Or so it is said. There is, I believe, a proverb that directly contradicts this one, though I cannot at present recall how it goes. I must apologize for my absence; I have been busy with exams, and things have been piling up on top of each other, various stresses exterior and interior; a habit of losing things, an unceasing treadmill of duties to attend to, certain other misfortunes, and other things, have placed me under so much stress in the last couple of weeks that I thought I might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I did actually break down at one point, but I do not think that counts as a nervous breakdown. I hope this was at least an opportunity for me to practise the cardinal virtue of Fortitude. I hope also that the reader will excuse my absence.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have thought it a good idea to compile a list of my poems on DeviantArt, so that they can be reached more easily than if you had to plough through my gallery.

Poems

No. 1. Time: [link]
No. 2. Sun and Moon: [link]
No. 3. Snow: [link]
No. 4. I Hate this Weather: [link]
No. 5. Stars: [link]
No. 6. The Seasons of the Year: [link]
No. 7. A Dark Poem: [link]
No. 8. The Forgotten Dream: [link]
No. 9. De Rerum Natura: [link]
No. 10. And we beheld his glory: [link]
No. 11. Recurrent Seasons: [link]
No. 12. On the Inception of the CRGS Philosophy Society: [link]
No. 13. Computers: [link]
No. 14. Death and Life: [link]
No. 15. Procrastination: [link]
No. 16. To the Muse of Poetry: [link]
No. 17. Nothing: [link]
No. 18. The Injured Writer: [link]
No. 19. Vicious Circle: [link]
No. 20. Loquitur anima: [link]
No. 21. Life: Sonnet: [link]
No. 22. Early Morning Stillness; or, On looking out of his window early in the morning, entranced by birdsong: [link]
No. 23. The Swan: [link]
No. 24. Fleeting Time: [link]
No. 25. My tale provokes that question: [link]
No. 26. Meteorology: [link]
No. 27. The Room: [link]
No. 28. Poetical Prose: [link]
No. 29. The Spark of Life: [link]
No. 30. Illness: [link]
No. 31. Inspiration: [link]
No. 32. To the Reader: [link]
No. 33. Sleep: [link]
No. 34. April: [link]
No. 35. On this green hillside: [link]
No. 36. What is a poet?: [link]
No. 37. Intended to be Today's Last: [link]
No. 38. Sheep: [link]
No. 39. Perspective: [link]
No. 40. It is the poet's duty: [link]
No. 41. The Red Squirrel: [link]
No. 42. The Deserted Village: [link]
No. 43. The poet, walking over hill: [link]
No. 44. EASTER TRILOGY: (1) Good Friday: [link]
(2) Easter Even: [link]
(3) Easter Day: [link]
No. 45. May: [link]
No. 46. In Imitation of Free Verse: [link]
No. 47. The Lusty Month of May: [link]
No. 48. Written during a Downpour: [link]
No. 49. Early in the Morning: [link]
No. 50. Note to BrerAnansi: [link]
No. 51. The Summer Sun: [link]
No. 52. Music, a roundelay: [link]
No. 53. Time rolls by: [link]
No. 54. Melancholia: [link]
No. 55. The Insomniac: [link]
No. 56. Hell and Heaven: [link]
No. 57. Evening: [link]
No. 58. London: a Sonnet: [link]
No. 59. Music: [link]
No. 60. English Assignment: [link]
No. 61. The End: [link]
No. 62. Homesickness?: [link]
No. 63. A Confession: [link]
No. 64. 666 Pageviews: [link]
No. 65. God moves in a mysterious way: [link]
No. 66. The Lord of the Terrible Land: [link]
No. 67. Luna: [link]
No. 68. To Ludwig van Beethoven: [link]
No. 69. 'I write these lines upon a sheet of paper': [link]
No. 70. On reading from a book: [link]
No. 71. Who would be a newsreader?: [link]
No. 72. Andantino: [link]
No. 73. Introspection: [link]
No. 74. A Colchester Nocturne: [link]
No. 75. De Morte Magni Instituti: [link]
No. 76. This Too Shall Pass: [link]
No. 77. "Real Men Don't Cry": [link]
No. 78. Proficiscere de hoc mundo: [link]
No. 79. Conscience: [link]
No. 80. A Late Evening Poem: [link]
No. 81. Sic fatus: [link]
No. 82. The Journey Home: [link]
No. 83. A Parody of Keats: [link]
No. 84. After Aquinas: [link]
No. 85. To a Book by C.S. Lewis: [link]
No. 86. Et homo factus est: [link]
No. 87. "Lies and False": [link]
No. 88. Ce qu'on entend: [link]
No. 89. The Battle of Flodden Field: [link]
No. 90. To Saint Augustine of Hippo: [link]
No. 91. The Legend of St Dorothea: [link]
No. 92. To a Seagull: [link]
No. 93. A Consolation: [link]
No. 94. A Sonnet: [link]
No. 95. Twilight: [link]
No. 96. The Killing of the King: [link]
No. 97. Sehnsucht: [link]
No. 98. Hypergraphia: [link]
No. 99. Righteous Indignation: [link]
No. 100. To Jesus Christ: [link]
No. 101. To the Mother of God: [link]
No. 102. To Our Lord at Dawn: [link]
No. 103. Some Heretics: [link]
No. 104. Answer to Prayer: [link]
No. 105. To a Day: [link]
No. 106. The Transience of Life: [link]
No. 107. Into Thy Hands: [link]
No. 108. Over the Sea: [link]
No. 109. Some More Heretics: [link]
No. 110. The Convert: [link]
No. 111. Kyrie eleison: [link]
No. 112. Ad Mariam Semper Virginem: [link]
No. 113. Oh, I do like to be a Roman Catholic: [link]
No. 114. A Prayer: [link]
No. 115. On Rabelais: [link]
No. 116. A Silly Song: [link]
No. 117. The Quest for the Keys: [link]
No. 118. Extraordinary Ordnance: [link]
No. 119. The Second Commandment: [link]
No. 120. Maundy Thursday: [link]
No. 121. The Tower of Babel: a Song: [link]
No. 122. A Question: [link]
No. 123. On a magpie: [link]
No. 124. The Solution: [link]
No. 126. Waiting for the Dentist: [link]
No. 127. On Toothpaste: [link]
No. 128. Mead is Better than Medicine: [link]


