Library Intern Goes to Oxford

All Souls College, Oxford.

It's been far too long since my last post. I know. Bad blogger. Amongst my full-time job, freelancing, social life (pahah), job-hunting, application-writing and interview-attending, as well as trying to write creatively in the realms of fiction which is my first great love, this blog has fallen by the wayside as per bloody usual. Must try harder, and all that.

I have ridden March as if clutching the reins in one hand and stumbling to keep up to its onward canter - or, rather, as if it tore free from the reins some time ago and I'm wandering in the fog behind it, a little lost. Just where the hell did it go? I have one week - ONE WEEK - left living at my beloved Library and I get the feeling it will slip away just as quickly.

Last week, I went off on another adventure - this time to Oxford, for two interviews in the hopes of securing a library traineeship. I'd never been to Oxford before, and as one might expect it was very similar to Cambridge, only literally everywhere I walked, behind towering stone walls and spires lay college after college. Many of these weren't clearly marked, especially if the unremarkable wooden doors were shut, and when I turned up to Jesus College I had to peer and check the tiny label over the bell to make sure I was at the right one! On my way through the city to my first interview, finding myself hours early I of course made a beeline for the bookshops, had a fortifying (massive) mug of sweet ginger tea in the Waterstones cafe and made a note to drop in to the Museum for the History of Science and the Natural History Museum on my way back to the guest house (reader, I did this thing and both places were wonderful).

The first interview was at Codrington Library, at All Souls College - one of the most impressive libraries I have ever seen. I can't pretend a great deal of my previous knowledge about All Souls came from Deb Harkness' fantasy trilogy, one of my favourite series of books ever, but I promise I read up on it much more thoroughly before turning up. The Codrington is an expanse of black and white marble, with a huge creamy statue at one end, lined with ebony-coloured shelves, many of which were locked and required a heavy, dark key to open. I thought Gladstone's Library was quiet (well, as much as we can make it), but the scholarly hush here had its own solidity, like a thick, expensive blanket. The interview took place on a beleaguered sofa in the Fellow Librarian's office, where I chatted about my Library (MY Library), answered a few questions about my ambitions and qualities and came up with responses to scenarios. I left invigorated and maybe a little confident, though found out two days later that it was not to be.

The afternoon was spent in the Museum for the History of Science, where I gazed at one of Einstein's blackboards, sets of frightening early-nineteenth-century surgical instruments (read: saws of various sizes), and more astrolabes than one could ever take in at once. I then foolishly believed the Natural History Museum was close by, and soon regretted not bringing a pair of flat shoes with me, as once I'd taken in the delights of the second Museum - dinosaurs! glowing minerals! birds! - I hobbled back to the guest house in my favourite elfy purple heeled ankle boots. No joke, there were almost tears when I pulled them off, peeled off my tights and stuck my feet in a sink full of cool water. It certainly distracted me from thinking too much about the interview I'd done that morning.

On with the flats, and a different outfit, for Jesus College. Much smaller and friendlier, bright sunshine broke out over the main quad as I walked across it chatting to my guide. Showing off its reputation as 'the Welsh college', daffodils glowed wherever we walked, and I dredged up some of my high-school Welsh to impress the (only English-speaking) guide. This interview was much more formal, a little more frightening, and I learned it's difficult to sustain an eloquent response to a hard question when your bra strap is attempting an escape out of your short dress sleeve and down your arm. Jesus has yet to call with either a job offer or a rejection; I fell in love with the place on first sight and it seemed such a good fit (pre-wardrobe debacle) that all my fingers and toes are figuratively crossed.

Slightly more seriously, as I was idling near the college before my second interview, I had a full-on spiritual moment, unlike anything I've experienced for a long time. I was standing in a square, the thirteenth-century University Church of St Mary the Virgin behind me, All Souls and Jesus Colleges close by, gazing up at the Radcliffe Camera (left), a reading room for the Bodleian and towering monument to high intellect. The church bells tolled, and I was struck by a blinding sense of time and place, my stomach lurched and I felt locked to the ground beneath, as if something portentous was happening and I was always meant to be standing in that spot, before the Camera, surrounded by beautiful buildings in a street that probably looked very similar hundreds of years ago. It was more than a little bit special, and you can mock me if you must, but doubt I'll ever forget that moment of meaning, of spiritual feeling and, well, right-ness.

Some things do not change, including the fact that my To-Read pile grows ever taller. This week two new books arrived at the Library for me - Caitlin Moran's Moranifesto, because I love everything she does and must be kept up to date, and Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. This second one is a bit of a wildcard, bought on a recommendation from The Pool, and was purchased in the hope that it might help unlock my creativity and stop me being scared of my own pen and notebook. So far, it isn't as schmaltzy as Eat Pray Love, though I admit I've only watched the film starring Julia Roberts, which put me off as it was very much 'white Western woman does a Columbus and "discovers" spirituality in the East'. I remain open minded, and will give it my full attention once I've osmotically absorbed every word in Moranifesto.

Send good vibes to North Wales - I'm packing up my life again and moving out of the Library, as my internship ends next Friday and it's time to move on. Also, good vibes because I really, really want to be moving on to this traineeship at Jesus College.

The Labradoodle at the guest house, jonesing for scraps of my breakfast

University Church of St Mary the Virgin, the official church of the University of Oxford and, it turns out, the perfect place to shelter, breathe and gather yourself before a job interview 

I do love a good set of historical surgical instruments, it makes me happy I live in a time of anaesthetics, operating theatres and delicate scalpels

DINOSAURS.