I woke up this morning rather later than usual. In an attempt to treat school as though it were my job, I've been getting up at a regular hour, going off to the library for hours on end, and returning to my room at the end of the day. It hasn't really worked. But it's going to have to for the next four months while I masochistically work on that bloody dissertation.

But I digress.

I spent the rest of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon putzing around Ancestry.co.uk. Most of my ancestors are from the Devon/Suffolk/Cambridgeshire/Essex areas of England... at least the ones on my grandma's side of the family... and so I was wading through masses of census images and birth registrations and the like, and realized I've turned into every historian/archivist's worst nightmare - the Family Historian. Don't get me wrong, there are some who know precisely what they're doing (like, say, moi, who knows where the Suffolk and Devon parish records are kept... I'm just too lazy to go there and too poor to pay someone to do the lookup for me). But for everyone one of the good ones, there are about 100 bad ones who make generalizations and attribute completely inaccurate meanings to some of the information they find.

But I digress again.

I decided, around 2 p.m., to take a walk into town. It was sunny, a light breeze... well... more like gale force winds... was blowing. In short, lovely day for a walk, if a little chilly when the wind hit. Mosied into town, stopped at a little deli I love just off the Shambles, and wandered over to the Minster Gardens to eat/read/ponder life (ok, little of the latter was done, but the eating and reading definitely happened). I munched my sandwich whilst leaning against a tree in the shadow of a gothic cathedral, reading Portrait of a Lady. Honestly, what could be more beautiful?

By the time I got too cold (being exposed to the wind and all) it was well after 4, and Evensong at the Minster was at 5:30. So I wandered through the Minster, actually paying attention to everything, even reading the Latin memorial inscriptions in an attempt to prove that the last 6 months of Latin classes haven't been fruitless.

I wish I had any sort of talent and the vocabulary to describe a service in a Gothic cathedral. I can't do it justice, though. My childhood was a fortunate one (I was a chorister in a cathedral choir until I turned 12 and my family moved) in that I was exposed to this sort of music at a young age and learned to appreciate the technical skill involved. CLICK HERE and then listen to the sample of "Evensong at York Minster" to hear the sort of thing I was experiencing today. I suppose I could use phrases like "soaring harmonies floating up to the vaulted ceilings, echoing off the intricately carved stonework niches, spires and the sculpted faces of kings, peasants and saints, as the scarlet-clad choir sings their hymn of praise with resounding bass and painless soprano" but it sounds florid and artificial, like something I could never be a part of. This is what I spent a few years of my childhood doing and to hear it is exquisite, and to realize that I will never be a part of anything so beautiful again is heart-wrenching.

Appropriate for Good Friday, I suppose.

I Am Reading
Academically: Nothing. Took the day off.
For Fun: An Unholy Alliance (Susanna Gregory - finished Portrait in the garden this afternoon)