Penitence and hope

Good heavens! Is it really that long? I assume that I no longer have an adoring public, after such wicked evidence of neglect. But in this lenten season, as an act of penitence, I write my blog to appease the ghosts of adorers past. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

This has been a winter of - well, not discontent, but certainly of stress and irritation. Christmas came and went with the usual merriment. The day itself was was delightful, and not only because two of the three resident children were enjoying the sybaritic life in Alexandria. The remaining minor worked all day, so I had an interlude of calm once I'd delivered him to work, until second son arrived in the afternoon to do his filial duty. The evening was unexpectedly brightened by the arrival of friends who stayed late into the night, gave me good cause for a hangover, and ended the day with fun and with good companionship.

Epiphany brought the brood home for a day; and then term started in a blaze of irrational optimism under an insane workload. The first few days of January saw an additional flurry of work on a research project which may or may not come off, before the arrival of students and the grim reality of a heavy term and a lot of evening teaching. Bouts of illness, injury and scheduled surgery means that we have rarely had a full complement of staff, and the load has sometimes fallen heavily in my direction. Meanwhile, my A-level project proceeds only by fits and starts, and all hope of peace on the domestic front is lost as the minors hurtle towards A level exams.

This season's weather event was a spell of snow which turned the cemetery behind the house into a Christmas card scene and messed up all teaching for a week. Sub-zero temperatures for ten days ensured that the snow remained and kept students away, but the price had to be paid during half term week, when I had to run extra sessions to make up for the cancelled classes.

Meanwhile, working on exam resources has been a wonderful opportunity to indulge in artistic and literary approaches to theology, to read gorgeous books with glossy pictures of works of art, to wallow in front of films in the name of research, and to revisit some of my favourite classics. Middlemarch drew me in and made my heart ache, and oh, bliss, Brideshead Revisted... I have yet to see the latest film of the latter, but surely no-one could do justice to Waugh's masterpiece as wholly as the 1981 TV series? And yet, faithful as Mortimer's script was, beautiful as Anthony Andrews was, Waugh's language is a more whole (and holy) experience. The pleasure I have always taken in this book was heightened this time through by insights from other recent reading, especially the private letters of the Mitford sisters and Powell's Dance to the Music of Time. Self-indulgent bookishness is the tired woman's alternative to pleasures of the flesh.

I do have a personal life sometimes, even now. I've seen my lover more frequently than expected because our collaborative work schedule has required more or less regular meetings to progress the project, and we have managed to fit in one city break since Christmas. All the extra evening teaching means that these can be taken as time in lieu, and exploring together possible material for incorporation is a sweet reminder of our earliest days together when I was primarily the artist and he the theologian.

And now lent settles in, term moves purposefully towards its close and slowly, unobtusively, the changing season sneaks in, a  few hours at a time, a day here and there, a morning of sunhine or an evening of gentle warmth.   It has been a long winter, and I wait patiently for the kindness of spring.