A short 2.5 mile run tonight, all I felt up to. This sudden increase in activity takes some getting used to.
Juneathon has a great advantage over Janathon, in that an evening run after a working day can take place in daylight and in the countryside. Nothing can be more unpleasantly urban than a January evening run on pavements, lit by orange sodium and dazzling headlights. I used to take refuge in bucolic poetry in the school library, when I was a boy. The library was usually a safe place, free from bullying, and in it I read all sorts of strange things, including a lot of Elizabethan lyric poetry, and, when I realised the link, the Latin and Greek poets the Elizabethans had copied.
When I moved to Sussex, for I started working here nearly ten years ago, to the day, I imagined running on the downs while nymphs and shepherds, Amaryllis, Phyllis, Chloe, Daphne, and Strephon dallied on the sward. I'm not sure why pastoral is so attractive, and can't remember any Empson; it just is.
