This sunny Sunday morning sees me setting off for a couple of weeks of TEI workshops, one in Paris, one in Graz. Nothing unusual there, nor in the fact that one is better prepared for than the other. But it has been an unusual week all the same, with two deaths and possibly a new beginning. The deaths first, since they are more difficult to write about. They perturb habitual patterns, making me confront and try to articulate parts of life that are hard to fit into a public blog, yet belong there in the absence of any other personal journal. (I say “public” but doubt that anyone except me reads this).
On Tuesday morning, I received from my friend Guy in Italy a text message saying that his partner Daniela had suffered a stroke and was in a coma; 24 hours later came another announcing her death. It is hard to react adequately to such events at a distance, and particularly so by text message, so I am waiting for a later less painful time to talk to Guy. I learned from a mutual friend that the funeral was yesterday. I dont want to obituarize but Daniela was a very generous and very affectionate person, as well as a fiercely independent one. I am very glad that she did not stay long in her coma, nor return from it badly scarred; I am also very glad that the last time I saw her was at a joyful family occasion in London.
On Saturday evening, yesterday, I received an email informing me of another death, also coincidentally on Tuesday: Chris Sheppard, in whose company I passed my adolescence and early twenties, chasing the same girls, crashing the same teenage parties, growing up to pursue not the same but similar academic careers. Chris was the first person in my school to know where to buy Levi 501s and how to shrink them to fit (in the bath). He introduced me to the works of Raymond Chandler and the collection of cigaratte packets. He was far too cool to take fashionable drugs at Oxford, but was on good terms with those who did. It was largely following his example that I returned to Oxford to take my masters degree in 1969, a year behind him. As graduate students we shared a rented hovel in Stanton St John (chemical toilet, coal fire, wall to wall books) for a year during which Chris taught me almost everything I know about literary scholarship and the love of books, not by precept, but simply by example. I was best man at his wedding back in 1976, but our paths diverged thereafter. At his retirement a couple of years ago, he was head of special collections at Leeds University’s Brotherton Lribrary, where I emember visiting him and being shown some of his more recondite treasures (a lock of Mozart’s hair, Conan Doyle’s photos of faery folk); I think the last time I saw him in person must have been at a lunch with P.N.O. Pullman some time in the 90s. Now of course that it is too late, I regret bitterly even the dwindling flow of Xmas Card exchanges and the fact that my last email with him was more than six years ago.
As to the new beginning — well, it seems a small thing in this context, but I am now feeling quite positive about the idea of buying a house some distance from the back of beyond in rural France. A specific house, that is, of which perhaps more anon. But for now, I will go back to worrying about tomorrow’s training course at the EPHE in Paris, and that in Graz a week later.
