Category: Indulgence
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Lingue
A good day at the Jung-Institut – the middle one of three hot days. Tess's writing seminar was very good – why in fact doesn't she do this for four hours a day for three weeks? that would work – and when people chose to read their work it included a man with a beautiful…
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Dilatory
Yes, I know: don't I comment, far too often, on my own rather flaky, inefficient working life in this blog? It seems that both Michael and Patrick have been annoyed by my apparent inability to just get to work, steadily – Michael to the point of gradually removing me from his virtual list of those-worth-being-concerned-about.…
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Craic
A lovely one-day-late Thanksgiving: Bennett cooking, Merrie setting everything up; I brought Annie with me; Michelle and her husband came, plus two of our new postgraduates from the US. A gorgeous evening, good food, endless laughter, lots of stories, everyone seemed engaged right up to the hilt – just what a social life should be…
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Light and air
After an amazingly unproductive weekend – even for me (my excuses: last week was full of meetings, this week has too much student work that needs marking, some of which is good but much of which is distinctly disappointing) – I'm avoiding everything, and everyone, by looking through vast books of architecture. 1000 x European…
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Wicked, wicked boy
So work on articles and book has dribbled to – not quite nothing, but very little. And, caught on the prongs of guilt over not keeping up with my energetic co-editor, I find myself reading pointless comics (Hellblazer) and light books… in between bits of Improving Literature, such as Jungians on dream work and Boice…
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What Barcelona and a cat have in common
No, it’s not a riddle. It’s also not a forgotten manifesto from the Surrealists. I still want something… feeling relatively healthy though still not energetic (especially yesterday and today, oddly and inexplicably tired after short errands and walks); but I am restless, and childishly rebellious that I should expect myself to get back to work…
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Flowers in the water
Hot bath with oils, flowers embedded in the solid blocks of oils… I haven’t done this for very long in my life, just the past four or five years; and I’ve mostly thought of, explained, them as indulgences and as survival: as pleasures that help me get through the northern British winters (and springs and…
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End of the holidays
And the holidays are now officially, by almost any count, over: 4 am GMT on New Year’s Day. (I suppose we could hold out for January 6, and Twelfth Night/Epiphany, but that’s probably pushing it these days.) Rain, on what has been a surprisingly warm evening here – and a lovely dinner at Beate’s house…
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This endris night
The candles are burning, and some old carols are playing; dinner is cooking – rice with saffron, cranberries and almonds, topped with a breast of chicken rubbed with paprika and nutmeg. Tomorrow I will go to blahfeme’s for Christmas dinner, but tonight is quiet and at home. *** I love Christmas stories, poems, plays, vignettes.…
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Winter pleasures
A rather tired day, as a result of the usual gastro problems. (I’ve been impressed by my secretary Jane’s recent adventures with a homeopath, who has hugely reduced her long-term allergies – I may try that myself.) To brighten myself up, I did various at-home things: Henry James, Washington Square. I’d never read this short…
Paul Attinello 