Time to join Facebook?

I have had some really nice letters, cards and emails from people, congratulating me on the publication of my book. However, one of the pieces of correspondence that awaited me on my return to work was a little more strange...


Written on a typewriter, from an Italian gentleman named Bruno Filipponio, this letter assured me that he "ardently desired" a copy of my book, and without explaining why he was not in a position to pay for it, requested me to send him a free copy, for which he offered me in exchange a book entitled Pironti: Osservazioni e chiose su vernacolo e dialetto (I can't find any trace of this book online, and it's not altogether clear what it is about - the Pironti apparently being a noble family from Ravello, with distinguished scions going back to the 13th century...). Though this book was "a treasured family heirloom", he was nevertheless willing to deprive himself of it in order to receive a copy of my book - would I agree to the exchange? It went on in yet more purple a fashion: "I know that I ask much and offer little, I know that I seem brash and boorish in my request....", and that if I was not able to "satisfy" him, could I reply quickly - even if briefly - "in order to avoid a long wait and a yet more bitter disappointment"...?

I put this aside for a while, having several hundred emails to deal with after what was effectively 6 weeks out of the office, then turned my thoughts to it again a few days ago. I wrote a quick reply, which Luisa kindly translated for me, confident - since Lisa's photo of my book on sale in Venice - that the book was available in Italy, and anyway why couldn't he order it online? It's not prohibitively expensive... (though the fact that the letter was written on a typewriter suggested the correspondent might not be au fait with the interweb...)

But something about the rather poetic way it was written made me wonder who this Bruno Filipponio was, so I Googled him, and quickly discovered that he had been an Olympic torchbearer for the Rome Olympics in 1960! But yet more curious - I came across a posting dated January of this year, on the blog of a Catalan Professor of Philology, Mariàngela Villalonga, who had also received a letter from Bruno Filipponio. And not only that, but the quotes she gave from the letter ("desidero ardentemente", "E' un caro ricordo di famiglia, ma sono pronto a privarmene pur di avere quanto ho chiesto; accetta lo scambio?") showed that it had been worded in the exact same way as my letter!

Like me, Mariàngela had gone online to find out who this chap was - and had found reproduced on the website of a Bolognese company the exact same letter as ours, just with the titles changed, of the book requested and the book offered in exchange; she also managed to find identical letters from our correspondent, received by Italian writers in 1977 and 1963! And that an Italian friend of hers receives a letter from him every time he publishes a new book!

Bruno Filipponio has been scrounging books off their authors for nearly 50 years!!! I wonder if he has ever bought a book in his life?? Indeed I presume that the books he offers in exchange are books previously sent to him by their authors, perhaps decades ago!

Mariàngela suggested that perhaps we should start a Facebook group for authors who have received letters from Bruno Filipponio! It is the first time I have actually been tempted to join Facebook!!

Snapshots

I have a fair bit to catch up on from the last month, but I thought I would write it around snapshots of what I have been doing and seeing in that time.

Owls in the British Library

Well, as I had been warned, the British Library was absolutely packed over the summer, and unless you got there by 10 or very soon after, you could pretty much kiss goodbye to the idea of getting a desk or finding an empty locker down in the cloakroom... People resorted to interesting lengths to reserve desks for themselves - I spotted this one in Rare Books as I was popping out for a coffee break: a little cloth owl, and a bashed-up old notebook. Later on in the day I remembered to look and see whose desk it was, and it was occupied by a very respectable-looking middle-aged Japanese lady - she was working away surrounded by piles of bona fide-looking rare books, with the toy owl still in the same position...

We got into a very cosy habit working with Juliette - my arrival time in the library was slightly erratic and she would always save me a desk. We moved around a little bit - she got a bit bored of looking at the mustachioed Italian who alternated his beige or grey cardigans on a weekly basis...

It was an immensely productive month - as Glaire commented in an email, I was obviously ready to do this. I sent off my book proposal and sample material, and got about halfway through revising the thesis. Some of it is not very polished, and I created work for myself in some ways by deciding to add a new chapter - by turning my object appendix into an object-focused chapter - but I feel very satisfied with how much I got done. Plus I felt extremely relaxed by the end of it, and not at all keen on going back to work - especially with the 'age of austerity' looming and no-one quite knowing what is going to be in store for museums and heritage institutions in the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review...

