Starting back

Pat and I arrived in good time for our 9h30 -because we dropped the kids off for 8h30, so I read to her some choice passages from Alain deBotton's book about the benefits of reading Proust (I am trying to psyche myself up...) We particularly like the letter from the American lady living in Italy who said she had devoted the previous three years to nothing else reading Proust when she wrote to him to ask him what it was all about, and the example of one of Proust's long sentences, written in extremely discursive and meandering style, which seemed to stretch on and on over, around, across, up and down the page, leading the reader's eye in ever-drecreasing circles towards a conclusion which never seemed to come, though one longed for it so greatly that full-stops seemed as precious as diamonds, commas like rubies.

It was good to be back in class again. There are 28 of us in 4th degree. This morning in communication we had to introduce ourselves - and it started with me. I don't care any more. I told them about the children. I told them I was a pastor, and after another chap spoke who is a RC seminarian it developed into a discussion of why the French are scared to allow any teaching even of comparative religion or even of the history of religion in their schools. "It's a neurosis!", said the lecturer.

She asked me what I thought of France. "It's cold!", I said. "But Britain is colder", she said. Not Wales. I didn't have to scrape the ice off the car every morning.

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