Category: Uncategorized

I was wondering whether the verb ‘refurbish’ had a non-iterative simple form; sure enough, there it is, and a good deal more specific in scope than the general sense of ‘spruce up’. According to Wiktionary, ‘furbish’ is used strictu sensu for ‘to polish, to make smooth and shiny by rubbing’ (though it can be used without the iterative prefix, which I think is just laziness) in the sense of ‘restore’. Just so’s you know.

I took a slow day for my morning miles, after having run so hard yesterday; it seemed a reasonable precaution. I’ll run hard again tomorrow.

Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, check messages, public office hours at Throwing Buns (the café named after the unique local tradition) because R&R is still closed for remodelling(?).

Home for lunch, reading, sermon work, dog attention. Checked messages again this afternoon.

My morning miles went by at a near personal-best rate (I had a week of faster times in March 2025, but then I was pushing so hard that I gave up timing my runs for four months to disarm my over-competitiveness), and felt mostly very good (a couple of slight twinges in my left knee). I’m hoping this betokens a favourable outcome for the Bannister Mile 2 ½ weeks from now. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, then home for more coffee and toast.

I submitted a book review yesterday, so that’s another small bit of writing in the works. Working now on another one….

I didn’t run this morning; I could have done, I woke up in time, but just didn’t pull myself together in time. I did make coffee and hot breakfast, showered, Morning Prayer, and headed into town for public office hours at R&R, but they’re still closed (they seem to be repainting the interior), so I went to Java. I handled some email, arranged a revision for my Orielenses, and read from a book under review. In a short while I’ll go in to the weekly Staff Meeting, then home to do some housework and (heaven and distraction permitting) more reading, perhaps dipping into my sermon for Sunday….

Looks as though I missed yesterday. I ran to a near-perfect [current] average time, coffee and fruit, bade goodbye to Margaret (who’s at the SST for a few days), Morning Prayer, Public office hours at The Missing Bean (cos R&R was closed), grocery shopping, home for lunch and therapy for the dogs, who are traumatised by Margaret’s absence. I had planned to spend the afternoon reading, but the proofs arrived for The Last Essay (paradoxically, there are two more in the pre-proofs stages). They were mediated by a mind-bogglingly user-hostile web app, which cost me some grey hair and ill-advised expletives. Then, too, I needed to run a couple of financial errands which depend on Josiah having free time to receive and relay single-use passcodes. All in all, these were good things to get sorted even if they scotched my afternoon.

I watched the last episodes of Shrinking, and turned in early.

Today my miles went by significantly faster than average (who knows why); coffee and fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, home for the ladies and coffee and toast, finished up the proofing and taxes, answering email, and at the end of afternoon, fixed bachelor dinner.

Yesterday afternoon, Margaret and I took a road trip to the nearby village of Sutton Courtenay. To be precise, a road and footpath trip, since about half the ramble involved a dirt trail. Sutton Courtenay shows up in written records beginning in the 7th century, and has a 12th century church, a Norman Hall, an Abbey, all built close on a series of pools adjacent to the Thames. It makes an agreeable destination for an afternoon walk (with two pubs), church and churchyard gazing, and riverside scenery.

Ran this morning to a good time, then coffee and fruit, Morning Prayer, shower, and off to church in an undisclosed location (Jen and I are off duty from Abingdon Parish today).

I took this morning easy, with a jog-walk in a very light drizzle. I tried out my new exercise earbuds (JLab Go Air Sport+) and they performed satisfactorily, though the control buttons are a bit too sensitive for a runner who wears a hoodie. There also seems to be a lag between tapping the control button and its effect, so that one can easily overlap and either change the volume too drastically or effect some other unanticipated change. Without the hood up, and with cautious tapping, all went well indeed.

Coffee, hot breakfast, edited book review on Margaret’s insightful recommendations, second cup of coffee with toast, thought along with Vincent Lloyd on ‘abuse’ (from, I think, his upcoming SST keynote) again on Margaret’s recommendation, picked up another good book (on which I owe a review) (sheepish emoji).

