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January 2002 |
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Tuesday 1 January
Usually, the first journal entry in January consists of thoughts about the year ahead. But the coming year seems obscured by the dust and ashes from those down-razed towers, and I can't help looking backwards rather than forwards. The murderous hijackings and devastation of the attacks on 11 September were the most shocking single event that I can remember—I'm just slightly too young to remember the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like the atom bombs, the attacks on New York and Washington were shocking not just in terms of the number of innocent lives lost, but because of the feeling that the world had changed forever and that the future has suddenly become unpredictable and frightening. In last September's journal entries, I said I was nervous that an inexperienced American President would react by lashing out wildly at the first apparent enemy that came to mind. In fact, that didn't happen. I was surprised that the President, who had spent his first eight months in office tearing up every international treaty that he could lay hands on, was persuaded to take time to put together an impressive international coalition to fight terrorism. It seems to have been proved beyond reasonable doubt that the al-Qaida organisation was responsible for the attacks on America, and the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan were given the opportunity to take action against al-Qaida. When they refused to do so, I don't see that there was much alternative but to remove them by force. So, a bit to my surprise, I found myself supporting the American attacks on Afghanistan. (I refuse to call it a war, since as far as I know, no country has made a declaration of war in this conflict.) But armed force usually causes more trouble than it cures. The scariest aspect of the US administration's policy is summed up in the soundbite "We don't do peace." It looks as though it will be left to the rest of the world to provide the aid and reconstruction that will be needed to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a breeding ground for future generations of terrorists. Meanwhile, the hawkish elements in the Pentagon and White House seem to be looking for other countries to invade on the pretext of rooting out terrorism. If they do that then their international coalition will fall apart very quickly indeed. Elsewhere in the world, unscrupulous leaders have been quick to use the rhetoric of the "war against terrorism" to justify their own aggressive policies: India and Pakistan are at each other's throats, as are Israel and Palestine; and the Russians and Chinese authorities are brutally suppressing internal dissidents. One way and another, things don't look too good for the world in 2002. When Shakespeare wrote his sonnet about lofty towers being down-razed, he obviously wasn't thinking of anything on the scale of the World Trade Center. The ruins that he saw in Elizabethan England would have been those of church towers, smashed during the Reformation. They would have reminded him that the old Catholic certainties had been swept away, and that he lived in a new and frightening world where Protestant England was drawn into war with Catholic Spain in the struggle to control the riches of the New World across the Atlantic. But when he wrote the sonnet, Shakespeare was not concerned with politics or war. The ruined towers, with their reminder of the corrosive effects of time, led him to wonder about what Time would do to his personal relationships. His worry was that "Time will come and take my love away." The theme that runs throughout the sonnets is that the young man, whose beauty hypnotised the poet, could only retain his youthful good looks for a short time, and that a relationship founded on that basis of physical attraction could not stand the test of time. That is why Shakespeare's sonnets mean so much to me. I know exactly how he felt. If your ideal of physical beauty is that of a post-adolescent young man, then Time is a great enemy. There is no way that a relationship founded on that sort of attraction is going to last for more than a very few years. So if you want a lifetime partnership you had better look elsewhere. Anyway, that's what I did. Here is the whole of Shakespeare's wonderful Sonnet 64. I think it's one of his best. In any case, it makes a much better introduction to 2002 than thoughts about terrorism and violence.
After a ten day period of doing very little over the Christmas-New Year holiday, the past week has been hectic as we scrambled to get everything ready for going away tomorrow. As usual, we are having a winter sunshine break in the Canaries. For the past two years, we have combined this with a visit to the family in Spain. But now that Steve and Jo have moved away from Málaga it is not so convenient to do this. So we are going to spend both weeks in Gran Canaria, and we plan to make a separate visit to Spain to see Steve, Jo and Tommy in their new place around Easter time. Another change this year is that our friend Lorraine will be coming with us for the first week of our visit to the Canaries. We'll be staying in the same apartment that we were in last year, which has a spare bedroom for Lorraine. The owner has promised to make sure that the apartment is free of any perfume or "air fresheners" when we arrive, and that the bedding is washed without using any detergent. So we are optimistic that Mary won't have too many allergy problems there. The main difference from previous years is that Mary is going to stay on in Gran Canaria when I come home in two weeks' time. We hope that if she spends a couple of months convalescing in a warm, clean environment, away from the damp, cold pollution of Leeds in winter, it may help her to recover from these allergies. That is why the past week has been so busy. It was not just a matter of packing for a two week holiday. Mary has had to get ready everything that she needs for the next three months. She has also been (quite unnecessarily) concerned that I won't be able to look after myself while she is away, and she has been preparing meals to put in the freezer to save me from having to cook when I get home in the evening. In nearly 36 years of marriage, we have never been away from each other for more than a couple of weeks at a time; and I have never in my life lived on my own, except for my first year in college at age 19, when I had a room to myself. It will be a novel experience for both of us to see how we survive two months of separation. Of course, we'll be in touch by telephone. But I think I'm going to find it very strange having this house all to myself. It's just as well that this place is 5000 miles from Kansas City, otherwise I might find when I get home one day that Bryan and Matt have moved in while I was out and changed the locks. :) If nothing else, I am going to have to get used to doing all the chores that are usually Mary's responsibility: feeding the cats, changing their litter, doing the laundry, watering the house plants, keeping the bird feeders topped up, paying the milkman and the cleaner, ... The list seems endless. Apart from all the household chores, there will be 100 exam scripts waiting for me to mark when I get back here on the 21st, so I'm not going to have a lot of time for journal entries. But I'll try to write something here before the end of the month.