With Nick at Blickling

We got away for the Bank Holiday weekend (typical late August weather, as you can see from the photo!!) and went to visit Nick in Norfolk. We had a rather crazy weekend staying with him at his mother and stepfather's, along with their 3 young grand-daughters (all under 5), the parents of their daughter-in-law, Nick's brother and his wife, and four labradors!! It was actually great fun, though we slipped away during the day, to take in the gorgeous Norfolk countryside and exercise our National Trust membership cards a little - not being drivers, we don't get to do that very much! K had a bunch of places that he wanted to visit for various research reasons, and it was great just spending time with Nick and catching up. We also got to be the first dinner guests at Suzie & Drake's wonderful thatched cottage, which they had only moved into 2 weeks before!


The South Bank had a Morris dancing festival - inspired by the sarcastic remarks apparently made by Sebastian Coe at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing: in reaction to the acrobatic Chinese dancing, he quipped that in London in 2012 we could instead look forward to the performance of 5000 Morris dancers. South Bank took him at his word, and pop artist David Owen created some memorable Morris dancing related images - one of them was (ha ha) Morissey, waving a bunch of wildflowers; another was the famous head from the bookcover of A Clockwork Orange, wearing a flower-festooned hat... But I liked this Star Wars Stormtrooper the best!

We actually didn't see any of the Morris dancing, but we did go to hear The Imagined Village playing at Queen Elizabeth Hall, which was excellent! The night before going back to work too, so I certainly was not sitting around at home moping over my 'back to school' feeling...


People have been emailing me to tell me they have spotted my book for sale in far-flung places! So far, the furthest-flung is the American University of Cairo bookshop - in Cairo! But this photo was taken by Lisa, "in an academic bookshop in a narrow street in Venice, about two weeks ago"... You can just spot it there in the middle on the top shelf!

Have you seen my book for sale anywhere exotic? I'd love to know!


I had one day back in the office last Monday, then went off again on a 3-day courier trip to Munich - installing a few pieces in an exhibition that is soon to open at the Haus der Kunst, commemorating 100 years since a major Islamic Art exhibition held in Munich in 1910. This one has a combination of 'historic' objects - which had been shown at the 1910 exhibition - together with contemporary works, which seems to be a current trend in exhibition curating in Germany these days. The exhibition in Berlin which I couriered in January took a similar approach. It was early days in the installation - I was the first courier - but I was impressed by the quality of the pieces. The Haus der Kunst is a rather ugly Fascist building - it was built in 1937, and seems ironically to be one of few buildings in Munich that actually survived the Allied bombings in 1945 - though they seem to have turned it into quite a thriving cultural and exhibition centre.

Munich was lovely - I had never been before - and it was really nice to catch up with Marion (hello! I know she reads this!). The Glockenspiel in the picture above is one of Munich's major tourist attractions - it is installed in the impressive belltower of the neo-Gothic Rathaus, though it dates from the early 20th century. It commemorates two events from Munich's history. Everyone gathers in the main square for 11 o'clock when it starts to play, and there is a great cry of approval when the Bavarian jouster knocks his Austrian opponent off his perch - lots of fun!

But what a busy week! I was giving a lecture yesterday - in a study afternoon on Seville - so as soon as I got back from Munich, I had to think about that. No wonder I feel like a zombie today!


And last, but by no means least, our calendar image for the month - K's grandfather, Robert, who died this time last year. This lovely photo of him was taken during the war, when he must have been in his 30s. He didn't change a bit all his life!

The Incident of the Rhubarb Tarte Tatin

It was Friday the 13th, and I quipped to Andrew by email, "I hope I don't burn the dinner!" Hmmm. I had chosen a fancy dessert recipe from Olive to wow our dinner guests, and also to use up the last batch of rhubarb from K's parents' garden. First problem - I haven't cooked with rhubarb much before, and had never made a tarte tatin, and found upon reading the recipe closely that this was supposed to be done in blini pans or in a Yorkshire pudding tray with four indents, neither of which I had. So a single tarte tatin in a cake tin it was going to be. Then came the issue of making the caramel base. I discovered the hard way (er, literally) that when the recipe says butter and granulated sugar, one should not use caster sugar to make caramel.

