As our group all brought their reading of Bram Stoker‘s Dracula to the Century’s End literature session today, wife Barbara was at the local hospital undergoing the ordeal of multiple medical staff trying for 3 hours to find a vein into which blood could be transfused. You couldn’t make it up, as they say. This was the preliminary procedure to a predicted 6 hour transfusion session. Eventually a vein was located by a cancer ward expert and half the planned dose of A+ was administered. That happens to be my group too so perhaps we have shared blood now as I have donated plenty to date over the years. We await a further bloody appointment. As for the lecture and discussion, many of the usual topics for this work were covered – homoeroticism, fear of invasion, racism, feminism, the Oscar Wilde connection, earlier and later gothic fiction, Freud, hysteria and the wonderful wolves. Along with a fairly unanimous appreciation of the quality of the writing apart from a few minor glitches.
Archive for the ‘Did’ Category
Thought the start back Wednesday literature class The Century’s End didn’t happen today on account of treacherous roads and pavements under snow and ice but it may just have been a week early. Borrowed a copy of York Notes on one of our set texts – Dracula – from the only other local resident / student who made it to the library just in case today was correct. We agreed that at our stage of studying we could cope with the dilemma of having York Notes available before getting on with the actual reading of the text. Even worse for me though as she has annotated the Notes! Well, I guess I’d just better get on and read the actual book if I hope to both enjoy it and have anything to say about it myself. Must visit Whitby again, hopefully this summer; it’s ‘on the list’, just after Chicago…..
Discussion around T S Eliot today; The Waste Land, the validity of the ‘elitist’ criticism, his happiness, melancholy, guilt, marriages, and psychotherapy amongst other topics. Also Amy Lowell and H. D. On to Willa Cather’s My Antonia next week. We rattle through’em! Lovely listening to John Toft our tutor talking from such a long and dedicated experience of working in literature (which began some years before he was my wife’s tutor at Brighton College of Education in 1966-70) along with his interaction with the other members of the group, many of whom, it appears, have been studying with him for years.
Washed £75 today at 30 degrees in my trousers back pocket, full cycle, biological. Came out a bit limp and very annoyed, but dried nicely on the radiator and is obviously non-iron.
Put the milk bottle in the cups cupboard instead of the fridge yesterday. Exit strategy to residential care going well. Hope they are on the internet.
Managed to go present shopping successfully (what a lot of double letters) at Next in Tunstall, ready for birthday party on Saturday and print off the directions to the Ramada in Leeds.
After 2 or 3 hours mostly staring at numbers and doing adding up and taking away sums, I reconciled my spreadsheet of the accounts for Arthritis Care Stoke Branch with the Bank Statement, ready for the Annual Return to HQ. Took me back 44 years to first job; I was and still am hopeless at double-entry bookkeeping, so at least that’s not age.
Frank Lloyd Wright at the Thursday WEA/Keele class and an hour of pilates this morning.
Both very relaxing and stimulating at the same time. Return home from pilates to find letter from Teachers’ Pensions – I am going to be taxed £100 extra per month! Cleared it up with Robert in Cardiff, to get the Age Related Allowance Tax Code change from 22L to 323L! Only being taxed about £50 extra per month now. (State pension is taxable, so IR get Teachers’ Pensions to tax me on it and I get State Pension Gross).