September 2, 2019

Saturday, August 31, 2019: A family day-out to Harlech Castle (which I’d often passed below, on the train, but never visited). The ruin passed all expectations. And the views from the towers … :

We had a late lunch at Dylan’s Restaurant, Criccieth. The food was good, but the Art-Deco architecture, even more special. It was designed by Clough Williams Ellis – who also built Portmeirion – in 1954:

The beach before the building was like a mirror:

Monday, September 2, 2019: These days, I’m prone to versify on Twitter when ideas take a more allusive and tangential turn. They’re composed and dispatched quickly, with little revision:

9.00 am: I caught up with emails about postgraduate applications, research admin, and those matters that were either vexatious or unutterably dull. There’s too much of that type of material coming across my desk, these days. All jobs have a downside: those things that must be done dutifully, well, but not necessarily enthusiastically. (I’ll not pretend to enjoy what’s irksome.) But when the downside threatens to topple the upside, a problem and a decision present themselves. There’s much that orbits around Higher Education that’s spurious, fatuous, and (curiously) uncritical and unintelligent. Few academics have either the time to critique the system or the luxury of losing their post for so doing. The hardest tasks to undertake are those in which one has no confidence. I can move a mountain with conviction. But I can’t move even a molehill with suspicion.

12.20 pm: I walked to the School to retrieve my post and scout around to see whether any of the MA fine art exhibiters had begun the process editing and hanging their work. There was a beginning.

1.30 pm: Following a light lunch, I persevered with the tiresome and unpersuasive tasks before treating myself to several hours writing an account of my own research:

Previous Post
August 29, 2019
Next Post
September 5, 2019

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Fill out this field
Fill out this field
Please enter a valid email address.