Lightening the gloom

The weather this morning as I woke suited the news. No sooner do we get rid of obnoxious government in the UK than the world is saddled once more with The Orange One. I don't get it. I'm sorry if anyone reading this is offended by my saying this; I'm even more sorry for friends - online and in RL - for whom this news is so very much worse. 

The weather matched my mood. A dank mist enclosed us all day until after dark - I can see the lights of the other side now - and occasionally became dense enough to be a fine, soaking rain. We had to have lights on all day. Various little irritations rumbled on. I stewed some prunes, washed a tablecloth, pottered around putting away clean clothes and cases from the weekend.

The day, however, was redeemed for me by my main event of the afternoon, an online seminar with the Associate Professor of English literature, film and literary translation, Director of the MA Programme The Theory and Practice of Translation at the West University of Timisoara, 
Romania, along with two of her students and the man who first contacted me via a site on Facebook for those interested in the poetry of R S Thomas, and who seems to be responsible for facilitating such courses in various countries. Two of my poems, Dali's Christ and Mother to her Child, had been selected, from half a dozen I'd sent him, for translation into Romanian. The purpose of the seminar was to let the students who were going to be translating the poems - one apiece - ask me questions about word choice, word meaning in context, underlying ideas, in order for them to be able to choose the most appropriate words in Romanian. 

It was like being back in school with the brightest of students, and was just the greatest fun. In the course of it I realised the difference between teaching a student to analyse a poem by a third party and answering questions to which at the moment of asking only I know the answer, even though there may be alternatives. The two young women - to say nothing of their impressive professor - were clearly luminously bright, with excellent English, and John, the man who brought us all together, was charming. The hour flew past, leaving me completely exhausted as well as exhilarated by the end of it. The book comes out in March, featuring ten poets and parallel texts. 

I took my exhausted self for a quick walk down to the monochrome sea, smelling the unmistakable tang of the seaweed that's washed up in the last storm, unwinding with difficulty - and was then summoned to be useful by a friend who'd gone to pay for her groceries in Morrison's and found she'd lost her purse. (Let's hear it for Apple Pay ...)

The news was unbearable, so I just fell asleep instead. That faux-revivalist preacher voice ... enough. To sleep, perchance to dream...Aye, there's the rub!