Supsliskans in lock-down. Week 6 20-26 April

Week 6:  20-26 April 2020

Ian 20 April 2020

Hello everyone

I have been following all the messages and uplifting bits and bobs with great interest and enjoyment. I'm particularly pleased to hear that Margaret has finally overcome adversity to successfully send a message from hospital. This arrived after I started drafting this and we await her fuller message. We all know the feeling of frustration when a carefully crafted message disappears. 

I feel that our exchanges  will provide an unusual record of how one group of loyal alumni kept in touch over these momentous weeks half a century after they were launched on the world with their diplomas clutched in their eager hands. With this in mind I have put together an edited version of our exchanges for weeks four and five:

https://supsliska.blogspot.com/2020/04/supsliskans-in-lockdown-week-4-6-12.html

https://supsliska.blogspot.com/2020/04/supsliskans-in-lockdown-week-5-13-19.html

Easter never really happened, apart from me managing to listen to Bach's St Matthew's Passion. Early in Easter week a couple of Easter bunnies were carefully lowered by us in a basket over the back wall into the garden of daughter Kate's home, to be put in quarantine in the days leading up to Easter.

That excursion combined our daily exercise with the delivery of essential items. Other excursions have been bike rides along the canal to the little port of Topsham about five miles south of Exeter to deliver food parcels to Jill's sister Julie. It is a pleasant and, more importantly, a flat ride, passing swans nesting and lambs bleating, being overtaken by the occasional demon lycra-clad power cyclist. Less successful was a Sunday stroll by the river yesterday as too many other people had the same idea on a sunny afternoon, so we cut back inland to return home rediscovering wonderfully quiet streets of early 19th century villas and terraces which we had not explored for many years. 

Jill has been reading her blogs as a form of vicarious travel and sending links to some of them out to various friends. Here is an Easter one from 2008 which some of you may not have seen: 

https://modestine4.blogspot.com/2008/04/modestines-olympic-marathon.html

We have both been working in the garden helped by fearless and opportunist robins and blackbirds - much more agreeable companions than the overabundance of pigeons, magpies and seagulls. There are also woodpeckers nesting somewhere in the neighbourhood and a family of foxes which digs holes and leaves other evidence of their passing in our vegetable patch. Some of our vegetables are deigning to show their heads above ground, although much of our watering remains an act of faith. 

Jill has been having intimations of my mortality during this Covid-19 crisis and has urged me to put my digital affairs in order. Over many years I have built up a mass of digital resources covering five millennia and five continents, including 100,000 records in the Devon bibliography, extensive lists of book trade personnel for all Europe, especially for the later 18th century, and also information on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica which I think I bored some of you with in a presentation at SUPSLIS. Add to that my collection of more than 1,000 manhole covers and unrivalled coverage of cloacopapyrology and the world would be severely deprived if all this were to disappear on my demise by an executor pushing the delete button. So I am using some of this enforced confinement sorting my files and drawing up a statement of wishes on where this material should end up. It is a bit like cleaning the Augean stables but without the manure, although there is certainly a considerable quantity of earlier versions of files that find their way to the recycle bin. Jill accuses me of being like Edward Casaubon of Middlemarch whose researches never see the light of day, but I do point out that much of it is already on the internet. I am really just an old bibliofool, living up to Edward Young's statement that:

Unlearned men of books assume the care

As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair

But I'm sure that some of you will be able to suggest  some learned men who were librarians. May I start the ball rolling with Casanova, particularly appropriate in view of Edward Young's comparison with eunuchs. 

Enough from me. Take care, all of you.

Ian

Janet 20 April 2020

Dear All

Yes, thanks to everyone for their news and attachments, all much enjoyed. Just thought I'd send you a link to an article which perhaps explains a bit more clearly than I have previously been able to what some pharmaceutical companies are doing to help find a way forward out of the current mess. Roche are not the only company working on this problem, of course, but my daughter works for them so alerts me to some of their contributions.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/roche-develops-new-covid-19-antibody-test/

Best wishes. Janet.

Jane 20 April 2020

There is talk now of face masks being mandatory. Would it not have been a good idea if we had been sent one by Boris instead of that letter?

Time for the morning walk. In sunshine! But I bet there is a cold wind …
Love to all, Jane

Sylvia 20 April 2020

Yes, Margaret struggles with sending emails as she only has a mobile with her in hospital and doesn’t own a tablet of any kind. The keys are very small and it seems to have a mind of its own (a bit like my hair now that I can’t get it cut!).  I did discuss the possibility of buying a tablet, but nothing is easy when you aren’t on familiar ground.

Stay well and enjoy the sunshine, everyone, even in the wind.

Sylvia

Janet 20 April 2020

Dear All

I thought you might be interested in the attached Sunday Times article from 12 Apr 2020 re the Swiss approach to lock-down, which they started weeks before we did. My daughter says the only thing that isn’t right (unless his village has special dispensation) is meeting up for dinner parties. You are only supposed to meet your own household indoors as you can’t realistically stay at least 2 metres apart and the interaction is likely to last more than 15 minutes.She says she's sure that by now the village re-educators will have adjusted him on that misinterpretation! Meetings of more than 5 people out doors won’t be allowed again until at least June 8th and it all depends on the infection rate not going up again.

Best wishes. Janet.

Margaret  20 April 2020

Yes, I did try! Spent about an hour writing an email on my smartphone this morning telling you a bit about life in a hospital. The phone rang so I put the smartphone down to  answer it, had a nice chat to a friend but when I picked it up had lost my email. Maddening!
I failed to retrieve it so am most grateful to Anne and Sylvia for allerting me to the fact that an empty message went out. I hope that will inspire me to send another email tomorrow with my news.

Till then love from Margaret

Angela 20 April 2020

Hello All

Yes, Sylvia is absolutely right that Margaret only has a mobile phone in hospital and that it is not the easiest to use. Margaret  told me  that her long fingers don't help. I have the same  problem, but with  with short fingers!  I completely sympathise with the difficulty of trying to send   e-mails and cope with attachments on a small mobile phone.

I have spoken to Margaret, both yesterday and the day before. We had a nice long chat and she sounded in very good spirits and is working at keeping the staff in the hospital cheerful! Her physio has unfortunately stopped owing to the hospital being in  lockdown, but she is doing her best to continue with her exercises and is now tackling jigsaws. 

Margaret only has a small table  to work on, so we discussed ways of expanding it for the jigsaws. I thought about a 'jigsaw roll' but if  anyone has any better suggestions, do let us know.

It is so good hearing how everyone is coping in different ways. It is incredibly windy here too, but I have just cut the back lawns so the garden is looking much better - the same effect as  hoovering a carpet - everything looks so much better!

Keep well, Love

Angela

Angela 21 April 2020

Hello Ian and Everyone

It really is good to hear how everyone is coping and so good that you are compiling an edited account. Thank you for doing this. I loved the idea of the Easter bunnies being lowered over the wall, but I am glad you included a photo as I was beginning to wonder if they were the furry version! We managed to do a 'virtual Easter egg hunt' from Norfolk linking up with with Freya and the family in Ealing on Facetime. We sent the eggs plus some simple clues by post  to them in advance, then on the day we hid small eggs round our house and using Facetime, and with some help from her Mum and Dad, Freya directed us to look d for the eggs.  Every time she found an egg, she was given  one of the larger ones which we had sent. I was really surprised that it all worked out - but we kept it short and simple. We are all so fortunate to be able to link up with family and friends with things like Face Time and WhatsApp. 