THE GHOST OF RUSSELL SQUARE
(an unfinished ballad in seven parts)
Part the First: [link]
Part the Second: [link]
Part the Third: [link]
Part the Fourth: [link]
Please be patient, the rest will come (eventually).
Note: I do not know whether the Ghost of Russell Square is worth continuing. It is such execrable rubbish that it is probably better off transferred to scraps.

Translations
Mes vers fuiraient, doux et frêles: [link]
Horace Odes I.xx: [link]
From Catullus: [link]


Essays

The Thinker (complete)
Dedication: [link]
#1 (Tuesday, 2nd May, 2006): [link]
#2 (Saturday, 6th May, 2006): [link]
#3 (Tuesday, 9th May, 2006): [link]
#4 (Saturday, 13th May, 2006): [link]
#5 (Tuesday, 16th May, 2006): [link]
#6 (Saturday, 20th May, 2006): [link]
#7 (Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006): [link]
#8 (Saturday, 27th May, 2006): [link]
#9 (Tuesday, 30th May, 2006): [link]
#10 (Saturday, 3rd June, 2006): [link]
#11 (Tuesday, 6th June, 2006): [link]
#12 (Saturday, 10th June, 2006): [link]
#13 (Tuesday, 13th June, 2006): [link]
#14 (Saturday, 17th June, 2006): [link]
#15 (Tuesday, 20th June, 2006): [link]
#16 (Saturday, 24th June, 2006): [link]
#17 (Tuesday, 27th June, 2006): [link]
#18 (Saturday, 1st July, 2006): [link]
#19 (Tuesday, 4th July, 2006): [link]
#20 (Saturday, 8th July, 2006): [link]

