Month: May 2020

This should be some sort of household jubilee, with celebration at having completed a half century of housebound obedience. Alas, no one is in a mood for jubilation; mildly satisfied determination is about all one can ask.
I slept a bit later than usual this morning, and got an even later start on my run (8°, very clear, feeling brisker than I’d have thought). I made several stops en route (I did poorly in Shoelace-Tying 101), so my time is even less indicative than usual, but I did come in at 9:45, which is better than I’d have estimated. Morning Office, shower up, fruit breakfast, and finished up marking. In the afternoon, I finished reading through Greer’s book, and succumbed to a couple distractions. Then Vespers, and Margaret and I testing the new Sainsbury’s vegan burgers while watching Vera.

Seven weeks is a long time to spend without getting out and about. Just saying.
This morning dawned crisp (3°) and dry, with medium pollen. I didn’t feel any particular challenge in getting limber, and my mile came in at 9:42, which feels reasonable.
Morning Office, grocery trip, hot breakfast, and a morning spent reading and deliberating about (former colleague) Paul Griffiths’s essay on ‘Pascal and the Magisterium’. I seem to have been feeling more low-level anxiety today, and getting productive work done was a challenge.
It’s the sort of day I could put to good use by working on a digital version of a text, if I had started one; but if I start one, it would be likely to siphon off energy from working on the book project (or the James essay I should write this summer).
The specific work I should have accomplished much more expeditiously today was marking; even granted my aversion of marking, I ought to be quicker off the mark than I was today.
Margaret prepared a sort of chickpea pancakes (laden with veg) for dinner, we watched an episode of Vera (‘Oooh, yer ma’s been beheaded, luv’) and a HIGNFY, and then to bed.

We watched Spooks late into the night, so I planned to skip my morning run; alas, I woke up early anyway, so I went ahead to run in the 6°, low pollen, creaky-limbed conditions. Came in at 9:50 (though I felt as though I’d been faster than that).
I said the Office, then cooked a hot breakfast while chatting with colleagues from the Sodality of Mary, Mother of Priests in the run-up to the Sodality Council meeting, which began with the Rosary and ran through the morning, ending with Sext. After that, I took the time to listen to a poetry reading given by Kei Miller, a former Glasgow colleague who’s now at Exeter. I had heard these poems from him when we lived in Glasgow, and it was deeply satisfying to hear him read once again. I downloaded the podcast and sliced the file into the nine individual files that I then uploaded into my music directory.
I had been trying on and off throughout the day to download the 1.0 release of Inkscape, the FOSS vector drawing app — I’ve been teetering from one small-market drawing app to another for years now, so I’m excited to have access to the full-on release of Inkscape.
In between, and at the end of the afternoon, I launched again into revising and expanding the outline of my current project.
Margaret cooked stuffed peppers for dinner, and we watched 21 Bridges, which we found an acceptable way to pass 90 minutes, though not without a number of plot holes and gross unrealisms. At the end of the day, we took time to remember our dear friend Phil Kenneson’s sister-in-law as he and his family and friends were praying together.

I had a productive day, and I don’t have much more to report. Run weather was 9°, medium pollen, 9:39. Spent a lot of time on the monograph outline. Mushroom, aubergine, other veg over rice noodles for dinner, and the end of Spooks.

Grey morning, with the sense that there had been recent showers (the overhang at Sainsbury’s protected dry pavement, but the unsheltered pavement was wet); I forgot to check the temperature, but I’d estimate that it was about 7°. My limbs were rusty, and the pollen medium, and I forgot to hit the button on my timer, so my guess is that my mile was around 9:50 or so. Morning, Office, hot breakfast, a morning spent with diffuse attention, Mass at St Michael and All Angels Croydon, lunch, and a bit of writing.
I did some reading and — well to be honest, no writing at all during the day. I think it was mostly one of those lost Plague Days. I’ll try harder tomorrow. Leftovers and Spooks; the end is in sight.

A lovely morning, 5° and breezy, but didn’t feel so bad. Medium pollen and harder breathing, but an adequate 9:51 mile. Hot breakfast, and I allowed myself a relaxing start to the day, with a view eventually getting a bit of writing done. Among the pursuits that enhanced my morning were selecting and ordering some ink and paper, and polishing several of my active-duty pens. I anticipated that the latter half of my afternoon would be consumed by Zoom meetings, so my expectations of productivity were low.
As it turns out, my expectations were vindicated, but that feels fine. The plague-tension (German Pestangst sounds right) won’t just go away, but if I can eke out some writing and reading in between spells of Pestangst-induced inanition, that seems reasonable to me. I defy productivity guilt! (This, by the way, is one reason I gravitate to making my PDF editions under stress-dominated circumstances. On one hand, it’s very definitely productive. On the other, it doesn’t require of me free, creative thought so much as persistent attention to detail, which soothes and gratifies me, and which results in the end in a useful result.
We ordered dinner form Majliss, and fought through into the final season of Spooks. If MI-5 is reading this, and if this series accurately reflects the work of the agency, just a word to say that you could hire Margaret and me, cos we hit on key ideas about the plot well before Section D does. (Apart from all the torture and killing, of course; we’re not in for that.)

The Home Office says that the pollen count today is ‘medium’, though I sensed that my breathing was rougher than it had become over the months, especially the last few weeks of daily running. The temperature was 8°, and the morning was handsome, but my legs were a bit heavy and (as I say) I didn’t feel as well oxygenated as on my besst days. Naetheless, my mile came in at 9:48, which is okay.

The rest of the day was pretty productive. I did some reading, and hammered out an outline for the beginning of my monograph. That is, I thought it was the beginning, but having given it an afternoon of thought, I suspect it needs a previous chapter that warms up the reader for the direction I’m heading, the presuppositions I’m challenging, and the perspective on the whole topic that I’m proposing. Anyway, it was very satisfying.

Pizza and Spooks. Oh, Lucas….