Method
Carrying Nothing
Most of the ground in this paper has no tap, no bench, no shelter and nowhere to put anything down. What you carry decides how long you can stay and how you are read while you are there.
What is actually out there
Very little, and it is worth being blunt about it rather than optimistic.
| Ground | Water | Somewhere to sit | Shelter |
|---|---|---|---|
| The quadrangle | A fountain, sometimes working | Benches along the footways | Building overhangs |
| The paving under the viaduct | None | None | The deck itself, which is the point |
| The arboretum | One tap | One bench in shade on the loop | None |
| The cemetery | One tap near the office | Low walls, and use them carefully | None |
| The reading room | Outside the room only | Yes, and that is the whole idea | Yes |
| The rooftop | None | None | None |
| The farm lane | None | None | None |
| The fairground perimeter | None on a dark week | None | None |
Five of the eight have nothing. Plan for nothing and be pleased when there is a tap.
The small bag argument
Not about weight. About how you are read.
A person with a day pack on a campus quadrangle is a visitor. A person with a large bag, a tripod and a case is somebody doing a project, and doing a project on private ground is a thing people ask about. Both are entirely allowed and only one of them ends in a conversation.
We are not suggesting anybody hide anything. We are pointing at a real effect: on unstated permission ground, looking ordinary is worth more than any explanation you could give.
The reading room inverts this completely. There you carry nothing at all, because everything goes in a locker and only paper and a pencil come to the table.
The list
Six things, and everything else is optional.
- Water, a litre a head, and more in August. This is the item people underpack and the only one that ends a walk.
- A hat with a brim. Unshaded ground is most of this paper.
- Shoes for gravel. Two of the eight are gravel and one of those is loose after rain.
- A pencil. Required in the reading room, useful everywhere, and it works in the rain.
- A telephone with charge in it, for the calls this paper keeps telling you to make.
- The number on the board, written down before you set out.
What to leave
- The tripod, unless it was agreed on the telephone. It changes what you look like on every kind of ground in this paper.
- Anything with wheels, on gravel and on grass. It will not go and you will carry it.
- Food, on the ask first ground. Eating in somebody's building or on somebody's deck is a small imposition that nobody will mention and everybody notices.
- A drone, everywhere, without exception. There is no ground in this paper where flying one is a good idea and several where it would close the arrangement for everybody.
Rubbish
Out with you, on all eight, including the ones with bins.
On private and open ground this is not tidiness, it is the rent. The arrangement holds because nobody who uses it leaves a trace, and one bag left against a wall is a stronger argument for closing a gate than a hundred quiet visits are for keeping it open.