The Most Beautiful Book.......Hmmm....

Anyone who has read any of my posts will know that I am a shameless devourer of books and that my appetite is more gourmand than gourmet.

It will come as no surprise then that I caved into my addiction once again (well, it was payday last Thursday) and have purchased 'The Most Beautiful Medieval Bibles' edited by Andreas Fingernagel and Christian Gastgeber.

Well, the display copy was beautiful, but I made the mistake of actually buying a cellophane- sealed one that I reasoned would be somewhat less dog-eared. Bit of a mistake: the copy I bought was poorer in reproduction quality than the one I looked at in the shop, the plates being duller and the pages having a peculiar dusty feel. So now I am in a quandary: do I return my purchase and ask for it to be exchanged for the display copy (this will entail carting it back into town: it's no light-weight tome and there's no guarantee that the display copy will still be there - there appeared to be only two copies in total) or keep the one I've got and feel slightly cheated. I have a feeling that this is a cynical marketing ploy, unload the second-rate repros, sight unseen. Consequently I feel miffed and annoyed with myself - usually a canny book-inspector - that I fell for this rather underhand tactic, if tactic it was.

Guess it serves me right if I get indigestion occasionally.

Back into the fold...or not, as the case may be

Ah well! Over too quickly but fantastic while it lasted....farewell sun and the relaxing Mediterranean lifestyle, hello grey skies, overgrown lawn and unanswered mail.
I felt the usual post-holiday fatigue, which is a combination of travel exhaustion (how can just sitting in airports and planes be so tiring?), withdrawal from alcohol, lack of sunlight, good food and the general sense of anticlimax, plus the knowledge that it'll take another year of solid saving to repeat the experience. A brisk trip to the gym and a swim drove out some of the lethargy and accumulated CO in the system and today I feel considerably brighter.
Sadly the major source of funding for my doctoral studies has not deemed me worthy of an award (again) so I am desperately hoping that I get an in-house scholarship from my chosen university. Otherwise, it's back to the drawing board for a serious reassessment of my life plans.
I knew my chances of scoring with the AHRC were slim (does anyone know anyone who has got funding from these people?), but I hadn't anticipated being as disappointed as I actually was. Mentally my compass over the past year or so has been fixed on starting doctoral work this autumn and now it is looking less and less likely, I find myself panicking rather, and wondering what on earth I will do if it all comes to nothing. I need some serious thinking time to map out a new route, but that'll have to wait until I have some quiet family-free time - another couple of weeks at least. Meanwhile, I feel somewhat downcast and rather tense. A scholarship would be a tremendous boost to my confidence, a real lifeline to the scholarship that I deeply and passionately love. I daren't believe I won't get one: I promise that I would be an exemplary student and treat the three years as professionally as I would treat a job. I have so much to offer, and so much I want to say. Please keep your fingers crossed for me.