Thursday morning went in to College hoping to find my glasses - the expensive ones. Asked at the Cybercafe - no luck. Over to the library and asked on floor three if any glasses had been handed in. Librarian misheard me, looked at me as if I was daft, and said,
'We don't lend glasses. Anyway, the only ones I've got are my own and they would look weird on you.'
After explanations - she's embarrassed and I still don't have my glasses. Eventually I found them - on the floor of my study (I don't have an office - I have a study, HMMPHH!) - under the chair, undamaged either by the wheels of the chair or the cleaner's hoover the night before!
Friday morning did lots of phone / email / marking then went for a coffee with Graeme. Met Alexander Hutchison the Scottish poet - not to name-drop but Sandy has been a friend since my early days here at the University - he gave me one of his poems, signed, as a gift to mark my Doctorate. Well a long blether about illumination in the poetry of Theodore Roethke, the dialectic between immanence and transcendence, the inordinately long sentence (Sandy thinks the longest one extant!) that comes at the end of Michael Polyani's 1951-2 Gifford lectures, Personal Knowledge, and our usual swipe at the suffocating algae of contemporary academic administration that reduces the oxygen and light of scholarship.By the way, did I mention the curling stone sized blueberry muffins that Graeme and I ate???
Friday afternoon did another 10k run - still quite hard going but slowly improving. Not today though - end of Semester fatigue took the edge off. But the wind, a couple of light showers and quite a lot of sunshine provided a pleasant climate in which to risk expiring. Running past a bus stop in Crookston Road, obviously looking mildly distressed, young ned says, devoid of sensitivity, ' Ach ye'll be too auld onywye by 2012.'
Obviously I no longer cut it as an Olympic prospect. But I did shift most of that mountainous muffin though!
This afternoon is fitba' and pizza - Andrew and I are hoping for a scoring draw, extra time and then a penalty shoot-out at the new Wembley which today doubles as the OK Corral between Mourinho and Ferguson. If one is the goodie and one is the baddie, which is Ike Clanton and which is Wyatt Eearp?
Doesn't matter we're neutral observers of the beautiful game, skilled practitioners of sofa fitba, the high energy spectator sport sustained by Pizza and, in true Blythean spirit, - IRN BRU. Anyway the BIG game is tomorrow - Aberdeen need to beat Rangers to qualify for Europe - or Hearts need to lose at Kilmarnock - which makes me a two day fervent Killie fan.
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