Get Your Pedigree in 5 Easy Steps!

Today I needed to get to the Royal College of Arms so that I could look at a manuscript associated with Henry VIII and his court. I was really trepidacious about going since it's one of the last places that grants arms, dispatches royal messages, and generally has an intimidating 'Britishness' of the type I always get mumbly around. But first I had to get to the south of London.

I left with an hour to get there since it was the tail end of rush hour, but the line I needed to take was shut down because of a broken train. If this type of thing happened to me two years I would have immediately started crying, or if not that panicing to the point that I couldn't manage to figure out how to take the tube in the right direction. Today I just got on the next train that took me a littler nearer to my destination until I was there, and only a few minutes late. I am used to the tube more, but I am also so much calmer now that I can actually read maps properly without wanting to rip them up into little tiny pieces.

I arrived at the College without a hitch, met the archivist who was from central casting (big bushy sideburns, little spectacles, mumbly voice that just trails off in the middle of sentences), and managed to ascertain that the person I was hoping wrote the document I'm working with did in fact write it! It was cute, I think I even impressed Mr. Archvist who wanted to know how I was able to get the position I did ("very prestigious, you know," he said). I smiled and told him that I applied, that I have good references, and I enjoyed working in archives. He smiled (more to himself than to me), and said "jolly good." I think I passed the test.