Ran to a good time this morning. Much as I dislike running, it’s less frustrating when it doesn’t specifically feel bad and give a disappointing result (I know, I know, it’s the doing not the achieving); with the Bannister Mile coming up in less than a month(!), I’d like to reach a better time than last year when I was undernourished and unwell.

Coffee and fruit, Morning Prayer, shower, coffee and toast, then settled down to reacquaint myself with the stylesheet for an overdue book review, and started writing. It will be a great thing to knock this one out, then take it easy for the rest of the day.

I walked and jogged this morning, had my coffee and fruit, fed the dogs, out to R&R for public-facing coffee, proofreading the parish newsletter, finish a good book and writing an appreciative note to an author-friend, home by way of the Cooperative for groceries, lunch. Maybe ore reading and writing in the afternoon.

It’s Wednesday, I’ve had two respite days and I will have another five, but I have to look toward the future and make sure that I’m ready for pitching back in (and not all grumpy and unprepared). I still love the freedom, though, and I love the fact that the Iranian people have a chance for some respite themselves, and I wish the same for Lebanon and Gaza.

Ran my miles this morning, a little faster than yesterday. I plan to take tomorrow at a jog/walk. Coffee and hot breakfast, shower, Morning Prayer, coffee and toast. Work on taxes.

Ran my miles, more than a minute faster than yesterday; clearly I benefit from not having the stress of Holy Week hanging over my head and curtailing my sleep. No coffee at first, cos Margaret and I went to Oxford together for the morning. We had a start at Love Coffee, then picked up a notebook for Margaret at Scriptum, a pencil sharpener at Objects of Use, then we investigated Blackwell’s (but found nothing that moved us in the Religion section as it’s now constituted). The sun shone, the temperature moderated pleasantly, and we headed home for lunch and dogs. A man could get used to a low-expectations retired lifestyle.

I had a good night’s sleep last night (Holy Week keeps me up after my usual bedtime and wakes me early, if only to work on sermons), and although I didn’t do anything significantly later than usual this morning, I could have, which makes a tremendous difference.

Had another slow run this morning, my rolling average down by about a minute from a fortnight ago. I’m attributing it to Holy Week exhaustion for the time being. Coffee, fruit, (at-home) Morning Prayer, shower, walk with Dr Adam in to R&R for a cafe start to the day, then home for lunch and a restful afternoon. I feel so much less stress, knowing that I have no obligations and no upcoming sermon — I could definitely get used to this.

It rained this morning, so that I didn’t run. Coffee, fruit, sermon tune-up, cleaned up, went to St Nic’s, and led the Easter service. The service went well, and the sermon was well received, better than I expected at the end of a small marathon of services and homilies.

I napped a while this afternoon, watched a couple of crime drama shows with Margaret, and now I’ll turn in. I will sleep like a log (I hope), and wake up with no obligations on my timetable. Today’s sermon below the fold.
Continue reading “Easter And On”

Slow average run. Coffee and hot breakfast. Morning Prayer at St Helen’s, plus some groceries for Margaret and me. During my run, it occurred to me that I might use an Easter poem as a vehicle for my sermon tonight, and explored George Herbert, John Donne, and Gerard Manley Hopkins — but none of these clicked with my imagination today. Eventually I caught a different tack, and it will turn out to be tomorrow’s sermon.

Tonight’s draws on motifs I’ve used before, a sort of homiletical greatest-hits medley; since I may not preach on the Easter Vigil again, I’ll roll them into tonight’s sermon.
Continue reading “Zeroing In”

No servers appeared for the afternoon Proclamation of the Cross and Mass of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts, so I soloed it. Minor complications, but I made it through alive, easily enough since the first final boss isn’t till tomorrow.

I did not, however attempt a speed run; reverence is paramount.

(We did have our choir and readers, so I wasn’t entirely left to my own devices. But some awkwardness did ensue; for instance, in carrying the cross, I had to carry also the base into which it would be placed, so I was one-handing the cross (my right arm got pretty sore), or I suppose you could say I was double-wielding a cross and a base (both bludgeoning weapons), or wielding the cross while holding the base up as a shield.

