mrow.

Apr. 22nd, 2005 12:52 am
helenic: (what's the matter lagerboy?)

  • You know you're working too hard a Classicist GEEK when you catch yourself reading [livejournal.com profile] londonpolybis as "London Polybius". I dread to think.

  • I am required by the laws of humour to pimp [livejournal.com profile] secretly_pope, the Very Secret LJ of Pope Benedict XVI.
    [livejournal.com profile] libellum: Am Pope! Yay! However, still not Emperor.
    [livejournal.com profile] amberspyglass: Arinze will kill me if I try anything ...
    [livejournal.com profile] baranoouji: ... Pervy poor-fancier that he is.
  • 11 600 words. Approximately 8 500 of them actually almost useable. I'm averaging 14 hours' work a day, and it's not going fast enough but considering my deadline that's unsurprising, and although I won't be able to go to the UL as I'd planned tomorrow (I wouldn't have time to write up any of my reading, and am better off editing what I've got) I will actually be able to email something to my supervisor before going to [livejournal.com profile] the_lady_lily's celebrations in the evening.


  • Also there will be a [livejournal.com profile] yiskah, for which much Yay.

  • As well as no belongings, I have no food in this house. I'm currently living on: sandwiches made from white bread and salt 'n' vinegar crisps, bananas, and tea.

  • Mainly this entry is an excuse to show off my new icon. What's the matter lagerboy, scared you might TASTE SOMETHING?

  • Man, when this thing is handed in, I'm having a really big drink.

helenic: (internal dialectic)

Surrealness! I just answered the door to a canvasser from our local MP. An attractive, young, blonde canvasser with good shoes. [livejournal.com profile] punkalou, in fact, whom I haven't seen for almost two years. Cue much squeaking of "ohmygod!" and bemused giggling. L, maybe we should meet up sometime and drink wiiiiiine?

I had an excellent weekend. On Friday evening [livejournal.com profile] elise, [livejournal.com profile] smhwpf, [livejournal.com profile] shreena and I saw Billy Bragg play at the Colston Hall in Bristol. We got there during the support band, whose name I didn't catch; they were a blues/electronica group with some fantastic rhythms and basslines and an excellent (and cute) tenor saxophonist, but the singer's voice really didn't blend with the rest of the sound, and their songs didn't seem to be about anything. Elise and I slipped out after a couple of songs and went to the bar. When we returned, Billy still wasn't on; we sat through an Indian guy speaking uninspiringly about Make Poverty History until, without any warning, Mark Steel came on stage. I've never heard his standup before and it was wonderful. Exactly what comedy should be. Hard-hitting, passionate, angry, absolutely fucking hilarious. Mainly he ranted about politics and religion, particularly New Labour and "all the bollocks about the Pope", and I was crying with laughter at the same time as applauding his sarcastically-expressed outrage. The evening would have been worth it just for that, but then Martyn Joseph and Steve Knightley were announced, also completely unexpectedly, which elicited a certain amount of squeaking from me. Apparently they've been touring together for the past three weeks. They mainly took it in turns to play their own songs while the other accompanied; I'd never heard MJ before, and he has an amazing voice. In the interval I bought the album they've recorded together. It was a shame not to see Phil Beer, but since I hadn't expected to see these guys at all I was more than happy.

Eventually Mr. Bragg came on at about 10pm, two and a half hours into the evening. His set only lasted 45 minutes but he was everything I knew he'd be. Forthright, rude, sincere, funny, heartbreaking. He played NPWA, Upfield, John Barleycorn, England Half English, I Keep Faith, All You Fascists, Power In A Union, World Turned Upside Down (which I was particularly happy about), Great Leap Forwards and A New England. For the encore he got Steve Knightley, Martyn Joseph, Mark Steel (who looked a bit uncertain about it all) and the blues singer onstage and did a group version of Redemption Song. Fucking amazing.

Two pieces of good news with which to start the week, both of which have made my insides twist with happiness and disbelief: Pakistan and India are at peace, and (is it wrong that I find this more exciting?) the Oxyrhynchus Papyri have begun to be decoded, making a potential addition of 20% to the current body of extant Greek and Roman literature. "The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War." Well, that puts my dissertation into perspective.

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