vivdunstan

Just blogged about this on my academic musings blog.

Wanted to brainstorm new academic project ideas. Still have lots to work out. But helped hugely by just rediscovering my handwritten notes from quite a few years ago for further academic journal paper possibilities based on my PG research into the local Melrose (Scottish Borders) court 1650s-1680s. That was for my MPhil (taught PG) history dissertation at Dundee University. I built a huge database of nearly 2500 local court cases, almost 10,000 participants. So much that I can research further. Amused at my handwritten note "researching court officials more inc my g..uncle the punching judge"! I also want to do more new historical research projects, as much as my progressive neurological disease allows. But I do have this mass of Melrose local court material readily accessible and already largely digitised. And I can certainly look at exploring its possibilities further, in multiple ways.

Spotted this, while checking on the same page another advert from the travelling German accordion player/tuner/repairer I'm researching. Forres, Elgin and Nairn Gazette of 6 May 1903.

Another 3-card past/present/future spread, using the Urban Crow oracle deck. And musings on how these might relate to my current circumstances.

Gifts / Commitment / Play. Generally the guidebook for the cards suggests viewing them non literally, more symbolic/metaphorically. But in this case I'm just going to go for the literal approach.

It's my birthday imminently, and I've already started getting some treats. Today I got an almost birthday present for self, that I would have asked for as a present, but it was selling out so quickly on a limited print run, so I ordered it anyway. It's a book about Commodore 64 SID music composer Rob Hubbard, famed for legendary 1980s British computer music such as "Monty on the Run". There are still some copies left to buy, but it is selling well, and won't be reprinted.

Looking simply at the Commitment card I'm reminded of our upcoming 30th wedding anniversary. I have been extremely lucky with my choice of husband, and despite my ill health it's been a happy 30 years together. It hardly seems any time, certainly not that long! To be fair I still feel 21! But we will be remembering the day 30 years ago in September when we eloped, aged 22 and 23.

And Play, well I need to still make an effort to have fun. I am severely disabled from my progressive neurological disease, and largely bedbound now. Happy working on academic research projects and journal papers. But I need to have fun too. That's important.

Back to more work on the Scottish black servants academic journal paper. Now typing up the story of John Ogilvie Glasgow, a servant just outside Dundee. Whose baptism was - like so many others - missing from the ScotlandsPeople indexes. Though in this case it was not so much a case of systemic racism among those compiling the original indexes, but rather the GRO for Scotland and ScotlandsPeople had missed out an entire register of Strathmartine parish baptisms from their computer indexes! Luckily they had the original paper records, and I had traced this one through a separate baptisms index on FindMyPast. ScotlandsPeople were able to email me a digital image.

My blog post about 19th century Scottish passport records held by Edinburgh City Archives and digitised by Ancestry. Musings on their use for genealogists and academic historians. And marvelling at my ggg-granddad's Paris trip.

Slept for nearly 12 hours, albeit with a fever like dream - that even kept going after brief awake bursts. A cross of doing historical research in an archive - a totally fictional archive that I made up, seemingly in Kelso though, which had loads of records re some of my ancestors there. And then morphed into a mix - still in the archive mainly! - of Robin of Sherwood and Doctor Who. The archive had a display of upcoming Doctor Who DVD and Blu-ray releases 😜 And then I was flying through Leela’s brain, trying to fix something, involving lily pads and miniature aliens. Bonkers!

For World Book Day a reminder that my Dundee University PhD thesis on "Reading habits in Scotland circa 1750-1820" is freely available in PDF form. I was lucky to be able to research what Scots read back then and how they fitted reading into their lives. https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/reading-habits-in-scotland-circa-1750-1820

Well new to me. As used in the 1648 will I'm transcribing e.g.

"or thair severall mantenance until the sd tyme of thair marriage or perfyte age"

and elsewhere it seems to specify that latter age as "xxi yeirs complett" i.e. 21.

This is all reminding me of the Madame de Pompadour Doctor Who episode - "She is not complete!"

Here is the relevant Scots dictionary definition.

This afternoon I was photocopying a small number of pages from a borrowed library book using a rather old DSLR camera. That Panasonic LUMIX camera still has double the number of megapixels of my final generation iPod touch, and more than most mobile phones today. And given that this was a pretty dense text book it was easier to just use this camera. Which was already charged and available and ready to hand. I can copy over the pictures quickly using my laptop which has a SD card slot, and have tweaked them and turned them into a PDF to add to my research folder for the relevant academic journal paper I'm working on. If I was photographing in an archive extremely dense old handwriting I would also use my old DSLR.