A brief update

Not much time for blogging this week, what trips out to Reading for research at the BBC archives and the added time of having to fend entirely for myself.  But I may as well start the month off with something for the blog, even if it’s just a few quick bullet points.

• I’ve spent the past few days at the BBC Written Archives Centre, probably the smallest archive I’ve visited in terms of number of desks for researchers.  You’d think that an organization with 23,000 employees would have a greater archival presence than a little bungalow in suburban Reading, but you’d be wrong.  What’s nice about the low-key surroundings is the informality of it all: there are no ID cards, no restrictions on the number of items you can have at your desk at one time, etc.  You even have an individual staff member looking after you!
• It’s been a pretty useful few days, but I won’t bore you with the details of the BBC’s policy towards controversy in religious broadcasting (the short version: a bit of controversy is okay and might even serve to get people more interested in Christianity, but let’s not get carried away and give rationalists a platform!).  Instead, an amusing anecdote.  During the later years of the Second World War, the BBC began annual broadcasts of bell peals from across the UK (and often Jerusalem) on Christmas morning.  There doesn’t seem to have been too much religious content to it, just a way of linking together the constituent nations in some good-natured holiday cheer.  But there was always one group of listeners who didn’t take kindly to the bell-ringing: bell ringers.  Apparently the BBC got it all wrong, choosing churches with a poor set of bells or, worse yet, having them rung poorly.  One bell-ringing enthusiastic went so far as to send in a county-by-county list of the best bells in England.  So if you’re ever in search of good bells, let me know.
• How about those Ashes?  For those you who couldn’t keep up, here’s a recap of how the first match went for England.  Day 1: Not so good.  Andrew Strauss, the captain, got out on the the third ball of the match.  An Australian bowler then went on to take a hat-trick: three wickets in three balls.  England were all out for 260 runs.  Day 2: Much better.  Due to some nice bowling from Steven Finn and Jimmy Anderson, Australia were on the knife’s edge at 220-5. Day 3: Outright bad.  Brad Haddin and Mike Hussey spent the better part of the day batting together, putting on 307 runs together in total.  At the end of the day, England were in serious trouble, faced with the prospect of having to bat for two days to save the match. Day 4: Recovery!  Centuries from Strauss and Cook put them in a pretty impregnable position at the end of the day.  Day 5: Rubbing it in the Aussies’ faces.  England ended up with 517 runs for the loss of one wicket.  That about says it all about the Australian bowling attack in this match.  So we move on to Adelaide, site of England’s utter embarrassment four years ago.  This time around, it could be Australia with egg on its face, seeing as it looks as if they’re going to change half their bowling after the first Test.
• It’s been snowing here in London!  Gatwick’s been basically shut down for the past few days, but on the whole I’d say that London’s snow is analogous to London’s rain: basically omnipresent (at least for the last few days), but never exactly overwhelming.  The sidewalks are a mess, which has made running something of an adventure. I had hopped to get some pictures of St Pancras (surely one of London’s most gingerbread-y buildings) encrusted with snow, but I haven’t found myself nearby in daylight.

That’s all for now, but I’ll be up for at least another hour and half waiting for the Ashes to begin, so we’ll see if I can’t think up a few more things to blog about…