After two attempts (the first with golden caster sugar, the second with normal refined caster sugar, just in case its goldenness had been the problem), K was dispatched to the local corner shop to procure granulated sugar, and hurrah! all proceeded satisfactorily with caramel production. I made a nice arrangement of the rhubarb bits on top of this, and I must say the tarte tatin did look beautiful when it was turned out. I don't have a photo unfortunately. Andrew was presented with the first slice and we all waited for the verdict - poor man, having been put on the spot, he did a valiant job of keeping a straight face. I tried a bite of mine - decidedly sour!! What happened to all that sugar in the caramel??? Plus the recipe suggestion of serving this with mascarpone was not a good choice.

With lashings of caster sugar, the dessert was eaten, but lesson learned - always test a new dessert recipe before serving it to one's dinner guests!! Alas, I feel this episode might go down in personal legend - "remember when you did that rhubarb tarte tatin for Alison and Andrew....?"

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The nice thing, however, was that we had a dinner party at all. It has been far too long since we had people over for supper, and this is one of the very nice outcomes of the time I have off work at the moment. Five whole weeks! I had so much annual leave to use up, having taken almost no holiday over the busy last few years, that I decided to take a big batch of time off in the middle of the summer - when it is usually quiet anyway - and spend it in the library, finally starting to focus on how to turn my PhD thesis into a book... I get two different reactions to this:

1) "Don't work too hard / Make sure you actually give yourself some time off!"
2) "Five weeks in the library! What bliss!"

I fall into the latter category myself. Two weeks in, and I am feeling immensely relaxed! I have said before that I don't really know how to relax like normal people - I actually really enjoy going to the library, and it is wonderful just to have the time to read things. I made a list of books and articles that have been published since I submitted my thesis in 2002 - not too long fortunately - and have been working my way through that, but also reading the odd other article, which I'm interested in but isn't directly relevant... Plus - I have space in my brain! And time to get round to things I have been meaning to do for months! Like write emails, send people photos or references I said I would send them, and just see people and be sociable!

The British Library is a pretty sociable place, as I have noted before, and I have been meeting friends for lunch and coffee and a post-library drink. Now Juliette has joined me in Rare Books, on her own PhD sabbatical, and we're getting into a habit of taking our packed lunches outside at 1, to sit in the sun for half an hour or so, and debrief... K will be off work too soon, so the 3 of us will be chilling out together...

And two weeks in, I have nearly a complete first draft of a book proposal! Reading the thesis again after 8 years was an interesting experience, and I was gratified to discover that it wasn't too awful, and that mostly I still agreed with myself... It's a bit dry and in some places overly defensive, but that's what makes a PhD different from a book, and that's what I have got to work out how to tackle. I've even had some positive feedback from the professor who supervised me for the beginning of the process, but didn't see it through because he went off to the States to be a hot-shot museum director - amazing to have some actual feedback as the viva was such a let-down... But water under the bridge an' all.

So - the next dinner party is planned for just over a week's time, and I'm already plotting the menu. I'm starting with the dessert first this time...!

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And finally...

Signpost, Chenies © KR

Our calendar picture for this month. A very English country road sign, but for K one which conjures up the places of his childhood. Chenies was where his grandparents lived, both now passed away. It was exactly this time last year that we were in Hereford for the 3 Choirs Festival, unknowingly spending our last days with his grandfather Robert... Perhaps a little sombre for the kitchen calendar, but it prompts some happy memories.

Henry Moore and the Jets

K ponders the Harrier, one of the two fighter planes in this year's Duveens Commission

That title might suggest this posting might actually be about Henry Moore, whereas the only link is Tate Britain - and I just couldn't resist the rock'n'roll title, Henry Moore being possibly the person I least associate with rock'n'roll....!

James commissioned us to go along to Tate and assess this year's Duveens Commission, Harrier and Jaguar, by artist Fiona Banner - so we thought we would combine it with going to see the Henry Moore exhibition before it closed. Nothing much to say about that - apart from, as K observed, grouping a whole load of Henry Moores together in an enclosed space does nothing for one's appreciation of his wonderfully abstract creations. Each one needs to be contemplated on its own terms, the way you do when you stumble across them as public sculpture, but in an exhibition environment, after a while you get fatigued by the requirement to give each one an equal share of your intellectual capacity...

The most memorable thing for me was the room dedicated to the series of drawings he made during the Second World War, especially of coal miners in Yorkshire, and of sheltering women and children in the tunnels and platforms of the London Underground. Inevitably the hundreds of sleeping figures take on the ghostly feel of Moore's signature 'recumbent forms'...

