A rant or a raunt

Something I often find surprising is how otherwise well-informed people, when called on to read Middle English – as well-informed people so often are – will fall into a cultural cringe when faced with a word of French origin such as 'gentil' and come out with something like [jontil], or, worse still, [ʒontil] (excuse my phonetics – they're the symbols I find convenient, and pretty transparent, I would have thought).
A quick breeze through any of the Canterbury Tales would make it clear that Chaucer doesn't rhyme French e+nasal+consonant with French a+nasal+consonant: e.g. 'apparence' wouldn't rhyme with 'da(u)nce)' – but on the other hand French e+nasal+consonant does rhyme with OE-derived e+nasal+consonant: thus 'rente' with 'wente'.
The fact is, of course, that the vowels e and a before a nasal didn't merge in northern and western French as they did from about C11 in central French – and the English French vocabulary owes more in this respect to the provincial pronunciation.
Now it's true that we do have loans from central French that show the merger: e.g. 'ensaumple', but in such cases the resulting vowel is spelt a(u) in English. There's also the complicating factor that in Anglo-Norman many verbs were transferred to the -er conjugation – hence 'defendant' rather than 'defendent'. In the case of 'jaunty' from central French 'gentil' the lack of the final consonant  in the English word is enough to mark it as a late borrowing.

In mainstream English, however, French e+N+C (you understand the symbolism) gives English e+N+C (and I'd guess that for semi-learned forms like 'sentence' the current rponunciation of Latin would have played a role. French a+N+C, on the other hand, gives a+N+C, or when stressed au+N+C. Hence French 'lande' > Modern English 'lawn'.

One might reflect that French i+N+C also gives English i+N+C, e.g. 'prince'.

So, Middle English 'gentil' should for preference be sounded as [jentil] – though it's always possible that a 14th century English person wanting to show off their 'French of Paris' might introduce the foreign sound.

See, on this subject, Pope: From Latin to Modern French.

The Aeneid

I have just been rereading the Aeneid: it seems to me that it consists of two narrative series, each of the form S₂ : a : $ : S₁. The first occupies Books I-V, the second Books VI-XII. Aeneas seems to me a rather different character in the two parts – in the first the intervention of Venus is more frequent and more direct, Aeneas more frail and more human. In the second Aeneas is more the Man of Destiny.

Perhaps I am slow to catch on, but it occurs to me as a later thought that Books I-V are Vergil’s answer to the Odyssey, and VI-XII to the Iliad: the first phase a romance, the second a typological narrative (V has interesting parallels with Odyssey XXIV, the funeral games recalling the contests among the suitors, the defection of the women the fate meted out to Penelope’s serving girls).

An interesting thing about the second phase of the poem is that Aeneas only appears in the even-numbered books. These can be considered as successive stages in the narrative, in all of which Aeneas plays the role of Hero, while the odd-numbered books can be considered transitional between the stages.

In Book VI the psychopomp role is played by the Sybil, obviously, while the shade of Anchises is King.

Book VII should have at its centre a test or ordeal – war is forced on Trojans and Latins alike as a result of the intervention of Allecto.

Book VIII (a) has the transport of Aeneas away from war to a place of serenity, and intimations of future glory, both by way of the visit to the site of Rome and the prophetic scenes on Aeneas’s shield. As Ascanius (Iulus) is to Aeneas, Pallas is to Evander: the valued possession in whom his hopes for the future are invested – his value, in other words – which he entrusts to Aeneas. That is to say, Pallas is Princess, which serves to make his death at the hands of Turnus in X that much more heinous. Note that Evander collapses when Pallas leaves (much as Mezentius will when he hears of the death of Lausus).

Book IX is largely concerned with a troublesome journey – the doomed mission of Nisus and Euryalus to seek help from Aeneas, the events that provoke it and those that follow.

In Book X Jove throws the result open to Fate – thus, we are in the wilderness ($), where all things come by chance. Aeneas receives comfort from Cymodoce, leader of the Nymphs which the ships of his fleet have become – the character of the Donor is typically manifested by a comforter in a narrative of this shape – and he is revalorized by association, i.e. being reunited, with Iulus, his value, described as a beautiful object (132-8). The contrast between Aeneas and Turnus here is that Turnus is unwilling to accept the gifts of fortune, in the shape of the opportunity to kill Pallas, with humility (502). Mezentius, ironically, shows himself more pius in defeat than Turnus in victory.

In Book XI the prosecution of the Trojans’ advantage involves the neutralization of a counter-gendered character (Camilla).

Book XII reasserts social values. A compact of single combat is solemnized (though ignored by the Latins), and the Hero is finally able to do battle with the Villain.

One notices at the conclusion of the poem that the ambition to found Troy anew, voiced for example by Venus in the debate that opens Book X, has not been fulfilled: the Trojan name is to be extinguished. On the other hand, not only Aeneas’s enemies but also his allies have been destroyed. The dynasty of Evander is cut off, thus vacating the site for the future Rome, and Latinus has lost his wife to suicide, while one can’t feel too happy for Lavinia. The reader can hardly help asking whether it has all been worth it. There are resonances here of Augustus’s claims to have refounded the republic, and also, in the repeated equation of heirs with value (Aeneas, Evander, Mezentius), of Augustus’s own problems with succession. Together with the curious exit of Aeneas from the Underworld through the gates of ivory (VI 893-899), leave one with the feeling that a pervasive irony underlies this second half of the poem.

Thinking about narrative - Puss in Boots and Hamlet

In Puss in Boots we have the Lacanian Discourse of the Master, alias the metaphoric narrative: $→S1→S2→a. We begin in the Wilderness: the Miller’s son left, upon the death of his father, with nothing but a cat. However, upon his acceding to the cat’s request for a bag and a pair of boots, Puss, in the Proppian role of Donor, makes presents to the king on the young man’s behalf. At the conclusion of this phase, the Miller’s son is revalorized by the gift of fine clothes – he is now taken, on Puss’s say-so, for the Marquis of Carabas.

The transition to the next phase requires a triplet of tasks, carried out by Puss in the role of Helper: menacing mowers in a hayfield, reapers in a cornfield and unspecified further people in other places into telling whoever passes that the fields belong to the Marquis.

The second phase is the City – the ogre’s castle, where Puss, by verbal trickery, is able, again as Helper, to kill the ogre (the Villain). The transition to the next phase is marked by a journey – of the Miller’s son in the king’s carriage. They arrive then at the New Place, the castle, where Puss, in the role of King, is able to show off the riches that apparently belong to the Marquis.

We then move directly to the final phase, the Garden, and the wedding of the Miller’s son to the princess (the Princess).

Things to notice: though the Miller’s son is the Proppian Hero, he never actually does anything. What is more, he has never suffered at the hands of the Villain, nor does he set out to win the hand of the Princess – he doesn’t even know there is a princess until Puss contrives for them to meet. In short, just as the ogre is the Villain, the Miller’s son is the Hero because of our feeling for the genre: the young man’s marriage to the Princess is our desire as intended readers rather than his as Hero.

Puss, though the main character, is not the Hero. He is the point-of-view character, the prism, if you like, through which we as readers view the action.

It seems to me that the way this story works may help us in understanding Hamlet. The play is a narrative: as such I would expect it to correspond to one of Lacan’s four types – but which one? My initial difficulty arose from not knowing where in the action of the play to locate the Garden: there seemed to be no still point, no episode of pleasure that invited that identification. Yet the Garden is simply a metaphor for the object of desire, and once we have realized that, we can see that the Garden is in fact the terminal phase of the play, which fulfills the desire that Claudius and Gertrude should be punished and civic order restored.

