22 April 2026
Wednesday. Back on The Corso for a week, to see to the Manly study. It has had a great deal done to it since the refurbishment, and I hardly need dust at all, which is unsettling.
The red walls are redder. The relics gleam. The Doctor’s chair is still where he left it, but someone has fixed the leg he always said he would fix. I have not decided how I feel about that.
Today’s party came in costume, and I wept a little into my handkerchief. A Cleopatra. A very confident Tutankhamun. And a young man named Lachlan dressed as an Egyptologist in safari khaki and a pith helmet, who looked so much like the Doctor in 1901 that I had to sit down.
Costumes are welcome and encouraged. Closed shoes, though. The desert is no place for sandals, whatever the films say, and in Perth there is a crawl space to consider.
Lachlan asked whether he could keep the pith helmet on for the whole hour. I said the Doctor had worn his to bed. He seemed to take that as permission.
— H. Plumb (Miss), Expedition Secretary
