Current sleeping pattern: wake around 4, brief panic about work and everything else, try to lie still so as not to indicate to Hans (eldest cat) that I’m awake as he’s want food, fuss or both, try to drop off again; this time managed to doze for an hour and a half without starting to think too much, so could be worse. Up at quarter to six feeling hung over, to do dishes and make tea. Weather very grey, and starting to feel stuffy. News full of vague speculation about events in Russia – BBC has now shifted to calling it a mutiny rather than an attempted coup. Awkward format; two people speculating, whereas Twitter creates better impression of multiple opinions gradually moving towards some preliminary conclusions; typical that the BBC interviews its own reporter for commentary rather than an academic expert on Russian politics. Tory candidate accused of groping; English cricket ‘racist, sexist and elitist’. Colour us all surprised – apart from the timing, which is actually unexpected, the day before a test match.
Carried out the usual morning Twitter routine, searching for ‘Thucydides’ to get a sense of the current state of discussion and to pick up any fake quotes – always hoping for sonething new or interesting. There are a lot fewer than there used to be, perhaps a sign of the expulsion of bots (though even after muting several hundred of them, I still daily encounter one or two accounts tweeting out fragments from the early P.G. Wodehouse story, now tending to make some reference to ChatGPT, but whose purpose continues to be opaque). Not a lot this morning, just a ‘Scholars and Warriors’ quote in response to the idea of political power being determined by ability to lift weights (or maybe past ability – to be fair, this doesn’t appear to be a fully developed theory) and the Vegetius “if you want peace, prepare for war” line, which has only recently started to be misattributed to Thuc.
Some continuing fallout from some US pundit arguing for ‘proper’history (Thucydides appears to endorse everyone’s priors, oddly enough), and random bits of Thucydides Trap, but really not a lot – has my Thucydides book missed its moment? Search results are dominated instead by a couple of relentless conspiracy theorists and shitposters who’ve chosen Thucydides as part of their user handles; I’ve previously blocked a couple of these because they’re utterly tedious, but one offers genuine insight into the crazy world of QAnon. It’s a shame the research ethics committee took so long to review my proposal for a project on ‘Who wants to be Thucydides?’ that I ran out of time and energy to do proper research, but I expect the responses to any questionnaire would be fictional too.
Shower, breakfast, saw A. out to the car and brought in the empty recycling boxes; washed the maggots out of the food waste bin, cleaned the cats’ litter trays. Checked greenhouse and watered the plants- only half an hour’s worth of work today, as the vegetable beds were watered yesterday, but the aubergines continue to be very thirsty. Checked the vegetable beds – and clearly the universe has decided that, regardless of the idea that this should be a completely ordinary day, Things Should Happen To Be Written About. Back story: our garden has suffered for years from badgers, which destroy potatoes, sweet corn, gooseberries (yup, they roll on the bushes to knock the fruit to the ground) and especially parsnips. We therefore have an electric fence round the whole veg patch, and grow potatoes and parsnips with wire protection – and still they manage to wreck most of the parsnips every year. This was of course once my claim to Internet fame, in the relatively early years of the Twitter – “The bloody badgers have now started on the celeriac!” proclaimed as one of the most middle-class tweets ever.
This year, the mighty Newt – ultra-posh hotel complex cum rural experience enterprise up the road, that’s bought up most of the land in the area to plant cider orchards and raise exotic cattle – put up heavy-duty stock fencing around the field at the bottom of the garden, and since then there have been no signs of badger incursion at all, to the point where we started to wonder if in future we could reduce the protective measures. This morning, however, the parsnip bed has been wrecked, and the gooseberry bushes have broken branches – I’m very glad I picked the main crop yesterday. Bloody stripy bastards. It’s got to the point where I am mostly stoical, as there’s nothing one can do other than wonder if it’s worth even trying any more – what hurts is the fact we’d had months of hope that the problem might have gone away. At least they haven’t started using the flower garden as a latrine again, as they did a few years ago.
Had another cup of tea to calm down – and instead came across yesterday’s news about the planned closure of most railway ticket offices. Honestly, why is this country so useless and cheaoskste? There are tickets that the machines refuse to accept exist, such as my regular day return to Exeter – if you can’t use the app (or it’s not working, as regularly happens) the only option is a ticket office if you don’t want to pay nearly double. Plus, management of disabled access, at a station like ours where you can’t get to the other platform except by footbridge unless a station person can escort you across the tracks? After my broken foot earlier this year, I am much more sensitive to issues of mobility and access, and how far the UK seems to regard such people as an annoying inconvenience for the process of extracting corporate profits. Bloody pinstripy bastards.
