Coffee, snow and a Friday night out

A few weeks ago I managed to spill a cup of coffee rather spectacularly. I was on my way across the Graduate Union building to present a paper on language (available here) to the CHAS (Christians in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences) group. Perhaps unwisely, I had a newspaper in one hand which I was reading and a large cappuccino in the other. I think perhaps I tripped. Somehow half the contents of my cup of coffee flew up into the air. I had dressed up slightly for my presentation so was wearing cream/beige coloured trousers, which were then nicely decorated with coffee and foam all the way down one leg. The newspaper I was holding was made soggy with coffee. There was also a pool of coffee on the floor which looked a bit like someone had been sick, and coffee dripping down one of the new wooden chairs (the GU having had a recent makeover). I was rescued by the PA to the GU president, a lovely Texan lady with whom I have some acquaintance.



A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a pub crawl for a friend’s birthday. I was running a bit late so tried to catch up with the crowd. The plan was to try to find where they were, and if I couldn’t find them by my own ingenuity, then to ring them to locate them. Unfortunately, my phone was out of battery so I couldn’t phone them. I ended up wandering the streets for two hours before giving up and going home. I think it's quite impressive in some ways that I managed to spend a Friday night meandering aimlessly between pubs without the aid of a drop of alcohol.



I also managed to leave a bag with some of my thesis work and library books in it in Sainsbury’s, but retrieved it later in the evening, since they kindly kept it safe for me.



In other news, it snowed.

“Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

books and beards

The road running past my college is closed for road works. A sign read 'Access to collage car park only.' It's since been corrected.

At least it got the meaning across, unlike the Welsh of this sign:

The Welsh actually says "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated." Guess what happened. (The BBC explains)

Someone has spent a year reading through the Oxford English Dictionary in its entirety (and written a book about it). This is a bit like the guy who read all the way through the Encyclopaedia Britannica (and wrote a book on it). (He also wrote a book about trying to follow every command in the Bible for a year). I find it interesting that the OED and the Encyclopaedia Britannica are quintessentially British reference works and yet these feats of reading have been performed by American writers.

Last year a French professor wrote a book entitled How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. I haven't read it, but I think it's great.

Today is my grandfather's 92nd birthday. It is also Reformation Day, to celebrate which, here is a polka and a rap about Luther and the Reformation:




While we're on church history, I recommend reading this post about why it is a biblical norm for men to have beards. There are also some references to great beard proponents of church history. My favourite quotation in this post is from the church father Clement of Alexandria:

"How womanly it is for one who is a man to comb himself and shave himself with a razor, for the sake of fine effect, and to arrange his hair at the mirror, shave his cheeks, pluck hairs out of them, and smooth them!…For God wished women to be smooth and to rejoice in their locks alone growing spontaneously, as a horse in his mane. But He adorned man like the lions, with a beard, and endowed him as an attribute of manhood, with a hairy chest—a sign of strength and rule"