Weekly Sustenance

Over the past few weekends, I've learned to appreciate the virtues of bread, cheese, and apples. Simple, cheap, delicious, and more or less healthy. Elizabeth and I usually go to Sainsbury's, the English equivalent of the Midwest's Meijer's, on Thursday afternoons and stock up on victuals for the weekend. Together we've sampled a good portion of the cheeses on display, and have discovered that England is the unsung motherland of good cheese. This weekend, I've been enjoying a brick of applewood-smoked cheese, a loaf of heavily-seeded organic bread, and Pink Lady apples.

This morning was the first time in a month that I worked up the verve to go running. I went down Gillygate to the river. It was early enough that none of the shops were open yet and there were very few people in the city center. The Ouse was full of rowers, some of whom were probably on St. John's team, and the park was teeming with walkers and their dogs. In the course of the run I realized two things: one, that I've gotten sadly out of practice since my jogging class last semester, and two, that the English, at least in North Yorkshire, don't usually greet strangers they pass. I'm a practitioner of the head nod, and even when running, I like to acknowledge my fellow runners and walkers, but here it goes mostly unreturned. This must be one manifestation of that renowned and sometimes elusive "English Reserve." Just a piece of armchair anthropology to mull over.

Also, John Morton was good enough to snap a picture of me at the Lincoln Library a few weeks ago. This is me holding up George MacDonald's letters to Tennyson like a shameless fanboy.