and then the interview was pretty nerve-wracking! I didn’t feel fully prepared because of everything else that had been going on that week, but I did my best. And then there was a test too, which involved picking specific books off some prepared shelves, which weren’t in sequence to make it extra hard! I didn’t finish as I only had 10 minutes, but luckily that didn’t seem to matter, as less than an hour after I left the interviewer offered me the job! This means I can definitely move to Sheffield, which is great news.
• Then after a relaxing day at home, I headed to London for West End Live, a free event in Trafalgar Square showcasing West End musicals – perfect for me! Hazy came too, and we both enjoyed a sunny day out with an amazing soundtrack, although after returning home I discovered I should have worn more sun screen!

June 23-29th

• One of the great things to come out of the exhibition launch was that the Master said it would be nice if we could put something about it in the College magazine, which gets sent out to all College alumni. So now I’m writing an article, trying to summarise everything in the exhibition in less than 1000 words! It’s pretty tough! But it’ll be worth it to see my name in print.
• On Monday afternoon we had another trainee trip, this time to Classics and History. Emily gave us the tour of the Classics library, complete with glimpse of Mary Beard, and also showed us her exhibition, which was based on the diaries and sketchbooks of a travelling German in 1799-1800. We also had the most impressive tea-break spread ever, including about 5 different cakes, strawberries and nut brittle! Then the Seeley Library at History was also very interesting. It was built in 1968 and designed by James Stirling of Stirling Prize fame – as such it is a very impressive building, with a full glass frontispiece and designed to look like an open book (whether or not this is successful, you can judge for yourself!). However, the building has had many problems over the years, including leakage, wearing down of the floors and the lack of foresight about disabled access and connectivity. Despite these issues, it’s still a striking building and I can imagine a great place to work.

• On Tuesday I went on a short tour of Great St Mary’s Church, which is known as the University Church, and had an opportunity to climb the tower, which offers amazing 360 degree views of Cambridge and the surrounding areas. Apparently on a clear day you can see as far as Ely, one benefit of having no hills!
• Thursday saw the trainee garden party, hosted in the Fellows’ Garden at St John’s, which was really lovely. It was nice to have a bit more of a social occasion, rather than just meeting for trips, and the fact that the food and drink was so copious was a real bonus! Champagne all round!
• On Friday we had another exhibition launch, as the College was still closed for the first one and so we couldn’t invite people from outside Christ’s. Unfortunately it rained at 5pm, which I think put people off from coming after work, but we had at least another 20, including 3 of the trainees and my mum and dad, so it was worth it. My parents stayed for the weekend, and although the weather was predictably awful we had fun and visited St Ives and Angelsey Abbey as well as exploring some more of the colleges.

June 30th-July 6th

• And we head into stock check! Now we’ve got RFID this should be easier, but Charlotte’s spent most of this week grappling with the technology so fingers crossed next week is simpler! It also means the rest of us have spent pretty much all of this week both withdrawing books and shelf-tidying, which I think most will agree aren’t the most stimulating of activities… but if it means we find ten things on the shelf that we didn’t know were there, then it’s worth it.
• On Tuesday we had yet another trainee trip – this time to the Conservation Consortium, who provide the rare books and manuscripts conservation for 11 colleges, and the Whipple Museum and Library, all of which was fascinating. The Whipple is a great museum, and the librarian was lovely too, even staying behind for almost an hour to show us some of the special collections!

• On Friday night we opened the Old Library for Fellows to see the exhibition, as to coincide with Independence Day the College’s annual Midsummer Feast was US-themed.
• Then this weekend I plan to relax! As well as house-hunting for Sheffield of course… no rest for the wicked!
Phew, that’s pretty much everything I think… if anyone has any questions about anything or just wants more detail, feel free to get in touch!

Film watch: I’m just going to try and list everything, without too much analysis.
Blue Ruin (good), Frank (really touching and funny), The Wind Rises (a bit disappointing), Godzilla (better than expected), X-Men: Days of Future Past (enjoyable but too complicated), Maleficent (could have been so much better), Edge of Tomorrow (actually quite good!), Belle (good but clichéd), Jersey Boys (great music but ultimately not a great film), Chef (heart-warming and funny – do not see whilst hungry!).