We begin in the Wilderness – outside, in the dark, a place of unexplained manifestations. Hamlet, when he appears, is in mourning and in despair: ‘O that this too too sullied flesh would melt’. He is estranged from his mother and the new king; he has apparently courted Ophelia, but is cut off from this also by the counsel of her brother and father.

Enter the ghost, as Donor, in this case donor of motivating information. Hamlet is made aware of Claudius’s crime; his desire, and ours as audience, is not only for the crime to be avenged, but also for the disturbance to the civil order, which was already apparent before the disclosure of the crime, to be redressed.

The transition to the next phase requires Hamlet to convince the court of his madness; a task performed through his interaction with a counter-gendered character (Ophelia). Then in the City (the court), there is a triple encounter with the Villain: Claudius put to the test by the players’ performance, Gertrude upbraided, Polonius killed.

Hamlet’s journey to England and back is the transition between the City and the New Place, where Claudius’s plans to murder Hamlet are laid bare first by Claudius himself (the poisoned rapier) and then by Hamlet (the treacherous letters), while the truth of Hamlet’s love for Ophelia is disclosed by Hamlet himself. Claudius and Hamlet thus share the role of King between them. A difficult task (the duel between Hamlet and Laertes) leads to the deaths of Claudius and Gertrude. The crime is avenged, and the entry of Fortinbras (the Princess) foreshadows a new stability.

Who is the Hero? I can’t help feeling that the Hero is the audience – that the fourth wall lies open to incorporate us in the performance. To me, the role of Hamlet is too polymorphous for it to be possible to identify him as Hero – partly, providing voiceover by way of soliloquy, he embodies the narrator, partly, as in his banter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or with Osric, he represents a character that appears elsewhere as the Hero’s wisecracking sidekick (like the cat Jiji in Kiki’s Delivery Service); mostly he is a proxy for the audience’s desire that the narrative should take its course. I am led to wonder here how applicable such an analysis might be to others among Shakespeare’s later plays – The Tempest, for instance.

The sun has crossed the celestial equator from north to south; in 9th century England and in the land of the Geats it begins to grow dark. At line 2200, the last act of Beowulf's story begins:
Eft þæt geiode ufaran dogrum / hilde hlæmmum, syððan Hygelac læg, / ond Heardrede hildemeceas / under bordhreoðan to bonan wurdon...

Though the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not hard to read aloud, problems are likely to multiply as soon as one begins to think about its metre. This is because its construction is, as it were, inside out compared to the verse one is more likely to be familiar with. That verse is likely to have a fixed number of syllables to the line - or a number that at any rate can be regarded as fixed - while the number of accented points may vary. To take Paradise Lost as an example, while every line has a notional 10 syllables, the number of accents per line varies from as few as 2 to as many as 6, with 4 the most common number:

Of Mán's Fírst Disobédience, and the Frúit - etc.

In GGK, by contrast, the number of accents in each line is fixed, while the number of syllables varies.

It might seem that this kind of verse would be particularly suited to English, if, as Kenneth L. Pike famously claimed, it is a stress-timed language: one in which accents fall at more or less regular intervals however many unaccented syllables there may be between them. To the extent that this is true, however, the very fact gives a line with a fixed number of syllables and a varying number of accents a great rhythmic flexibility, since accented syllables take substantially more time than unaccented ones. This is perhaps one reason accentual verse fell out of fashion.

Rhythmic flexibility in GGK comes from variation in the position of the accent, and from variation in the number of unaccented syllables, though that latter quantity does not vary much. Each of the long lines in GGK comprises two halflines. The first halfline has two accents, which may be written with the symbol / and two unaccented strings, which may be written with the symbol x. These occur in every possible arrangement: //xx, /x/x, /xx/, x//x, x/x/ and xx//. The second halfline has two accents but only one unaccented string, and two arrangements of these occur: /x/ and x//.

Typically both accented syllables in the first halfline alliterate with the first, but not the second, accented syllable in the second halfline, though sometimes the alliteration is carried by a first, unaccented, syllable of the word containing the accent. It is not uncommon also for the first halfline to contain additional, unaccented, alliterating words.

Each unaccented string consists of a pair of unstressed syllables. Unpaired unaccented syllables do not count for metrical purposes, except when a metrically defective halfline can be made regular by understanding a notional extra syllable. This most often happens at the end of the first halfline, where the pause, as it were, stands in for a syllable. Most second halflines end with a single unstressed syllable, which is not counted metrically, any more than the eleventh syllable that ends about two thirds of Chaucer's 'pentameters'.

The examples of scansion that follow should make the principles clear:

	Siþen þe sege & þe assaut watʒ sesed at Troye,	x/x/	/x/
	Þe borʒ brittened & brent to brondeʒ & askeʒ,	x/x/	/x/
	Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wroʒt,	/x/x(1)	/x/
	Watʒ tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe;	/x/x	/x/
5	Hit watʒ Ennias þe athel, & his highe kynde,	x/x/	x//
	Þat siþen depreced prouinces, & patrounes bicome	x//x(2)	/x/
	Welneʒe of al þe wele in þe west iles,	/xx/	x//
	Fro riche Romulus to Rome ricchis hym swyþe,	x/x/	/x/
	With gret bobbaunce þat burʒe he biges vpon fyrst,	x/x/	/x/
10	& neuenes hit his aune nome, as hit now hat;	/xx/(2)	x//
	Ticius to Tuskan & teldes bigynnes;	/x/x(1)	/x/
	Langaberde in Lumbardie lyftes vp homes;	/x/x	/x/
	& fer ouer þe French flod Felix Brutus	/xx/(3)	/x/(4)
	On mony bonkkes ful brode Bretayn he setteʒ	x/x/	/x/
	1. a single syllable before the caesura counts as 2. 2. a syllabic resonant is discounted. 3. there is more than one way to scan this a-line; of the two ways that don’t involve supplying an extra syllable, this is the commoner form. 4. a notional syllable must be supplied after ‘Felix’.

The fact that we have collarbones and horses don't means that, unlike horses, we don't have to breathe in synchrony with the motions of our forelimbs. But just because we don't have to doesn't mean we don't, and observation suggests it may be more natural when we do. Looking at the (mostly women) tennis players who strike the ball with a grunt or squeal suggests that there is something irresistible about emphatic vocalization when an emphatic gesture is being made.
It's the same impulse with marching songs - probably popular in all cultures that are fond of marching; is it a coincidence that narrative verse tends to adopt the same rhythm? Reciting Virgil, for example, one gets through about 10 lines in a minute – 60 feet, that is to say, each of which consists of two parts: what the Greeks originally called the thesis (setting down of the foot) and the arsis (lifting of the foot – during which process, of course, the other foot was being set down). That means 60 double paces a minute, in 2/4 time. That is the rate of march Napoleon prescribed for his armies.
The Old English line reads at about 14 lines a minute – four accents in each line, 56 double paces, in other words, compared with the 55 which was the standard of the British army (maybe French soldiers had shorter legs). Middle English accentual verse is the same – and like Old English verse is readily analysed as following a basic 4/4 time in which most marches are composed.
Chaucer, Milton, though writing in a different convention, also give us verse that reads at about 15 lines a minute and often provides a 4-accented line.

Improvised while walking along this morning – a translation of Horace Odes 1, xxxviii:

Look, boy – I’m not a fan of fancy stuff.

Wear hothouse roses on my head?

I’d just as soon be dead.

Plain myrtle is enough

For you to serve, and me to drink the wine

Under the trellised vine.

