great leap forwards

[libellum]

Surrealness! I just answered the door to a canvasser from our local MP. An attractive, young, blonde canvasser with good shoes. punkalou, in fact, whom I haven't seen for almost two years. Cue much squeaking of "ohmygod!" and bemused giggling. L, maybe we should meet up sometime and drink wiiiiiine?

I had an excellent weekend. On Friday evening elise, smhwpf, shreena and

Comments

[oakwonder]

The newly-deciphered texts sound so exciting, they sound wonderful, you'd squee over them if they were discovered somewhere... But this is just the first few readings after the initial success. It's just the beginning. Oxyrhynchus in the nineteenth century gave us Bacchylides and Menander and original texts of things known only from Carolingian whispers or Veronese bungs. And that was 2000 readable fragments out of 100 000. No, there won't be any complete Euripides from beginning to end, but the volume of fragments potentially there is... Sappho is nothing but fragments. In those rubbish heaps we could double our Sappho. Pages of new plays. Do you know Stoppard's Arcadia? How Thomasina weeps over what is gone, consigned to entropy, never to be recovered...

[punkalou]

you're far too kind! I worried afterwards about being a bad advert for the Labour Party - freezing cold, snuffly and not really wanting to be there! You were the only person on that street who actually answered the door, so was rather dispirted by that point.
Wiiine is indeed a good idea, but can't make plans at the moment because tend to be working until stupidly late. It's likely to be less manic next week though, as we will have finished yet another mailout...

[anonymous]

re: the most recent post.
people you've probably forgotten, or even of whom you may never have really been aware, think about you quite often, a bit like in the cheery forwards which well-meaning people send but which so often just make it worse. i can't speak for the others; but you have my sympathy and best wishes, if not my acquaintance. lost, alone, and that other one. take care you.

[libellum]

Many thanks for the sympathy and best wishes - you are very welcome to my acquaintance if you desire it, but you'll have to disclose yourself first. I'm a little confused which "most recent post" you're referring to - I assume you mean my latest friends-only entry, which would mean you're on my friends list and it's extremely unlikely I've "never been aware of you". If I've added you it's fairly probable I like you quite a lot. So if the secrecy is due to any ideas that I don't (know you, or like you) then I think it's unfounded (and evidently I'm curious).

Still, the sentiments and the thrill of mystery are very much appreciated. (Your IP address suggests you're in Oxford, but I can't think why you'd suppose I'm not aware of you, if that's the case... intriguing!)

[anonymous]

i'm often guilty of unfounded paranoia i suppose. i just stopped posting in my livejournal for whatever reason and moved elsewhere, but may come back, having realised how much i like comments being made. here to learn. your acquaintance would be wonderful; i am on your friends list (i often wondered why that was, without wishing to sound like a self-pitying arse). are you still at cambridge next year? i hope to be. and my ip address is leading you on.

[libellum]

my ip address is leading you on.
fair enough. I don't speak computer very well.

I am hoping to be at Cambridge next year. Clare have accepted me for the one-year MPhil in Classics, but whether I can do it depends on the generosity of the AHRB. If I can't afford the course, I'll probably defer and work in Cambridge, so I'll still be around.

I have some guesses as to your identity, but I am too shy to reveal them. Which, I suppose, leaves us at a bit of an impasse.

If you're any of the people I think you are, you should start writing again. If you're the one I hope you are, then you really should write again because as it is I occasionally find myself getting such a craving for you (like Dionysus for Euripides!) that I have to go and read your old entries, and that's kind of lame. So yes. Write more!