Dr Alcock writes:
Rather than a translation I have decided on a few notes instead.
Here are his notes!
Month: July 2017
From my diary
Last Sunday I drove down to start a new contract on the Monday. It’s quite interesting adapting back to life on the road. Sleeping in hotels is an art! I did manage to get some sleep on Thursday night! The manager who recruited me to the new client is trying to cheat me, which is not good news. I also had one of the staff dent the passenger door of my car. He left no note, so there was no indication who did it. Sadly for him, earlier that day I had taken a photograph of my car (entirely accidentally) which happened to show his car and the number-plate. The office manager did the rest and sorted him out. I suppose the world is full of scoundrels; but every so often we get a reminder.
While I was away, a new copy arrived of Matti Moosa’s translation of the chronicle of Michael the Syrian. Dr Moosa did send me a complimentary copy, but it went missing in the refurbishment of my house last year. Reluctantly I bought another. For when they are sold, they are sold. I wish that I had bought the copyright.
A little pile of volumes is accumulating on the side, for conversion into PDFs. Among them is a guidebook to the archaeology of Rome, that ought to be very interesting but is really dull. Also a few duplicate copies of paperbacks that I already possess, bought for pretty much nothing, which I can dismember and scan.
An unusual query from an Athonite monk; could he do some translation work? I have replied, and perhaps we will do some more of the St Nicholas of Myra stuff. I really wish that a complete version of the Life compiled by Simon Metaphrastes was online. And … it still strikes me as funny that, for a figure venerated worldwide, it is little old me who is funding the translation of the literature. All the princes, publishers, philanthropists and funding bodies… do nothing. Perhaps it is ever so.
I ought to do a little shredding. So very hot here this evening.