Between 10:20 – 11:20, I spent my time in the marquee at my stall. I arrived to find that a group of Russians with a film crew had positioned themselves with a table right in front of my table, thereby preventing anyone from visiting it. Promises that they would not be long proved empty. By dint of rearranging I was able to get the table at least partially accessible.
I’d brought my laptop, and typed up a diary. I sold a paperback there, and, interestingly several visitors picked up a copy of the leaflet, apparently oblivious to the fact that they had one in the welcome pack.
But my presence there brought one dividend; David Michelson, whom I had missed earlier, appeared and we talked about his new project for an online Syriac dictionary of people and manuscripts. It’s all database driven, he has plenty of staff.
The latter will be publishing an Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, by Sebastian Brock and van Rompay, which will be less than $100, and sounds like an essential purchase.
Meanwhile I was trying to set up Microsoft Expression Web on my PC, which I had bought by download this morning. It refused to start, so I didn’t get anything done. But it turned out that this is a known clash with Kaspersky anti-virus. There was no Wifi in the Examination Schools — a very strange omission — so I didn’t find this out until later.
But I did get a call from Gemma at Queen’s to the effect that there was now a room I could change to (room 12 in the Queens Lane Annex) and I promptly did. There is still some noise, but much less, and I hope to actually get some sleep tonight! I was very pleased by this, as you may imagine.