Trekking the Andes (and btw, it wasn’t the Inca Trail, but a – much tougher, higher, and generally more extreme – Inca trail) was so much more than I thought it would be… the best of times, and the worst of times. I can’t even begin to summarize here, so will have to work on a blow-by-blow account on another page. But I can now say that I have survived bigtime altitude sickness, camping at -5 degrees C, climbing over 2500 ft in three hours and descending the same before lunch, close proximity to llamas, and serious digestive discomfort, all framed by the vicissitudes of travelling stateside by air and its attendant indignities visited on the person by so-called security officials. Can’t wait to go to AMS conference in LA in November. The challenges will be slightly different, of course, but equally character-building. OK, so maybe not so different, what with hotel air conditioning and all – except LA is at sea level.

I will not be taking my iPod to the Andes as there is no point – nowhere to charge it, and I can’t be fussed with one of those little battery chargers. But not having music electrically supplied hasn’t been a problem during our weekend training hikes, simply because it’s going on in my head all the time. The only difference is that it tends to be one bit of music on a continuous loop (nearly wrote “continuous loup” just then – wonder what that would be like? Owwoooo…). A few weekends ago it was the Boswell Sisters’ “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” (someone else likes this one, too – click on http://katry.blogspot.com/2005/07/between-devil-and-deep-blue-sea.html). Last week it was the chant Regnum mundi et omnem ornatum saeculi contempsi from the profession rite for a Clarissan nun – one of the chants featured in Fallen.

Now, as I’ve said before I’ve never really been into chant: not my kind of thing, no no, just the boring bits you have to sit through before you get to the swingin’ polyphony. However, I have to say, since starting to research Fallen I’ve fallen in love with it, especially with singing it. I find myself humming little snatches of chant tunes as I’m filing in my office, or tidying the bathroom. It was great to sing it in ensemble when we had our first chorus rehearsal last week; incredibly calming, and grounding, and quietly energizing. Being a Quaker sympathiser, I guess strictly I’m not supposed to be into hymns and the like, but I’ve retained an affection for the good old tunes since my church-job days (excellent for giving it some welly when digging the garden – “HE who would valiant be, ‘GAINST all disaster”), and now I’m just going to have to admit chant into my pantheon of weaknesses. If nothing else, it helps make low-level housework more bearable.

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.