"Writing biography" and "Latin 1" - week 2

Week two of the biography course is pretty good again. I sit with Nicki again and learn more about her own PhD which, it turns out, took her 10 years to complete as she was working full-time throughout. And I discovered that Katie works in Solihul and lives north and Banbury travelling over 100 extra miles to attend this course after work. We are mainly critiquing various bits of text tonight. One of these covers a quote from Constance Reid's Hilbert and addresses the difficulties caused by having to cover highly-specialised knowledge in a biography. This is the number one issue for me on the course. Most of the other participants seem quite happy with the method Reid uses even though they get little understanding of the maths from this. And I agree that Reid's tone is one of lightness and assumed expertise. But I feel I would want to aim for something more than this.

One or two new people attend who missed last week, one of whom I already dislike - a man about 70 who started his contribution to our group discussion by saying that he believes that there are two ways of doing anything, the right way and the wrong way, and that he likes to think that after 70 years he knows what the right ways are. This seems to be just an excuse for holding old-fashioned and reactionary views on just about everything to do with our course. I could imagine that I might find this increasingly annoying as the weeks go by. Either that or I will find myself taking the mickey out of him all the time.

"Latin 1" the next morning goes quite well. My translation homework looks ok - not perfect but a decent enough start. Then we start some formal grammar, studying the first two verb conjunctions. I am quite impressed with this course so far, especially Alison the teacher. She also teachers "Latin 2" and "Reading Latin Texts", two more twenty-week courses which, if all goes well, I might be doing over the coming years.

Later that afternoon, I take Linda to her appointment at the eye hospital - progress is being made, but perhaps a little slower than would be liked. But good news nonetheless.