Good intentions

Yeah, well, what do you expect? I'm busy. I've also been distracted today, keeping my eye on a slow-cooking hand of ham. 3 kilos at 120C for 8 hours and, bingo, fantastic ham. You have to shove up the temperature as high as it will go just for the last bit to crisp up the skin.

If that was a side issue, the main business of the day was ploughing through Paul Claudel's La Nuit de Noël, 1914. What an extraordinary piece of theatre! Jean and Jacques, a seminarian and a secular school teacher, are killed by the same bullet as Jacques tries to rescue Jean from no-man's land. They appear in an antechamber of the afterlife, which resembles a propsect of Rheims cathedral, and discuss life, death and salvation with the dead children of the War and with a murdered priest. With the approach of midnight, the curé leads them all in prayer, as the German canons boom out twelve times, ostensibly to destroy the cathedral, but ironically marking the advent of Christ. That has to be symbolist theatre at its best.

Well, to bed now. I have much to do this week. This has hardly been soapbox piece, except for the boredom quota. That you can always rest assured of ;-)