Goodbyes

And I am now unemployed!

Thanks for your kind messages about funding – I’m not thinking about it for the next week, and will instead enjoy a week in Northern Ireland… might be a little damp, I hear. Still, I get to spend Saturday at the wedding of two friends, so that will be wonderful.

This evening I had a meal out with my two closest friends at work, Clare and Lucy, as it was my last day in the Bodleian. We don’t work in the same departments at the same time as each other, but always spend breaks and lunch together, and they are very, very dear to me. We’ve laughed our way through the year, and have dozens of in-jokes which would irritate everyone after moments. We all got each other parting gifts, and mine included two books: Mrs Woolf & the Servants by Alison Light, which I’ve had my eye on for ages, and The Autobiography of Sir Thomas Bodley. He of the Bodleian, you understand. One of our most repeated private jokes – basically, if you say ‘Sir Thomas… Bodley?’ eight hundred times, you’ll be a step closer to understanding why we laugh at the sound of his name.

So, off I go to Northern Ireland… with seven books. I probably will only finish one or two, but the idea of being stranded without books… doesn’t bear thinking about.

I’ve packed them now, so have to try and remember them from the photo…
-They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell – a gift from Karen aka Cornflower
-A Passage to India by EM Forster – on my reading list for next term (have I updated you on reading lists yet? I fear not! More on’t soon)
-Piccadilly Jim by PG Wodehouse – been meaning to read more Wodehouse for ages, and borrowed this from my aunt Jacq years ago
-The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald – a gift from Lynne aka dovegreyreader
-The Man Who Knew Everything by Tom Stacey – review copy
-(not in picture) The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton – borrowed from Mel, my housemate