Meanwhile, last Monday, my beloved uncle drew my attention to an article in the Guardian on the subject: it seems that board games may be making a modest come-back. He has just taken up Mahjong, a game that is deliciously sensual with its heavy, decorated playing tiles that click as they move around on the table. I've always loved Scrabble, and not the online variety, but the get-the-dictionary-out, pour-the-wine, score-on-the-back-of-envelopes game that can turn lovers into enemies with a Q on the triple word score. Cribbage is a delicious combination of luck and skill and doesn't require a wide circle of friends, and the most miserable of wet afternoons can be riotous fun if you play Canasta for blood.However, I still like being able to play games on my phone, and in preparation for a train journey downloaded the latest Harry Potter offering at enormous cost. Unfortunately, the text is so tiny, I can't read it. As son number four pointed out, holding a magnifying glass over the screen of my dead sexy mobile phone as I zap baddies "kinda spoils the cool look".
All of which suggests a leisurely August - something that I haven't really had. Staff summer holidays at our institution and our partner university have made getting collaborative things done close to impossible. I decided to go in person last week to see if physical presence might be more effective than unanswered emails and ringing out phone calls. Alas, no. Two of the people I'd hoped to see were in meetings all day; another called to say he wouldn't be coming in. And yet another gave brief answers to my questions but was "too busy with other things to deal with that now".
But I refused to consider the day wasted. I met a friend for a drink, mooched around the SPCK bookshop, read for hours, and then went to Evensong in the Minster. It's a service I used to go to frequently when I was younger, but rarely manage now. Sheffield Cathedral choir isn't really in the same league as the cathedral choirs I remember (or perhaps the building doesn't have the ringing acoustics), and fewer and fewer clergy know how to conduct evensong with impassive reverence. The boys and clerks were away for the summer, but a passable visiting choir made a fair stab at a traditional setting. Visiting choirs rarely sing with the resonances of the building, in my experience: they sing too tightly and don't allow the music to ring. It was a large congregation, for a midweek evensong, made up mostly of tourists, but the service was dignified and gentle. To my great delight, the organist ended with a piece that means a great deal to me, Lang's Tuba Tune, played with energy and precision. I almost danced back to the station with delight.
Youngest son has now arrived back from his visit to his Dad's (up at 6.45 on a Bank Holiday Saturday to go and fetch him!). When I come home from work each evening there's a different configuration of sons and friends, and some evenings they both sleep over elsewhere. This makes planning and preparing meals a bit of a lottery: one never knows how many people - if any - will sit down to eat until perhaps half an hour beforehand. And some of my best recipes take an hour to cook...
If work has been busy, personal affairs have been less to the fore. A delicious walk in the park, hand in hand, with my lover, a convivial meal with friends, and a meal to celebrate some pretty good GCSE successes: these have been the sum of my social activities in August. Instead, I come in from work more tired each day than the day before, and drift through domestic chores and paperwork until bedtime. It's becoming clear that a summer without a proper break from work is unhealthy. I shall treat myself to a week off at half-term and go away somewhere, perhaps with the tent. There's nothing like bacon and eggs cooked on a primus for restoring one's appreciation for life. And for entertainment, there's always the Guardian crossword.
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