a sure sign that summer is not far away. One of the resident minors passed into adulthood in April, and another celebrates her 18th birthday this coming week. Both have now chosen their universities, and by October, I shall only have one resident child. How quickly time seems to slip past when my mind is on other things!As the rest of the country goes hysterical over the risk of Mexican swine flu, the family has all been afflicted with a much more British chesty cold. With four of us hacking away, the house sounds like a TB sanatorium. I comfort myself with the thought that once all are recovered, we have probably completed our annual quota of respiratory viruses, and the minors can look forward to a healthy summer and untroubled exam preparation.
The latter part of last term proved frustrating for me. Other training demands on my students' time left them struggling with their assessed work. Although some threw themselves into their final assignment, others were distracted and diffident, and it took all my energy to keep them going. This ebb and flow of concentration is a hazard of teaching adults, and I sometimes flirt with the idea of diverting into schoolteaching instead. But it would have to be a special kind of school, I think.
One bright spot, though, was the weekly visit of a dear friend who came to sit in on one of my courses, and then joined us for a meal afterwards. The children competed to produce pleasing meals each week for him, and he rewarded them with generous appreciation and good company. To celebrate the end of term, his wife came instead and wowed the resident minors with her wry perspective on the idiocies of life. I have a small circle of friends, but those I have are all rather special.
Time for relaxation was harder to fit in. Both of us have jobs which make erratic demands on our time, but my lover and I managed to have a few days away at half term, which gave me my first real chance to escape from the treadmill of work and parenthood this year. Easter gave us another weekend to enjoy together before the onslaught of the summer term.
The lesiure activity this term has been some ad-hoc research on stained glass. Back in the days when I was a real student I did a course on medieval glass and iconography, and I never lost the sense of wonder that ancient glass provokes. So when I heard of a perfect early 15th century church with a contemporary East window that was largely undocumented, I got hold of some photos and started exploring. It is at such times that the internet provides a dilettante researcher with resources previously only available to the most assiduous scholar. Identifying the heraldry was as simple as describing the arms in the correct technical terms and running a Google search. Facsimiles of books online provided evidence, dates and names of those involved in restorations, and the most wonderful archive of stained glass photographs has given me hours of pleasure, searching for iconographic parallels and stylistic similarities.
So when the sun was shining last week, and I was
owed some time off, I borrowed a pair of binoculars
and set off to find this pretty little village with its fascinating church. The churchyard was snowy with cherry-blossom and the church deserted, so I spent two hours peering at the window light by light to refine and correct what I had discovered from studying photographs. In fact, although almost all of the East window is 15th century glass, not all of it was originally in the East window. The detective work involved in identifying which was which makes this an intellectual puzzle as well as an aesthetic treat, and I made discoveries and came to conclusions that left me with a deep sense of having done something satisfying with my time.
But satisfaction is a fleeting thing, and the approach of the minors' exams, uncertainties about the future and a yen for a new direction stir troublesome currents under the calm surface of my life. I wonder what the summer holds?
