A Complete Week

A little has been done, though as many items have been added to the 'to do' list as have been crossed off. This w/e has but one external fixture, a tango workshop and milonga in Huddersfield. Beata Maia Gellert's previous workshop was most instructive and well worth the trip up the M1 and the hazards of an unfamiliar ring road.

Josephus' work, I can only absorb in small chunks. But 100 pages of the'Antiquities' to go, and Herod is still alive. Adam lived for 930 years and only merits a couple of sides. Herod's c. 70 years take up 100s of pages. Reflection and notes on this work and others, together with Peter Lawley's most constructive comments on my 'Jesus' chapter, will be a great help when I come to recast 'Paradise Delayed'.

Josephus has been leavened by some easier reading, some books by my contemporaries who, although of widely differing backgrounds from me, and from each other, are not so remote as a 1st century priest from the Jerusalem Temple. Paul Pellicoro is a master of tango; he stresses the primacy of sensitivity and communication; they must be synthesised with technique. It is the first book on tango where I can follow the diagrams. That is probably because I have now at least attempted the figures he depicts. I doubt that I could have learned much from the pics and diagrams alone.

Ali Abunimah's 'One Country' is a compelling argument for a united Palestine/Israel. The 'Road Map' to a 2 state solution he sees as the route to an unsustainable Mid East apartheid. Peoples who are interwined by territory, family and economics cannot be split apart into separate polities. The West Bank and Gaza could only ever become a bantustan. The 'End of Days' elements of Jewry, Christendom and Islam are hardly visible in his book, even in the margins. The defusing of tension that a united state would bring, would, if all worked out, render them all but irrelevant. Today, all three remain powerful forces.... I must learn to describe this clearly for 'Apocalypse Delayed'.

Bilborough work has been most welcome this week, and the salsa session was very successful. At this stage the students prefer constant direction and guidance. If the course can continue into next term, they may feel sufficiently confident and equipped to devise their own sequences and to improvise; meanwhile close guidance is required.

Must promote my guitar lessons anew and work likewise on my own technique.

Time now to do the 'to do' list.