Well, I see it’s been weeks since I posted anything in my blog. Hardly a sterling effort. Well, I’ve been busy. Really busy, and I know it’s not an excuse, but there you go.
What I want to know is, how many completely different activities can one keep up with before just going into overload? Son 2 has come up with a brilliant expression that says it all. In response to his father asking him to do something, at the end of a long and stressful day, he just looked up balefully and said, “My shop is closed, Daddy.” I know how he feels.
Thinking about what I’ve had to cope with over the last month – major projects a-gogo, and only summer-time childcare (so five hours a day if I’m lucky) – it’s hardly surprising that I’ve had to resort to relaxation tapes just to get to sleep. I know I’m my own worst enemy, but I’ve had to juggle Fallen, training for my charity trek, organizing the induction of all the new first-year intake at work, and submitting the manuscript of She’s So Fine. So one minute I’m trying to get 18 habits cut out of the vile cloth with increasingly blunt scissors, the next I’m pounding up and down the South Downs Way, followed by frantically rescheduling events because the campus policeman wants a 27-minute DVD to be shown in a 20-minute slot in front of the new students, and all the while carting the Chicago Manual of Style under my arm. And even writing this is displacement activity, because really I should be writing the instruction manual for the house and boys so that my mum (who’s babysitting when Pete and I are in Peru) will know where the spare lightbulbs are, who to phone if the dryer breaks down for the third time this week, and what to do if somebody comes home from school with nits. Who ever said being a musicologist and a person, at the same time, was easy?
And then, there’s all the stuff that comes along that is oh-so-interesting-and-don’t-I-want-to-spend-all-day-thinking-about-it. I note that one huge event I didn’t write about was taking Son 1 to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Earls Court in July. What a trip – we’ve seen them before (Hyde Park 2004), and I’m not sure which was the better gig, but still it was fab. AND Patti Smith showed up for a jam, which was truly wonderful and good for the soul. But ever since I’ve been thinking deeply about the gig and the album, and how they seem to be working their way through the 60s (having done girl groups, now they are on to Simon & Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), and wouldn’t it be great to write an article on that. And then there’s all the archival work in Ferrara that I’d love to do to find out more about my Renaissance nuns. Not to mention girl culture and Star Wars. So much academic rant, so little time. My shop is closed.
It will be good to get to the Andes – we leave on Thursday – and be unable to do anything. Five days during which I don’t have to see anything that plugs in, do any washing or answer any telephones – all I have to do is put one foot in front of the other. Not so much blisters as bliss.