Some correspondence about Oxford today made me revisit my Oxford journal from 3 years ago – some observations not without interest;

Air travel brings out the worst in me - I think it's like what they tell me of childbirth, that you repress the horror of the process because you're so delighted with the result. Some notes - bus trip revives memories of English summer: the size of trees, the omnipresent greenness. Walked to North Oxford, saw Murray's house (OED man), lots of Victorian family houses - big light rooms, redbrick, some carved, some hung tiles. Met a gardener who let us wander through gardens on college property, climbing roses, many vivid red, lilies, privet hedges, lilac everywhere. Back to Exeter College - although closed to the public, a porter showed us around. Morris tapestry of adoration of the Magi in the chapel - interesting composition with central angel and balance of holy family on one side and magi on the other, but one notices that the head of the Christ child is placed so as to divide the length and breadth of the painting in golden section.

'Morris' room with a number of drawings by Burne Jones, pages from the Kelmscott Chaucer and Froissart, Morris curtains and upholstery. Did various things in arvo - searched for pork pies with little success. Early evening looked through Blackwells, unimpressed with 2nd hand section. Ale in pub: nice food, real ale still tastes like slop. Early back to b&b - English plumbing no better; strange dreams.

Tuesday: off to West Oxford to look for laundrette - found church of St Frideswide with unfinished tower and uncarved window corbels - waiting for the money that never came. Walked along the towpath a couple of k's - wondered how barges passed each other. Great unsolved mystery. Poppies and cornflowers and walled gardens with gates onto the path.

Everywhere enormous horse chestnuts. Family of swans on a backwater. Then back through Jericho - once meaner part of North Oxford - a bit like Newtown but more upmarket now - a place where academics might live. Drank cider in a pub, saw cross in the road where Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer were martyred. Reflected that 3 archbishops of Canterbury had suffered martyrdom. Wandered through Blackwells, met a Danish boy who had seen the film of Beowulf and thought, 1 that the poem was in a Scandinavian language, and 2 that it would be like the film. Disabused him. A copy of Gesta Francorum resistible at £80. Picked up copy of Naevius and found Saturnian verses very stimulating. They are clearly a five stress accentual metre with a caesura after the third accent. Very like the long lines in Beowulf, and with plenty of analogues in GGK. Wondered if anything had been written about Saturnians lately. In my memory, people seemed at a loss to understand them. Dined in same pub as last night, to sleep early, strange dreams.

Wednesday: To London for 2 reasons - to keep A awake by walking him round all day, and to let him show off about his knowledge of London.

Coffee in Cafe Diana where paparazzi used to lurk for a glimpse of Lady Di, then along Kensington Palace Gardens. Had forgotten the sheer scale and weight of London masonry and the amplitude of the spaces. Through Hyde Park to Mayfair.

Saw shop in New Bond Street where A had helped a friend choose an £8000 rock for his intended. Demonstrators outside the Burmese embassy - told them we were with them and they were pleased. To Parliament Square, cheered by statue of Cromwell. Then to the legal district where walked through Middle Temple - astounding gardens once more - red roses of a colour I haven't seen in Australia and many of them.

Temple church with tombs of Knights Templars, rooms of some of A's friends here and there. Bought a dress shirt with a higher collar than any I have, which might make me look a trifle distinguished, I fancy. To St Pauls, which didn't take my breath away as much as at first, but staggering nevertheless. Later to St Bartholomew the Greater - what a contrast to St Pauls - a place of amazing weight of years: dark, solemn, mouldering. Wat Tyler was brought here fatally wounded. Popular place for weddings, apparently, though hard to see why. Would be good for a funeral. Lunched, by the way, at the Cheshire Cheese, one of Johnson's hangouts (his main one, the Mitre Tavern, is no longer with us). Surprisingly untouristy, a good meal and beer, nothing has been cleaned, changed, etc, since about 1850.

Thursday: To London again to lunch with K: still the same bright and sparkly person, but I wondered how different she might have been if there had been an intimate relation at the centre of things for her. We are molluscs, not shells, I think, and need to touch each other's softness. I felt there was too much shell. Touched on some serious matters, but briefly. She was surprised at the marriage of some common acquaintances (long since, I might say), which to me had been clearly a matter of mutual lust. A little sad to feel that this was a foreign idea to K. But nevertheless, 'the heart out of the bosom is never given in vain', and from her I had the valuable lesson that for a relationship to work, love is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Walked along South Bank dodging buskers, clowns, mimes, musicians, and other totally rejectable flotsam - reflected how everything we had seen the previous day was something you would wholeheartedly embrace, whereas the world of markets, performers, shysters etc you would totally reject. Sat on the grass outside the Abbey while K showed L a superior way of tying shoelaces.

I improvised this clerihew:

Westminster Abbey

Is looking shabby:

The towers are quite clean

But most of the rest is positively green.

Then to a wine bar with Alice, a 2nd cousin's cousin once removed whom I last saw just over 30 years ago (she is 31). We were jolly over a bottle of wine.

Friday: L to hairdresser etc. Noticed hairdresser in George St called Toni and Guy as in North Sydney. Had not thought of hairdressers as international organisations. Walked to Oxford Castle and climbed mound, marvelling at works of engineering people managed in those days (1071). Two large trees on the top like planes but with shinier, darker, smaller leaves and different bark. Guessed they were sycamores, which was confirmed by a man I talked to on the way down. Walked round past Nuffield - well done on the whole with lovely view through the gates of rectangular lily pond, but the detailing on the windows less than satisfactory and I thought the proportions of the chapel tower were all wrong. Coming down Turl Street came face to face with Louise. Much hugging and talk. She is moving back to Inner West and will appear more at medieval functions and reading groups. Met L for lunch and afterwards to University Parks (enormous and v. beautiful) and looked at Keble where the Victorian brickwork is as engaging as ever, though considered an outrage in its day.

Saw Natural History Museum and dodo, which was smaller than I expected - only previous acquaintance being through Tenniel's illustration. Then Wadham where there is a Romeo & Juliet in the garden - we might go. Reminded of Midsummer Night's Dream in Sancta quad on a freezing night. Wall of Wadham well proportioned for getting your girl back in after curfew. You would lean your bike against the wall, the girl stands on the saddle, then on your shoulders, from where her hands can reach the parapet and there is a convenient string course for her feet. Climbing into Jesus, on the other hand, you would be lucky not to break your leg. Ate too much in the evening and went to sleep during Master Chef. L dizzy - I think virus may have got into her ears. Thought more about K: it seems to me that when we reach adulthood we have done all the growing we can do by ourselves and can only continue to grow through our love for other people. Dreamt about L and how she outshone others and woke about 6 to a grey morning.

Saturday: A arrived mid-morning. Tour of colleges, specially Univ. Saw portrait of William Jones. To Christchurch - chapel with Burne Jones windows of St Cecilia and dining hall where A suggested lion's heads in the frieze inspiration for Cheshire Cat. Seemed plausible. Their main quad too big - UQ-like, and so unusable. Millions of kiddies everywhere. Why? What could a 13 yr old get out of the experience? v. mysterious.

Went punting on the Cherwell - A clearly very good at it. Rather delightful way to spend time. Bumped another punt and caused woman steering it to fall in, which was a cheery note. Drink in Turf - pub down a narrow passage. Jane Burden and Elizabeth Siddall born here in same block. v. small mean houses.
In evening called on oldest livng Univ graduate (98) who is cousin of Janet’s. Powerful smell of urine. He is Dawkins fan, which I find superficial. A countered with Spong. Seems to me that reverence for whatever principle has caused us to be here and experience delights that we do is inescapable. And love which makes it possible to grow beyond our single petty molluscine shells. Then to dinner with David T and Andrew I (A's schoolfriends) and their respective girlfriends. Saw rock. Andrew spotted his girlfriend at a party, chased her to Oxford, in due course proposed. Take that, Dawkins! There is a need for clickingness betweeen people that transcends the sexual urge. Sex in such cases is a sacramental affirmation of that larger unity. Walked back to hotel a long way in rain. Hope L's cold not aggravated. So to long and dreamless sleep.