But to the Jets. As an aviation journalist who appreciates art and museums, James was keen to know what we - as two curators - thought of the current installation of two fighter planes in the neoclassical surrounds of the Tate's Duveen gallery, the implication being they had become art objects rather than objects of destruction. I am going to attempt to get my thoughts on all this in some sense of order for him here.

The first thing is that it is completely awe-inspiring. You see the jets first as beautifully-designed objects, and then you remember that they are designed that way in order to be more effective killing machines. This creates a sense of tension and awkwardness inside you which is the essence of the artist's intention, I think. This is especially so with the Jaguar, cleverly shown upside down, so you find yourself admiring the sleek engineering of its under-carriage, and then discover you're face-to-face with its gun ports.


I don't know if I'm using the correct terminology to describe any of these bits of the plane, and in fact my utter ignorance of this type of object was also part of what disconcerted me about their display. I didn't know if what I was looking at had been 'interpreted' by the artist in any way (and the text on the wall panel didn't clarify that for me, even when I finally read it) - I didn't know if the suggestion of feathers painted on the wings, nose and tail of the Harrier Hawk were put there by the artist or whether they were part of the original design of the planes; I didn't know if a Jaguar normally looked that shiny. Having watched an interesting short film about it on the Tate website (what a joy, may I say, to listen to an artist being so articulate about their work), I now know that the Jaguar was stripped back and polished for the exhibition, but there was something unsettling about my ignorance at the time I was looking at them.


I wonder if this is a female response? Most of the men visiting the galleries seemed inexorably drawn to the planes and seemed to want to 'explain' them to the women they were with - I suppose a symptom of making Airfix models as boys, and all wanting to grow up to be fighter pilots... One man - and this was extremely perturbing - posed for several photographs standing astride the long nozzle projecting from the front of the Jaguar, so blatantly phallic. These photos were being taken by a female friend or partner who seemed to think it all very amusing, but you felt you were intruding on something too intimate - not to say vulgar and rather pathetic - to be out in the open like that.

I felt the planes were poised as if they had just come to land - crash landed in the case of the upside-down Jaguar, though obviously there was no damage to it. The Harrier was just hovering with its nose a few inches off the ground, as if it had just plunged through the roof and caught in the branches of a tree or something - though the curator in me wanted to know more about the superstructure supporting it in that position... There was something slightly sinister about the 'greyed-out' appearance of both cockpits - I felt if I looked too closely I'd see someone in there, a dead pilot perhaps.

I suppose that was the tension surfacing again, the fact that you are so strongly aware of these objects' original function - these are both actual decommissioned planes which have seen action in recent international conflicts: the Jaguar was in Desert Storm. I felt happier - if that's the word - comforted even, that this meant they were authentic - that we were not just looking at them as gratuitous symbols of conflict, they had actually been there. Though, again, the tension, the unsettling awkwardness...

The polished, seemingly silver-plated, precious-metal surface of the Jaguar now reflects the architecture of the galleries enclosing them, and more than one person was taking photographs of this artistic reflection. This is deliberately part of Fiona Banner's effect - the Tate built with the funds from slavery, in the neoclassical style that was the symbol of empire at the time it was built, now housing these modern symbols and tools of empire. The display works because of its environment, in a more successful way than I have seen for a long time - seeing the planes in that space generates thoughts and feelings which I can't imagine thinking if I saw the planes in a airplane hangar or in an aviation museum. Perhaps I would, but there is something about the creative intent behind stripping and decorating them in this way, the whole idea that they are now art, that makes you look at them in a completely different way. Well, it provokes thought, and that has to be a good thing in an art installation.

So thanks James for our own commission! My head was so deeply buried in the ground during the last few months that I didn't even know about it, so I'm grateful for the excuse it gave me to start to reopen my eyes to the outside world.

The constant composter

Wool drying, Lewis & Harris, Outer Hebrides © KR

This month's calendar picture - the only one in colour, just because of the beautiful contrast of colours it shows, which is so typically Scottish, or so typical of what we now associate with the Outer Hebrides. This was taken outside the home and workshop of Marion Campbell, the tweed weaver we went to visit on Harris last summer. There is something amazing - but I suppose not all that surprising - about the way the earthy colours of the wool echo the colours of the hills on the horizon.

