Time, like an ever-rolling stream,Bears all its sons away;They fly forgotten, as a dreamDies at the opening day(Isaac Watts, ‘Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past’ (1708)) Sunday, November 10. A morning remembrance: 10.00 am: The church service, for Remembrance Sunday, was held an hour earlier. Shortly before 11.00 am we gathered around the memorial at the square in Llanbadarn…

Saturday, November 11. Open Day; the final one for this academic year. The weather, which had been kind to us on previous occasions, withdrew its blessing: a bristling cold air and downpour were the overture for the day. Before facing towards the town, I’d alighted upon a tweet posted by the Church Times. It featured a quote from the Roman…

Late yesterday afternoon, a palette of boxes containing my The Biblical Record CDs arrived at the School. The larger part of the batch will be sent to the National Library of Wales. They will sell it from the library’s on-line shop, along with the other two CDs in the series: R R B V E Ǝ T N Ƨ O A (2014) and The Bible…

8.45 am: Abstraction set up. The morning’s lecture dealt with Rothko and Newman in the context of their beliefs about the trancendental. I’ve passed through this discussion with a great many students over the years. For some, like Stephen Chilton, the lecture was a turning point towards a deeper apprehension of his own modus operandi. This had nothing to do…

He that was I 6.00 am: I woke with Henry Mancini’s and Johnny Mercer’s ‘Moon River‘ (1961), as sung by Andy Williams, in my head. (What had prompted that?) I’d grown up with the song. It’s about the lyricist’s childhood near the waterways of Savannah, Georgia. In that respect, the theme and its context had nothing to do with me.…

6.00 am: Awoke; arose. 6.50 am: Before breakfast; looking towards Pendinas: 7.30 am: A paragraph on racial tension in the USA during July 1964 (when Scourby recorded The Talking Bible) needed to be written; then the ‘That One Day’ composition descriptor would be completed. A busy day of MA tutorials lay ahead. I cleared my inbox and packed my ‘school…

Where is the blessedness I knew (William Cowper (1731–1800)) Sunday, November 3. 11.15 am: Morning Prayer. I like the poet and hymnist William Cowper, whose hymn ‘Oh for a Closer Walk with God‘ we sang. He was a non-standard Christian, one who’d been institutionalised for insanity, and suffered bouts of severe depression and profound loss of faith throughout his life.…

Trapeze artists catch each other by gripping one another’s wrists simultaneously. So, if one of them accidentally lets go, the other can prevent them from falling. 7.00: I got up. But I’d been awake since 5.30 am. My brain still hadn’t yet adjusted to the clocks going back. 7.30 am: I messaged my sons with a review of Ad Astra,…

All Saints’ Day. 8.45 am: I recalibrated my brain so as to re-engage the composition descriptors. ‘Get them finished by the close of this weekend, John!’, said the voice in my head. ‘No time to lose, then’, I replied. [John, you are seriously bonkers.] I plundered the vaults of my diary blogs for information on the development of ‘Wisdom is…

All Hallows’ Eve ‘Wasn’t something supposed to happen today?’ 7.30 pm: Breakfast time: 8.25 am: Off to town, by way of a supermarket, towards the School. 9.10 am: The first of the day’s two Abstraction lectures. We went to the Armoury Show (1913). Who wrote this?: This is the last time that I’ll be delivering the module at the School.…