Katherine had today off school and while I had a tonne of work to do, it had always been my intention that we should get out and explore a bit today. (She has Monday off, too, but I’m trying not to think about that.) So I plugged away at things for the morning, but when the afternoon came, I chucked it in and we got out of the house.

We went to several places, but surprisingly few places of interest that do not involve spending money are open on a Friday afternoon in February. The Cathedral, the Basilica, Cabot Tower, St. Thomas’ church… all closed and locked up tighter than drums.

So we thought a bit and decided to go to the university library, which has enough books to satisfy both an eight-year-old and a thirty-six-year-old. My favourite (well, second-favourite*) part of the library is the Folio section, where the over-sized books of all sorts are housed. Really big books are ten times more likely to have awesome pictures and fabulous maps, so we pored over Atlases, massive tomes about “antient Ægypt” and Katherine was delighted to find a few humongous books about Van Gogh and Dürer, which were duly hauled out and minutely examined.

As we were leaving, she asked about who used the library and I explained again about the university, what it meant and who it was. We descended the staircase and she looked thoughtfully at the door through which we had passed, saying, “Right. The Folio section is on the Fifth Floor, near the elevator. Just want to remember for in nine years’ time.”

*my first-favourite part is the top-secret archival section with the medieval manuscripts, one of which was written by a woman. Must find a good reason to go there soon….