The Catholic
(First 4 issues)
#1 (Saturday, 8th March, 2008): [link]
#2 (Tuesday, 11th March, 2008): [link]
#3 (Saturday, 15th March, 2008): [link]
#4 (Tuesday, 18th March, 2008): [link]
---The series was ended on account of sickness. There may be a new series at some point in the future or I may write under a different title.---

Literary Criticism
Analysis of a Sonnet by Sidney: [link]

Miscellaneous Essays
2 + 2: [link]
Theological Thoughts: [link]
Against the Humanist: [link]
On Traffic Jams: [link]
On Appreciation: [link]
On Paganism: [link]
On Reading: [link]
The Index of Forbidden Books: [link]

Meditations:
The Sign of the Cross: [link]

Reviews
Books
The Stripping of the Altars: [link]
Films
The Da Vinci Code: [link] (negative)
Plays
Michael Frayn: Donkeys' Years: [link]
Musicals
Princess Ida: [link]
Television
Eurovision: [link] (negative)

Prose Fiction
Arabian Nights Imitation: [link]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am a member of the following clubs:

I must apologize for the total absence of an essay on Holy Saturday; I have been ill for a while and I have not recovered yet; and I have been so tired that I have lacked the energy to compose a complete essay. "The Catholic" is therefore on hold at the moment. There is so much that is evil in this world it is highly depressing. But let us never despair. And let us direct our hearts, our minds, and our senses, to that which is good, true, and beautiful.
Let me tell you something. Last night I had a kind of waking dream for I had not gone to sleep yet. I was lying on my bed and it seemed to me that there was a priest beside me (my parish priest in fact), I had made or was ready to make my confession & how beautiful it would have been simply to die. I'm not sure it was a true vision because my priest is old and I don't expect to have that particular priest at my deathbed, unless it prove that I am not to live very long. That may be the case but only God knows the future. I pray that I may by living in the state of grace die in the state of grace. I am aware that this is a very strange journal entry but these are strange times. Surely heaven is far preferable to earth. These are hard days for a Christian but so I suppose are all days. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? I hope we may sing it with loud and hearty voice, and reverently & as if we mean it and getting the words right and not with liturgical abuse and so on. And to the correct tune.
Sorry if this seems somewhat bizarre. But so be it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have thought it a good idea to compile a list of my poems on DeviantArt, so that they can be reached more easily than if you had to plough through my gallery.

