Friday 5th February

Well here I am again, well gone midnight and not a yawn has passed my lips. I have a new secret weapon though, a Valerian tea that I picked up in the supermarket today. Valerian is a herb that's long been associated with getting people off to sleep - although it's supposed to take an hour to work and I've only just brewed it, so I'll report on it's efficacy at a later date! Mind you I have to say that anything you buy off the common shelf in the supermarket is probably not going to be of the knock you out strength that may be required (two teabags perhaps? mm.. )

So what else has been happening - I have a working first draft of my presentation for Monday. This has been something of a struggle. Augustine is not the easiest of theologians to be doing battle with, he's not one of those chaps to use a single word when he can think of fifteen that would say the same thing only make you think that little bit harder before you get to where he's wanting you to go. And my first draft is something of a mess, and won't be anything like what I expect to end up with - but it's only late on Friday and it's not due till Monday. Plenty of time. I'll not be panicking until say... midday Sunday. Ok, well maybe there will be a slight frisson of the p word coughing quietly in the wings from Saturday night onwards. But what I have got, I can hear myself saying - which frankly is not always the best of signs. To wit, the RRSH lecture on Thursday evening when Stuart Airlie is trying to draw out a bunch of near silent post grads, stunned witless by his oratory, to whom he is demonstrating the prejudices of nineteenth century editors of the Monumenta Germanica. He has highlighted the fact that they have printed 'father' in the place of a word which another edition of the text has as 'mother'. Why, he is saying, did they choose to say Father when Mother could have done just as well. Silence. (I should point out that there's not a man jack of us that's not perfectly well aware of exactly why they did it.) Cue me, first thing that comes to mind as usual - 'Because he's a man!' Not gender theory, Tess, not an elegantly turned phrase to make it sound like you have historiography on the tip of your tongue. No, you come out with because he's a man. Typical. It's my problem you see, I open my mouth and out comes whatever's on the tip of my tongue. Happily I can usually substitute a more elegant phraseology when I'm writing.


Ah the Valerian tea is fit to be drunk. And yes, it is truly revolting. It's cats piss. I'm sorry but it's vile. It'd better send me to sleep or I can't see myself drinking this very often. The smell alone is just revolting. Have you ever tried drinking whilst you hold your nose? Actually it tastes a lot better when you do this, and I can live with the chance of choking. But oh my God, it's revolting.