March 2, 2021

WFH: DAY 43/LENT 12. I had a poor night’s sleep. Nevertheless, the bright and consoling morning light put me in an upbeat mood for the day ahead. 8.00 am: A communion. I’m grateful for the years I’ve received, and those that remain. A number of friends with whom I’d shared my schooldays are gone. Some had died while at school, others in their twenties, and yet others more recently. Having scrolled to the bottom of my secondary school’s Facebook page, I alighted upon one photograph of me. It was taken around 1975, alongside two members of an amateur comedy troupe (in the mould of Monty Python’s Flying Circus) that used to write and perform sketches in order to raise money for local charities. I looked seriously unhinged back then. But, then again, my accomplices looked seriously damaged too:

8.30 am: I assembled the paperwork for the morning’s viva voce, reread my and the Internal Examiner’s reports on the thesis, along with my questionnaire. 9.30 am: A meeting with the Internal Examiner, at which we discussed the overall complexion of the candidate’s thesis, our respective questions, and the structure of the examination.

10.30 am: The viva Voce. The candidate acquitted themselves very well. To my mind, one ought not to hold a viva if the student is unlikely to be ready for, or cope with, it. 12.15 pm: Mopping-up. There were feedback and performance reports to write-up before my task was done. I’d need to return to the task again this evening.

2.00 pm: An afternoon of MA fine art tutorials, interspersed with emailery and forward planning. Tiredness was catching up on me. At times, I pressed on mechanically … sensing that if I could just keep on talking, something meaningful might ensue. 4.30 pm: A restorative:

The overgrowth beneath the School had been cleared, which now gives Avenue strollers a magnificent view of the it, and the students and staff a far better view of the Avenue, when they return to the building. Everyone’s a winner.

7.30 pm: I returned to my examiner’s report — all 1,300 words of it. (Sigh!) In my ‘off’ moments, I’ve been keeping abreast of research on the relationship between long-Covid and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), which I’ve suffered from for over thirty years. The symptoms are remarkably similar: periods of profound tiredness (especially after exertion), cognitive deficits (‘brain fog’), muscle ache, digestive problems, complex allergies, dizziness, periods of crash and lapse, sleeping difficulties, and disorders of and changes to the personality. My condition is chronic but no longer severe. I can cope, function, and leave a fulfilled life … but only with great effort. Of course, as I get older, my body and mind need to exert themselves harder in order to perform the same tasks with the same efficiency as they did when I was a younger man. My job and ambitions require it. But there’ll come a time when that continued effort may have a detrimental effect on my core energies and resolve. And for that occasion I must prepare.

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