Ian's account of his digital store made me feel much better about our  collection of  papers and books (Leo) and photos (me) which have been on the list for 'sorting' for years! I feel this is the perfect time to tackle them, and have made some headway but the sunny weather does tempt us out into the garden where there is still lots to do and is much nicer work! I was fascinated to hear about Jane's grandfather's whisky running activities during prohibition. Leo's father was a merchant seaman but lived for a time in New York during prohibition. He never got over the sight of crates of whisky being destroyed! 

I couldn't resist following up your 'learned men' who were at one time librarians idea. I expanded it to 'famous people' and a quick Google search came up with the following:

• Mao Zedong - Assistant Librarian  Peking University
• Golda Meir - worked as a librarian
• Pope Pius XI - Librarian in the Vatican - also re-organised the archives there
• Lewis Carroll Charles Dodgson) - Sub-librarian at Christ Church, Oxford.

I am sure there are many more!

Keep well. Love

Angela

Anne 21 April 2020

One more, just out of the top of my head: Philip Larkin, poet and librarian of Hulll University, and another one that no-one else will know about!

Johann Andreas Schmeller, Bavarian State librarian and compiler of the Bavarian Dictionary, in the 18th century. Spent his childhood in Rinnberg, a village part of Rohrbach, just down the road from where I live!

Lunch time now!

Anne

Howard 21 April 2020

Ooohh Philip Larkin.  I was at Hull and I must have lived near him. I used to see him in his dirty raincoat on his bike. He used to come to Sark on holiday. I remember when the BBC Monitor team came to interview him in Hull. I think it was Hugh Wheldon.

I remember his deputy Brenda Moon, I think her name was, came to lecture us in Sheffield. I think she was librarian in Edinburgh after that (not sure about that). When Larkin died I think Ian Mowatt bacame librarian at Hull. He was at Sheffield the year after us. I think he also became librarian at Edinburgh after Hull. I think he died early.

Howard

Tony 21 April 2020

Ian Mowat was a lovely guy. I never realised that he had been to Sheffield. He became Librarian at Newcastle, and then National Librarian in Edinburgh. He died tragically early in a climbing accident on (I think) Ben Nevis. For those of us who know the Far North, he used to spend his summer holidays with an uncle’s family in Brora, where the uncle was a bank manager.

Mike Day, who became Librarian at UMIST, was also in the year after ours at Sheffield.

I’ve discovered that I can get an opera streamed free of charge each night from the Met in New York using the ‘Smart Hub’ on my television. Remarkably good quality. Also Covent Garden and the NT once a week on You Tube, also foc. It’s incredible what technology is enabling. Just to think that in 1967 we were so impressed with Hollerith punched cards….. I wonder what it’s like being at Library School these days.

Sorry for the brevity. Lunch (in the person of Shirley) is calling. I just got carried away by the mention of Ian Mowat……..

All best wishes, Tony

Jane 21 April 2020

Ian Mowat was actually Librarian at Edinburgh University (not the National Library) following, we think Brenda Moon, after whom a room is named in the Art College Library, now part of EUL. I have met Ian's wife at meetings of the Friends of EUL. Brenda Moon was a good friend of Nance McAulay, Durham University Librarian who, when I got the job there, was the only female University Librarian. Ian's deputy at Newcastle was Jon Purcell who became Librarian in St Andrews before moving to Durham from where he retired early a couple of years ago. Philip Larkin was at Leicester before Hull, and David's friend Lionel Madden (who became Librarian of the National Library of Wales) did not speak kindly of him. DUL's Chief Cataloguer, Norman Guilding, came from Hull and thought Larkin was wonderful. Small world!

Angela, I was interested to hear that your father-in-law was a merchant seaman during Prohibition. My paternal grandfather and his twin brother were shipowners in Leith, made a fortune running armaments to France in WWI, spent their money wildly and tried to recoup various losses by running 300,000 bottles of whisky to the west coast of America in 1923. That lost them more money, great uncle fled Britain, and my grandfather eventually went to St Pierre et Miquelon in 1930 where he was definitely involved in the whisky business. My contact in Newfoundland is planning to publish a book about the islands and the trade in Scotch whisky at the time. Hence my trawling through reports in British newspapers.