Poems

No. 1. Time: [link]
No. 2. Sun and Moon: [link]
No. 3. Snow: [link]
No. 4. I Hate this Weather: [link]
No. 5. Stars: [link]
No. 6. The Seasons of the Year: [link]
No. 7. A Dark Poem: [link]
No. 8. The Forgotten Dream: [link]
No. 9. De Rerum Natura: [link]
No. 10. And we beheld his glory: [link]
No. 11. Recurrent Seasons: [link]
No. 12. On the Inception of the CRGS Philosophy Society: [link]
No. 13. Computers: [link]
No. 14. Death and Life: [link]
No. 15. Procrastination: [link]
No. 16. To the Muse of Poetry: [link]
No. 17. Nothing: [link]
No. 18. The Injured Writer: [link]
No. 19. Vicious Circle: [link]
No. 20. Loquitur anima: [link]
No. 21. Life: Sonnet: [link]
No. 22. Early Morning Stillness; or, On looking out of his window early in the morning, entranced by birdsong: [link]
No. 23. The Swan: [link]
No. 24. Fleeting Time: [link]
No. 25. My tale provokes that question: [link]
No. 26. Meteorology: [link]
No. 27. The Room: [link]
No. 28. Poetical Prose: [link]
No. 29. The Spark of Life: [link]
No. 30. Illness: [link]
No. 31. Inspiration: [link]
No. 32. To the Reader: [link]
No. 33. Sleep: [link]
No. 34. April: [link]
No. 35. On this green hillside: [link]
No. 36. What is a poet?: [link]
No. 37. Intended to be Today's Last: [link]
No. 38. Sheep: [link]
No. 39. Perspective: [link]
No. 40. It is the poet's duty: [link]
No. 41. The Red Squirrel: [link]
No. 42. The Deserted Village: [link]
No. 43. The poet, walking over hill: [link]
No. 44. EASTER TRILOGY: (1) Good Friday: [link]
(2) Easter Even: [link]
(3) Easter Day: [link]
No. 45. May: [link]
No. 46. In Imitation of Free Verse: [link]
No. 47. The Lusty Month of May: [link]
No. 48. Written during a Downpour: [link]
No. 49. Early in the Morning: [link]
No. 50. Note to BrerAnansi: [link]
No. 51. The Summer Sun: [link]
No. 52. Music, a roundelay: [link]
No. 53. Time rolls by: [link]
No. 54. Melancholia: [link]
No. 55. The Insomniac: [link]
No. 56. Hell and Heaven: [link]
No. 57. Evening: [link]
No. 58. London: a Sonnet: [link]
No. 59. Music: [link]
No. 60. English Assignment: [link]
No. 61. The End: [link]
No. 62. Homesickness?: [link]
No. 63. A Confession: [link]
No. 64. 666 Pageviews: [link]
No. 65. God moves in a mysterious way: [link]
No. 66. The Lord of the Terrible Land: [link]
No. 67. Luna: [link]
No. 68. To Ludwig van Beethoven: [link]
No. 69. 'I write these lines upon a sheet of paper': [link]
No. 70. On reading from a book: [link]
No. 71. Who would be a newsreader?: [link]
No. 72. Andantino: [link]
No. 73. Introspection: [link]
No. 74. A Colchester Nocturne: [link]
No. 75. De Morte Magni Instituti: [link]
No. 76. This Too Shall Pass: [link]
No. 77. "Real Men Don't Cry": [link]
No. 78. Proficiscere de hoc mundo: [link]
No. 79. Conscience: [link]
No. 80. A Late Evening Poem: [link]
No. 81. Sic fatus: [link]
No. 82. The Journey Home: [link]
No. 83. A Parody of Keats: [link]
No. 84. After Aquinas: [link]
No. 85. To a Book by C.S. Lewis: [link]
No. 86. Et homo factus est: [link]
No. 87. "Lies and False": [link]
No. 88. Ce qu'on entend: [link]
No. 89. The Battle of Flodden Field: [link]
No. 90. To Saint Augustine of Hippo: [link]
No. 91. The Legend of St Dorothea: [link]
No. 92. To a Seagull: [link]
No. 93. A Consolation: [link]
No. 94. A Sonnet: [link]
No. 95. Twilight: [link]
No. 96. The Killing of the King: [link]
No. 97. Sehnsucht: [link]
No. 98. Hypergraphia: [link]
No. 99. Righteous Indignation: [link]
No. 100. To Jesus Christ: [link]
No. 101. To the Mother of God: [link]
No. 102. To Our Lord at Dawn: [link]
No. 103. Some Heretics: [link]
No. 104. Answer to Prayer: [link]
No. 105. To a Day: [link]
No. 106. The Transience of Life: [link]
No. 107. Into Thy Hands: [link]
No. 108. Over the Sea: [link]
No. 109. Some More Heretics: [link]
No. 110. The Convert: [link]
No. 111. Kyrie eleison: [link]
No. 112. Ad Mariam Semper Virginem: [link]
No. 113. Oh, I do like to be a Roman Catholic: [link]
No. 114. A Prayer: [link]
No. 115. On Rabelais: [link]
No. 116. A Silly Song: [link]
No. 117. The Quest for the Keys: [link]
No. 118. Extraordinary Ordnance: [link]
No. 119. The Second Commandment: [link]
No. 120. Maundy Thursday: [link]
No. 121. The Tower of Babel: a Song: [link]
No. 122. A Question: [link]
No. 123. On a magpie: [link]
No. 124. The Solution: [link]
No. 125. Reminiscence: [link]
No. 126. Waiting for the Dentist: [link]
No. 127. On Toothpaste: [link]
No. 128. Mead is Better than Medicine: [link]


