I haven’t had a foreign holiday in years, but I haven’t really been very good at taking a decent break at home, either. As long as I was sharing myself between librarianship and research, my annual leave tended just to support my research habit. But this year, I’ve done substantially more research.
I decided that this year, I would have to do better when it came to taking a deliberate break.
I’ve continued to pursue domestic projects, stayed abreast of family preoccupations, done some more weeding (so much weeding!), and read a great book, Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande. This was lent to me a couple of weeks ago, and it proved well worth devoting the time to. But by Thursday, I was itching to go on another outing. A holiday surely has to involve going places, if only locally.
Tea House on the Loch
I fancied tea beside a river. ALL I typed into Google was, ‘tea’, and it came up with the ideal cafe. Does it read minds? We didn’t even know there WAS a small loch at Gartcosh, so this was a pleasant surprise. It turns out there’s also a garden centre, which might be useful to know in future.
I’ve also visited a friend, and when I got home, I found that the book I ordered the other day had arrived.
Well, this was fatal. It’s a song book. I looked right through it, looked up the two lady composers and their illustrator, played the songs over, then decided I’d better write down what I had discovered. An enjoyable use of an evening, but this hardly counts as taking a deliberate holiday from research! Indeed, it merely piques my interest as to how the ladies ended up writing their book. Did the friends reach out to the publisher? Or vice versa? Or did someone put them in touch?
Meanwhile, my crowded bookshelves have an extra book, and I need to remember that I’m taking a holiday!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 