Adventures in Life & Research

The last 3 weeks have been an absolute whirlwind of research mania. It's been awesome, but intense... I've done up to 4 interviews on some days, and I even did an interview that began on the phone at 11pm one evening. As I said, intense! But the membership of the NHM who have spoken to me are fabulously engaged and accommodating, and I have really enjoyed all of my interviews. I think the running tally is 30 completed interviews (5 by email, the rest by phone or in-person), and another 3 interviews with the museum staff who put the Darwin Exhibition together. Pretty kickass. I have 3 more to do this coming Tuesday, and then off to Cheltenham on Thursday; from there, I'll go to Bristol on Sunday, and then fly to Paris that evening. Exciting!

The rest of my travel plans are slowly coming together too. The plan is to stay in Paris until the 23rd (I managed to book a hostel, thankfully, as the first one I tried was already booked up and I was a bit worried), and then head to Brussels, and then Bruges. I hadn't originally intended to see Bruges, but since I'm in Belgium, and because so many people said it was a lovely place, I figure I may as well. (Not to mention that I am really looking forward to Belgian beer and chocolate, so extending my trip there is a not what I'd call a hardship.)

After that, I'll be heading back to London for a few days so Emma and I can get ready for the Hadrian's Wall expedition. We head up to Carlisle on May 3 and plan to complete it by the following Saturday. After that Emma will (sadly for me) be heading back to London and then home to Chicago, whereas I'm planning to head to Edinburgh. I've heard nothing but fabulous things about the city, so I'm excited to see it! On to Glasgow to see a museum after that, and then I'm going up to the Orkneys. I was a real Arthurian enthusiast (aka King Arthur geek) when I was younger, so the islands hold a bit of mystery for me... it should be a fantastic experience. At that point, I haven't decided if I'm going to go south and back to London, or whether I'm going to skip across to Ireland, since I'll be so close to the north of it at that point. It would be easy to do a side trip there, and then take the ferry back across to north Wales, and head home from there... I am leaning towards this latter route, as I really want to see more of the UK while I have time. I should end up back in London in late May, and while I was planning to settle down in a smaller city to do work for the rest of my stay in the UK, I'm now thinking I will find a cheaper place to live in London (possibly in the SW) and settle in here. I really love the city, plus I'm developing a great social circle here, and I really don't want to leave!

Speaking of a social circle, I have met some really fantastic people who work at the museum. I met up with a few of them last Sunday at Mme. Jojo's to see a burlesque and variety show (one of them did her first burlesque performance in the show - she was awesome!), and that ended up being my fourth burlesque show that week, thanks to the London Burlesque Festival. I saw a show first thing in the week with Emma and Liz (neither of them had been before, and they loved it!), then the "Battle Royale" amateur competition on Friday, followed by the "Jetsetter's Ball" on Saturday. I took a video of Coco Framboise's performance, as she did a beautiful job representing Canada at the festival:



Overall, it was a great week (aside from a cold I managed to pick up through over-extending myself, which robbed me of my voice for almost 3 full days). This week was busy with work too, but this weekend was a lot of fun; Emma and I went to the Tower of London on Thursday, as well as the London Zoo. I was thrilled to see the ravens at the Tower, as I read a really fascinating article on them in the past year - oh, the stories they could tell! I was a bit disappointed in the zoo, especially because the main reason I wanted to go was to see the Winnie the Pooh statue, and I wasn't able to find it before the zoo closed (although I do admit we only had an hour to look around).

One of my best friends, Vanessa, arrived on Friday as part of a rather spontaneous trip over here, and it was so nice to catch up with her over tea and wandering around the V&A. My friends Zoë and Darcy were here from Victoria this weekend too, en route to their two month holiday in Turkey, and I caught up with them this afternoon to wander around the Brick Lane Market in the east end, followed by dinner. I hadn't seen them for almost 4 years, so it's been a real treat to have so many friends here.