It’s good to have some sustenance while waiting for colleagues (and Peter is a Professor, a rank I will now almost certainly never attain) to offer their opinions on one’s writing. That paper might even get finished one of these days.
Two decades of working the allotment has proven that fruit is so much easier to handle than vegetables. The plums and the various berries (black, blue, josta, logan) have all been and gone. But here is just a small portion of the last crop of the year. Anyone want some apples? We will have too many.
I notice that almost exactly three years ago, on 7/10/21, I illustrated that there were still plums on our tree (albeit being eaten by insects). This year, those fruit were all gone by the end of August. But it’s time for the apple tree to pay off. It never matches the production rate of its neighbour, but it does just fine each year. On this shot I note also the matching car behind (yes, our kitchen is that close to the road).
The plums are eaten and gone, but there is still some free food to be found in the garden. The apples are not very big and a little tart but they will do fine in a crumble. I suppose I could have moved the prominent leaf before capturing this one but hey, it’s all part of the natural vibe.
This is nothing whatsoever to do with today’s global media event, which I could not have spared the time to watch even if the desire had been there: declaring a national holiday at short notice is all well and good but it didn’t mean the jobs went away. Not least the new Mac, that is still in the process of being shaped to look as much like the old one as possible. Though no thanks to Apple, for taking away most of the useful ports on anything they shipped after about 2017. That’s another £64 to the Cupertino coffers for the umbilicus one now needs even to look at all that data sitting on the backup drive.
The absence of recent posts and the aforementioned ‘computer problems’ are here represented by a crap photo, but that just epitomises it all. Still, I’m back up and running again now, 11 days later. Kind of.
A tough assignment today. Online classes late in the afternoon then another in the evening meant I couldn’t go out. The world outside was grey and dull — though at least, still light, at approaching 8pm. This is the kind of day that will eventually kill the creative spirit in me, and thus, this blog. But here’s my best effort.
Eight and a half hours’ work today — almost all spent in online meetings. Even in the depths of lockdown I did not do such a day. These objects marked the limits of my real world. (Yes, that’s a sticker of Graham Chapman’s face stuck to the Macbook.)
Before 2020 I never minded doing online teaching, because it offered variety, and was not the only game in town. But there are limits, and I probably reached mine about this time last year. Fortunately, a sense of Real Normal has largely returned. This particular class was always designed to be an online session — when it works, use it, when not, get face-to-face. Steve, one of my PhD students, peeks his face out from his virtual cell.
We might as well all hibernate, mightn’t we. The apple tree needed pruning, though, and deepest winter is the time to do it, according to those who know. The shot reflects the greyness of the day and the other clouds, the ones that currently separate us from each other. I feel like I’m on an extended break from the rest of humanity.
Being 42 