Why This Is Hell

This has felt like a week and a half.

What with the To Do list consequent upon seeing the solicitors -

- which has involved a lot of digging stuff up and delving into files and checking things and discovering inter alia that a certain publisher has been sending my statements into the void, i.e. to an email address which went defunct in 2012. And that The Textbook is actually available in an e-version that I wotted not of.

Plus there has been the less straightforward than I supposed matter of actually putting the getting civilly partnered in hand - at one point I thought this might be on hold until Jan '27 but by not doing the most utterly basic possibility at the local Town Hall, can do it within a more reasonable time-frame, contingent upon going down to the Town Hall to register with due notice....

Okay, as historian and novel-reader I can see that this is to as far as possible avoid all those sensational entanglements that are fun to read but not to endure in person.

Concurrent with this there have been other annoyances - yes, I am delighted that my review is being published, but YOY do I have to, yet again, register with the journal portal and why is this never completely straightforward?

And I think this is apposite for the undertakings of this week: ‘The reading of the will’: making inheritance law visual - wills in funerary monuments, art, literature, media.

More about the LCC and the Arts: The LCC and the Arts II: the ‘Patronage of the Arts’ Scheme

‘Protecting what matters’: a statement from the Royal Historical Society, Institute of Historical Research, History UK and Historical Association:

If the government is serious in its stated aim of strengthening the social contract, it needs to act now to support and sustain the study and practice of history across all sectors of education, in communities and in public discourse. If we are to collectively ‘protect what matters’, we challenge educational leaders, policy makers and politicians to protect and defend history.

and

New strategic vision for archives highlights how BBC Written Archives Centre falls short:

{W]e profoundly regret the decision to stop responding to enquiries from members of the public. Also, it is entirely unsatisfactory that physical access for researchers via the Caversham reading room has been reduced from three to just two days each week.
Moreover, we disagree with WAC limiting use of its facilities to just ‘writers who have been commissioned to write a book or article; those undertaking research for a commercial project, [and] academics in higher education undertaking accredited research.’ The restrictions are detailed here, and are more tightly focussed than has been the case in the past.

This is a fascinating piece on how people engage with 'dark tourism experiences': visits shaped less by exhibits, explanation panels and audio guides, and more by interactions with other visitors

This, however, is grim reading: What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center: 'I spent 10 months working at the institution because I thought I could help protect it. What I observed there is far worse than the public knows'.