Didn’t run this morning — too little rest over th past four days, with two and a half coming up, feeling proper knackered — so, coffee and fruit, Morning Prayer, to Waitrose with the Dr Missus to help stock the kitchen for her weekend baking project, checked messages (now that the office phone is working again), then home for coffee and toast and sermon prep for tomorrow night (no sermon for Good Friday; the Passion does that job).

Last night’s sermon goes beneath the fold…
Continue reading “Two And A Half To Go”

A month ago, I blogged about Jon Hicks’s dissatisfaction with iTunes/Apple Music; at the time, I concentrated on playback aspects of the software, but this afternoon I was playing my semi-random semi-weighted shuffle through our AirPlay-compliant tv, and I remembered that Jon also bemoaned the ‘visualiser’ feature of the app.

As I was thinking of this, I looked at the TV and saw this:

(It’s my fault the title of the cut is wrong; I’m still mopping up the mess from having had to change hard drives last autumn.) Why would you design a visualiser that allots so little space top the most graphically significant feature of the album — the cover design — and leave so much empty space?

So I mocked up a comparison that would have required the Apple engineers no more than two minutes longer to implement.

So, I woke a bit later than ideal (though it approached ‘ideal’ since I stayed up late watching the last episode of our crime drama), and felt a very strong temptation to take a day off — but I didn’t, in order to keep up and perhaps sound my legs into condition for the 4 May Bannister Mile. I did not, however, press for a rapid pace, with the result that I came in at a moderately slow time. Then coffee, fruit, shower, feed the dogs and let them out, Morning Prayer, parish communications, responding to a query about ‘Confirmation’ (again) by pointing to my [fourteen years old] post on the topic, and now to the sermon for the Easter Vigil (and, heaven permitting, Easter Sunday).

Ran to an average time, coffee and hot breakfast (yay, Wednesdays!), shower, Morning Prayer, and a morning and early afternoon banging my head against tomorrow night’s homily. Stress-free interval, then dinner and Low Mass for Spy Wednesday. Full day, one day closer to Easter.

Twenty-two years ago — long before my current students were born! — Lawrence Lessig wrote the book Free Culture under an Creative Commons Non-Commerical/By Attribution Licence. If I recall correctly, I picked up the PDF of the book & read it directly (those were the days), and wrote a blog post suggesting we each read a chapter & make an audiobook out of it.

Within a few days, this was the result (credit to the readers, and especially to Scott Matthews and Noa Resare):

And ultimately to the wonderful Hugh McGuire’s founding of LibriVox…

The Web was a very different, marvellous medium back then. It could be much more marvellous again, if enough of us pitch in (the way we pitched in twenty-two years ago). But whether we do or don’t, remember that there are great possibilities out there, and friends to help us. Let’s start something!

(Brought here from BlueSky, where I’m [astonishingly] @akma.bsky.social…)

… and I’m pondering some other form of exercise — but for the time being, running wins out because it’s functionally free, gets me out of doors for a half hour in the morning, the weather will get better eventually, and my body will probably get less stiff and wonky. I like swimming — the meditative pace and lack of sensory input make it a more calm exercise — but that’s just not an effective option for the time being.

Anyway, I did run this morning, for a sluggish pace. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, home for coffee and toast, and now I’m back to tackle Thursday evening’s homily. One of the first cuts that came on iTunes weighted shuffle was The Gospel Harmonettes of Demopolis, Alabama performing ‘We’re Going to Have a Time’, which reminded me of the heyday of music blogs when John Seroff administered The Tofu Hut and posted several of the Harmonettes’ tracks — produced by his dad — on that site. Go read his dad’s account of the session; John’s posting it, with the songs (at that time unavailable on any commercial media), underscores what we’ve lost in the current media environment of a handful of mega-streaming sites. While you can no longer download the Harmonettes from John’s blog, the album is available from Apple Music and the Harmonettes have recordings posted on YouTube. Cheers, John, and best wishes on all your ventures.