A new friend

This morning I walked up to St Cecilia's Hall (the right venue!) to learn about  a project in which University of Edinburgh researchers are digitising the seventeenth century manuscripts of Alice Thornton. I was attracted to this session of the University's Festival of Cultural Heritage Research because I anticipated that I would find parallels between this work and mine on the Lorna Lloyd archive. 

Apart from the presenters, there were only three people in attendance. This may have been a disappointment to the project team, but it was great for we audience members. I asked many questions, learnt a lot (glad of recently having read The restless republic, which I bought at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year, to be able to understand Thornton's context), and shared my own experience of digitising an archive of a woman's writing, albeit on a smaller scale.

One of my fellow audience members is the subject of my blip today. Muqiao Yue is studying the history of art at Edinburgh University. After the session we shared our lunch together, enjoying a very interesting conversation. I was fascinated to discover her experience as a Chinese student on an art history course in Europe, learning about the extent to which her modules are dominated by western perspectives. She asked me about my early career and was both amused and shocked by my account of the difficulties of accessing scientific journal articles in the late 1980s. In my blip, Muqiao is sketching my portrait in my notebook.

I arrived back home again at the same time that the engineer came to fix our brand new cooker hood (a day later than planned). The remainder of the day comprised the usual Thursday domestic tasks - the second trek of the week to the supermarket, laundry - and daily duties associated with caring for and feeding my housemates. My sisters (mainly the not-so-little one) and I also spent much time discussing a tricky issue online. 

Exercise today: 1 hour on the exercise bike; walking (13,956 steps).