From my diary

There is a heatwave affecting southern England at the moment, which made it impossible to sleep last night, and filled the roads with sleep-deprived traffic early this morning.  I’ve started a new contract, which is very welcome after so long.  The air-conditioning in the office is even more welcome!  But all of this means that things only move in dribs and drabs.

A couple of chunks of the oldest Life of St George have appeared.  I need to revise these.  This in fact leaves only two chapters left – 15 and 16.  So this is progressing well.

An old correspondent wrote to me enquiring if I was commissioning at the moment.  It is a great evil that young scholars with amazing language skills are left on the market.   Sadly I had to tell him “no”.  I’m not sure whether I will ever commission more translations, in truth.

I’ve started to OCR the Mombritius edition of the Life of St Nicholas, as translated by John the Deacon.  Here again I find eccentric spellings, which is a nuisance.  I was able to do four pages this evening before I had to stop.

A kind correspondent has sent me a copy of the Craig Evans paper, “How long were ancient books in use?”  It makes some very valid points, and some obviously invalid ones too.  But I think it’s an important paper, and I hope to review it some time soon.

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7 thoughts on “From my diary

  1. Oh, dang, I’m sorry.

    Usually I’d give y’all a ribbing in the line of the “heat? You call that heat?” and whine about the humidity here, but there’s a time and a place for that and when it’s screwing with folks’ sleep is neither.

  2. Set up a bag of ice in a cooler, basin, sink, or in your bathtub. Run your fan behind or in front of the ice container. A/C the cheap way!

    Doesn’t help humidity, alas….

    (Assuming you have bags of ice for parties, in the UK.)

  3. We stole your weather. Our 90F plus heatwave with the 97% humidity got replaced by days at 70F and nights at 55F. I have had the windows open at night. Like going up to camp in the mountains in Pennsylvania. (Not really mountains, but big hills with enough climate difference.)

    Next week we go back to normal summer….

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