Sunday. Morning prayer at Christchurch - first hymn was Keble's 'New every morning is the love / Our wakening and uprising prove', which resonated very well with my thoughts of yesterday. Preacher had old-fashioned superior voice with 2x2x2 vowel system. Reader of the Epistle, on the other hand - also a woman - pre-glottalized at least one consonant and had a back a. After the service drank foul coffee courtesy of the cathedral. Afterwards met Maureen and Michael (friends) and A showed us through New College. Remarkable gardens with lavender a bright purplish blue I don't think we have in Australia. A few foxgloves beginning. Remains of old town walls with arrow slits. Through Univ again where I saw William Jones memorial. Down past Christchurch meadow with hay bales and then swampland along an avenue of handsome trees Maureen said were limes. No-one in a position to disagree. Lunch at Head of the River pub. Drank bitter on 'when in Rome' principle. Still disgusting. After lunch through Christchurch (again) - fine fan vaulting outside dining hall and portraits of assorted dignitaries. Dodgson near door, Gladstone at other end looking cranky.
On way out ran into Stewart T - 2nd ex-OE scholar of mine in one week. He was hurrying to evensong. L and I ourselves lured into St Michael's Northgate by promise of choral evensong. Turned out to be choral Eucharist which was a bit of a let-down because I expected it to be sung, which it wasn't. Last hymn was 'angularis fundamentum'. Translation not one I knew, but something to feel located in the tradition of Venantius Fortunatus (if that's indeed who wrote it) and philosophical position of greatest minds of millennia. Urged by member of congregation we got talking to to look at font, where Shakespeare had been a godfather. Seemed unlikely to me. Considering that yesterday I was mistaken for an eminent Shakespearean scholar, feel I can speak with some authority. Anthony went off to do washing. An early night after a perfect day.

Monday. A off early for his mini-pupillage. Misses breakfast, poor boy, which here is v. good. L and I did different things in morning - being still in theological mode I bought Spong book and started to read. Feel I am going to disagree with him - obviously superstition, ignorance and prejudice have no place in religion, but to me central fact is that reality is irreducible and fitting it to our understanding is like putting an orange in a paper bag - not a close fit and pointless spare capacity. There is an incomprehensibility deep down things - unthinkable and ineffable as the phrase has it. Not to reject science, which would be fatuous, but to realize it is an outgrowth of our system of understanding. For lunch L and I bought fresh rolls in a shop opposite Univ full of prosciutto and mozzarella and other modern ingredients. Ate sitting on Magdalen bridge near boat hire place. Raining on and off. Walked to Harris Manchester which was closed but entered with workmen like Jap subs into Sydney Harbour. Asked to see chapel and they even showed us how to switch on the lights. Will be a sad day when L loses her charm. On entering became clear we were in an alternative England. A told us later that HM is only non-conformist college in Oxford. Transferred from Lancashire in 1890s and reflected whole world of dissent, workers' education, the beginnings of socialism etc. Superb windows by Morris & co - virtues down one side, the other a wonderful set in three pairs of the 6 days of creation, the 6th being particularly fine with crowds of pre-Raphaelite angels with red wings. Given by 'the heartbroken parents' of a boy who died at age 20. Central figure of end window is Everyman, flanked by evangelists. Went back to office where woman in charge insisted we should see the library and phoned the librarian to come and let us in. Window with Wedgwood, Priestley, etc. In History section it looked to me as if they catered for a fairly lowbrow kind of undergraduate. Long talk with assistant librarian who told us they concentrate on mature age and educationally disadvantaged students. Later stopped for a drink at tables in an open yard with half-timbering above. Reminded L of set for The Student Prince. A back earlier than we thought and v. cheerful. He had expected to be daunted, but half of the barristers he saw in action were idiots - clearly he can find a place in one half or the other. The bus he will catch tomorrow serves croissants and OJ on the journey, apparently, so that is a plus. Dined at an Indian place A knew. L a bit better having seen a doctor and got antibiotics, even if it did cost £60. So to bed.

Tuesday. Out to buy a stamp. L recommended WH Smith where I fell foul of the English passion for queuing. Sits oddly with their total disregard of 'don't walk' signs. Walking up St Giles ran into Jenny G (former colleague) who told me she'd enjoyed mii. This was gratifying. Made polite excuses for further meeting. Back along St John Street - a row of blank C18 facades, some with pillars. Turner lived in one - somehow had never associated him with Oxford. Noticeable how lower stonework is always in worse shape, no doubt due to rising damp. Had urge to climb AS tower of St Michael's, but repressed it. Fat pigeons in churchyard. Later met Gill and David - Alice's parents and 2nd cousins' cousins - and we went to the Eagle and Child for lunch, mainly out of curiosity as it was a hangout of the Inklings. A bit of a dive, I thought, and food a fair way under par, though that seemed a minority opinion. David drove us out to Bicester - a complete non-event of a place, though presumably there are Roman remains somewhere. A told us afterwards that it is where Oxford people go for factory outlets. Then to Islip, a pretty small town, birthplace of the Confessor. A plain old church under stone tiles, earliest bits C12, I think. Then home. Finished reading Spong book in evening. Diagnosis is right, I think, but remedy is wrong. A more medieval view of the relationship between the letter and the significance is to me more productive. In particular I think he misreads Jung on the subject of the shadow. Acknowledging your own darker tendencies is not the same as embracing them, and love, however unconditional, still leaves room for correction. We love partly to make one another better. But enough on this subject. Tomorrow, it seems, to Pemberley we are to go.

Wednesday: Set off early for Kelmscott wearing panama in honour of occasion. First a big bus, then after a long wait a smaller one which rocketed through narrow lanes in deep countryside. Wide fields of stubble with corn now and then. Lechlade, our terminus, turned out to be quite a way from Kelmscott, but L's charm worked its magic, and a woman we got talking to in a charity shop offered to drive us. The house was just as you expect with Morris textiles everywhere, furniture by Philip Webb, etc, etc. Among the artefacts the thing that took my fancy most, I think, was an incredibly lame set of 4 tiles by Burne Jones depicting the judgement of Paris. Designed for the Great Exhibition, but rejected. Shows the judges had good taste. Face of Juno is clearly Janey Morris, but bodies of goddesses make them look like 14 year old schoolgirls changing for sport. Some nice brass platters from Iceland. Just another interesting house, in other words - except that the resonances of the books were everywhere. The attics that the narrator of NfN found dusty and empty with discarded children's playthings, the path where Ellen led the narrator to the house, the little stream where they drew the boat up.

I could even fancy in the Tapestry Room (Rossetti's studio) that I was at the window where Walter watched the Lady and the King's Son walking naked in the moonlight. It was through Morris's imagination that the place became more than just a house. We walked 100 yards down to the Thames and the little promontory where the haymakers greeted the boating party. Back in late afternnon past the church - v. plain and quite like the church at Islip with thick Norman pillars. Here they held the harvest feast while the narrator gradually slipped back to the present. Grave of Morrises outside. We would have had time to walk back to Lechlade, but one of the volunteers from the house pulled up and offered a lift. Perhaps charmed by sight of L's back. Home about 8 with a couple of tea towels and many memories.

Thursday: On the loose this morning while L caught up with people and did washing. Lured into antique and craft market where badly bought a 1908 edition of The Phoenix and the Carpet at ridiculous expense. In the afternoon took bus to the Trout at Wolvercote and lunched looking over the river. 2 women trying ineffectually to land from a punt. Walked back along the Thames path about 4k. Ducks and little ducklings, and a field of geese we had to walk through. Thought they were sheep at a distance.

