Summer Holiday - or not

As my father reminded me yesterday, and one of my adoring public today, there's been a quite unreasonably long gap between posts. I'm always frustrated by the widely held fantasy that lecturers have long, lazy summer breaks. Not a bit of it! Instead, there's all the end-of-year administration to do for the last academic year, and all the start-of-year preparations for the coming one, which overlap throughout the summer holiday. Students writing assignments over the summer still need supervision, and assignments that come in need marking. As a result, summer is one of the busiest periods in my calendar, and I've struggled to keep going without benefit of any proper holiday.

Towards the end of last term, I started work on an exercise in contextual theology following a murder of a teenager locally. Comparisons between the young Augustine of Hippo and the typical experience of local youngsters took me deep into Augustinian theodicy, and an analysis of the theology expressed by the young people who responded to this horrid event. I presented it as work in progress at a conference at UTU in July, but I hope to revisit it to develop the thinking in the autumn.

The children who were working towards exams when I last wrote are now enjoying their long summer break, however. Youngest son spent seven weeks post GCSE working as a site engineer in Egypt and came home tanned and lean to an excellent crop of GCSE results. A levels at the local sixth form college will follow, and he plans to do a degree in civil engineering with a view to turning his holiday experience into a career.

Second youngest son and foster daughter were enjoying their holiday in Egypt when their AS results came through, and they too did themselves credit. This year starts with them making their university choices before the final push towards A2 exams, so independence and adulthood suddenly seem awfully close.Despite the lack of holiday proper, I've had a couple of short breaks with my lover, and a wonderful day in the one really hot week we had visiting country pubs in his open topped sports car. In between times, I've used my limited leisure time to start work on an exploration of theology expressed by combattants in the First World War, after a friend mentioned the work of a relatively obscure war poet whose writings astonished me. Following this thread led me to spend a wonderful day a couple of weeks ago in Scarthin Bookshop in Cromford, whence I came home with early editions of Blunden and Brooke. Instead of the Guardian crossword, I now retire to bed with dusty books and a pencil to read and take notes so that the theology can float gently into my consciousness as I sleep.