VE Day Anniversary, May 9th 2020
Yesterday, he was the 75th anniversary of VE Day, so we had a street party organised by Laura at number 2. It was a fine afternoon and went off very well.
Me, standing in the road, photo taken by Laura
In the evening. Wendy had ordered a meal from Rara which was very good.
My leg is still giving trouble from the ulcer. I have been along to see the nurse twice, once at the Kew retail Park surgery on Monday and then on Thursday at the Sheen Lane surgery. I am wearing stockings over the top of the bandage.
Jean, Wendy’s sister is apparently getting better. She has only rung up her daughter Jane once, but said that she is still alive and that the kidneys are still very poorly. Still we hope she is getting better slowly
I have not been doing much work on the book. At the beginning of the week I sent off an application to Coombs Moylett publishing agents, but have heard nothing in return not even a formal acknowledgement. I have finished my review of Greg Woolf’s book and sent it off to Matt. I have also been doing the final revision of my article on Roman Barcelona with a sad email from Carolina that Antonio’s wife has died from Corona virus and that he is in hospital.
I have started reading Peter Wiseman’s book on the House of Augustus.
I have been trying to make these Musings website work I do not know what success.
4.45
Have I just been out sunbathing naked in the garden – it’s a gorgeous day. However Wendy was sitting outside and when she saw me naked, she hastened to put something across my middle. But as soon as she went away, I took it off then 10 minutes later she came down and found something else to drape across my middle.
And why not sunbathe nude? to one side the Lithuanians have gone away, she has joined her husband in Switzerland for the shutdown and on the other side, they can only see me from an upper bedroom window, which I don’t think they used very much. So what the hell? In any case, Wendy is wearing her very short shorts in which she looks wonderful – she still has super legs!
May 12 2020
This afternoon, Wendy cut my hair!
Yesterday I dictated the house of Augustus to Ronwen, who sent it across and today I have been correcting it.
Yesterday in the evening I had a long session when I finally worked out how to transfer pictures from my mobile phone to the computer via a USB cable. It was a long process, but I eventually found the right click, hidden away, where you had to scroll down a lot of junk to see the crucial click.
But having done so I downloaded all my mobile photos of this year and some for last year and put them in the right folders . It is very good to have them all at full resolution
It has turned cold!
Today I have been preparing a long order from Sainsbury’s for delivery, 9 o’clock on Thursday evening. It already comes to £190
14th May
I had a good day yesterday. In the morning I put in some orders for Amazon for a jumpstart for the car and also some birthday presents for Izzi. But then in the evening I signed up to Jericho Writers to get some names of literary agents for my book. They give a weeks free access to their list of agents, after which it costs £30 a month. I signed up free for a week, but then I set to work, selecting those agents who mentioned ‘history’, and UK and found 251 potential agents. They come in seven batches and I downloaded the first batch on 10 sheets of paper and then went through them adding notes and found a couple of real possibilities.
I also thought of a new title for my book. Instead of Barbarism and Civilisation, how about How the Greeks invented Civilisation. I am inspired by this by seeing Matt Ridley’s blog about his new book he is about to get published called How Innovation Works. I thought I should try out the word ‘how’ in the title of my book. I think it works much better.
I have also been having some new ideas about how I present my philosophical ideas and I think the answer is to use the word ‘liberal’, or ‘liberalism’ or ‘classical liberalism’, but liberalism still sounds good and I can even add inspired by Hayek. I must now get down to rewrite all my introductions along these new lines.