THE GHOST OF RUSSELL SQUARE
(an unfinished ballad in seven parts)
Part the First: [link]
Part the Second: [link]
Part the Third: [link]
Part the Fourth: [link]
Please be patient, the rest will come (eventually).
Note: I do not know whether the Ghost of Russell Square is worth continuing. It is such execrable rubbish that it is probably better off transferred to scraps.

Translations
Mes vers fuiraient, doux et frêles: [link]
Horace Odes I.xx: [link]
From Catullus: [link]


Essays

The Thinker (complete)
Dedication: [link]
#1 (Tuesday, 2nd May, 2006): [link]
#2 (Saturday, 6th May, 2006): [link]
#3 (Tuesday, 9th May, 2006): [link]
#4 (Saturday, 13th May, 2006): [link]
#5 (Tuesday, 16th May, 2006): [link]
#6 (Saturday, 20th May, 2006): [link]
#7 (Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006): [link]
#8 (Saturday, 27th May, 2006): [link]
#9 (Tuesday, 30th May, 2006): [link]
#10 (Saturday, 3rd June, 2006): [link]
#11 (Tuesday, 6th June, 2006): [link]
#12 (Saturday, 10th June, 2006): [link]
#13 (Tuesday, 13th June, 2006): [link]
#14 (Saturday, 17th June, 2006): [link]
#15 (Tuesday, 20th June, 2006): [link]
#16 (Saturday, 24th June, 2006): [link]
#17 (Tuesday, 27th June, 2006): [link]
#18 (Saturday, 1st July, 2006): [link]
#19 (Tuesday, 4th July, 2006): [link]
#20 (Saturday, 8th July, 2006): [link]

The Catholic
(First 4 issues)
#1 (Saturday, 8th March, 2008): [link]
#2 (Tuesday, 11th March, 2008): [link]
#3 (Saturday, 15th March, 2008): [link]
#4 (Tuesday, 18th March, 2008): [link]
---The series was ended on account of sickness. There may be a new series at some point in the future or I may write under a different title.---

Literary Criticism
Analysis of a Sonnet by Sidney: [link]

Miscellaneous Essays
2 + 2: [link]
Theological Thoughts: [link]
Against the Humanist: [link]
On Traffic Jams: [link]
On Appreciation: [link]
On Paganism: [link]
On Reading: [link]
The Index of Forbidden Books: [link]

Meditations:
The Sign of the Cross: [link]

Reviews
Books
The Stripping of the Altars: [link]
Films
The Da Vinci Code: [link] (negative)
Plays
Michael Frayn: Donkeys' Years: [link]
Musicals
Princess Ida: [link]
Television
Eurovision: [link] (negative)

Prose Fiction
Arabian Nights Imitation: [link]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am a member of the following clubs:

More commonly known as Mother's Day, or Mothering Sunday. I hope you all remembered. There was a tradition in the Middle Ages of people visiting the church in which they were baptized on this day. I can't do that today, unfortunately, because that would involve a several-hundred-mile journey which I cannot afford to make unnecessarily at the moment.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have thought it a good idea to compile a list of my poems on DeviantArt, so that they can be reached more easily than if you had to plough through my gallery.

