**Back online after an urgent need to sleep following a 30-hour journey…**
Sunday 20 July: On the Jo’burg plane, very early morning, 4.40am. There are many nice anticipations. Safe arrival in Port Elizabeth, hoping we get a good car at the car hire pickup, the possibilities of clear winter sunshine when driving to Grahamstown, hoping the house keys will be ready for us and wi-fi has been sorted out, and the collections we want to start work on will be waiting for us on Monday. And, around all these, thinking about the pleasures of doing some food shopping in the Greenacres Woolworths at PE. Rusks! Some biltong! Lots of goodies to take to Grahamstown that are additive-free so that I (Liz) won’t have perpetual allergic reactions to things. This all sounds very domestic and petty – a car, shopping, driving, house keys and food – but such things are the bedrock of functioning at full pelt once we hit the Cory Library and its collections at 8.30am on Monday.* We’re staying in a Rhodes university house, single-storey with a stoep (a verandah), and in fact it is the very same house** that I lived in during 1995 when I had a Hugh Le May Fellowship at Rhodes to work on the Olive Schreiner collections in Grahamstown. The Cory Library is a brisk 20 or 25 minute walk or a 5 minute drive.
*In the end it was 2pm, after catching up on some sleep, performing errands and fixing burglar alarms.
** Actually across the road.
The collections we’ll be starting with have at the moment a kind of shimmering haze of keen anticipation the magical names of Price, Pringle, Bowker, Gold Fields Consolidated! The Bowker and Pringle collections are those of well-known settler families in the Albany area near Grahamstown. The Price collection is a missionary one. And Gold Fields Consolidated is an offshoot Cecil Rhodes set of papers relating to his interests in gold production on the Rand. A mixed bag, and as well as Bowker and Pringle, there are likely to be other family collections there that we’ll have an interest in too.
On the Port Elizabeth plane, 10.45am: After some rather stressful goings on changing to the domestic bit of Oliver Tambo airport at Jo’burg, we’re safely on the PE flight, 
but having successfully got some local PAYG data SIM cards for a phone (Andrea) and iPad (Liz), with Sue’s needing to be sorted either at PE or in Grahamstown. But, basically, email is now fine. An hour and a half-ish of doing very little before the 
G’town last leg, just staring from the window at that wonderfull red-brown of everything.
At African Street, Grahamstown, 6pm: Arrival, after a most charming and welcoming welcome from Paul Walters, Professor of Lierature here and a Schreiner kissing cousin. And flowers too! We are fed, wined and very very sleepy. A provisional plan has been agreed for tomorrow – a late start after sorting out some household matters. And so, good night!
Last updated: 21 July 2014
