It has been a bit of a rough week over here, I am not sure where to even begin; the days have completely blended together by lack of sleep, so perhaps a quick run through of happenings:
Had a power outage in the building (brief, but disrupting) on Wednesday. This caused me not to be informed of Seminar class not meeting because our instructor was ill, so I got up early for it (almost didn’t make it out of bed really almost forgetting it) to find out it wasn’t happening. Tragically, I’d devoted the entirety of Tuesday to the reading for this seminar… that was very long. Couple things around the building with people – just various things here and there that needed attention or time or whatever. Thursday was given to reading Virgil and then Friday I hit the library and started researching – there are a lot of books on the subject, so I was doing that till almost 8pm which meant I was up way into the next day writing my paper (just pulled the all nighter) and then in the morning, my tutor was too busy to meet me – so I met him today instead, but at the time it was a little crazy.
I am minimizing that last bit… what really happened was I went to meet him all strung out from finishing my paper just an hour or so before with only a quick breakfast of tea and a croissant in between, he was late, Fiona wasn’t in the office to have gotten his message that I was to meet him out of the building at another college, I didn’t know where the other college was, and I ran out of here without a coat to get to him late only to find him on the phone, waited for him, then was told “tomorrow instead.” I was not pleased at the time… but it wasn’t really that bad, and it is hard to stay mad at someone who says nice things about my papers.
Besides, I am told I tend to let things go fairly quickly – no point staying stuck on one thing when a bunch of other things are going to keep happening. Busy busy.
That’s just a sampling really, to write it all out would mean I have time and that just isn’t the case. Also, like I said, I don’t like to dwell.
So Saturday I took more or less for myself after my tutorial and went to look at some shops, bought myself my official “me” item (a charm bracelet and three charms for it) with the money Mommy and Da gave me for buying something for just me. I also picked up another family Christmas present – but I can’t say what or for who because they might be/probably are reading these posts. I hadn’t really planned on doing my holiday shopping here, but it is sort of turning out that way as I see things I know people back home will like or want – I wonder how I am going to get all my stuff with the stuff I picked up here, with the books I bought, and all this stuff into my suitcases!
In the evening I hung out in the Common Room with peoples, watching movies and just generally milling around but I was rather on the cranky side so I moved around more than usual and tended to drift between groups of people until I finally got tired of doing that and camped out in what I have dubbed “Crypt Keeper’s Harpy Nest” … which is a sideboard near the TV / couch area that I like to sit up on. I was up watching various movies until 1am or so, maybe 2 not really sure because I wasn’t keeping track of the time, but apparently I went to bed before the real party started – or so I heard this morning.
This morning I got up and instead of going to brunch like I usually do, I went to the Remembrance Day ceremonies in St. Gile’s Square. I took some video, but not of the official parts that involved prayer because that would have been, in my opinion, highly disrespectful – not that I didn’t see people doing it anyway. I felt the parade was fair game though so I took shots of that. It was actually very moving and the drizzle didn’t bother anyone. On the way back home I picked up some breakfast and made some tea to go with it before coming back to my room and starting up laundry and meeting up with my sweetie for video chat.
I have some reading to do today, primary stuff from the books I bought at Blackwells. Today I read the main text, tomorrow I will spend at the library researching, and then the evening is given to writing. If I didn’t have the text, the time it takes to read it would need to be subtracted from one of those two things tomorrow, which bumps the whole program closer into becoming another all-nighter – and believe me there are too many of those here as it stands. I don’t have a Classical Mythology assignment this week, because we seem to have gotten out of synch with the other students and so on, but I will probably use the time I’d usually be using on his work to do my Seminar paper, which I really need to get put away or at least half done before it comes due in just three short weeks – yes indeed, today marks the first day of 6th week and that means only 3 more to go! Where did the time go?! Yet, I also feel like I’ve been here forever. It is very strange.
As for Remembrance Day, please feel free to watch the short parade that I have left more or less unedited (took out some shaky camera bits here and there), and below that I have also included the e-mail that Dr. Philpott sent out informing all the CMRS students of this days importance in this country. I am very glad to have been able to honor it.
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high,
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow.
These lines from the Canadian poet John McCrae's famous work In Flanders Fields help to explain why lots of people around you have suddenly started wearing paper poppies in their buttonholes. At around this time of year we commemorate the sacrifice of those who died fighting for our freedom in the two world wars and all the other struggles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. On Sunday the Queen will lead the Remembrance at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in London, taking part in a short service and laying a wreath on the symbolic empty tomb, accompanied by members of her family, Commonwealth, government, parliament, armed forces and civilian services, along with thousands of veterans and civilians.
All over the United Kingdom city-by-city, town-by-town and village-by-village, similar services will be taking place. Oxford’s will be around the War Memorial in front of St Giles Church, led by the Lord Mayor and the Vice Chancellors. On the stroke of 11 a.m. (commemorating the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month -when the Armistice brought the First World War to an end) all over the country guns will thunder and sirens be let off, inaugurating two minutes of silence for remembrance, reflection and rededication. This is - or should be - a most solemn moment in the nation's year; please can I urge you to respect it?
Some will also ask you to respect two minutes of silence at 11 am on Thursday – the actual 11th day of the 11th month.
Why poppies? Well, it's partly because of the extra-ordinary crop of poppies that grew on the battlefields of Flanders in the disrupted soil of 1915, providing a striking image for poets like McCrae:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Thus the poppy comes to be also a striking symbol for our remembrance of the sacrifice and our determination to hold high the torch thrown to us at so high a price.
In addition - perhaps even more importantly - we wear our red poppies, because they are made and sold by the Royal British Legion for the benefit of ex-servicemen and women, and their loved ones. The labourers are few, but the work great and still growing. Alas there are now very few surviving veterans of the First World War, but those of the Second are well into their seventies and eighties now, and there are plenty from subsequent conflicts who need help. ‘The Legion’ recently calculated that it tackles about 300,000 urgent calls for help each year; and - shockingly - that something like 100 ex-service people sleep rough every night in London alone with a further 500 in homeless hostels.
Thus, the poppy is both a symbol of remembrance and determination, and a concrete help to surviving heroes and loved ones. So, if you can spare a contribution, it will be well used in a very good cause....
Traditionally, a few lines of Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen are read at Remembrance Ceremonies, so they seem an apt way to end this note
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
MP
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