Alex's Historical Fiction

Duhh day!

The dear partner is off this week, as he's got loads of time off work to take. He's doing lots to get prepared for the first re-enactment show this season, which is at the end of this month. It's also a chance for us to get together to plan our holiday for this year. We're going 'darn sarf' to have a look at some sites we haven't visited for ages, including: Fishbourne Roman Palace, Rockbourne & Bignor Roman Villas and the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum. Many of these places have been substantially extended or refitted since we last saw them (back in the 1980s), so it'll be nice to see what's been done with them.

Meanwhile, back at the computer, I'm starting to 're-model' a University project I did just over 10 years ago. At the time, my tutor gave me a 'First' mark for it (something like 80%), and said I should 'do something with it' So, finally I am. It's not historical fiction - being a survey of information about York brickmakers - but needs to be published formally, if only to disseminate the information about a major 19th century industry in York. I'm initially going to enter it for an essay competition, but many of the pieces entered for the competition go on to be published in the local 'York Historian' journal.

The project needs a lot of sorting out. For instance, why didn't I quote page numbers to the book references? Don't know! I'd written plenty of reports before doing this, so it's a mystery to me, 10 years on! I'll have to see if I've still got my original notes (think I saw the file a few months back), but if not, I'll have to chase round the libraries involved and consult the books again. Duh!!!! Then there's formatting. It needs footnotes for this comp, so I'm integrating references and appendices into those. And then there's the vexed questions of illustrations - I think some of the old maps will be out of copyright, so may be publishable, if I'm lucky. Gotta check. Will also need a nice map showing where the brickworks were, which someone with graphics skills will have to do for me (if I ask nicely)

Oh, and the 'deliberate' mistake in my mosaic: in the bottom border of the mosaic I used grey tiles, rather than white ones (as can be seen on the other three borders. I mis-read the rather grey-backgrounded guide I had! Duhh, again!

posted by Alex Bordessa @ Tuesday, April 12, 2005