I went to work this afternoon. It was much better than being at home in our half-packed house. I am dreading packing my wardrobe. I have too many clothes.

There is an undated letter in the series I am cataloguing at the moment. It would be possible to date it, if I could discover when in 1918 the person it was written to was awarded a medal by the Queen of the Belgians.

I mean, honestly. Life is too short.

We are trying to pack everything up by Sunday evening. We are not doing too badly.

Funfares

That's what National Express calls their cheap tickets.

Going on National Express buses is not fun.

Poor James bought a cable that is supposed to link his Mac to the TV in colour. It didnt' work.

Dull whining post

If you're going to be ill, it's much better to have a few symptoms. Some spots - you can rub cream on spots. A cold. You can blow your nose and drink hot toddies and take aspirin (not together, I know). Aching bones: you can go to bed for a few days and keep warm.

But this illness is just vague tiredness, slight nausea, and a nagging sense of guilt and depression. It sounds like my usual state, except that James has it too and this is not his usual state. So, although it is bad to be ill at the same time as him, in this case it's slightly better because I know this is an illness and not my imagination.

I am now very familiar with daytime TV; in particular, the works of Noel Edmonds and John Burton Race. TV has become so cruel. Thank the Valar for Stephen Fry.

James is reading The Woman in White, so I wont' see him this evening. The TV version had me cowering in terror last night.

People are coming to view our house, which is looking unnaturally clean and tidy. We hide the untidiness under the bed and in cupboards when people come round. James is boxing up his books to send to Ango.

I feel sad today because I have the flu. I have spent most of the day sleeping. I woke up this morning weighed down by more doom-laden thoughts than usual and failed to get out of bed. I thought I was just being lazy but I think I'm having the illness that James had a couple of days ago, which makes you very miserable and think that everything you do is useless.

How can you tell? It's a good question.

I saw a TV programme which included some film of kakapos. A kakapo climbed down a tree and then jumped to the ground. They said that there are over 100, but I'm sure the web site says 86. Have they hatched 14 eggs without anyone alerting the world? I have a Google news search for kakapo so I'm sure I wouldn't have missed it.

If you want a laugh, watch Enemies of Reason, and pretend it's a comedy instead of a programme about science.

Scene: a New Age Fair. Richard Dawkins approaches a stall.

"So, do I have any guardian angels?"

"Everyone has angels guiding them on their path through life."

"Can you see my angels?"

"No, you haven't asked them to come near you."

Scene: Richard Dawkins lies on a massage table. A kind woman wearing a purple shirt rubs his feet and he strokes his temples. He's quite enjoying himself, he says.

"So," she says, "Repeat after me: "Fear of being ignored."" (James, mend this punctuation please x).

We are tired of waiting to move. We want to get on with it.

Satisfactory

James has bought a new pair of trainers. They are like trainers that skateboarders wear. They are very comfortable. They are blue. He has ordered a second pair, in black. In the sale.

He now owns at least five pairs of comfortable shoes.

I nearly took a photograph but perhaps that's going a bit far.

The Enemies of Reason

Roused my brain from its usual torpor. I thought he chose some rather easy targets, though.

Scotsman saves parrot

Some kakapo news.

Two observations.

Cleaning a bathroom while listening to a programme about the Sino-American arms race is not the most cheerful way to spend an evening.

But every misfortune is grist to the blogger's mill.

Hey everyone, do you like my new mission statement?

Everyone needs a mission.

James's mission today has been to get cheap phone calls. This has involved testing internet phones on me and his family and friends in America. He is on the phone for the third time this evening. Most of the conversation deals with phone and computer technology:

"Do you see the little window that shows me? Pretty good, eh?"
"No, click on the other button."
"You probably have to run windows on your computer. I'm just plugging in my ethernet cable to see if it gives a better connection."
"You're breaking up now...Still there... You froze there but came back...I guess the call quality is kinda variable. The camera is a real cheapo one"

Earlier in the evening I spoke to his friend M in New York, who had twins about two months ago. She said that she wasn't going to candy-coat it; it's really hard and you don't get much back and you don't get to use your brain. I talked to her wearing the weird little earpiece that dancers and call centre operators wear.

I hate levels in archives

When you are cataloguing archives, you are supposed to do it according to international standards. These are The International Standard for Archival Description (General) shortened to ISAD (G) to make it sound more important; The National Council for Archives's Rules for the Construction of Personal Names (or something like that); and the International Standard for Archival Authority Records (ISAAR). I've probably got all this wrong but it's something like that. At the beginning of September I can forget all about it. In practice you hardly ever have time to make any authority records because in the time available you can just about catalogue the collection if you are a project archivist and you seldom make much of an index either because there isn't time to do that. If you are a real archivist who runs a service you spend most of your time answering enquiries and trying to keep your reading room open and writing funding bids to get project archivists in to do some cataloguing.

But if you do happen to do any cataloguing, you have to contend with Levels. There are five levels of description with infinite numbers of sub-levels in between. The Levels have names to make them sound more important:

Fonds or Collection - this is the whole archive as generated by its creating organization or individual e.g. Records of the Archival Committee for Makign Things Sound Important
Sub-fonds - this is a functional sub-division of the fonds if its an organizational archive or whatever you make up if its the papers of an individual because most people have better things to do than arrange their archives for the convenience of history (you usually have a couple of extra levels in here) e.g. Records of the Archival Sub-Committee for Making Things; Records of the Archival Sub-Committee for Importnat-Sounding Things
Series - volumes of minutes of the Archival Committee for Making Things Sound Important - generally things in a series look the same, which helps a bit
File - a single volume of minutes, a group of papers
Item - an intellectually indivisible unit e.g. minutes of a meeting
Piece - a physical division of an intellectual whole - e.g. a single page from a volume of minutes.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Until you try and apply it to, well, almost anything.

Can you have a series of letters? Is a group of letters from Marvin Marblesons to James Lee a file or a series? To me, it sounds like a series because it's the same thing repeated not a group of unrelated things bundled together. And I think a letter is an item because you can't have an intellectual sub-division of a letter, can you? Can you have a series of items or do all items have to be in a file?

Reference codes in archives are usually hierarchical and some people even try to give a reference code for every level in the archive, but I gave up on this and found things much easier.

Oh it's all so dull.