Twelve Days in the Year: 27th September 2024

Very strange dreams – some sort of awkward conference dinner in the open air, which I think was with people (1) whom I had never met before and (2) who appeared to be American political scientists, then convoluted a journey back – when I say ‘back’, I’m not sure where I was heading back to, but it was definitely ‘back’ – through dingy alleys and across major roads. Slowly realised that it was still dark, and waking up was a bad idea; dozed, started to compose blog post in head, started to think about chord sequence for something connected to the blues as this was my jazz composition homework.

Eventually realised that I desperately needed the bathroom, so got up ten minutes before the alarm clock. Washed up last night’s dishes, fed cats, made tea, back to bed. Hector rushes to cuddle next to me, Olga disappears under A’s legs; Buddy, having a passive-aggressive turn, sits in his room and yells, expecting me to go and collect him. We don’t, in hope he learns a valuable lesson – A concerned that he becomes too dependent and manipulative, and that there will be problems when I go away – and he goes back to sleep.

The usual morning routine of reading web comics, blog updates and the Grauniad while listening to Farming Today and then trying to ignore the Today programme in the background; in particular, an infuriating segment in the business news on OpenAI: “This is really going to change the world.” And a lot of mention of “force for good”, simply arguing over whether it’s good for investors or ordinary people. Nothing on environmental concerns, nothing on the fact that it’s basically crap. Smarmy git meets incurious booster. Mutter, mutter. At half six A gets up and decides that Buddy needs to have at least ten minutes of cosy time under my legs under the duvet, so brings him in; he’s looking very smug and comfortable when I get up to have a shower quarter of an hour later, and he then sits on his cushion next to me as I have breakfast while A. showers. She heads off to work at half seven; I bring in the empty recycling boxes, clear cat litter trays, make another cup of tea and prepare some dough for Scandinavian-style rose and cardamom buns, primarily intended for Saturday morning breakfast.

Most of the morning is spent translating my rough draft of a book review into German, as it’s for a German academic journal (to which I need to make amends for failing to get a review written on time a few years ago because of the Long COVID brain fog). It’s interesting as ever to experience the gap between languages that can never be bridged by direct translation. A few weeks ago an Austrian friend on whose draft funding application (in English) I’d been commenting asked me why German is so abstract compared with English, but I don’t think that’s actually the issue – rather, they just express relatively abstract ideas in quite different ways (English, one might say, trying to pretend that it’s not abstract at all). It does mean that half my sentences, which would be perfectly clear to an English speaker, have to be completely rewritten in order to make any sort of sense.

This is quite a fun exercise on the whole, apart from the slight sinking feeling at the end when I realise I’ve forgotten to keep an eye on the character count – perhaps because it’s usual in English publications to focus on the number of words, so I do have an ongoing sense of roughly how much I’ve written and the overall length expected by that metric, whereas ‘8000 characters including spaces’ means nothing. Anyway, getting my German checked by a friend will probably change the count, in one way or another, so no point in trying to get everything spot on beforehand.

Manage to get the review sent off to said friend just before A returns home at half twelve. Make fried rice for lunch with last night’s leftovers, then another hour of work – largely spent hunting down email addresses so I can try to nag people into agreeing to write reviews for the journal, and the fact that this is an ever more time-consuming task is a sign both of the decline of Google search and the way that university webpages are now focused on attracting potential students and showcasing institutional strategies. Also exemplifying the general decline of everything is the new cat toy A. insisted we must buy for the gang, a remote-controlled rechargeable flapping catnip bird – which the box hilariously illustrates as a bat, which largely ignores the remote control, and which at best bemuses (Buddy) and at worst terrifies (Olga) the people who are supposed to derive great pleasure from it.

Off to Bristol mid-afternoon, where we have booked an early supper followed by a concert at St George’s. As the last three times I’ve booked tickets for a concert in Bristol we haven’t actually made it – one time because of my broken foot, one time because of appalling weather, and A and I can’t agree on whether the third time was because of sheer exhaustion or a combination of exhaustion and bad weather – I’ve been expecting floods and/or locusts, but the drive is fairly straightforward, with plenty of time (but rather limited energy) for chatting about German, academia, A’s colleagues, the cats and their ever-developing personal dynamics – and the numerous changes on the route since I last travelled it.

Still more in Bristol, as we see when we walk down Jacob’s Well Road from the West End car park to the harbour, admiring the energetic oarsmanship of various boats (one rather magnificently called Massive Attack) and assorted monuments of industrial archaeology, and onwards to the Cumberland Basin, where we find a new candidate for our list of favourite restaurants and some superb fish and chips surrounded by Bristol rugby fans enjoying the pre-match special. Actually venture a post-prandial espresso to make sure I stay awake for the rest of the evening, and to balance out the oyster starter. Back along the harbourside and past the cathedral to reach Park Street, which is probably the area which remains clearest in my memory from my Bristol years and so serves as a marker of change. So many restaurants have been replaced, and the Bristol Guild has gone – but the Futon Shop is still there. On to St George’s for a drink before the concert – partly reflecting on the striking resemblance of many of the women around that bar area to our friend C from Germany – A and I disagree on whether this is a distinctive arty type – and partly nervously checking whether there’s anyone I know.

The concert, a Norwegian fiddle player (partly normal violin, partly a national instrument that isn’t called a Harbinger but I can never remember the proper name) and a Norwegian harmonium player, playing assorted traditional hymns and folk songs. Atmospheric and calming, but for my taste they could have done a lot more in the way of improvisation rather than simply playing the tunes. What did strike me (and A, as became clear as we talked on the way home) was how far the tunes echoed others; the hymns could have been Welsh or English, the folk tunes often sounded Scottish or Irish in their cadences. And if traditional Norwegian hymns can be turned into something that at least faintly resembles ECM-style Scandinavian jazz, then maybe one might do something similar with Thomas Tallis… Anyway, St George’s does have a lovely acoustic.

The great thing about a concert finishing at a quarter past nine is that the journey home is very straightforward – getting out before the rugby match finished, for a start. The cats are predictably cross when we get home (and still frightened of the new toy) but settle down; we read for a while, then go to bed. The beer I’ve had counteracts the espresso nicely, and I sleep reasonably well; A has an awful night…