The HRC is closed on Mondays so I started work yesterday. This huge white building is on the edge of the University of Texas campus, itself a gigantic complex of teaching, administrative and maintenance buidings all grouped around the UT tower. My office - yes, I have my own office! - is on the 3rd floor, and the reading room just below that.
In the last 1.5 days I have managed to read only half a folder of Barker's correspondence from 1946-48 - but what I have read is incredible! There are many signed letters from Leonard Woolf (the Hogarth Press was Barker's first publisher) and lots of references to mystery unpublished short stories that I hope to unearth. My worry now is that I'll never have time to see it all. There are 18 boxes in total with about 7 folders each!
Apart from work, I have been busy chatting to random people as per usual. I went to a "mall" today in search of a US cell phone (which are surprisingly expensive compared to the UK) and met a nice woman on the bus. She told me that it takes her 2 hours to travel by bus a journey that takes 25 mins by car. No wonder everyone in America drives!
On the way to the bus stop I was mobbed by a load of these horrible birds they have out here called Grackles. They look a bit like blackbirds but make these strange dinosaur-like clicking sounds. I keep expecting to find one blocking the path in front of me. And then, just as I raise my foot to kick it away, another to my left about to pounce. "Clever girl!" Just like that man in Jurassic Park.
Right, my horrible cold is fogging my brain and I can't think of anything else to write so I'm signing off now.
More soon...
K
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