It’s amazing, but this week has felt like I’m back home in New York. Why? Because I’ve spent the entire week in the library, typing madly, trying to finish my papers in time to go to Madrid on Wednesday without having them hang over my head. You know it’s been a boring week when the most exciting thing I did was not take my laptop with me when I went to the bathroom. Yup, I was playing it fast and loose, but to my relief it was still there when I returned. Actually, I did take a small break for Valentines Day. My friend came over and together we baked super chocolately cookies for our flats as a Valentines Day present. Unfortunately, because it’s reading week, about half my flat has gone home to study and one of my other flatmates decided to dress up as a fifties house wife and bake brownies and a Victoria Sponge cake for Valentines day. So now we’re sitting around the flat, I’m chained to my desk, and there is a mountain of baked goods calling to me from the kitchen, the majority of which are chocolate based. This is not good. Oh well, I’m working under the theory that sugar helps me type.

Hopefully things will pick up on Thursday. The entire reason I’m working so fast and furiously is because I want to finish drafts of all of my papers before I leave Thursday morning to visit my friend in Madrid. That should produce much that is blogworthy. Until then, I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with a photo of the library where I’ve been working. Actually, that’s a pretty impressive structure. It used to be the British equivalent of the National Archives before Kings bought it, and when we were getting oriented they presented us with an audio tour of the facilities. The audio tour contained all sorts of interesting information, like the fact that the building contained no artificial lighting in the days before electricity because gaslights were thought to be too much of a fire hazard. Ergo, the library would have to close around four during the winter, because that’s when the sun went down. Also, the building contains one of the only zinc roofs from the Victorian era, presumably because zinc was thought to be more fire proof than wood.

I’m down to one more paper. If I can get a credible essay contrasting Defoe’s sense of deception in Journal of the Plague Year and Moll Flanders I’ll be a happy girl. Wish me luck!