Beside the path, ruins of Godstow Abbey - just a curtain wall and the shell of the Prioress's chapel. A signboard said the nuns were notorious for providing comfort to young Oxford clerks. To the railway station past a house wall laid in English bond with those deep apricot-coloured bricks. Such things lift the spirit. Discovered in the morning that Ordnance Survey 1:100,000 maps not still published, which is rather a shame - makes my collection all the more worth having even though they are falling apart with much use. Bought maps covering where we went yesterday, and interested to see just where Kelmscott etc were in relation to other places. In evening K rang for a heart to heart with L, who later went out to a concert. A came in and gave us a full account of his legal doings, and he and I went out together so he could borrow some money. Got talking in the pub to a couple from Adelaide and swapped travel impressions for half an hour or so. They had been in Cornwall and were heading to the Lake district. I said days were longer the further north you go, whereas he said they were longer the further west you go, which I suppose is understandable from an Adelaide perspective. Came home and watched a show about teenagers desperate to have babies while L improved her mind at baroque concert. To bed about half past ten. During night thought of ending for short story, but not clear whether it will make required number of words. Time will tell.

Friday: Walking around, came upon Ashmolean Museum (art & archeology) which was closed, but shop was open and full of interesting things. Some postcards with images attributed to Hiroshige which I would have sworn were by Hokusai. Bought L a small vase of a particularly attractive blue. They have the Alfred Jewel, and I would have been sorely tempted to buy a replica if they had one, but they didn't. Clearly the Ashmolean will be a must-see if I am in Oxford again. Raining hard all morning with sporadic thunder. Noticed footscrapers in St John St, once v. necessary, I would think. Some broken with just stubs remaining. A man rolling his own in a doorway, something I haven't seen for a while. Past Keble, sheltering now and then as rain got heavier. Became quite wet.
After lunch moved our stuff to Univ guest room allegedly once occupied by Clintons. Quite a job manhandling cases along a warren of narrow corridors. No sign of Monica, but still hoping. Room looks out onto enclosed garden with clipped privet hedges. In late afternoon met Anne (L's cousin) & husband Michael at Summertown in North Oxford. Pronounced Zammertuin, as if Dutch. They drove us to where they once lived in Stanton St John, a village only 8k from Oxford but along country road quite out of sight of houses. Their former house v. pretty with climbing roses etc, but village on much higher ground than Oxford and bitterly cold. Reminded me of Mars in Out of the Silent Planet with warm valleys and freezing airless uplands. Good hot meal in pub v. welcome. Back late and locked out of college, but Anthony did seigneurial thing and banged on windows till porter came and let us in. Glad we didn't have to climb over wall. Dreamt that L and I were in Cambridge and she told me that as a young woman she had to get out of a college by swimming the river. She was a bit shamefaced about it. Should have mentioned yesterday how we were struck by Constablesque quality of vistas as we walked along the Thames - huge skies, fields stretching to a horizon of trees, and distant spires here and there.

Saturday: Getting into glad rags for graduation ceremony - unpacked new shirt, doing best to remove all pins. New suit, new waistcoat - felt like new man. Then found best silk tie had been stolen - it was in its box in the outside compartment of my suitcase. Thank heavens I still have my camel suit. Panic call to A, who needless to say travels with selection of silk ties appropriate for use of gentleman on any occasion. Then queued for about an hour to get into the Sheldonian Theatre.

Lucky it was fine - who knows what they do if it rains. Building (early work by Wren) is D-shaped, with big doors in the middle of the straight side, and the V-C sits opposite. Graduands sit on the flat and the first tier. We were up a staircase at the back of the second tier, and then there is another stair up to the gods, very stuffy under the flat ceiling. One woman fainted, others had vertigo. Ceiling depicts 'the triumph of the Arts and Sciences over Envy, Rapine and brutish scoffing Ignorance'. Too far away for me to see. Ceremony certainly not designed for people with short attention span and made you very conscious that C17 people, for whom seating was designed, were shorter than we are. But you got into the swing of it after a while. All in Latin, rattled off in fluent schoolboy pronunciation. Latin names of colleges can be quite silly. Also puzzling bits, like when MAs kneel and are tapped on the head with the New Testament. Unlike in Sydney, graduands wear clothes of their present status, then when admitted to the degree they go out through a side door and re-enter later through the main doors in their robes, when the Dean of their college presents them to the V-C.

Afterwards an infinity of photo opportunities, and lunch in Univ dining hall. L bonded with the mother of a new D.Phil from a staunch Labour family who remembered sitting in the House of Commons in 1945 to see the Labour government installed. Best summer pudding I've had - quite sour and v. flavoursome with lots of different berries. In the evening up to far North Oxford to party with Jess (the other student in A's couse at Univ) and her family and other new graduates etc. Jess known from photos but good to meet her - tall and blonde and nice-looking with humorous mouth. House they had borrowed - 3 storey terrace with attic in new development - you would have thought late Victorian. You cross the canal from a Victorian/Edwardian precinct, and the only giveaway is the technique in the brickwork. Brought a couple of bottles and ate much bread, pate, cheese, etc. Cheese has been quite a theme these last 2 weeks - made me reflect that perhaps it has always been average English person's main source of protein. Jess's parents having N American sweet tooth also provided sweets and soft drinks - if there had been mineral water I mightn't have drunk so much wine. S African wine not bad, whereas Californian drop at Univ lunch on far side of acceptable. Parents v. nice - father sociology/social theory prof from BC. Had much academic talk. Set off back to college at 10 or so, A proposing to swing on to barbecue. After a long walk found ourselves in a scary lane that went on and on round corners and between high walls, but then suddenly brought us out near Nuffield. Phone to A to remind us of entry code for Univ, then off for last turn of Clinton sheets. Dreamt about a student complaining of low marks for essay, so glad to wake up to grey day. Yesterday best weather yet.

Sunday: Off to University Church which promised sung Eucharist, but it was not to be, and communion in one kind only owing to swine flu. Not much good on dates, but judged church to be ca C14, though with baroque porch with twisty pillars stuck on at the street entrance. North windows of nave and clerestory windows on south side clear glass, which made it very light. Hymn book fell open at St Patrick's breastplate, which I took for a good sign. Heard little of sermon, though L and A said I would have liked it. Had a sudden rush of affection for K, which made me smile. Reflected on forms of prayer - whether reiteration of formulas helps straighten the mind and iron out kinks. Must read what Johnson says on subject. Good literature does the same thing, I think, but more slowly and you have to be exposed to it. Perhaps long exposure of English to Prayer Book liturgy has done something for them, because I think that as people go they are a fairly sane lot. Appreciated again how good it is to have memorials set in floor where they get worn away: no doubt slaughter at Battle of Hastings was sad, but the names mean nothing to us now, nor should they. A small choir of women, very beautiful when unaccompanied, I thought. Afterwards had coffee in shop under the church, dodging the free coffee on offer which was likely to be terrible. Looked at prints. Some nice Japanese woodblocks, though ones I liked were in the high hundreds. Then to lunch in the Bear, nearest pub to Univ, with a trio of A's friends who were well into a drinking session and seemed set to continue. This is where A and Jess came to blow off steam after exams. L and I now in Holiday Inn near Heathrow ready for morning flight. Sweetest memory I think strolling through Middle Temple garden in sunlight with L & A eating strawberries. Tomorrow to fresh woods etc - or rather familiar ones.

Yesterday's poem put me in mind of a version from half a century ago:

Who is that slender, scented boy whose embrace

You’re yielding to at the moment, Pyrrha, lying

In some rosy grotto, for whom I saw you tying

That blonde hair up with such unstudied grace?

Soon, when the storm clouds gather, he’ll complain

And curse his luck as his shattered convoy sinks

With all its load of love, though now he thinks,

In his golden haze of pleasure, you’ll remain

As dumbly amorous as the first time he met you –

The breeze is no more fickle, goodness knows!