Poems

No. 1. Time: [link]
No. 2. Sun and Moon: [link]
No. 3. Snow: [link]
No. 4. I Hate this Weather: [link]
No. 5. Stars: [link]
No. 6. The Seasons of the Year: [link]
No. 7. A Dark Poem: [link]
No. 8. The Forgotten Dream: [link]
No. 9. De Rerum Natura: [link]
No. 10. And we beheld his glory: [link]
No. 11. Recurrent Seasons: [link]
No. 12. On the Inception of the CRGS Philosophy Society: [link]
No. 13. Computers: [link]
No. 14. Death and Life: [link]
No. 15. Procrastination: [link]
No. 16. To the Muse of Poetry: [link]
No. 17. Nothing: [link]
No. 18. The Injured Writer: [link]
No. 19. Vicious Circle: [link]
No. 20. Loquitur anima: [link]
No. 21. Life: Sonnet: [link]
No. 22. Early Morning Stillness; or, On looking out of his window early in the morning, entranced by birdsong:
[link]
No. 23. The Swan: [link]
No. 24. Fleeting Time: [link]
No. 25. My tale provokes that question: [link]
No. 26. Meteorology: [link]
No. 27. The Room: [link]
No. 28. Poetical Prose: [link]
No. 29. The Spark of Life: [link]
No. 30. Illness: [link]
No. 31. Inspiration: [link]
No. 32. To the Reader: [link]
No. 33. Sleep: [link]
No. 34. April: [link]
No. 35. On this green hillside: [link]
No. 36. What is a poet?: [link]
No. 37. Intended to be Today's Last: [link]
No. 38. Sheep: [link]
No. 39. Perspective: [link]
No. 40. It is the poet's duty: [link]
No. 41. The Red Squirrel: [link]
No. 42. The Deserted Village: [link]
No. 43. The poet, walking over hill: [link]
No. 44. EASTER TRILOGY: (1) Good Friday: [link]
(2) Easter Even: [link]
(3) Easter Day: [link]
No. 45. May: [link]
No. 46. In Imitation of Free Verse: [link]
No. 47. The Lusty Month of May: [link]
No. 48. Written during a Downpour: [link]
No. 49. Early in the Morning: [link]
No. 50. Note to BrerAnansi: [link]
No. 51. The Summer Sun: [link]
No. 52. Music, a roundelay: [link]
No. 53. Time rolls by: [link]
No. 54. Melancholia: [link]
No. 55. The Insomniac: [link]
No. 56. Hell and Heaven: [link]
No. 57. Evening: [link]
No. 58. London: a Sonnet: [link]
No. 59. Music: [link]
No. 60. English Assignment: [link]
No. 61. The End: [link]
No. 62. Homesickness?: [link]
No. 63. A Confession: [link]
No. 64. 666 Pageviews: [link]
No. 65. God moves in a mysterious way: [link]
No. 66. The Lord of the Terrible Land: [link]
No. 67. Luna: [link]
No. 68. To Ludwig van Beethoven: [link]
No. 69. 'I write these lines upon a sheet of paper': [link]
No. 70. On reading from a book: [link]
No. 71. Who would be a newsreader?: [link]
No. 72. Andantino: [link]
No. 73. Introspection: [link]
No. 74. A Colchester Nocturne: [link]
No. 75. De Morte Magni Instituti: [link]
No. 76. This Too Shall Pass: [link]
No. 77. "Real Men Don't Cry": [link]
No. 78. Proficiscere de hoc mundo: [link]
No. 79. Conscience: [link]
No. 80. A Late Evening Poem: [link]
No. 81. Sic fatus: [link]
No. 82. The Journey Home: [link]
No. 83. A Parody of Keats: [link]
No. 84. After Aquinas: [link]
No. 85. To a Book by C.S. Lewis: [link]
No. 86. Et homo factus est: [link]
No. 87. "Lies and False": [link]
No. 88. Ce qu'on entend: [link]
No. 89. The Battle of Flodden Field: [link]
No. 90. To Saint Augustine of Hippo: [link]
No. 91. The Legend of St Dorothea: [link]
No. 92. To a Seagull: [link]
No. 93. A Consolation: [link]
No. 94. A Sonnet: [link]
No. 95. Twilight: [link]
No. 96. The Killing of the King: [link]
No. 97. Sehnsucht: [link]
No. 98. Hypergraphia: [link]
No. 99. Righteous Indignation: [link]
No. 100. To Jesus Christ: [link]
No. 101. To the Mother of God: [link]
No. 102. To Our Lord at Dawn: [link]
No. 103. Some Heretics: [link]
No. 104. Answer to Prayer: [link]
No. 105. To a Day: [link]
No. 106. The Transience of Life: [link]
No. 107. Into Thy Hands: [link]
No. 108. Over the Sea: [link]
No. 109. Some More Heretics: [link]