I haven't blogged about this year's Hebridean holiday - there are just not enough hours in a day to get down here all the things I would like to write about, all the thoughts that pass fleetingly through my brain... I have finally got round to loading up some images on Flickr, a selection of about 50 out of the 400 or so photographs I took, mainly of amazing landscapes, and K and my sister pulling silly faces... The home-movie, The Langass Witch Project, is worth a watch though! (We climbed Beinn Langass, and I was trying to figure out how to photograph the amazing views from the top, and had the brainwave that a panoramic movie would capture the scene much better than a series of stills - but my endeavour was rudely interrupted...)

This year we were on North Uist, where my sister has been living since November, which is the second-most northerly of a string of five islands linked by causeways - though the word 'islands' is in some ways a misnoma, since they are potted with so many lochs and bodies of water that it doesn't feel much like a landmass sometimes. As with Lewis and Harris last year, the landscape is almost achingly beautiful, with such contrasts from one view to the next - ragged mountains on the horizon in one direction, miles-long sandy beaches with transparent turquoise seas in another, undulating treeless peaty moorland all around you, suddenly interrupted by the bright colours and heavy scent of the machair, meadows which grow behind the sea and before the peat, which were covered with wildflowers and teeming with wildlife, full of species of flora and fauna I had never seen in my life before!


We spent most of the time outside - a wonderful change from being cooped up in libraries or offices or galleries. K bought a small book about the archaeology of the Uists, which had a helpful gazetteer in the back, and we used it as the starting point for long walks in different parts of the islands. The joke became that the archaeology consisted of piles of stones in different configurations, be it chambered cairn, or Iron Age wheelhouse (the oldest 'buildings' in Europe apparently!), or medieval chapel... In fact it didn't really matter, it was the walk there that counted. One feature we thought particularly beautiful was the dun, or artificial island built out in the middle of a loch, linked to the land by an ancient causeway. The dun usually had a structure built on it, a cairn or a burial mound or domestic structure. You'd see them all over as we were driving around.


This time round we stayed in a B&B, run by a rather eccentric Dutch artist - a wonderful place in a beautiful setting, but he had quite strict breakfast times, which sometimes involved having to talk to strangers (other people who were staying there) without having yet imbibed sufficient quantities of coffee to have properly woken up! So we didn't get as much sleep as I would have liked and I did very little reading (only got through one book), and it confirmed us in the view that self-catering is definitely the way to go - memories of that gorgeous little cottage on Harris last year... But the infrastructure for that kind of tourism doesn't exist on the Uists yet, somewhat surprisingly. I was only partly joking every time I saw a run-down blackhouse for sale, about buying it and doing it up and renting it out... (especially since our house-buying plans in London are rather on the backburner these days)

So many stories and happy memories - slightly embittered by the personal difficulties that my sister has been having, and her indecision about what to do with her life. It seems she might be moving to Edinburgh now, where she was at university - I won't mind! I love Edinburgh, and it will be great to have the excuse to visit it more, plus it will be easier to get to see her, since getting to the Hebrides is not all that easy (one of its charms, of course) and can be rather expensive. We might try the Inner Hebrides next year, especially since there is a possibility that my parents might be about to move there... (Hmmm, don't think I should be taking it personally that my immediate family are all moving away!)

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I've done a neighbourly turn this afternoon, which I am feeling rather self-satisfied about. I have donated a good load of the compost we have been making for over a year now to the friend of a friend, who lives two streets away and has an allotment. It's all very well composting our food waste, but the bin was getting full, and though it goes down as the waste rots, ultimately it seemed a bit pointless if we weren't going to do anything with it. I tried offering it to the Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses, who were very nice about it but understandably have to observe DEFRA health and safety guidelines about the compost they use being made on-site; then a colleague of K's said she was sure her friend Honor would be interested.

I commandeered an abandoned barrow (I quickly realised why it was abandoned - it has a flat tyre), and borrowed some trowels from Lisa, the lady who technically owns the compost bin, though about 4 or 5 flats have been composting in it for a good long while now - then started excavating. It's quite good stuff! Amazing to see what all our food waste turns into! Lots of worms, which is apparently a good sign! Honor happily carried away three heavy bags worth, and will be back in the autumn for more! She gave us a lovely looking lettuce and two amazing courgettes in exchange - and it just seems so good that it will actually be going to some use. And it's created lots of space for more good composting! So now I can carry on composting with a clear conscience, and it has impressed K, I think, who was always a bit dubious about our compost. So good turns all round!

¡Campeones del Mundo!