I feel an anticipatory pang for those

Who gape at you, but haven’t tried to get you.

I’ve hung my shipwrecked finery on the wall –

It’s only a miracle I got home at all.

While the sonnet is not without its beauties, it's flabby, I think – it doesn't have Horace's snap (not to mention crackle and pop).

Horace Odes 1, v is famously untranslatable. Even Milton couldn't make much of it, so what chance does anyone else have? The muse that descends when you're awake at 4 in the morning suggested this version:

There’s a savour of sex in the air –

Some boy’s been enjoying you there

            With pashes and pushes

            Between the rose bushes;

And now you’re re-doing your hair.

When his goldilocks sits on his knees

He’ll be thinking she’s easy to please,

            But your true love, dear Pyrrha,

            Resides in the mirror –

For others you swing like the breeze.

Though zephyrs are filling his sail,

He’ll soon have good reason to wail:

            With fortune deserting

            His heart will be hurting –

A vessel capsized by the gale.

If another should see you and sigh,

I’d look on with a tear in my eye;

            There’s the shine, there’s the sparkle –

            Then comes the debacle.

Too harsh? Let them give you a try.

Those clothes that are hung in the shrine,

Still dripping with seaweed, are mine:

            The god of the ocean

            Has earned my devotion:

He brought me to land – and I’m fine.

If you want all the word-play and double entendres, you'll have to look at the Latin:

Quis multa gracils te puer in rosa

perfusus liquidis urget odoribus

            grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?

            cui flavam religas comam,

simplex munditiis? heu quotiens fidem

mutatosque deos flebit et aspera

            nigris aequora ventis

            emirabitur insolens,

qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,

qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem

            sperat, nescius aurae

            fallacis! miseri, quibus

intemptata nites. me tabula sacer

votiva paries indicat uvida

            suspendisse potenti

            vestimenta maris deo.

It's very noticeable as I go around how so many of the people who are wearing a colour just now are wearing red. An index of the social mood? I'd suggest red is the colour people turn to when it seems good times are turning sour – and a lot of people right now seem to think something is turning sour, though just what that something is it would be hard to say. And so people are bringing out those red coats, jackets, scarves, backpacks, you name it.
As and if things get worse, we'd expect the mood to move towards orange and then yellow, though in more sombre shades, so the yellow is likely to be realized as brown.
It's the endless cycle between the yang (active) and the yin (passive) and back again by way of the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. Green is the fairy colour, the dream colour; blue is for reason, rationalism, conservatism (ever hear of a true blue conservative?) – but conservatives proper and conservationists have a lot in common.
Does this cycle of moods drive the economy, or vice versa – or are they both driven by something else? Who knows? But people are not wearing red for no reason.

Thinking about narrative and such things, it seems to me that the ultimated conceptual/perceptual categories are participant and circumstance. The element -p-c which belongs to neither category is that which opens up the situation, the intertextual, that of which the perception makes things new. Dare I call it the becoming? Its grammatical equivalent is the verb. The element +p-c is the behaver, the active subject, the participant which is not constrained. The element -p+c is the surrounding circumstances, the backdrop, that against which the dynamic perception plays out. And the element +p+c is the participant that is drawn into the action, which becomes a quality of that action.
These four elements may be augmented in various ways. To give the augmented Jakobsonian scheme we introduce a third, symbolic dimension, so that a textual function stands as counterpart within the text to the intertextual, a phatic function corresponds to the behavioural (expressive), a poetic function corresponds to the referential, and a metalingual function to the conative.
This eightfold way will also recall the combinations of Lacan's symbolic, real and imaginary and Halliday's verbal categories (relational = symbolic, existential = symbolic & real, etc, etc).

Monday, April 30. Some dynamic driving on my part, L having previously driven, and we were back in Oxford soon after lunch. Passed through Nether Wallop, but other Wallops escaped us, or we them. Only made one major mistake. Many minor ones were committed along the way, since the positions of the indicators and wipers were the reverse of normal - more than once I cut in to the surprise of an English driver after signalling with the windscreen wipers. L urged me to repeat after her 'the indicators are on the left', but I thought that would be beneath me. To the surprise of both of us we managed what we had to do in Oxford without taking a single wrong turn. Then it was just Heathrow and wait for the plane. Which was delayed. Two passengers had failed to turn up, so their baggage had to be found and the bombs it contained unloaded. In the course of which, a forklift driver drove into the side of the plane and made a hole in it. We sit for an hour, while the captain reports consultation between Qantas and Airbus Industrie etc, etc. In the end, it seems, they decide to put on a piece of sticky tape and carry on as if nothing had happened. Doesn't do wonders for your confidence. The meals, however, were as nice as anything I'd eaten recently, which is something new. Lots of empty seats, due no doubt to $A - after Singapore, L and I could have 3 seats each. Back now, tired but happy.

Sunday, April 29. Wet and wild. Drove to Broadoak, a hamlet in the middle of nowhere, along deep lanes strewn with broken branches, foliage meeting overhead, banks starred with flowers of wild garlic. A small church, late C19 and very plain - diamond windows with glass of a couple of pale colours. All through the service, the wind slammed against them, and once wrenched open the door, sending a flood of rain inside. Few in the congregation under about 50, which didn't seem a good sign, but all enthusiastic. Afterwards to lunch with Nerissa and David J - our one time landlords at Church Farm Cottage - I noticed that at midday the thermometer in Nerissa's car was reading 6.5 degrees. Later to Church Farm Cottage itself and afternoon tea. Tomorrow we leave.

Saturday, April 28. Shower apparatus, though very beautiful, also very stupid (though L couldn't work the one at Maureen's either). Think you and your mistress are supposed to loll in the bath and take turns spraying one another, but that's not what we did. We didn't lounge in our fluffy bathrobes sipping champagne, either. Couples we saw at breakfast didn't look like master-mistress pairings. One of breakfast options was snails, so naturally had to order them. Cooking turned out to be undistinguished, so glad we hadn't had dinner last night. Then to Bridport, walking around the town, savouring the things we remembered, bemoaning unnecessary changes. In particular, where Hodges' bakery used to be is now a health food shop and advertises 'natural remedies'. As L said, 'what could be better for you than a lardy cake?' In particular, bakeries and teashops are now very few - they used to be full of women taking a break from the day's shopping, but now that all women capable of independent locomotion are at work, there is no custom. L bought an early E. Nesbit in a 2nd hand bookshop; I was tempted by some Angela Brazils, but reflected that I probably had them already, or might as well have, Ms Brazil being a repetitive kind of author.
Mike & Gail F and Gail's sister Vanessa for morning tea - Vanessa's daughter Buffy used to stay with us when she was doing Vet, Moss Vale being a rather long commute. Now ministers to the cats and dogs of Hampshire, and does a lot of operating, Vanessa tells us, because her partner in the practice doesn't care for that side of things. Maureen had just been telling us a horror story about their dog and an ingrowing grass seed, so felt Hampshire would be all the better for Buffy's ministrations.
In the evening to Powerstock Cider Festival, in village hall. A very vernacular event. Red cheeks obligatory, shaved heads/leather jackets optional. 20 or so local ciders you could try - crowd thick and animated. Most little different from poison, but there were two I liked. An authentic Cornish pasty with leathery pastry and a couple of sausage rolls helped line the stomach. As evening wore on, cider makers started giving it away, L & I danced to a loud band. Then home, having laid a good foundation for a headache.

