268
time trying to catalogue this library.
We have now, all three of us, given you some idea of what we are doing, but although James has been at it for almost 30 years, effectively we are only starting. We are only 3 or 5 people with an interest, with busy jobs and in David's case a heavy teaching and research schedule of his own. None of us can give up more than a fraction of time to studying village life and society.
We are therefore doing all this in our spare time, in odds and ends of time, and we just cannot keep up with the information that is coming in. We hear things which we can't take on, however much we want to take them up; and then you find that a couple of years have passed and it is still one of the things that you would like to do; but now it is no longer so easy to do because the person who told you is dead. But when the present generation of villagers who are now 70, or in their late 60's, is dead, the opportunity to research the richness of village life will have gone with it, and it is possible that all that will be left of the work that we are doing because of the lack of staff and the lack of money and the lack of institutional support, will be a great deal of rather half-baked and ill-connected loose information. This is roughly the position that we are in now.
To be sure, all of us, I think, have got very strong ideas as to what the society that we are looking at is like, but we would also agree that apart from one or two aspects of it, we are a very long way away from being able actually to prove our case. This is a terrible thing. I'll leave it there for the time being.
James Hayes
We still have a lot of other things to talk about, as well as exhibitions, publication, and "spin-offs" of various kinds. Let each of us speak for another five minutes to talk about those other aspects. This will take us to 6.45 pm or slightly after then, leaving say 15 minutes for questions, because I think questions are very important.
Let me take up my story again, and update it a little. I was very
268
time trying to catalogue this library.
We have now, all three of us, given you some idea of what we are doing, but although James has been at it for almost 30 years, effectively we are only starting. We are only 3 or 5 people with an interest, with busy jobs and in David's case a heavy teaching and research schedule of his own. None of us can give up more than a fraction of time to studying village life and society.
We are therefore doing all this in our spare time, in odds and ends of time, and we just cannot keep up with the information that is coming in. We hear things which we can't take on, however much you want to take them up; and then you find that a couple of years have passed and it is still one of the things that you would like to do; but now it is no longer so easy to do because the person who told you is dead. But when the present generation of villagers who are now 70, or in their late 60's, is dead, the opportunity to research the richness of village life will have gone with it, and it is possible that all that will be left of the work that we are doing because of the lack of staff and the lack of money and the lack of institutional support, will be a great deal of rather half-baked and ill-connected loose information. This is roughly the position that we are in now.
To be sure, all of us, I think, have got very strong ideas as to what the society that we are looking at is like, but we would also agree that apart from one or two aspects of it, we are a very long way away from being able actually to prove our case. This is a terrible thing. I'll leave it there for the time being.
James Hayes
We still have a lot of other things to talk about, as well as exhibitions, publication, and "spin-offs" of various kinds. Let each of us speak for another five minutes to talk about those other aspects. This will take us to 6.45 pm or slightly after then, leaving say 15 minutes for questions, because I think questions are very important.
Let me take up my story again, and update it a little. I was very
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