Sunday, July 5. The CoE morning service was delivered by various contributors from Her Majesty’s Prisons. (During lockdown, we’ve all been prisoners of sorts.):
The weekly post-lunch runaround with the vacuum cleaner and duster. How often the necessary and the irksome are synonymous:
Late afternoon, we walked. Signs of the times:
Monday, July 6. WFH DAY 84. 8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: I made ready for my morning’s stint on the Online Open Day event. 9.00 am: First, a refresher course with our marketing team. Contributing staff arrived (looking dazed) in bunches and singularly. And with them, the sounds of domesticity: children, pets, traffic passing, and the clatter of breakfast dishes being washed. I’d inadvertently opened two versions of Teams, and created an engaging delay/echo feedback loop between them. However, it wasn’t conducive to listening to content. (‘Concentrate, John!’)
Understandably, many inquirers were anxious to know how Covid-19 would impact upon their first-year experience. One can only say what’s sayable, at present. As staff, we’re in the same position — asking the same questions. There was a steady stream of inquirers. 12.00 pm: My colleague and I shut shop. Thereafter, until lunch, I prepared to resume Saturday’s business while consulting other writings by Edmund Jones, upon which I’d made notes back in 2002:
1.30 pm: I returned to the first composition, having let it lie fallow over the weekend. There were a few other samples that just might have had a place within its fabric. One did, two didn’t. 2.30 pm: I returned to composition 2, and the horrors of a supernatural ass’s bray. This sonic landscape must appear as though it’s uncomposed — naturally occurring. That’s a tough call. The ‘Image and Inscription‘ suite, from The Bible in Translation album, evoked dark and brooding landscapes associated with the Sinai desert and its titular mountain, as heard through engravings of biblical scenes by John Martin:
4.30 pm: An Anti-clockwise walk, returning via Plas Grug Avenue:
7.30 pm: Back to composition 2, and the development of the appalling brays, derived from slowed-down sawing. I was, now, in control of the process again; I knew my location and direction of travel, and could glimpse the end of the journey.
Udder-gloves:
