This is Fleshmarket Close in Edinburgh. It’s an absolute killer! I hadn’t ventured up those steps for some years – I swear they’ve got worse – and although my bags weren’t heavy, I was ready for a breather 1/3rd of the way up, and 2/3rd, not to mention at the top! Fitbit says I’ve put in my steps quotient, but annoyingly didn’t count how many flights of stairs I ascended, which is ironic.
But I was on a mission, and I did reward myself with a cuppa when I got to the University Library.
It’s good to go to a different place to study. (The library, I mean, not the cafe …) I think that in itself puts one in a frame of mind to come up with fresh ideas.
It was something of a scoping exercise. Now I need to sit and think about what I found, and its potential as a future research project. Tomorrow will doubtless see me writing away until I get my ideas in order.
I’ll leave you with a couple of publisher’s rejection letters – nothing to do with music or my research. I just stumbled across them, and smiled:-
Publisher to naive would-be authors:-
‘Dear Madam, […] For a book of merely 43 pages, 370 illustrations is excessive …’
Or this one:-
‘Thank you for offering a MSS on Cats and Reptiles. I regret that neither subject would be likely to suit our programme which is chiefly school and expository’.
I wonder if the author ever DID get their MS accepted somewhere?!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 