Two hours then disappeared more or less without trace – I know I’ve sent emails, answered emails and written a couple of student references, but it doesn’t feel as if I’ve achieved anything – and since several of the emails involved negotiations about dates for postgraduate vivas and upgrades later in the summer, the feeling of time running away was even more accentuated. Then a drive down to Yeovil, where I had an appointment to scan my bone density, presumably prompted by the aforementioned broken foot. The most awkward aspect – besides having to be in Yeovil at all – is the requirement to avoid jeans, belts and buckles; I have for many years hovered on the boundary between two trouser sizes, so tend to buy the larger one to accommodate the occasional periods when the cake craving gets the better of me – so currently everything is a bit loose without a belt.
Having parked the car and negotiated assorted roadworks to get to the hospital, the usual lots of waiting around, listening to elderly ladies discussing the medical problems of friends and acquaintances – and other family members, as it gradually became apparent that Alzheimer’s-afflicted Bill, who tends to walk along and than suddenly stop, not responding to anything, and then start walking again, is a labrador. The conversation then segued into the case of a friend getting tired of clearing up puddles of piss and ripping up all the carpets before storming off to visit the grandchildren – and this time it’s a husband. “Thank goodness we don’t have husbands we have to live with, eh?” The same woman was starting to explain why she won’t have anything to do with that sort of thing with her ‘gentleman’ – “I’m not going to go into the toilet with him!” – when I was called away to be put into different poses for the scanner, thankfully not involving any claustrophobic tunnels, which remains one of my great fears. Trouser preparations a waste of time; the guidance hadn’t mentioned zips, but apparently they’re just as fatal to scanners as buckles and belts, so had to change into scrubs for the purpose. A laconic “we’ll be in touch”; at least there was no attempt at showing of knowledge of Roman History, as I’ve had with some consultants there.
Home, via a couple of unsuccessful attempts at finding some plant saucers for the aubergines in the greenhouse that are drying out much too quickly. Had planned to have yesterday evening’s leftovers for lunch, but A. took most of the cooked rice for hers, so hasty stir fry with some slightly bedraggled cabbage and extra chilli sauce instead. Equally hasty walk into town to get a Castle Cary Big Bat Count event poster put up in the bookshop and to buy compost, plant saucers and compostsblr bin bags, then stagger back up the hill in time for online editorial board meeting for Classical Receptions Journal, which took up the bulk of the afternoon – as ever, a bit difficult to concentrate, especially with rather erratic broadband connection, but better than some. Familiar issues – problems in getting people to review submissions (I had to approach ten people to get two reviewers for one recent piece), vague questions around open access.
Now a switch to energetic action, to get supper ready in time; grated courgettes and mixed with salt to extract moisture, walked up road to get eggs from the usual supplier, squeezed out courgettes and mixed with feta, a bit of grated cheddar and herbs and spring onions (at this point I forgot to add the eggs, thankfully without any adverse effects), and packaged the whole lot in filo pastry; while it cooked, dug the first new potatoes of the year, just in case the badgers return in force tonight. Ten minutes calling the two younger cats, Hector and Olga, who spend most time outside at the moment; I’m happy to let them wander, but A. likes them to check in, or be checked in, at least once an hour.
After supper, further endless tinkering with my jazz composition homework – a blues inspired loosely by Charles Mingus’ Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, in which currently the harmonic structure keeps wandering off in a completely different direction from the melody as I try to avoid too-obvious chord sequences. Yes, they may be obvious for a good reason… The problem is that I don’t have enough harmonic knowledge to know in advance how something is likely to sound, so just have to keep trying different things, saving multiple copes in case (as regularly happens) I realise an earlier version was less rubbish. Starting to suspect that I will once again be trying to avoid the tutor’s eye rather than having my homework dissected in class.
Taggeschau at seven, partly to keep up with my German (I was relieved to cope with three days of pretty well solid German at last week’s conference in Bochum, albeit with a lot of vague gesticulating to compensate for gaps in vocabulary, so want to maintain this) and partly because it’s generally much more international than the BBC – a good place for European and world news, not just German. Putin, sex scandal in Catholic Church, ongoing rows about new energy regulations. Then flicking through channels: a Trabi-Krimi, various culinary journeys through different regions, and an equestrian competition from Aachen, being introduced by Princess Anne (pretending not to speak German…).
None of these appealed; instead – with express permission from A, who can sometimes get a bit cranky if I disappear off upstairs for hours – I returned to the music, starting on a completely new version of the harmonies (which ended up sounding very similar to the first version, but I think it makes more sense). Back downstairs just after eight to read for a while then check the garden – putting on the electric fence – let Hans out for a final time in the hope that he then behaves himself overnight (the others are always good as gold, but he tends to stomp, yell and occasionally piss), and then bed; did sudoku for a while before lights out just after nine. And yet I still feel tired all the time…
(For an explanation of why I’m writing such a mundane yet lengthy post about my day, see Twelve Days in the Year).
Update: this now has the correct date… I am less surprised that my brain is fried, and clearly suffused with anxiety that the summer has half vanished already and I’ve made no progress on the book, than that it took six hours for anyone else to notice.
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