I think we have a lesson here. With days that begin with a mile-and-a-half run, cleaning up, Morning Prayer at 7:30, days full of prep, teaching, meetings, and marking, home at 18:30, dinner, and evening entertainment, blogging simply falls by the wayside. Okay, let’s add in doom-scrolling. We won’t know for another ten days, but…
Sunday of Second
For Brendan and Rosie’s wedding this summer, the first reading was taken from Gregory of Nazianzus’ Carmina 1.2.1. 262-275, 283-287. Brendan supplied a prose translation, but because your blogger here is that kind of guy, I felt impelled to look up the passage in Gregory’s original Greek and work it out for myself. Let it…
Weekend Days
Yesterday, Mother Lucy pointed out to me that (according to her youthful, athletic son John) it’s better to take one day off from exercise in a week than to exercise every day. (Actually, she said ‘training’, but that implies a goal or a norm, and in my case the goal or the norm is just…
Homburg
I was going to mention this three weeks ago, when Margaret and I went down to Worthing for Josh Delia’s ordination to the diaconate. ‘This’, that is, that as we waited at Victoria for our train to the south, a man approached us and thanked me for wearing a homburg. He noted the rarity of…
Weekdays
My firm purpose and intention to keep writing online every day has obviously faltered in the face of (a) keeping to my morning run (b) doomscrolling during the mornings, to see what the current occupying power of the White House has perpetrated overnight (c) the dining room being now open to teaching staff, I no…
Good Morning, Class
After my morning run, Morning Office, fruit breakfast, House Meeting, and some consultation with colleagues, I gave my first lecture since Hilary Term. It was a bit unnerving, what with a red line taped to the floor so that I not score a goal when the ball is offside, and having to wipe down everything…
Sunday of First
Morning run, Morning Office, hot breakfast (have I mentioned before how much I love hot breakfast?), morning Mass, a tasty lunch, and the afternoon occupied by various items of course prep. Margaret made veg with tofu for dinner, and we watched more Ozark.
That’s Noughth
Ten percent of the term has passed already. Granted, it had none of the teaching obligations, but I’ll take it anyway; I’ve had a six-month layoff, and I haven’t yet forgotten, omitted, or committed anything unforgivable. Morning run, Morning Office, hot breakfast, some course prep, some errands, some reading and marking. Margaret made pizza for…
Saint John Henry Newman
Before I get to the important part of the day, just a reminder (to myself as much as anyone) that before the plague set in, I used to run a mile on two mornings a week, maybe three. Now, including this morning, I run a mile and a half every morning. I’m no Mo Farah…
Work
Morning run, Morning Office, morning Mass, fruit breakfast (and Margaret made a smoothie for me!), and really the rest of the day was almost all course prep of one sort or another. Some correspondence, a grocery trip mid-afternoon, and pasta dinner and more Ozark. That’s a day.
The Magic Half-Hour
On Wednesday mornings, the Office begins a half hour later, a precious thirty minutes that makes a world of difference to the weary flesh. It gave me a pleasant cushion for the timing of my morning run, and a bit of extra wakefulness when I set to work. I gave the annual ‘Preaching the Scriptures’…
So Far So Good
Social distancing yesterday seemed mostly to be operative. The chapel seating is beginning to settle in (I’m stuck off to the side in the transept, near the shrine for Our Lady of Walsingham, so I can’t see the students — and hearing is an issue as well, as the voices bounce about several times before…