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.