Sphinx

People respond to crisis, not to say imminent apocalypse, in different ways. I’d been expecting to struggle through the final two weeks of term, staggering punch-drunk out of the maelstrom that was 150 Greek History essays into the need to write the final classes – an interesting exercise to view the expansion of Rome from the perspective of the eastern Mediterranean, but to be honest I wasn’t looking for new intellectual experiences at this time of year – and hours of consultations, about dissertations, essay feedback, final essays and the Bloody Impact Case Study. I was planning to spend most of next week asleep.

Instead, I find myself strangely full of energy. It does help that Hans, the cat who’s taken to prodding me awake at about 3.30 am because he’s bored and/or hungry, has adopted a more civilised sleeping pattern, probably helped by the fact that the weather is better and so he gets more exercise. But mostly – and I confess this with a certain embarrassment, as I know how difficult many people are finding this – I think this is down to the crisis. My inner Ballardian antihero is finding new purpose in the radical alteration of daily life, the sudden opening up of new possibilities…

So, the shift to online teaching offered lots of creative problems – what’s the best way to support anxious students *and* effectively reproduce (or even enhance – I’m actually really excited about the enforced change to 24-hour take-home papers rather than traditional exams) the original experience as far as possible? – and far from bring relieved that classes are now over, I fear a significant withdrawal crash, and will probably be lecturing to the cats by Thursday if I can’t find an alternative audience.

My peasant ancestry kicked in for a couple of days, and I made jars of kimchi, pots of braised red cabbages and five pounds of wild garlic sausages – wild garlic pesto next week – and would have had a baking drive if I hadn’t managed to break the oven. My new imperial stout has been bottled, and ingredients bought for the next brew. New raised beds have been constructed and fed with well-rotted compost, seeds sown, potatoes planted and logs sawn.

My blog has been more active, together with the usual yelling at the internet, and I’ve recorded a new podcast in my Thucydiocy series as well as being interviewed for a War on the Rocks podcast. Finally – and this may be the conclusive evidence that the crisis has done something to my brain – I’ve seized the opportunity to put into action an idea that my wife had a year or so ago but I never had time for, and so have bought a false beard…

Everyone treats Thucydides as an unimpeachable authority figure, The Man Who Knows – but for some reason assumes that he has knowledge to contribute only on topics like war and politics. In Episode 2 I offer his forthright views on the pressing issue of social distancing, and that’s pretty sane compared with some of the ideas I have in mind. Normality can’t return soon enough.