Friday, April 27. Sunny first thing in the morning, and warmer, but soon turned to rain again. To Bath to lunch with Jeff (nephew) and partner Liz, whom L hadn't met and was keen to. Though narrow, part of the road followed the Fosse Way, which is the sort of discovery that is always warming (and a village was called Street on the Fosse, unimaginatively enough). With Jeff and Liz to a new bakery they had wanted to try out - Jeff hankers for nice bread after his years in Belgium. What they were baking looked nice, though most of what we would have liked to order was sold out. Much talk. Liz involved with reporting triathlon for the Olympics - she's a triathlete herself. L keen to reacquaint herself with Bath Abbey. The memorials there have a perhaps unique coherence, because they all fall within a fairly narrow timespan - you wouldn't be far wrong if you said they were all people Jane Austen could have known. L disappointed to find that the fan vaulting was C19 - Abbey was actually a ruin until restoration began at the end of C16, and the present roof is the second since then. The church didn't count for much until Bath became fashionable.
South then across Somerset until suddenly it was all so much more beautiful and warmer and more springlike and we were in Dorset. Found a room in a fairly upmarket place in Beaminster where bed is wide enough to sleep crossways. For 5 people at a time. Walking round the town, puzzled by streams of children coming out of all the alleyways - like the Pied Piper. Concluded there must be a disco on at the High School or something, but later it seemed this is just what they do on a Friday night, milling round in groups without any particular purpose. Thought it was a bad sign. Cuffs of my trousers have been perpetually wet for the last month, walking in the non-stop downpours - hope to dry them tonight in the spacious wardrobe provided. Shall I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled?

Thursday, April 26. Set out to drive to Bower Hinton in Somerset where we were invited to lunch. As usual, L and I had different ideas about how long it would take, and high words were exchanged. She said 3 hours, I said no more than 2, so we agreed to allow two and a half, and to leave at 9.30. In the event it took 2 and a quarter, but we didn't get away till 10.15 due to the incompetence of the car hire people, who claimed to have lost the booking due to a computer glitch. Somehow it's always hopeless people whose computers play up. Left my hat behind in Oxford, having parked it on top of the wardrobe on the grounds that wet cold Oxford was not worthy for the display of such a fine piece of headgear. Through Beedon, maybe - quite likely, I think - the site of Mons Badonicus, past Stonehenge, and to BH at last with faultless navigation. Barely arrived when Maureen and Michael B (old Dorset friends) asked us to spend the night, which was not a thing to refuse. Lunch of melanzane al forno and many glasses of red wine, in the evening a freshly made soup of fennel, cauliflower, broccoli with many more. Their garden full of spring growth - forget-me-nots, bluebells, daffodils, tulips, and a big rosemary bush all covered in blue flowers. There is a kind of small tree we see everywhere covered with pompoms of rose-pink blossom like a flowering plum, but it may be something quite different. Maureen and Michael took us to the top of Ham Hill where the warm yellow stone is quarried that so much here is built of - a hill-fort originally, but much obliterated by millennia of quarrying. From here you can probably see as many counties as your imagination can find names for. Then to their church, v small and plain complete with musicians' gallery right out of Under the Greenwood Tree reached by an outside staircase. Slept in great comfort.

Wednesday, April 25. Anzac Day. Perhaps we should get the Eurostar to France and drop in on the Western Front - I'm sure there'd be a group from my old school paying their respects. Old school activities, right wing politics, both manifestations of getting stuck in adolescence. Wondered during the night how my reaction to a work like the Birth of Venus might be describable in terms of Lacan's discourses. It's all a question of where the implied reader is to be located. If implied reader = Other = inarticulate $, then it is the discourse of the analyst where delight (a) is Agent. The payoff being S1, a new social realignment, as Production. But perhaps it is inarticulateness in the face of the work that is Production. Seems a fruitful line of thought. Is the difference between these 2 the difference between the beautiful and the sublime? A book I picked up in Blackwell's about C. S. Lewis's fantasy novels in the first 60 pages has used both the words 'scary' and 'comfy' in ordinary critical discourse. Oddly enough, these same two words came up in a discussion I was having with S about the way baby words crowded out real ones. Enough to upset your tummy!
At breakfast in the college dining room there seemed to be many fewer students than expected - surprising, as we would have thought all Oxford colleges were chock a block. Students usually in same-sex groups - they are very young, reinforcing my feelings about undesirability of them being driven into each others' arms. They have to pay for each element of the meal individually - a rasher of bacon costs 34p, I noticed - so perhaps the reason there are fewer than I might have expected is that they skip breakfast.
Went to the Ashmolean in the morning while L looked after washing. Large parties of primary school children being taken around the displays of Ancient Egypt, which I find a rather repellent civilisation. Took a long time to find the A-S collections; if the Alfred jewel was there, as they claim, I didn't see it. The whole place could do with more exposition - rather a pointless collection, I thought, taking it all round. Big surprise a reproduction of the Willendorf Venus, which turned out to be only around 7.5 cm high, whereas from pictures I'd expected something quite massive. Then to lunch with Gill and David W and Nick and Lindy P (cousins' cousins) at the White Horse. Though Nick someone I have always known about, we had never properly met, since the only other time we encountered one another (12 years ago) I couldn't really be counted as one of the company, in consequence of gastric flu (that tainted gherkin again). Nick and Lindy have been big in disadvantaged education. A pleasant afternoon, then back to St Hugh's in pouring rain. After goodbyes L and I walked round the block, admiring walls of ancient eroded red brick, much older than the college, and college lawns with tulips and daffodils. In Italy the tulips were already over. Out for a walk in the evening found an Italian place for pasta where we were the last customers (suspect the pesto was thinned with beef stock, so if you're a vegetarian, be wary). I'm not sure how the conversation turned that way, but the proprietor brought out an MS book he had written, about as thick as a house brick, which was an exhaustive English-Spanish dictionary of phrasal verbs. Also favoured us with a brief history of the English language, so we went to bed much enlightened.

Tuesday, April 24. Got ourselves to Victoria and then thrashed about a bit looking for the Oxford Tube - though we'd travelled on it a few times the precise details of where it left from seemed to have escaped us, and it's not clearly signposted (Buckingham Palace Road, Stand 10, for future reference). Then to Oxford. The road the bus takes runs almost straight, which means it passes over the Chilterns at their SW end, and then in a deep chalk cutting down into the plain of Oxford. Clouds of kestrels over the motorway. Sheep and cattle here for the first time, whereas on the London side the only livestock were horses, which seems a wasteful use of land. Fields of rape, in yellow flower. On first sight of these gentle hills you wonder how it was they held back the first wave of A-S settlement, until you think about what it would mean to fight uphill. Bus driver's vowels noticeably shifted anti-clockwise to Australian. St Hugh's, where we were booked, a long haul for suitcases, up the Banbury Road in light rain. Originally a women's college, now coed as are all except one, I think. Long corridors, lots of fire doors, and a room not a lot bigger than the friars' cells we saw in San Marco, though sans frescos by Fra Angelico. Not sure I've ever been in a student's college room before, but for £55 for the two of us, what can you expect? And how is it they have vacant rooms in term time? Could be a glum sort of life if you were a student, I rather feel, and calculated to promote precocious sexual activity - not necessarily a good thing. Back to town, and coffee in a new place A1 recommended while L revealed her plans for the rest of the week, which she claimed to have been too frightened to tell me before. Then wandered round while she did tasks of various kinds. Dinner in a pub.

