Sunday 24 Aug: That horrible feeling of being in a wrestling match has started, of realising that this time next week we’ll have packed up the hands-on-day-to-day-archive-work bit of this research. Working like stink around the sense of a ticking clock, ticking hour to hour, day to day, five working days only left, has started. The enormity of ‘the stuff’ in these fascinating collections, and the finitude of the remaining time available to explore it, creates a strange kind of stress. This is entirely self-imposed, and it only happens at a point when a sense of ‘this will end’ comes to conscious thought. Of course, there’s always an after, in the sense of a realisation that any period of research will end. But when an archive fieldwork period starts, the time available seems endless and ‘the stuff’ appears easily got to grips with. However, ‘the research’ and its concerns and focus becomes wider and deeper hour on hour and day on day until – five weeks in – it goes POW, ZAP, EEEEEEXXXXXXPAAAAAAND! There are two intertwined processes going on here, the researcher grappling with time as a research period winds to a close, and that bizarre fascinating thing about minds and their capacity to expand the conceptual horizons, often doing so at the very point that the time available for doing so just stops full stop.

Last updated: 24 August 2014