The week

A long time without a proper update. This needs to be sorted...

Work has been going alright. I’m more or less done with the theory chapter and have left it behind for now. I’m now writing the chapter on Norn, the first of my case studies. This basically involves restructuring my M.Sc. dissertation and paraphrasing everything. I also discovered that I need a bit more data, and am suddenly finding books that I never found, or indeed looked for, last year. I’m hoping I can get the chapter more or less finished early next week, before I set off for Shetland and can actually meet all the people who wrote these books and may be able to fill any gaps there still are in my research.

The word of the day game that we’re doing is also going nicely. So far we have absquatulate, buccelation, ca’canny, doryphore, egglet, foison, gilly-gaupus and hydatism. I think it’s ER’s turn for the i on Monday. It must be, ’cause I did h and WB is down in Manchester next week doing recordings.

I turned 27 on Tuesday. I suddenly feel all mature and wise. Not.

On my way to Dunedin on Wednesday, I met AK. He asked me whether I had already received the issue of Northern Studies. No... Well, he sent it to my pidgeon-hole. But I’m no longer in LLC so I have a different pidgeon-hole now. Oh well, trekked over to the Celtic building on Thursday to pick it up. They did change the page numbers on me, but there it is: my first publication...

Knooihuizen, Remco (2006). ‘The Norn-to-Scots language shift: another look at socio-historical evidence’, Northern Studies 39, 105–117.

Dancing in the Chaplaincy was okay, the floor was very slippery which led to a lot of humorous situations. MG dealt very neatly with the Panda situation, so although she and her mum will still be coming to St Andrews with us tonight, next year she’ll only be coming to cèilidh class. We’ll also give her mum the cribs for the Summer Dance – seeing the manicness of it may convince her that Panda’s not quite up for dance to corners and set, corners pass and turn, Quarries’ Jig and Muirland Willie figures, Schiehallion reels, and whatever other nastiness I managed to squeeze in. Hello/Goodbye setting, there’s that too.

Friday was my birthday party. I invited a lot of people, and although the room and hallway were full, there were still numerous people who didn’t show up. Okay, so some of them had an excuse, like being in the US, Switzerland, Cambodia – and I’ll let St Andrews get away with it as well. But others... No – focus on the nice people who were actually there. Mostly NS people, although WB (with ES) and ER did constitute a very small delegation from work.

Crisps. Lots of crisps. And there was a lot more alcohol than at MG’s party, even though it was mainly the same people. I think an entire bottle of gin was shared among four people, there was also a lot of wine – we’re left with a lot of half bottles of wine, please come and collect! – and we now have a wide variety of empty beer bottles. The party was very nice. I got an executive toy from AF, magnetic sticks and balls that you can build things with. Also chocolate (from ER and from SP) and wine (from RB). Oops. Some revelations again. Last year it was TT and MG who suddenly appeared to have gone out for a month prior, this year it’s EMcG and JH. And EMcG’s flatmate and AL became very cosy after a few G&Ts...

Nothing happened yesterday. I went to the office to pick up the book I was reading, so that I could sit outside our living room window in the grass reading, but as I was walking to the office it started to become a bit more covered, so I read a bit in the office. Went home via LG’s (and CB’s back!) for tea, read some more, played with my executive toy and with Google Maps.

Google Maps is actually great fun. The sheer size (or lack of) Sumburgh Airport still amuses me, and I’ve been looking for landmarks a bit. Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the St Peter, the Statue of Liberty, the Monument on the Dam, the Tower of Pisa, Frogner Park, etc. etc. You can lose hours and hours on there. Great procrastination device. A pity though that a lot of areas still don’t have properly zoomable pictures.

Today it’s Castle Cèilidh in St Andrews. It was raining here this morning, but AF just texted DMcL in St Andrews and apparently it’s clearing up and they have good hopes it can still be in the castle.