'Pulpo Paul' - as they call him in Spain - predicts the Spanish win (100% success rate for this psychic octopus! I just want to know who on earth first thought of asking an octopus to predict football results!?)

and about time too!! Spain have been not-quite-achieving for so long but they are worthy World Cup winners - though, being a quarter Dutch, it was ever such a slight dilemma knowing who to support...

Actually it was never in doubt. I first started supporting Spanish fútbol when I was living in Madrid for a year, researching for my PhD, and Real Madrid won the Champions League - can you believe that is 10 years ago now, in 2000?? (Can you also believe there is actually a Wiki page on that particular match!) They returned to Madrid covered in glory, and there were processions and celebrations in the street - I just got caught up in the joy of it all.

So I can well imagine the logjams that wild partying in the streets of Madrid has apparently caused as Spaniards celebrate their victory! A picture on El País shows Gran Vía absolutely crammed with people in red and gold shirts! The outbreak of support for the national team - "La Roja" - across Spain has apparently also done much to heal separatist rifts: an interesting article on the Guardian about that here.

Great pictures on El País tonight of the team returning home and being received by the royal family at the palace - everyone just looks so happy and relaxed! Can you imagine our queen and prince consort looking so happy when faced with a squad of footballers?? There was a great moment, just after Iniesta scored his historic goal last night, when the TV camera caught la Reina Sofia whooping for joy with her arms in the air! I had hoped to find it on YouTube, but it doesn't seem to be up there - perhaps it is not an unusual occurrence! But if it had been England winning the World Cup (er, please excuse a moment of fantasy) can you imagine old Lilibet even twitching a smile?!

¡Enhorabuena España!

My book is in the shops!

and the Ceramics Study Galleries are open - the two major projects I have given all my time to over the last several years are successfully complete, and I am becoming increasingly aware of an unfamiliar feeling of aimlessness in my extra-curricular time. It's not that I don't have research or writing projects I could be doing, I just don't want to be doing them - or rather, I feel that I have earnt some time off from them, just that I don't really know what it is that normal people do with their free time. I suppose part of the problem is that K has two article deadlines to meet, so he is writing writing writing, so I can't make any plans for us to go off and do things together at the weekend. And I quite enjoy luxuriating in the pure fact of having nothing to do.

But I have read enough of the LRB and my current book, The Rings of Saturn (which I have to say I am not enjoying nearly as much as I ought to be - especially since it is one of K's most beloved books), and have caught up with the Guardian profile of Simon Mawer and review of his recently-Booker-nominated The Glass Room - the book I read on holiday, which was such a wonderfully evocative portrait of a Modernist building that when I eventually brought myself to look at photographs of the Tugendhat House in Brno, Czech Republic, upon which it based, I felt I had already seen it... I have caught up with a good few long-overdue emails, and we have even started to arrange to see people again!

I feel like I am re-emerging from a long period of hibernation, but am out of practice where basic social pastimes are concerned - perhaps because our habit over the last years has been to do our research in all the spare hours we can carve out from the day. I made a conscious decision early on in my working life to maintain an active academic strand alongside my job - of course those things should cross over more than they do - but I feel I have now got to the stage, especially now that I have been promoted, where I do not have anything to prove any more, and I am grateful for that. But it is difficult to suddenly learn to relax when you've never really been sure of how to do it! I have done quite a lot of cooking - hours in the kitchen last night producing Ottolenghi's turkey and sweetcorn meatballs, and as always with meatballs I am not sure that the end result really justified the hours of faff; I have even done all the washing up (things must be bad!).

This lull is also actually only a brief window before embarking on the next book project - in August, I am using up 5 weeks of my accumulated leave (having not really taken any holidays over the last few years) to start focusing on how to turn my thesis into a book. I haven't looked at it for 8 years, and don't really want to think about it at all before 2 August - when I plan to pitch my metaphorical tent in the British Library for the duration (people who don't realise I am not going on a month's holiday say, "I hope you're going somewhere nice"!) - so I am trying to get my ducks in a row (scans from Spanish colleagues of articles that have come out in the last 8 years, a sense from EUP - where I plan to propose it - of what I should have achieved by the end of August) without really engaging my brain, since I want to come to it absolutely fresh when I finally sit down and re-read it. I am hoping that the intervening years and publishing projects will make it immediately obvious to me what it needs, but I also don't want to do too much rewriting, mainly restructuring and reducing. But who knows what will possess me.

In the meantime, we're having a glorious summer and I really should be outside. Thank goodness we have the Lambeth Country Show next weekend!