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16 March 2010

It's March Already

So, where have I been? Of late, my days have been:

Get up (6.30)
Drink coffee and read the Guardian (I've got it down to 40 minutes now)
Avoid getting dressed for as long as possible because it's so cold
Bus and Central line to Holborn (also takes 40 minutes: it would be great to combine it with the paper but often there doesn't seem to be enough room for my elbows even so no broadsheet reading on the train) (8.30)
Library
More coffee
Seminar (10.00)
Lunch with philosophers who haven't stopped even though the seminar has
Walk twice around Lincoln's Inn Fields (or similar - there are many squares nearby)
Library
Tea in the Common Room and more reading
Write an essay
Lecture (15.00)
Drinking with philosophers who are not able to wait until the seminar to discuss the lecture
Central line and bus home
Put something in the oven, switch on the water heater (20.00 - 21.00)
Sit on the couch, take shoes off and groan for a while
Read
Eat
Wash dishes, fill hot water bottle and have a bath
Read something that isn't a newspaper or philosophy while my hair dries out some
Finish drying hair
Watch whichever inane yet bearable programme I can find on the telly (anything too interesting ends with me staying up too late)
Go to sleep (23.00)

Repeat.

Term ends on Friday.

6 comments:

  1. That post just made me nostalgic. I used to live just around the corner from High Holborn. There's a children's playground with farm animals in the old foundling's hospital called Coram's Fields, opposite the top end of Red Lion St. If ever you pass that way, note the little Georgian gatehouse to the left of the front gates. That was my home for 3 years!
    Glad you've dropped by with an update.
    K.x

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  2. That's the behavioristic picture of yours, the objective view of yourself you share with others. Now where's the subjective side? When I used to sit on the train for 40 minutes there were at least 245 ideas running through my head, getting adjusted to each other and producing a couple of new ones, there was memory of events getting triggered and rearranged, there was imagination and fantasy producing stimulating fairytales disguised as possibilities or plans, even looking out of the window and watching the landscape stream by was a fulfilling and interesting experience.
    Probably more reflection about the nature and importance of repetition, viewing time as circular rather than linear, putting things on a larger scale where these weeks are just a dot in your many years, don't know. Usually a philosopher should be astute enough to be able to transform each life's moment into a hedonistic and catatonic experience, even though a practical approach about the reorientation of emotional states and mental targets could involve seeming contradiction to rational habitualizations. (Catatonic might not be the right word, it just came to me, probably something else with cata-.)

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  3. Blimey, that was a comment and a half!
    I only cam e back to correct myself. I meant Russell Sq. tube station, not High Holborn. it's just around the corner (almost)!

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  4. Is it common to turn your hot water heater on and off in the UK?

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  5. Kate - Coram's Fields: I've spent some happy hours hunting in bookshops over there. I haven't been back there since I got back to London but I know exactly whereof you speak.

    MoleculeColony - why so many normative statements? Also, I am an analytic philosopher - the more so since this year - and we are too purist and snooty to use philosophy purely as means to consciousness alterations - the Truth being held to be the proper end of philosophy, of course! If I had all the time in the world and more energy than I currently do, it would would probably be fun to try to write out the subjective account in full. However, that would be pushing it with respect to my own privacy. I tend to stick to the 'objective' (inasmuch as an 'objective' view is knowable - open to question, I acknowledge) because this blog is not my journal, and because of my aforementioned analytic bias. While my undigested personal experience is interesting to me, this blog is intended to be more reflective and not ever purely personal.

    Scream - It is common to either switch your hot water heater off and on or to have it set on a timer to switch on and off at set points during the day. That seemed very odd to me when I first moved here but once you realise how much energy is saved it really rather makes sense. My flat is quite downmarket in terms of modern conveniences so I have an electric immersion heater that would probably explode if I left it on and would certainly cost the earth. It only takes about 20 minutes to heat the water and it's sufficiently well-insulated to keep hot overnight so I don't have to be too worried about planning my water usage.

    That was probably more than anyone really wanted to know about my hot water heater but it does rather occupy my mind - like Charlotte Bartlett and her drains in Tunbridge Wells.

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  6. Holborn... There's a lovely pub on High Holborn - the Princess Louise, just down the road from the tube - marvellous rococo ceiling, and (when I was last in there) marvellously cheap beer. I used to make a point of choosing it as a fairly central meeting point when going to play music in London.

    Take care, Dx

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