Back in the Jug Agane
Aug. 24th, 2010 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceLove the Lit & Phil as I do, I don't often come here twice in one day. As it happens, though, Gail and I are going out to dinner with the librarian tonight: so it would be rude, almost, not to be making good use of the facilities she provides for an hour or two before dinner. Can't just treat the place as a hotel, y'know? (It was this same argument that took me to Midnight Mass, that Christmas that I spent with three generations of gay vicars. Couldn't treat the rectory as a hotel, I felt positively obliged to watch my host at work...)
Anyway. Here I am, post-doctor and back at work myself. Wartime recipes for gingerbread: where else would I look, but here?
And I've been meaning to mention for a while, one of the joys of my particular workstation down here in the Silence Room is that it's also known as the Reference Room, and my chair is within a long arm's reach (and I have long arms) of the dictionary shelf. Which may not seem so exciting - any laptop with internet access, after all, is a dictionary in itself - but the definition is a little deceptive. This is the old Reference Room. All the contemporary dictionaries are upstairs; what I have within reach are long outdated. Which makes them ideal for my purposes. Nuttall's Standard Dictionary of the English Language (Based on the Labours of the Most Eminent Lexicographers), Third Edition with Supplement, 1930. How did I ever live without this book? Every time I use it, I find words by happenstance that I have never seen before (chapeless - meaning without a chape! effossion - the act of digging out of the earth! ect ect). Which has been sometimes good for the fantasies, and is currently remarkably useful for a WW2 historical (basically, if it's not in Nuttalls, I can reckon that it wasn't in common parlance ten years later [with obvioius exceptions for jargon, slang and innovation]), and is constantly an entertainment and enlightenment for myself. Sometimes I think I ought to buy a copy, just so's I can have it at home as well.
Anyway. Here I am, post-doctor and back at work myself. Wartime recipes for gingerbread: where else would I look, but here?
And I've been meaning to mention for a while, one of the joys of my particular workstation down here in the Silence Room is that it's also known as the Reference Room, and my chair is within a long arm's reach (and I have long arms) of the dictionary shelf. Which may not seem so exciting - any laptop with internet access, after all, is a dictionary in itself - but the definition is a little deceptive. This is the old Reference Room. All the contemporary dictionaries are upstairs; what I have within reach are long outdated. Which makes them ideal for my purposes. Nuttall's Standard Dictionary of the English Language (Based on the Labours of the Most Eminent Lexicographers), Third Edition with Supplement, 1930. How did I ever live without this book? Every time I use it, I find words by happenstance that I have never seen before (chapeless - meaning without a chape! effossion - the act of digging out of the earth! ect ect). Which has been sometimes good for the fantasies, and is currently remarkably useful for a WW2 historical (basically, if it's not in Nuttalls, I can reckon that it wasn't in common parlance ten years later [with obvioius exceptions for jargon, slang and innovation]), and is constantly an entertainment and enlightenment for myself. Sometimes I think I ought to buy a copy, just so's I can have it at home as well.