Slip-time

Wow - I can't believe that it's past the middle of November...

In the last two weeks:

* I got my residence permit to live in the UK for 2 years - then I have to apply to stay indefinitely (with, undoubtedly, another goodwill gift of at least £300).
* the University of York has not only paid Nasser's remaining fees, but also paid for his final writing-up year.
* I've been working full-time (well, training full-time) at the Local Studies library in the city
* Nasser's best friend has been over from Spain
* I finally got cover for my last December shift at the university which means I don't have to call from Canada and pretend I'm sick
* The German Christmas market has come to the city again!

Local Studies is a facinating place to work - maybe it's cause I'm not from this city (or country!) so it's all new to me. We have maps from the 16th century of the area - I learned that round the corner from my house used to be a brewery - and that it's called 'Burley Lodge' because there once was a lodge with grounds right where we live. The library has the censuses from 1843 thru to 1901 and parish records for most area churches (including non-conformist) from the 16th century when churches were obliged to keep records.

Last week, I started to help out on some of the continuing projects - Local Studies doesn't exactly have a huge budget and most of the information is in dusty, crumbling old books or on microfilm. So (and this is still slightly behind the times!) we're digitizing our own collection onto MS databases. For the last week, I transcribed graveyard records from microfilm to paper. It was fascinating. Old records (this one was for the area of the city right over the valley from us) list occupation, age, place of death, parish... wonderfully suggestive stuff. As I wrote, I couldn't help but picture these people (I just made it up to records from about June 1939 on Friday afternoon) dying. It's a small thing - a name: so incredibly evocative and yet so empty on its own.

All I had was a name not spoken in 50 years, an occupation ('labourer' was the most common for men), an age, and where they died. And it represents a whole lifetime - and more curiously, it represents a perfectly unique, individual lifetime. Names can be repeated - I recorded a John Smith or Thomas at least 2ce an hour - but a name plus a death-date plus where they died: that's irreducibly one person's experience. That these people had been largely forgotten in most cases is true - but I enjoyed it, selfishly, as a reminder of the materiality of the past: that these were people who were as I am, who died in a place as I will, and were recorded by details that stripped them of their substance but preserved their uniqueness as I might be.

And I buried them again - and perhaps more surely this time: anyone can open a book and find a name (even by accident), now they are so much binary code.

But enough - Mondays are no day for sustained philosophical digressions!

Nas's best mate was up on the weekend from Spain which was lovely - even the weather thought as much and we've had two almost perfect very-late-fall days of sunshine and crisp air. We went up to York yesterday to one of my favourite pubs for a Sunday lunch - and went to the Fudge Kitchen... I did splash out a bit but it's in my freezer waiting to accompany after-dinner-drinks over Christmas. And one piece is set aside for my friend who has a new baby and needs lots of energy (and really good chocolate...). A couple of Christmas puds from Harvey Nick's and we're set for foodstuffs to take to Canada...

Tonight is the first Christmas do of the season - at the School of English. It feels a bit early - but then, we're off for Canada in three weeks...yikes!