Puppets and libraries

If life can settle down in London, it appears finally to be doing so: I have moved into my flat, purchased necessary furniture, set up an internet connection, started school. Now a routine can start to form, which doesn't mean that days can't exist (like today) that seem so out of the ordinary to be a little surreal.

My daily schedule has generally been starting rather early, with toast and jam for breakfast with a cup of tea. I discovered a wonderful magazine called the London Review of Books which makes great reading over breakfast or on the tube, so I generally carry that around with me. I have class two days a week, though I am generally in the area of London where UCL is more days than not: the course convenor for my MA told us that the British Library should become "like a second home," and I have a feeling those words were more prophetic than advisory; so most mornings I think I'll be leaving pretty early if not to go to class than to set up in one library or another for a day of reading and writing.

This morning, that was my plan. I woke up early and was making my second cup of tea when my flatmate Becky's boyfriend, Ollie, popped in and announced that he had free tickets to a show at the Little Angel Puppet Theatre to see Sleeping Beauty. Of course I can't turn down a chance to see a puppet show, so at 10am I found myself in Angel, which turned out to be a charming area with lots of antique shops and patisseries, in a tiny theatre behind a garden with a tiny stage for tiny puppets. Most of the audience were under five years old except for a sprinkling of mothers and the little group of postgraduates sitting in the back that Ollie convinced to come. But all of us really enjoyed it: there's something really charming about puppets.

After lunch I said goodbye to Becky and Ollie and headed over to the British Library. I had reserved a copy of a play published in 1728 to read in the Rare Books Room. The BL is a copyright library, so they have--literally--everything. But you cannot check anything out: if you have a Reader's Pass, you can order books to read inside the library. There is a somewhat elaborate process to be allowed to read a book. You must leave all of your belongings except what is allowed in the reading rooms (pencils, paper, laptops on silent, etc.) in the cloakroom. Everything that you take with you must be placed in a clear plastic bag. At the entrance to the reading room you must flash your Reader's Pass and then proceed to an empty seat. Noting your seat number, you may either proceed to a computer to order reading material (which may take 70 minutes to arrive) or, if you were smart enough to order it online ahead of time, to an issue desk to retrieve your book. You then sit with it at your desk until you are done, at which point you may return it to the issue desk and request that they keep it for you for three days. On exiting, your clear plastic bag is inspected for stowaways.

Despite all this, it's an amazing experience to visit the BL. Once you make it through their security measures, they are remarkably lenient about what you can be allowed to read. I almost couldn't believe that they would just hand me a copy of a rare play from 1728 this afternoon, but they did. I sat in the middle of the reading room in a comfortable leather chair and alternated between taking notes on the text I was reading and enjoying watching the people around me. People watching is rapidly becoming one of my favorite activities to do in London, and the British Library seems to be a great place to do it if you're interested in older scholarly (and sometimes slightly eccentric-looking) types.

The play I was looking at is called The Double Falshood, or Lovers Distressed by Lewis Theobald, though Theobald claims that he only edited it and that the text is actually the lost play Cardenio by Shakespeare. Reading it, I find it hard to believe that it could actually have a Shakespeare manuscript behind it. It was entertaining, and certainly accomplished and polished poetry, but there wasn't anything special about the language itself.

I ended the day with more puppets: Ollie shares my love of the Muppets and so we all watched some episodes of The Muppet Show together. A good end to a satisfying day, really.