But the sun is shining, and hopefully the wind has dropped so I will go and deadhead the daffodils and pull more weeds.

All the best to everyone, Jane

Margaret  22 April 2020

Dear Jane et al

Perhaps I can manage a shortie!

I don't remember Ian mowat but heard Philip Larkin lecture at an aslib conference. He was a strange fellow with a very long back and short legs. Current gossip had it that he was librarian at Hull in name but his deputy, presumably Brenda moon, did the work.

The Edinburgh university librarian I remember   is Richard fifoot who was education librarian at Leeds when I  worked in the brotherton. He left to be univ librarian at Edinburgh returning to Oxford some years later to be bodley,s librarian. He only lasted 2 years, all rather sad.

Well, I have managed that and think I will send it on its way before it disappears!
Love from Margaret

Jane  22 April  2020

Richard Fifoot gave me my SCONUL training post in Edinburgh.  I was interviewed in his office in an alcove off the upper library hall in the Old Quad. Each alcove had bookshelves and I had no idea which led to the exit when I came out of his office. There were 2 staff rooms,  one for Assistant Librarians and above, and one for the rest of us. Better than a sexist division I suppose. Happy days!

Love, Jane

Priscilla 23 April 2020

Have been enjoying your trips down memory lane. Some of you may know that Callum Smith (wasn’t yet calling himself Smith-Burnett) taught me when I was an SLIS student. It was management and I remember nothing. Also, I think, but not certain, that Ian Mowat was external examiner shortly after I started lecturing. Two riveting bits of information there!

Best wishes, Priscilla

Janet 25 April 2020

Dear All

Don't know if you caught this news item about a new method of arranging books in a public library. Possibly useful for those using books as a backdrop for their Zoom appearances!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-52412655
Also, thanks to Priscilla for the news of what happened to Callum after we left.

Best wishes to all, Janet.

Angela 25 April 2020

Dear Janet and Everyone

Thank you for this news item - I think it is just brilliant! With all the focus on bookshelves as background for online interviews etc.  this is a new approach, though I have seen one where the books were arranged tastefully by colour.

I remember when I was in the school library in Stevenage,  as a build up to teaching how the books were arranged in Dewey order, I used to ask the kids to  imagine that all the books had been jumbled up and to think of how many different ways they could think of arranging them. By size often came up first. What a lovely,  neat library we would have had!

Love, Angela

Pat via Angela 26 April 2020

Here is a message from Pat which she has asked me to forward to everyone.

Angela x

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-jk-rowling-shares-glimpse-into-her-huge-home-library-11977258

It was J K Rowling who surprisingly arranged part of her collection of books by colour. See link. Sorry Angela - I could not find an address to include the whole group, so can you send it on please?

I broke the lock-down rules yesterday and got my son to drive me round the city so I could see the deserted streets. Looked even less busy than a Sunday of course. Safe distance queuing outside supermarkets was a predominant feature and several people out on bikes. My first time out for nearly 6 weeks.

I am enjoying the garden in this lovely weather with varying degrees of success with sowing, in and out of the greenhouse. Broad beans, dwarf French beans and sweet corn appearing outside plus two asparagus spears a day! I planted 10 asparagus plants about 10 years ago and I think I must have lost some of them. Annoying as I keep quite a large area free for them.

Whilst I am enjoying my gardening, more reading than usual, daily exercising with Joe Wicks, and singing with the virtual choir, my son is getting a bit stir crazy as he has various projects that he is wanting to get on with on my house but is waiting for online deliveries of a drill, a ladder and other basic tools that I do not have. But when they arrive it’ll be go, go, go.

It will be interesting to see what Boris does, if anything, about relaxing the rules. We are in such an extraordinarily complex situation. 

Love to all. Keep well, Pat