Heavy grey skies, total humidity from a rain that had only just let up, but cooler temps and good, limber legs, to the result of a 9:35 time. Again, I can’t account for the variability of timings, except to say that obviously I’m not a running machine. Morning Office, a crumpet for breakfast (limited fruit available), and a Margaret-inspired morning research project on the creator of Wondermark comics, David Malki ! Malki warrants a Wikipedia page, but I am not about to do that work just at the moment.
I was having difficulty bearing down on my James essay, so I thought I’d at least devote time and energy to something productive and edifying, so I transcribed some pages of Legends of the Jews and listened to tunes. I was deeply moved, as I have been before, at the Who’s Quadrophenia, about analysing and admiring it with Matt Pappathan in undergraduate days, about pointing out to Nate and Si Keith Moon’s and John Entwhistle’s amazing fills, of course Pete Townshend’s composition and writing, the cultural politics of Mods and Rockers; and then I listened to the first side of Hunky Dory, remembering sharing that with Pippa (and her returning the favour by identifying Margaret and me as ‘Kooks’); and all of this while Darnielle’s Master of Reality was still fresh in my memory. I suppose few of my students would imagine my thinking about them as I admit that I, one of ‘all you rock’n’rollers’, had to face the fact that I had long since grown older (I’m neither wet nor cold, but I am indeed old) — but now so many generations of undergraduates and ordinands have endured my teaching that I can no longer see the individual faces in back rows of alumnæ/i. There have been some posts online recently about the vocation of priesthood, emphasising the gravity of this calling, and I certainly sympathise with that way of thinking. I wonder, though, whether my vocation to be AKMA, imperfectly as I’ve fulfilled it, comprising the priesthood, the teaching, the rocking, the parenting and husbanding, the laughing, has not been a more frightening and demanding call.
Anyway, on a lighter note, we had takeaway curry from Majliss, and watched the last of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, The World’s End, which we had not seen before.