Wednesday 23 January Home alone This is just a short entry to let an anxious world know that I am safely home from the annual winter sunshine break in the Canaries. As we planned, Mary has stayed on there to convalesce. This means that I am incredibly busy. For a start, I have come back to a stack of exam scripts that have to be marked. What's more, there was a disastrous misprint in the first question on the paper (entirely my fault), which put off most of the candidates and made the weaker ones panic. This means that I shall have to grade the papers extra carefully, and make allowance for the effect that the misprint may have had. On top of that, the Head of Department is away for the next two weeks and I have to stand in as Acting Head. This means an endless succession of dreary committee meetings and papers to be processed. And I don't even want to think about the 320 emails that arrived while I was away. Fortunately most of them can be ignored. But the worst thing is that I also have to look after myself at home. I brought back a mountain of laundry from the holiday, and I have to operate the washing machine and dryer all by myself. Then there are the cats to feed and groom, and I haven't even got round to changing their litter yet. And I have to make my own meals. For the past two days I have been virtuous and cooked a wholesome dinner for myself when I got home. But I wonder how long it will be before I am reduced to going to the local Burger King or chinese takeaway. I even have to answer the telephone instead of leaving it for Mary to deal with. I'm already feeling very grateful for the amount of work that she does. It makes me realise how pampered I am, and I wonder how people manage when they have to live on their own. So one way and another my days and evenings are entirely taken up with chores, and I am not going to have much time for the internet in the next little while. I do have some stuff I want to write about the holiday, including a few photos, but that will have to wait for a few days. Be patient.
Whew! The exams are all dealt with, the laundry is under control, the cats are being fed (and so am I), and I even remembered to water the house plants (just in time—they were starting to look curled up at the edges). But I have been on the go the whole time. And when I do have a few minutes to spare, I have only wanted to flake out on the sofa and channel surf, which is something I never do when Mary is here. Maybe that's because we only have the one cable TV and she usually monopolises it. Anyway, I have been neglecting the journal and the email for the past week. I am such a wimp. Other people manage to hold down stressful jobs, deal with the chores of daily life and still manage to do productive things with their leisure time. I wonder what's the matter with me, when I see how young guys like Tim and Bryan cope with paid work as well as full time study, and still have time for a full social life, including keeping a boyfriend happy ;). But then it occurs to me that I was probably just as active when I was their age. It had never actually struck me before, but I suppose it really is true that you start to slow down as you get older. So before I put on my slippers and dressing gown and shuffle off to the Golden Years Retirement Home, I had better do what I promised in the previous entry, and give you a quick rundown on the holiday in Gran Canaria. We were there for two weeks. For the first week our friend Lorraine shared the apartment with us. She did not have too good a time. For a start, the weather was less than perfect. An easterly wind was blowing across the ocean from the Sahara, bringing clouds of fine sand that settled everywhere. Then there was a rainstorm, which cleared the sand from the air and turned the normally barren island into a brilliant green as it brought all sorts of long dead plants to life. Just as the weather started to improve again, Lorraine went down with a severe attack of sinusitis and had to see the local doctor, who dosed her with antibiotics. By the end of the week I think poor Lorraine was glad enough to be going home again. In the second week the weather was perfect, as it should be. Mary had more energy than on our previous visits, and we able to see more of the island than we had done before. We spent a day at Palmitos Park, and on another day we took a boat trip along the coast to the neighbouring town of Puerto Rico. But most days we were happy enough to take things easy. In the mornings we went down to the beach and I had a swim. In the afternoons Mary had a long siesta while I drove to my favourite place on the island, the dunes at Maspalomas. In the evenings we had a leisurely dinner at one of the restaurants around the harbour. A surprising number of visitors to this site come here through a Google search for something along the lines of "gay nudist dunes Maspalomas". So here, as a public service announcement, are some detailed instructions on how to get there.
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W Shakespeare, Sonnet 64
