Thursday 20 December 2018

uh oh last blog was July and it is now December - should this be a five-monthly blog? It's not that I forgot exactly - several times I thought hey what about that blog, or even - this would be good material for the blog, but between that thought and the actual typing in, the finding of time to do that, life interfered and interfered and interfered - often electronically.

will the gaps get longer and longer each time? I am only coming to this now after three days of almost downtime in prep for Xmas - teaching is over, most of my colleagues are away, and I am using the hours to do things that have been left undone since September, different piles of papers left abandoned on my library floor as I half-do something and then have to cut it short for one pressing reason or another, intending to go back 'soon' - three or four or more months later in actual fact.

i subscribed to Art Review in 2018 thinking it would expand my mind in areas not normally ventured by me, but of the 8 issues of 2018 have nearly 3 still to read. It is simply too much and too big for me to catch. there is no time anymore

i have so many plans and projects i would like to follow and so little time to do so. also, this week i have been submitting my haiku to competitions and editions and realise that i probably only manage to submit haiku to one out of three Presence issues a year, and I'm supposed to be its essays and reviews editor

it makes me thankful for the run-up to Christmas, when teaching subsides and my colleagues take leave, when decorations are done and the main stimulation is not the number of emails in my inbox but the cards falling through the door which stimulates me to set to the new hands-on task of making a yuletide response. I like the way I spend the weeks of late autumn thinking of others - the opportunity to give - over-exploited of course by the capitalist economy we live in, we all know that, but nevertheless an opportunity to consider what they'd like, how to surprise them - not a last minute rush but a slow accumulation, so slow in my case that I pre-empt the Christmas advertisements. My gifts usually all bought before that carousel begins. I also like the way I am often inspired to hold a feast of one kind or another for friends, or family, or both. And the Christmas week itself, in my line of work, provides a big gap because of the shutting down of computers and offices. I cannot go to work. I have to stay home, made all the more special this year by a rediscovery of Dickens - Dombey and Son - which I am reading in short bursts, unlearning my habit of skimming.