Monday
This morning, I had a violin lesson with my teacher round the corner. We’ve recently changed the strings on my violin as one of them broke, so now I have to tune it practically every five minutes because new strings will keep going flat all the time. I’m currently working at sort of midway between Grade 1 and 2 at the moment. Come October I’ll have been playing for a year now 😁
Afterwards, we did some Thucydides. We’ve just got to Pericles’ Funeral Oration, which is an extremely wise and noble speech given by the Athenian leader Pericles in commemoration of the Athenian soldiers who died in a battle against the Spartans. You can see how strikingly relevant this speech is; Pericles talks mainly about retaining the free country which was handed down to the Greeks by their forebears (as our country was through the sacrifices and efforts made by those in the World Wars and other instances).
Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
Pericles, in his Funeral Oration
In the afternoon, I had my first swimming lesson back after the summer holidays! Sadly all my friends who were there had left over the summer, but that’s probably a good thing because it means I’ll concentrate on my actual swimming more 😅
Afterwards, in the evening, we did some poetry reciting which we haven’t done in way too long. We used to know over 50 poems off by heart but I’ve probably forgotten a lot by now. I also wrote some of my story and made some progress on my latest drawing of Scully from The X-Files.
Tuesday
Today was the start of what would appear to be an Indian summer! It suddenly got really, really hot, so we all felt a bit sluggish and lethargic and not much was done unfortunately. Instead of going for a walk, we spent the day reading and summarising Thucydides and watching the next episode of the Ancient Rome documentary we’ve been watching recently.
Unfortunately I did have to leave at some point as I had to walk up to the gym in the evening. It was so hot, it took me an extra ten minutes to get there than it should have done! And then, when I finally got into the biking room and set up my bike, I remembered that the air con in there is broken 🥵 So I had to do one of the hardest classes available in a stiflingly hot room. It was torture.
When I got back, I did my instrument practice and watched some Dark Skies with Andy. We’re going to watch one more deciding episode tomorrow to see if we abandon it or not – some episodes are much better than others so we’re undecided as to whether we’ll start something else or not.
Wednesday
This morning, we decided to read a bit more of Thucydides, watch some Massolit and read some summaries of his History before moving onto something else. The History is an extremely long book after all! We read some choice extracts from it, and then finished off the Thucydides Massolit course I mentioned and summarised/analysed everything I’ve read so far.
In the afternoon, my mum and I went to IKEA to get some parts for my bunk bed and some other bits and bobs. We went and got hot chocolate in the cafe too 😋
When we got back, I did my instrument practice and Tilly, my mum and I started watching a programme called Barbarians which came out in 2020. It was all right, but sadly it was very corny and predictable. However, it was interesting how all the characters spoke in their relevant ancient languages like Latin or German, so you had to read the subtitles to understand it.
Thursday
This morning, I started a new Massolit course on Athenian democracy with Professor Robin Osborne of Cambridge University. He’s a really good teacher and I learnt a load of new stuff, which I typed up on my summary of the course here.
In the afternoon, I did my instruments, went to the gym and tried a new cute little bunches hairstyle thingy. 👍
Friday
This morning, I got right onto the Robin Osborne Massolit course on democracy and finished that off, adding to my analysis of it (link above). Then, in the afternoon, I helped my mum but up two bookcases for the study, did my piano practice (and learnt the piano for Amy Winehouse’s song Back to Black!) and then wrote up my day on here. 🙂
Weekend
Nanny came round on Saturday, and I gave a presentation in front of the family on a rather unusual and certainly unexpected topic: why they should let me have a dog. I’ve always wanted a dog but we’ve never had a single pet, so after a lifetime of occasional asking I decided to shoot my shot at one final last plea for a furry friend. Unfortunately it didn’t actually go very well in terms of reception.
My mum and I walked round to someone’s house to collect some plant pots they were selling. We’ve got some grand plant-pot-y ideas for the study and my and Tilly’s bedroom – we already got a few plants at IKEA a couple of days ago. The plan is to get some rope and make some cool hanging planty things, like this:
