From my diary

I hope to upload Methodius On life and rational activity soon.  The translation is done, and paid for (as of today), and only needs a tweak to my introductory footnote.

Less good news: the Trinity-St Sergius Lavra site,  which hosts the Old Slavonic manuscripts that we are using, is offline.  Fortunately I did download the images of the two Methodius manuscripts so we are not completely stuck.  I will pop them onto a keydrive and post them to the translator.

This is a warning, tho, that these online collections of manuscripts are very fragile.  In the case of most such sites, I wouldn’t even be able to download the images.

I’ve seen the list of papers for the quadrennial Oxford Patristics Conference, 2015, which is due to start on 10th August.  Invitations went out last year, and I looked at the price for the week, and I looked at the cost of staying in the accommodation (which you do want to do), and I thought about the financial loss involved in being away from work for a week.  I also thought about the problem of car parking, which they make so difficult and expensive, and the lousy quality of the accommodation.  And … I decided not to go.

In truth I didn’t enjoy my conference all that much.  Booking late, I ended up in a poor room in Queens College, which undoubtedly affected my mood rather.

Having made that decision, I looked at the papers with some trepidation.  Would it be full of items that I would ache to be present at?  Things that I would really want to be present for?

In fact, and I hate to say it, the papers look very dull.  An awful lot of them seem to be by Americans, on the sort of topics that might be given to an undergraduate.  So few of these papers looked interesting!

I don’t know whether it is just me, or whether there is a genuine diminution in quality.  The answer is probably a bit of both, in truth.  There will be 900 people there.  I’d like to mix with patristics people, it is true.  But … I think I’ll be happier not to attend.