I am not a young man and so it’s a relief, midway along the journey of my life, to find I am mostly not lost in the dark forest. I can do my job. I have helped raise children I am proud of. I know how to hold a knife and fork. I am, at …
Tag: love
Reserve, 21.07.21
I had to go into the Ashmolean Museum Reserve Collections yesterday, to choose some objects to teach with next term. Now this is mostly very good. First of all, without giving away any crucial security secrets, the reserves are in a deep, dark basement, so it was relatively cool. And second, museum reserves are fundamentally …
Name, 24.1.20
It’s always strange on a Friday to be surrounded by famous names. In our house, everyone has a name that is peculiarly and particularly not famous. My eldest, Miriam, is Huncs. Huncs is a contraction of Hunca Munca, who is one of the Bad Mice in Beatrix Potter’s ‘Tale of Two Bad Mice’, and Miriam …
Biased, 17.1.20
I gave a lecture on Tuesday. “So what”, I hear you cry. Well, it is my job; but this one was actually fun, because I got to talk for an hour about my favourite artist, the dazzling star of the Florentine Renaissance, the one, the only Donatello. Thing is, it was a terrible lecture. It …
Elastic, 27.12.19
Around Christmas, time is strange. We go to bed late. We get up early because, despite the absence of work, there is still way too much work to do. Even the days of the week cease to have meaning. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday give way to Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, as time …
Deserve, 26.9.19
Sports fans have long memories and, to be honest, an occasionally overdeveloped sense of justice and injustice. It’s one of the reasons that non-sports fans find us so insufferable. Ancient games are analysed and reanalysed, the question of who deserved what, or didn’t deserve anything, endlessly picked apart: Leeds United deserved to win the 1975 …
Aunt, 9.7.19
Singleness, paradoxically, is not a single thing. There are varieties of singleness. Once upon a time in the olden days, for example, everybody seemed to have an unmarried maiden aunt. My maiden aunt was Auntie Grace. Grace Moore was born when Queen Victoria was still alive and lived to be 93. Once, many years ago, …
Say, 14.2.19
Valentines Day. The day for the loved-up and the loving. The day when hope and longing coalesce in an inescapable, incandescent burst of desire. The loveliest, sappiest, soppiest, most intolerable day of the year. On Valentine’s Day we talk about true love but half the time we don’t know whether it’s true or not - …
True, 19.10.18
When I was young I used to run cross-country. I was part of a great team. We won races. We took home trophies. I was not, however, a great runner. I was the makeweight in a team full of talent. My brother Bill, on the other hand, was a proper sportsman. He played cricket and …
Slippers, 7.5.18
One Christmas, many years ago, I was given a pair of slippers. They were black leather with suede soles and they were butter-soft, the most comfortable things I have ever worn. So I wore them a lot, every day, until they were full of holes and beyond repair. But I couldn’t bear to part with …