So, instead of meeting some friends this week, I visited a work colleague. It could... have gone better. I should known better than to try and drink this hardened Londoner under the table. By hour one I was over the bowl, bubbling, chundering as though for fair England at the Olympics. Then, once I had come round, not an hour later I was there again, 'bowled over'.
He watches this conspiracy theorist woman on the Tube. I cannot say I have any interest in her. She is fair, granted, but unlike reading grey literature, dry excavation reports or academic articles upon the subject (or better still, either closely reading ancient manuscripts or papyri or handling artefacts themselves) most of what she says is hyperbole, tendentious, conjectural. It's anecdotal, unsubstantiated, mere supposition. Still, you can't blame the guy. This gal could read out the entries in the phone book and still put on a good show. It's a little like me listening to the BBC's absolutely gorgeous Yalda Hakim discussing [her] current affairs in detail: she is both informative and aesthetically pleasing.
Since then I have been working on compiling my notes for my translation of Nennius' History of the Britons (a dull and thankless task), and, more importantly, putting the finishing touches to my latest play: Boadicea: Queen of the Iceni. Original works are so much more interesting to scholars well schooled in the classical tradition. Today was an interesting episode of In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 (on Sophocles' Antigone). It bade me revisit the play (only in [Kitto's] translation [the OWC ed.]). Sophocles, wrote how men ought to be, whereas Eupidies wrote how men actually were. I actually quite like Sophocles, but in honesty, I actually prefer Aeschylus or Euripides (especially). Being still only a neophyte at ancient Greek means I can only really appreciate the tragedies of Seneca, in Latin, naturally. In any case, one could not help but notice that Oliver Taplin has translated Sophocles' Antigone recently. Much like Peter Kingsley's translation of the philosophical hermetica, this is an absolute must for the bookshelf. Taplin, like Kingsley, is an old hand, a great classicist. I am ashamed to say that I do not even have Emily Wilson's Odyssey by Homer on my shelf yet (I have a dozen translations of the Odyssey, but no one translates like Emily Wilson does, and I mean no one - not even I!).
Speaking of which (mere materialism: obviously dedicated to upgrading my book shelves), the old ball and chain came through (eight weeks after she said she would), so that means (1) a Mother's Day card for mother (obviously), (2) a nice parcel for my daughter (essential), and (3) after all payments are made: upgrading my bookshelf. It is not actually the books which I need (for I have many of them, evidently, not that university learning is worth a tinker's dame in Dark Age Britain. This is not Renaissance Italy, evidently), but the book shelves. I have the last one of my rickety self-made shelves holding up my Loebrary. I shall need to upgrade that alright, but that will hurt, deep in the pocket. However, it is no great loss, because I will be safer in the knowledge that my Loebs are well looked after (they are currently wedged in at a slight angle - not good for books - and the end ones have little nail heads and screws denting their sides).
There were very few books which I (a) didn't already have, or (b) were informative, in town today. I picked up one little book I bought some ten years ago now: Writing for Pleasure and Profit. It was written a comparatively long time ago, and is not the most informative book, but it is still the kind of reading material I require in order to make the transformation or catharsis from chrysalis to butterfly (i.e. from unskilled labourer to writer). I still have the old ball and chain's books to edit (which must be done before the end of July), but she's in Hawaii at the moment at the Luau (so not problems there).
Righty ho! Back to work. No rest for the virtuous.
Max.
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