Month: June 2020

Chilly rain this morning, so no run — I’m a creature of routine, but I’m not mad. Morning Office, fruit breakfast, and all day hammering away at Legends till late afternoon, the Office of Readings with the Sodality. Fajitas for dinner, and more Chernobyl, then day’s end.

13°, 99% humidity, very high pollen. What’s the difference between running in high humidity and swimming? When you’re swimming, the water will always be cooling you off as you go. The mile was an undistinguished 9:44. An early trip to Tesco for four bags of groceries and a megapack of toilet roll (we were coasting on another such purchase from several months ago, and there’s a certain satisfaction at extending the interval between purchases). Morning Office, hot breakfast, and much of the day devoted to Legends, with a protracted interval in which I sought out instances of the Greek verb kataperdomai at the provocation of Fr Peter Anthony. My special bachelor plate (with basil pesto) for dinner, and we started watching Chernobyl last night, though we didn’t have the stomach for more than one episode).

13°, very high pollen, high humidity, a bit of a slow start at limbering up my knees and thighs, for a mile time of 9:56. Morning Office, fruit breakfast, and a morning devoted to Legends — with Abraham in the books, I think the end of Volume 1 (and relevant notes from Volume 5) is in sight, which is exciting indeed. Of course, that leaves three volumes of narrative and one and a half volumes of notes to go, but it’s still a landmark. Two afternoon socially-distant appointments (including a lovely conversation with a former student), and Margaret asked to see Game Night last night. She had seen it on one of her academic jet-set flights, I had not, and she wanted me to have seen it as well as she.

Ninety days — that’s more than two of Noah’s flood. Luckily, our home is not crowded with herbivores, predators, and their waste; but I have to admit that ‘forty days and forty nights’ sounds a lot less dramatic at this point.

Another cool, clear, calm start for the day, with 98% humidity and very high pollen levels. My legs felt heavy, and breathing was laboured; I came in at 9:49 on a day without any muscle strain. I’ll want to work on that. Morning Office, fruit breakfast, and some bits and bobs before my Exam Board meeting. After the Exam Board, back to Legends — I finished Abraham! — and Majliss for dinner, and the very peculiar film UFOria, filmed in 1981, released in 1985, and rarely seen.

Cool, just the right temperature for exercising (about 12°), calm, clear, and very high pollen — so that my morning mile was encumbered by streams running down the back of my throat. I made it home in 9:32, anyway. Morning Office, shower, hot breakfast, Mass of Corpus Christi first from Winchester Cathedral, then from the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Wolverhampton. I did some bits and bobs to further my examining, but most of the rest of the day I devoted to Legends. I realised that I had made some hasty mistakes in the handout I prepared yesterday, so I edited the handout and prepared another (a two-column parallel of a translation I made compared to the NRSV). We had Margaret’s chickpea omelettes for dinner, and had a good visit with Nate in the evening.

Tomorrow begins the un-lockdown in England. We are very skeptical of the evidence in favour of unlocking; let’s wait a week or ten days, to see how this plan works out. I’d project a serious swing upward in COVID cases, as I don’t believe there will be more than intermittent cooperation with the road markings and in-store guidance.

Another grey, mild, misty post-rain morning: very high pollen, and high humidity, but no pain in my adductors, and a somewhat gasp-y 9:20. Morning Office, weekend morning grocery trip, and today I spent most of the day working on my plan for a presentation next Saturday (on John 17, for the Sodality) — working up an interlinear handout, and ruminating about what to say. I sat in on a Sodality Q-and-A session for interested clergy and aspirants. Dinner and some Mrs Maisel, and turned in for a night of deep sleep.

Mild dawn weather at 14°, high pollen, high humidity, and while I didn’t push hard, I wanted to attain a more usual time — which I did, at a 9:21 mile. Fruit breakfast, Morning Office, and the rest of the day I spent finishing up my examining.

Today was Margaret’s and my thirty-eighth anniversary. I would wish we could have had a special outing today, perhaps finding presents for one another and going to dinner and a film. Even once the government permits more general circulation and travel, we expect to stay cautious, based at home, venturing out only for specified errands, and limiting social contact. Not festive, but (from what we can see) sensible precautions as England dashes headlong into a second wave of infection.

Moderate cool weather (11°), fresh after pre-dawn rain, medium pollen, high humidity, and my adductors thanked me for letting them settle back to normal. I didn’t push, but I did run gently, and brought my time back to 9:40. Morning Office, fruit breakfast, and head down pushing through my examining until mid-afternoon, at which point I’d broken the back of the work and needed to let my mind idle for a while. (We did seek out a Mass for the Day of Obligation, even though we’ll probably be attending a Corpus Christi Mass on Sunday; Holy Days transferred to Sunday seem like cheating to me.) Sodality Office of Readings, dinner, and the conclusion to Deadwater Fell. That made for a thoroughly satisfactory day.

The conditions for running were fine this morning, apart from high humidity and pollen: about 11°, calm, cool enough to keep you from overheating, warm enough that my extremities weren’t getting numb. I suspected that my adductors would welcome another day of diminished expectations, though, so I took a very slow, steady pace, and probably shouldn’t have timed my mile at all, since the consequent time — 10:54 — casts a pall on the whole exercise. Still, my groin muscles gave no sign of distress, and I’ll be stronger for the next run in which I do try to pick up my pace.

We neglected the grocery list in last night’s festivities, so I skipped the early trip to the neighbourhood stores. Morning Office, hot breakfast, and back to my examining work. Instead, I used the grocery trip to Tesco as an early afternoon break. The outside world looks more as though all distancing bets were off, with a few overcautious souls (such as I) wearing masks and trying to keep metres apart. To the extent that my experience in Tesco reflects broader reception of the government’s easing of lockdown restrictions, I expect we’ll see a discouraging second wave within a month.

At the end of the day, Margaret and I indulged in a hearty dinner of leftover potato-veg casserole, and watched the first two episodes of Deadwater Fell, which we are intensely eager to finish up tomorrow evening.

Clear morning, cool temps (around 10°), very high pollen count, and my groin strain was sensitive yesterday, so I opted not to time this morning’s run, but rather to take it slow, with short steps, and go a wee bit further. So I have no time to report, but it would have been around ten minutes, I’d guess. Morning Office, fruit breakfast, and spent the rest of the day banging my head against examining.

It will come as no surprise to some who have worked with Virtual Learning Environments that I find this process very much more onerous online than I do with good old paper exams. And no, I’m not going to print out every bit of paper I’m examining; it would actually make the process more humane, but my environmental consciousness won’t let me run through a ream of paper and several tanks of ink in order to make myself more comfortable for three or four days.

By the end of the afternoon, I had no reliable brain cells. Luckily, two friends came over to celebrate the [very conservative, in our practice] opening up of social contact, so Margaret and I shared dinner from Majliss, wine, ice cream, and jolly conversation with them.

Another 8° chilly morning, high humidity, high pollen, and my left adductor is giving me serious grief. Still and all managed a 9:33 morning mile. Morning Office, fruit breakfast (well, to be honest, I ate the remaining apricots and a crumpet; crumpets aren’t fruit, but we’re almost all out of fruit and I didn’t want to eat the last bit before Margaret had a chance at it), and I began poking into the examining I have to do, then turned my attention to Legends. That was most of my day: erading about (and transcribing) the Akedah. And I call that a day well spent.