THE GHOST OF RUSSELL SQUARE
(an unfinished ballad in seven parts)
Part the First: [link]
Part the Second: [link]
Part the Third: [link]
Part the Fourth: [link]
Please be patient, the rest will come (eventually).
Note: I do not know whether the Ghost of Russell Square is worth continuing. It is such execrable rubbish that it is probably better off transferred to scraps.

Translations
Mes vers fuiraient, doux et frêles: [link]
Horace Odes I.xx: [link]

Essays

The Thinker (complete)
Dedication: [link]
#1 (Tuesday, 2nd May, 2006): [link]
#2 (Saturday, 6th May, 2006): [link]
#3 (Tuesday, 9th May, 2006): [link]
#4 (Saturday, 13th May, 2006): [link]
#5 (Tuesday, 16th May, 2006): [link]
#6 (Saturday, 20th May, 2006): [link]
#7 (Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006): [link]
#8 (Saturday, 27th May, 2006): [link]
#9 (Tuesday, 30th May, 2006): [link]
#10 (Saturday, 3rd June, 2006): [link]
#11 (Tuesday, 6th June, 2006): [link]
#12 (Saturday, 10th June, 2006): [link]
#13 (Tuesday, 13th June, 2006): [link]
#14 (Saturday, 17th June, 2006): [link]
#15 (Tuesday, 20th June, 2006): [link]
#16 (Saturday, 24th June, 2006): [link]
#17 (Tuesday, 27th June, 2006): [link]
#18 (Saturday, 1st July, 2006): [link]
#19 (Tuesday, 4th July, 2006): [link]
#20 (Saturday, 8th July, 2006): [link]

Literary Criticism
Analysis of a Sonnet by Sidney: [link]

Miscellaneous Essays
2 + 2: [link]
Theological Thoughts: [link]
Against the Humanist: [link]
On Traffic Jams: [link]
On Appreciation: [link]
On Paganism: [link]
On Reading: [link]

Meditations:
The Sign of the Cross: [link]

Reviews
Books
James Joyce: Dubliners: [link]
Films
The Da Vinci Code: [link]
Plays
Michael Frayn: Donkeys' Years: [link]
Musicals
Princess Ida: [link]
Television
Eurovision: [link]

Prose Fiction
Arabian Nights Imitation: [link]
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I am a member of the following clubs:

I'm back in Durham, I am pleased to say; I am rather busy at the moment, however, as I have rehearsals for this bizarre Kagel thing, about which you will hear more after I've done it. We've rehearsed from 10 till after 6.30 today (with some breaks but less than would seem desirable) and we're rehearsing from NINE until 6.30 tomorrow! But that seems to be the way of it. I hope you've all had a pleasant holiday and not got too drunk. May 2008 bring you great graces!
I am currently reading "Gargantua and Pantagruel", a real Rabelaisian romp. Here is a sample of Urquhart's translation:

There was then in the abbey a claustral monk, called Friar John of the funnels and gobbets, in French, des Entommeures, young, gallant, frisk, lusty, nimbly [sic?], quick, active, bold, adventurous, resolute, tall, lean, wide-mouthed, long-nosed, a fair despatcher of morning prayers, unbridler of masses, and runner over vigils; and, to conclude summarily in a word, a right monk, if ever there was any, since the monking world monked a monkery: for the rest, a clerk even to the teeth in matter of breviary. This monk, hearing the noise that the enemy made within the inclosure of the vineyard, went out to see what they were doing; and perceiving that they were cutting and gathering the grapes, whereon was grounded the foundation of all their next year's wine, returned unto the quire of the church where the other monks were, all amazed and astonished like so many bell-melters. Whom when he heard sing, im, im, pe, ne, ne, ne, ne, nene, tum, ne num, num, ini, i mi, co, o, no, o, o, neno, ne, no, no, no, rum, nenum, num: It is well shit, well sung, said he. By the virtue of God, why do not you sing, Panniers farewell, vintage is done? The devil snatch me, if they be not already within the middle of our close, and cut so well both vine and grapes that, by God's body, there will not be found for these four years to come so much as a gleaning in it. By the belly of Sanct James, what shall we poor devils drink the while? Lord God! da mihi potum. Then said the prior of the convent: - What should this drunken fellow do here, let him be carried to prison for troubling the divine service. Nay, said the monk, the wine service, let us behave ourselves so, that it be not troubled; for you yourself, my lord prior, love to drink of the best, and so doth every honest man. Never yet did a man of worth dislike good wine, it is a monastical apophthegm. But these reponses that you chant here, by G—, are not in season. Wherefore is it, that our devotions were instituted to be short in the time of harvest and vintage, and long in the advent and all the winter? The late friar, Macé Pelosse, of good memory, a true zealous man, (or else I give myself to the devil,) of our religion, told me, and I remember it well, how the reason was, that in this season we might press and make the wine, and in the winter whiff it up. Hark you, my masters, you that love the wine, Cop's body, follow me; for Sanct Anthony burn me as freely as a faggot, if they get leave to taste one drop of the liquor, that will not now come and fight for relief of the vine. Hog's belly, the goods of the church! Ha, no, no. What the devil, Sanct Thomas of England was well content to die for them; if I died in the same cause, should not I be a sanct likewise? Yes. Yet shall not I die there for all this, for it is I that must do it to others and send them a packing.

Now tell me, is not this absolutely brilliant? The author's prologue begins, "Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified blades, (for to you, and none else do I dedicate my writings,) Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's, which is entitled, The Banquet, whilst he was setting forth the praises of his schoolmaster, Socrates, (without all question the prince of philosophers,) amongst other discourses to that purpose said, that he resembled the Sileni."

I should say that I do not think Rabelais is for children.

I shall conclude this entry with the verses at the beginning:

TO THE READERS

Good friends, my readers, who peruse this book,
Be not offended, whilst on it you look:
Denude yourselves of all deprav'd affection,
For it contains no badness nor infection:
'Tis true that it brings forth to you no birth
Of any valye, but in point of mirth;
Thinking therefore how sorrow might your mind
Consume, I could no apter subject find;
One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span,
Because to laugh is proper to the man.

Well, I'm back. I haven't been on here very much over the last few months what with work and essays and lectures and Uncle Tom Cobley and all, for which I offer the Gentle Reader my humble apologies. I hope to find the time to look at the 423 deviations and 113 messages which are in my inbox. I don't think it likely that I shall be able to respond to all of them, however.
Yesterday was my birthday: I am 19. An Irish monk* has commented that it is nice that I celebrate my birthday on the day the Church sings "O clavis David," which reads:

O clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
claudis, et nemo aperit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Translation from Wikipedia, S.V. O ANTIPHONS.

The prayer is of course addressed to Our Lord. The nights from the 17th to the 23rd (I think) of December are called the Golden Nights. You can read about them at [link] (or I thought you could, when the link seemed to be working).



* Bro. Martin (that is his first name) O.S.B.