Month: June 2020

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.

This morning’s run encountered medium pollen, 9° temps, sore adductors (I think; I’m not much of an anatomist), but I still pared back the mile to 9:23. Morning Office, hot breakfast, Sunday Service on Radio 4, then Mass (we started at the patronal of Most Holy Trinity, Wolverhampton, but connectivity issues brought us ’round to St Michael and All Angels, Croydon). After all that religion, I focused on Legends most of the day. Margaret had a demanding weekend — she’s trying to set up communications with some MPs and Peers in the run-up to the Agriculture Bill, which involves manoeuvring some hoops designed to prevent people from lobbying MPs and Peers — so she knocked off a bit early and we watched the end of the mostly vapid Alex Rider series, interrupted by my preparation of fajitas for dinner (with no root vegetables).

I underdressed for what turns out to have been a chilly start for the day, around 7°. Pollen medium, high humidity, some breezes, but I pulled my time back to 9:37. Groceries at Tesco, but they don’t stock the newspapers, so I hopped out for another dash to Sainsbury’s. Morning Office, hot breakfast, and then some time spent writing a long letter to my sister and cousins about memories of my father’s political activism — that took a lot of careful thinking and remembering, and tons of emotional energy. Lunch, then time spent on Legends, and toward the end of the afternoon we had a video chat with Thomas, and Pippa messaged me to ask my memories of the late 60s, and about my father and grandfather — I was so absorbed in trying to answer her well that I entirely forgot that I’d promised MArgaret that I’d cook dinner (mea culpa, mea culpa). Margaret made mashed potatoes, veg, and pepper steak (Quorn), then we started watching the Alex Rider TV series.

Cool weather (11°), medium pollen, light breezes, but sometime in the past couple of days I overstretched my thigh muscles and I couldn’t pick up my pace at all; my mile timed only 10:00, the slowest mile I’ve run in weeks. Morning Office, fruit breakfast, some emailing, some Legends, some reading. Actually, that made up most of the day: trying to focus on reading, doing some Legends, and then more slow reading. Some notes toward my own thoughts for the book project. Margaret had a difficult day, with technological issues and a lot of bitty work. At last, the day ended.

I slept late this morning — ten to six, huzzah! — but that meant that the streets were actually almost busy when I took my morning run. The grey skies and breezes made the temperature feel chillier than the 10° my weather app showed. I saw a woman in an anorak on Magdalen Road! High pollen, high humidity, and my legs were leaden, and I didn’t hit the Start button squarely on my timer app, so I don’t know the embarrassing time my mile took. Morning Office, shower, and fruit breakfast.

The rest of the day boiled down to reading and Legends, along with an online meeting of SMMS, with a break for fountain pen browsing.

Back to my usual schedule: up early for my run (14°, high pollen, heavy unwilling legs, time of 9:22), quick shower and then for the first time in eleven weeks, I set off for Tesco! We had been going to Sainsbury’s because it was nearer, smaller, and open earlier, but it develops that Tesco has begun opening at 6:00 and they offer some items that Sainsbury’s doesn’t. So Margaret asked that I go to Tesco this morning, and I was able there to obtain gluten-free pizza crusts, decaf ground coffee, Chili Rice Crackers, and the usual staples. Then hot breakfast, a bit of Legends to warm up, and reading and so on. After lunch, I returned to Legends (I’d like to finish off Volume One and turn back to historic Anglican documents for teaching purposes) for the afternoon. I had some emails to work through, and in the evening we enjoyed a hearty dinner of veg and pesto, and watch the last episodes of Killing Eve, which we thought a disappointment — as though the writers just didn’t have any plausible idea of where to take the drama (the Villanelle-in-Russia episode serves as a warning signal, contributing hardly anything to the plot and little to Villanelle’s character except to make her even more confused and confusing). ‘A series of bizarre vignettes’ is not the same as a plot. If the BBC will perpetuate the show for another series, the writers have a very serious job of work to get it back onto the rails, much less running forward at speed.

I think it’s seventy-six. Some zombie files rose from their fitful slumbers to knock the blog offline for a week. Apart from the obvious immolation of the United States and the less obvious risks of the [UK] government’s plan to relax lockdown restrictions even as the death toll keeps rising, not much happened in James Street. I ran miles to the times of 9:14, 9:09,9:08, 9:34, and this morning’s 9:41 (I was obliged to cut short yesterday’s run, for biological reasons). Fruit breakfast, Morning Office, and on to work.

I devoted most of yesterday morning to cobbling together the Plague Cross booklet. I posted the files around midday, then did some work on Legends, some reading, some website maintenance and seeking in file archives for my designs for altar cards, and hey presto! it was time for evening devotions, dinner, and evening entertainment.

Herewith I deposit my liturgical pamphlet for A Prayer for Aid Against the Plague (Remedium contra Pestem) (download from that link) and the accompanying Plague Cross.

For further reading, Don C. Skemer’s excellent short, illustrated academic essay ‘Deciphering a central European plague amulet’ in the Wellcome collection’s blog sheds a lot of light (even though, as we know, I remain resolutely resistant to the “code” metaphor for interpretation).