… to the last eight years of my life. And it has taken me nearly a year to get round to finishing it, what with that pesky thesis getting in the way. Anyway, in the vacuum-like calm of the post-thesis lull, I finally got round to tuning back into Radio 4 and picking up my Stabilo again.
The Radcliffe Camera, affectionately known as the ‘Rad Cam’, is one of the most iconic buildings of Oxford University. It is a reading room of the Bodleian Library, being chiefly the home of antiquated law and sociological texts as far as I know. As a result, I, as a scientist, was treated only to the subterranean delights of the Racliffe Science Library, and none so internally or externally picturesque as the Rad Cam. Nevertheless, as an undergraduate I found several excuses to work in there whilst revising for finals. The silence in there is oppressive, and personally not conducive to concentration, as I contemplated the changing pitch in readers’ footsteps as the perused the shelf. At least I went there, and I spent many more hours working on it, than I ever spent working in it.