Tag Archives: translation

The women, not the drugs

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Dot in the grounds of the UEA during a recent walk. Can’t explain the sun.

Not a week that will trouble my top ten. For some reason I was feeling down at the start of it, and this was exacerbated when I got a good position in my chess game on Monday and, needing only a draw for a team win, proceeded to lose concentration completely and go under very quickly in a pawns-and-bishop ending.

The week “ended” with a visit to the doctor yesterday. My blood pressure has gone down – thanks to my daily walks – but he still thinks I need another pill, as well as some work on my arm/shoulder, which has been giving me trouble. At the moment I am resisting the additional pill (I didn’t take it this morning) but he thinks I’m taking it, which is not the best situation. He is working on statistics, which I don’t have the greatest faith in.

I also messed up Thursday, when I could have gone to see the new Archbishop at the Forum and/or the Cathedral, followed by Sam S playing with his band, The Upgrade, at the Waterfront in the evening. Both opportunities were squandered in typical fashion. Instead, I got a mysterious call from A Ethel’s number in the evening while Dot was at a governors’ meeting, and when I tried to ring back (the call ended after a couple of rings) it just rang and rang. After consulting with Angela, I went with Dot (who had just got home) to see what the problem was and found Ethel sitting on a chair in her petticoat, with the apparently broken phone in her hands and saying she hadn’t rung us. So that was fine. No, it really was.

In other news, I have managed to complete a flyer for the Dragon Hall day, barring a few minor additional bits of information. On Monday I went with Rob to the Norfolk Record Office for a progress meeting for the autumn exhibition there, and that went quite well. Lucy couldn’t go as she is in a bad way with another infection and a bad prognosis from her doctor.

My nephew Sam stayed with us for a couple of nights, but spent most of the time with his parents, of course, organising the purchase of a new laptop for Joy and a new gaming computer for Phil. It was Phil’s birthday on Tuesday: he is 61. I got him a CD he requested, some wine and a rather esoteric book about remote islands which took my fancy in Waterstones.

I’ve finished a biography of Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man, by Sylvie Simmons – which was beautifully written and compulsive, as well as telling me various things about LC that I didn’t know. I had an idea about the number of women, but not the quantity of drugs. That’s where I went wrong.

I e-mailed the UEA lecturer who spoke to us about translation and attached my “translation” of the Lord’s Prayer from Aramaic. She asked me to do a guest blog on it, which can’t be bad.

Natural break … Just had our hair cut, and this evening we are participating in a Quiz and Chips Night as part of the Roger Mason-Liz French-George-and-Fiona team. Jude is setting the questions, so it should be interesting.

Walking in the snow and rain

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My trousers after I got back from Jan’s memorial service: splashed by a bus on Rose Lane

Winter has returned, albeit a bit later than forecast. A fair bit of snow on the ground last night, which deterred Sam from completing his journey from Birmingham, where he had been attending a Christian Writers’ Conference with Joe and Birgit. He made it as far back as Joe’s and wisely decided to stay the night there.

Earlier in the day I had walked up to Holy Trinity through a mixture of snow and rain to attend Jan Miller’s memorial service: quite an inspiring one – very well organised in a Holy Trinity sort of way. Hardly anyone there I knew, so I didn’t stay for refreshments. Even harder snow and rain on the way back, but all good for my walking programme. Today is the first day I haven’t done at least half an hour for a couple of weeks. That’s because it’s still very cold, with a mixture of snow and rain falling, though the snow that laid last night has largely vanished; so I imagine Sam will eventually make it.

He is visiting his parents, as he had been signed off work for a couple of weeks. On Thursday I took them to the doctors and left them there for about 90 minutes before being recalled to fetch them. I have to say neither of them looked particularly well.

The day before, I had another of my longer walks, dropping off some cash at Ian’s before heading into town for a cafe conversation on translation at the White Lion Cafe. Happily Adrian was there again, and the session was good too, by Dr B J Epstein of the UEA. Some interesting ideas, and practical too. I think it was aimed mainly at people considering doing translation, but that’s not really in my mind. Still it inspired an article and a poem for my website.

I’m also reading the latest biography of Leonard Cohen (I’m Your Man), which is beautifully written and easy to read, as well as revealing some unexpected details about him, such as the huge amount of drugs he took. A combination of that and the translation session inspired me to want to write more poems, though not to take more drugs.