Monday, April 23. A few aches during the night, and waking to find I couldn't see very well concluded another change in weather on its way. Though hard to see how weather could change any more, considering it has hardly been the same for ten minutes at a time since we got here. Over breakfast watched a squirrel annoying some pigeons in the park below our window, later went out to catch up on internet things while L made return visit to London Archives/ hairdresser. She has her voice back now, but is still coughing well.
Found internet cafe nearby in what is clearly a student precinct - vegetarian cafes, gay bookshops, all the things young people care about. By the time I emerged into the street the change had arrived - temperature dropped about 10 degrees and rain driven by blustery wind. Umbrella turned itself inside out several times and then folded into 4, a number of the ribs having snapped. Nevertheless searched out Red Lion Square and found the house where Rossettti , then Morris and Burne Jones, lived in the 50s: flat-fronted grey-yellow brick, 4 storeys with basement. Now several sets of business premises. Off to Queen Square where Morrises lived after Red House, but little original still standing. Then via The Brunswick, a shopping centre that would impress anyone that hasn't been to Westfield Tuggerah, where ditched the umbrella and bought another, returning home with a Lebanese wrap from the King of Felafel to await L's return, warm up and dry off.
Read some of a Swedish murder mystery from a series that claims to have sold 10 million copies worldwide - I find it derivative and feeble. Ditto with Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow which made such a splash a few years ago - once you got past the fact that the hero was a gay woman Eskimo there was nothing there. Conclusion: it's easy to be a celebrated writer if you're not writing in English.
When L came back set out for evensong at Westminster Abbey - through misreading the tube map arrived late and were seated outwside the choir screen. Effect rather of looking into a secret place - inside, lit by red-shaded lamps on the desks, we could see the choir, while outside we faced the richly gilded screen and an altar with a cloth embroidered with the Latin distich 'Crux fidelis inter omnes / arbor una nobilis' - no doubt from some source well-known to everyone besides me. The music and the prayers coming out through the screen created just the feeling I had missed the previous evening. It being St George's day, the prayers were of a national character, but specifically directed to include all English people whatever their ethnicity, faith or orientation. Finished with Kipling's great anti-war hymn. L felt it showed where the mainstream C of E was these days, and it was a good place. Huge congregation, as we saw when those lucky enough to have been inside came out - not bad for Monday 5pm. Afterwards A2 took us to Jamie's Italian in Covent Garden. Parted around 9, as A1 had work to finish. Hope to see them at Christmas.

Sunday, April 22. Woke to wide pale blue sky and sunshine. Leaving shirts to wash while we set out on projected journey to Bexleyheath (Red House), could hear washing machine agitating half-heartedly in bursts of about 5 seconds. Machine comes with instruction booklet of ludicrous complexity, examples of typical weights for sheets, towels, etc, and instructions not to underload or overload the machine. As it essentially doesn't work, I don't know why they bother. How different from our own machine at home, where you just pile everything in, switch it on, and away it goes. English have never mastered anything to do with plumbing (or the 20th century at all, L would say). She wet her stockinged feet in the bathroom this morning because there is no floor waste, and the floor is graded outwards, towards the door. Yesterday, as well as being unable to work the shower, she pulled the shower-curtain fixings out of the wall. Some people might call her inept, but I blame the English.
To get to Red House, train from Waterloo past public housing of various ages - one block that L thought early C20 I thought could have been post-war. A look at the brickwork would no doubt reveal all. Speaking of brickwork, on the Circle line, which is old enough to have outdoor sections where you can get a look at the construction, I was delighted to see in an archway that the bricks were laid at 45 degrees to the direction of the tracks (and I suppose there were several such layers making up the arch and at right angles to one another). Little to be seen from the train appealed to any of the senses, though by the time we came to cuttings the embankments were now covered with a flush of lime-green leaves. Bexleyheath station offered no directions to what must be the only feature of local interest, a mini-cab driver equally ingorant. When we got to Red House, a reasonable crowd which kept on arriving seemed to show that our interest was not just a personal quirk. A red brick wall outside; inside rhododendrons, holly, a kitchen garden, and where the old orchard had been apple and pear trees still in blossom with first leaves. One old apple that had fallen still sending up sprays of rose-pink flowers. On the NW corner of the house, an espaliered pear the same from which Morris could pick fruit out the window of a small morning-room inside the front door. In the hall, big square terracotta tiles - a painted settle I thought showed Rossetti's hand - guide thought several artists probably contributed.
Little of original paintwork left inside, the house having been through several owners, But various papers and fabrics displayed. Saw another version of the Burne Jones tiles of the Judgement of Paris - goddesses still looked like a trio of year 9 schoolgirls changing for sport. Exterior charming in red brick and tile, and the angle on the south side with the well did not disappoint. Something to see the building which had so great an influence on later domestic architecture, particularly Edwardian - something like the Woolley Building a remote descendant.
Lunch in the tearoom was a gluey minestrone with a microwaved bread roll - L didn't finish. On the way back, lost our sense of direction completely, and had to take refuge in a bus that took a twisting route through endless streets of unlovely houses with pebblecrete finish to a quite different station. Deciding to ride on from Waterloo to Charing Cross was a major blunder, since our arrival coincided with finish of London Marathon. A huge scrum to get through the barriers - one was held open for runners, but neither of us could claim to be that - and then a long close-packed shuffle along underground tunnels to the platform. Would have been a good opportunity for a terrorist, but perhaps they're claustrophobic.
To choral evensong later at St Bartholomew the Great. Layout of church unusual - choir, pulpit and organ at one end, high altar at the other. Sermon by a priest I took to be Nigerian with an accent so thick I could make little of it. V high church, and I didn't think it worked, asking the congregation to combine the roles of voyeurs and participants - either the 4th wall is there or it isn't. Perhaps it was just that the high church is so out of sympathy with the impulse that gave us the great C18 and 19 hymns - the Book of Common Praise, which they used, full of lame C20 stuff. The congregation numbered 50 or so, mostly men. L said if she was looking for a man it would be one of her first ports of call. If it should come to that, I wish her luck.
What really did work was post-evensong - a blessing of the elements with antiphons sung or spoken from one end of the church to the other and an organ passage like the last trump in the middle. Sense that something important and inaccessible was occurring. Came out into the rain. I had left my far from integral umbrella at home, but we found we could get on pretty well with L's if I held the umbrella with one hand and clasped her tightly round the waist with the other and we walked in synchronised counter-step as for a 3-legged race. By King's Cross the rain had stopped, and we walked hand-in-hand down Judd Street singing the Mosman Prep school song at the tops of our voices. After that, what could have been nicer than a plate of pasta con olio e aglio followed by a Time Team special on an A-S treasure? Nothing I could think of.

Saturday, April 21. A rather disturbed night, what with the tainted gherkin. Came to me that reaction to the great paintings bears some similarity to thoughts I had about Hamlet - viz that from the point of view of narrative the audience is the hero. Not clear how this applies to looking at a painting, but the idea seems fruitful. Sunshine on waking, but still cold. To meet A and A2 - A1 and A2 I should call them, like the bananas, and A2's mother Kerry for brunch, so after many embraces walked through squares and streets to Lantana, a cafe in Fitzrovia currently highly regarded and run by Australians. A long queue outside, but A1 magic worked as usual, and we were seated straight away. Fortunately the weather held, as we were on the footpath, though a brief sprinkle brought out the shopkeepers who unwound awnings, and then wound them back in again just as quickly when the sun came out. Afterwards to National Gallery where female contingent went to see Turner exhibition while A1 and I made for permanent collection. Turned out we have the same strategy for gallery viewing, though A1, being right-handed, walks around the right-hand wall whereas I make for the left. As it turned out, we saw more Turners than the other party, though we didn't look at them, because they were on the wrong wall. Unlimited stuff, and we only saw a fraction, a single exception to our viewing policy being when A1 spotted Holbein's Ambassadors through glass doors a long way away, and we went for a closer look. Was impressed with how dead flat the impasto is, and how ultimately unnaturalistic this makes the two figures. Came out to find it was much warmer and dined at home on pork and egg pie and salad. Heavy dose of garlic made me feel a bit better.