The Sixteen - Victoria Requiem
After months of hard work, I’ve finally emerged out of one of the tunnels I’ve been in, and have a few precious days to enjoy the sun and fresh air before plunging headlong into the next tunnel, which is marked with a nice Victorian enamel plate reading “Move House”.
It has been a very busy and somewhat stressful time. On Tuesday, I hit the button marked ‘Submit’ on my grant. To my disappointment, I didn’t get a lovely friendly message from the web interface saying “Congratulations! You’ve done it—-go and have a couple of beers and relax”, nor was there a sound effect like a rocket launch when I pressed the button. There really should be, because it was a bit of an anticlimax, though for reasons that I’ll explain, I wasn’t able to totally relax until Wednesday. As soon as I’d done the deed, I dashed off to catch a train to Lichfield to see The Sixteen and Harry Christophers performing Victoria’s Requiem. I had a bit of a nasty moment when the brakes failed (in the on position, rather than the off position, thankfully) on my train, and we had to get off and board the next one.
I’d like to say that the train breaking down was a portent for the way that the pressure on me didn’t quite let up, and that obstacles remained, but trains breaking down are a portent only of the terrible state of our rail system, and quite commonplace.
