On Friday, I travelled up to London with Fran for his very first job interview (which was a success- he got the job!). I accompanied him to go to the British Library and examine some much needed books. As I walked up to the steps, I couldn't help thinking, "I have arrived! I have arrived. I'm really an academic now. Muahahaha." I skipped blithely up the steps, brushed my way to reception, past the tourists ("I am here for work, you vacationing, Olympic mob") where I pulled out my bazillion forms of ID. The librarian glumly surveyed me: "We do not accept bank print offs of your proof of ID."
"Oh." My heart sank. "Umm, I've showed you my visa as leave to remain. That had to be mailed to me current address." This visa cost me something around 400 GBP and it shows. It has a chip inside it with all my biometric data. Fingerprints, hair color, probably a scan of my eyes, and if I was the anti-Christ, most likely the mark of the beast. If I ever lose this, I may as well never try to build any credit ever, as it would be the supreme case of identity theft because someone could spawn a new me off the DNA encoded into that baby. Surely this will suffice. I play my trump card.
"No, sorry. We can't accept that. Look at one of these following forms of ID" wherein she hands me a list of ID forms: I don't have a utility bill; I'm not on pensions or benefits; no tv license; no firearms license. My heart is slowly sinking to my stomach.
"But please, I've travelled all the way..." My voice is small and she suddenly makes me feel like a Balrog with her very stern, "You shall not pass."
Depressed, I call my bank to get them to send me a statement. How hard can that be, and I'm coming up again on Sunday. Can make up for lost time then.
"Not a problem miss, we'll get you one in the mail within the next 7-10 business days."
"Er.. could you speed things up? Like if you did it now, it would be posted today, I'd get it Saturday, can go to the reading rooms on Sunday."
"No, I'm sorry miss. You can just pop by a bank and we'll print one out. They'll even put a seal on it. I'm sure they'll accept that." Nope, nope, nope, they did not.
So I slowly wander around, feeling like a small beetle, and join the crowd of vacationing olympicers. I wander into their National Treasures room. This slightly cheers me at all the first editions of books. I'm even more pleased when my poor paleography pays off and I can read the handwriting and the texts. There's a Gutenberg Bible, a Wycliffe Bible; a whole host of musical texts. I'm sad I don't see Beowful, but I put on a pair of headphone to listen to its recording. See how good my Old English is. It wasn't in Old English. It was a translation. Probably by Seamus Heaney. Ugh. I listen to Virginia Woolf. She sounds very posh and not at all how I would expect her voice to sound. I expected it to sound like her writing, lyrical and husky. But then there's Yeats and he's reading "Isle of Innisfree" and that's lyrical and magical.
I wander out, feeling rather superior, and amble to the exhibition. "Not All Who Wander Are Lost." I should be pleased at the Tolkien quote, but I get a little rankled, perhaps annoyed by all the Christians who use that as their email taglines. It's not unaffordable. It's about British geography as a character in British writings. The more I think of it, the more I think it's true. That's perhaps what's so distinguishing about British writing. America is so vast, so many different pockets. I see this video and I wonder if I'll turn like Sara Maitland.
I wander through and see so many first hand manuscripts by so many different authors. I see their hand writing and sometimes can ever make out a word or two. There's the oldest manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and I'm so excited my knees are knocking. And Chaucer, and that page they're showing was the cover of my book at UNC. There's George Eliot and JK Rowling and Charlotte Brontë and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and JRR Tolkien and T.S. Eliot and my heart is so very full and I feel so underserving to be able to see books that I've held so dear for long, and the very hand writing that first penned them, and well, perhaps I had arrived after all.
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---For a full list of texts at the exhibit--- For a list of IDs the British Library requires one to bring
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