Snoozin Sontag

We had seven hymns at ours and processed across the city while chanting the Litany of Loreto 🌈

'Dame Sarah Mullally is the 106th cleric to take up the position' says the BBC, wh has also just incoherently referred to the C of E's 'nearly 500 years of history'.

Hm hmm hmmmm which is it

Early October in poor health and high spirits

Trainpal!

'Where my hoooome shall be eternal...'

It's vexing to clearly remember ordering a piece of music which one never ordered and which is not even on the music list. I must be dreaming about work, which is a great waste of dreaming.

Just the simplest rewarding thing

Thérèse of Lisieux doing one of saint things, which is to show up with your neck completely exposed to the sharp-edged Word of divine justice.

I love the brazen idea of walking in with empty hands. Because your works aren’t in themselves “meritorious,” as the theologians say.

(as Saint Augustine saith)

At least Jefferson, like Dante and unlike me in this age of light pollution, could look up and see l'altre stelle 🫠

Marry someone who lets you have 'Hobgoblin nor FOUL FIEND can daunt his spirit' as one of yr wedding hymns.

Discovery: I don't hate 'the beach', I hate 'hot sand beaches'. Lying on the shingle at Thorpeness in a bracing wind may be one of the happiest hours of my life.

New year, new notebook

Writing on the train to Ipswich, and it's like putting pen to paper atop a particularly wobbly dromedary

Went through Paddington on our way out to Suffolk!

The best thing to do on a train journey is text friends for playlist recs. Introduces a *pleasant* bit of unpredictability into the trip.

I love that in theory we could have bumped into each other this morning 💕

U know Poulenc was in Sl*th*r*n &c &c

Just attempted to order Poulenc's Lenten motets in 'the Salazar edition', RIP me

1. Raspberry swirl
2. Marmorkuchen
3. Lemon pound
4. Triple berry summer bundt
5. Cream cheese pound

First of five wedding cakes just about to come out of the oven. Gay marriage is so good, so good.

The Nunc of Stanford in G is the litmus test for the dividing line between a bass and a baritone: in this essay I will

Other than that...? I think I just really loved the Divine Ben in those red pyjamas, which I still do; but even the most generous among us can hardly credit Waugh for that vision fair

My favourite part was always 'My theme is memory, that wingèd host....' or however it goes, and then eventually I read Proust and, well,,,

I don't even remember exactly why all those years ago but I'm willing to bet it didn't *not* have to do w yr handle

I can smell the AC, even.

YES

The extraordinary grasp of eternal life which made some saints long for death *precisely* so their love and work could enter a wider sphere of friendship.

And redeemed from the tyranny of linear time, at that.

Tangentially, a great thing to do in Vienna is watch the wild hamsters frolicking near Brahms's grave—not a joke, they're fab.