[DanaC]

I'm in the Travelodge at Hounslow (London) having spent a fairly fruitless day at the archives. I've basically spent half of what I had left to do this trip (2 days) and it may just be a total fucking waste.

I came down yesterday evening, with plans to get out really early and get to the archives before they opened....

I got up in time, had a good breakfast and was out the hotel by 8:45. Not quite early enough to beat the 9am opening, but plenty time to get there for 10...not bad.

Got halfway to fucking Kew and realised I'd left my sodding camera at the hotel. Had to go all the way back and get it. Didn't get to the archives until nearly midday...realised my card expired a couple of months back and had to reregister (another 20 mins). By the time I'd booked my table, searched for and ordered some records it was gone 1pm. Then a 45 minute wait until the first records were delivered to me.

They've changed the catalogue search system. It's shit. Much harder to navigate imo. And what I thought would be a straightforward search for a set of courts martial records turned into bollocks: rather than a volume of transcribed trials (easily photographed and showing complete records) like the ones I had for the 1790s, the ones for 1813-1825 are just boxes of individual trial papers...small, difficult to manouevre for photographing, half of them are damaged beyond reading, and the ones that aren't are barely relevant to my work. - still photographed them though in case I can make sense of them when I can zoom in.

Left the archives just before they closed, having pre-ordered some docs for tomorrow. Given up on the general courts martial, gonna try and find some regimental courts martial in the individual regimental returns.

Of course tomorrow it's normal opening hours (shuts at 5) instead of the long opening day that I managed to waste. (closed at 7)

So...was feeling glum. It's all piled up on me a bit. Money has more or less run out and I currently have zero income. Gonna put in a claim this week (now that uni is officially over - though I will still be working on my PhD as a 'write up year'

Rent is overdue, dog needs vet stuff, etc etc. Claiming for housing benefit means getting in touch with the landlord which means them coming round, which means I have to try and rescue the shitpile that used to be their house. Which reminds me: Thanks for chewing the fuck out of everything Carrot, that really makes life easy.

And then....on the way home from the Archive one of the veneers on my front teeth split and half of it came away. Front and centre, looking good huh?

Which means a fuckoff big dentists bill to deal with it.

How I managed to hold back the tears on the subway I don;t know. I really felt like I was going. I just wanted to sit down and sob and not care what anybody thought.

I dunno. I think I may be due ya know? Like, expecting a visit from the stomach cramps fairy. This stuff doesn't usually make me cry.


Anways. Got back to the hotel, dumped the laptop and camera etc and went off looking for a late chemist. Yey for ASDA! Bought an emergency dental repair kit and glued the fucker back in. Yeah, well. We'll see if it stays. Am half expecting to wake up with it gone and swallowed. Which would be a pain.

There. That's my rant done. Thanks for listening dwellarpeeps. I feel a bit better for offloading :P



[eta] oh yeah, forgot to mention my broadband at home is off. Th phone went down completely for a few days then they fixed that but now the broadband doesn't work.