London, lightning and lots and lots of rain.....

Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday...by the time I got home from London I was just so exhausted that I couldn't think straight, let alone compose a coherent blog entry..... Many hours of sleep later I'm feeling much better, and so here I am - you lucky people :)

Yesterday was my first research trip to the Women's Library in London, and my friend J kindly came with me to help me with the note taking. As it turned out she ended up helping in other ways as well.. Purchasing large cups of tea for me, being just one of those.... Somehow, despite getting up in plenty of time, I managed to get myself caught up in reading something online and was late leaving the house...so I had to peddle very fast to the station - and as it always the case in these situations ALL the traffic lights turned red as I approached them....gah.... I swear someone in the council was watching, and laughing as they pressed the button... too paranoid?? lol

Anyway, I arrived on time, red in the face, sweaty and looking shocking....so J bought me a cuppa, gotta love her....we had a lovely journey up to Waterloo - chatting all the way (what me, talk a lot? nah...) Then we battled our way through the London Underground and made our way to Aldgate East station - at which point I took us in completely the wrong direction, before we eventually found our way to the correct London Met Uni building and the Women's Library.... Both J and I were hugely excited - historians tend to get like that at the idea of proper, primary source research... Sadly, they only retrieve documents at certain times of the day, so we had to order ours and then wait....so we had lunch - well it was only fair that we sustained ourselves whilst waiting....

Then we finally got our hands on the documents and promptly dived straight in to them...the next few hours just flew by, and I shall have to go back tomorrow because even with two of us we still didn't manage to get through everything we needed to. It was hugely exciting to read the words of men and women who lived over 100 years ago...and not a little amusing to realise just how similar their rants on the evils of prostitution/sex/women thinking for themselves, are to some of today's opinions....somethings never change, I guess....

The archives at the Women's Library are amazing but they are (unsurprisingly) expensive to maintain and run...and there is the possibility that we (as a country) may lose access to the archives. The LMU can't afford to maintain it, and so the archive is up for sale - as in they want someone to take it over.. I know the preference is to keep it in this country but I also know that much of the interest (and money) is in the USA.. It would be a real shame if this resource were lost - particularly as none of it is online and much of it is so fragile that to digitise it would be prohibitively expensive - or so I'm told... Fingers crossed that this will be resolved, but I fear that the only way to stop it going into private hands and being split up it will have to go overseas...

Anyway, we were finally kicked out of there at 5pm and we made our way back to Waterloo - only to find that due to a signalling fault our train had been cancelled, and would start from Woking...we were told that we should go to Woking and the train would be there...except that ALL the trains were delayed and so by the time we got to Woking the train to Portsmouth had gone and we had a 30 minute wait - bearing in mind we'd only bought lunch with us as we'd expected to be back by 7... J was amazing,, because without her I'd have been stressed and anxious but because she was there I was able to relax.... Eventually we got back to Fratton station, got off the train and immediately saw this............

As you can imagine, given that I was on my bike, I was somewhat skeptical about my chances of arriving home dry and warm.... Nevertheless, I got on my bike (my powers of instantaneous transportation being rather limited) and set off...sure enough, halfway home the heavens opened and I was soaked....I was cycling into the storm, so the roads were already wet and cars/buses/lorries were chucking up water everywhere...kinda miserable really, but them's the breaks of cycling.... At least when I got home I received a warm welcome from the cats - mainly cos they wanted food but hey, it's all attention...and was able to get changed...at which point I just crashed out on the sofa....

Now, I was planning on having a nice lie in today, then going to see my friend H and doing some shopping....but the best laid plans and all that...at 7:30 I received a call from A's dad to say that A wasn't well...now P is not one for being conned by A when he wants a day off, and the fact that A had apparently gone to bed (without protest) at 5pm last night suggested that he probably wasn't well....so he was on his way to mine for the day....bye bye lie in and lazy lunch with H...

So today has been boring - I did go back to sleep for a bit, and managed to get to Tesco for food shopping, as well as sorting my money out and being a good girl - separating the money for my bills so that I don't spend it....boring but essential..and now, I'm chilling on the sofa, before having an early night as I'm up at 7 to go to London tomorrow...just about the only thing which hasn't been boring today has been the weather - rain, sun, lightning, thunder, hail...not all at the same time but almost....

I'm still very tired, but the looming black cloud (the metaphorical one) has gone (the real one in the sky seems to be coming back...) or has at least lifted considerably.... My anxiety is there but I'm in control a lot better than I was.... Part of this is because of the amazing support I've received, part is because I've got things to fix my mind on when I start getting upset and part is because (for the time being) I'm not confronting some of the trickier issues..... so we'll see - doctors is on Friday so I'll talk to him about it all and see where we go from here...

Night all :)