Monday
I didn’t have a music lesson this morning as my teacher is on holiday, so I spent the entirety of the morning─guess what─reading Atlas Shrugged. I also write a short review/character analysis. In the afternoon, I had my third swimming lesson since the latest lockdown, which involved an interesting and highly amusing game of “pull the casualty across the pool with a sponge noodle that keeps breaking”.
In the evening, I had my maths lesson with Damian, in which we revised factorising and did some more work on imaginary numbers (maths decided it needed to be a little bit more confusing by inventing numbers that don’t even exist and making you do questions on them as well). Then I made a mug cake and watched some telly with Andy ☺
Tuesday
Again, I spent the majority of this morning reading Atlas Shrugged, my all-consuming love for which is deepening each day! And, after a week off from Latin, I did some morning with my mum─luckily I haven’t forgotten it all yet. Then we both did a whole Massolit course on Oedipus Rex with an Exeter professor called Richard Seaford, who raised some very interesting points about the balance between fate and free will in the Sophoclean play, and about our concept of a tragic hero and whether one really exists or not.
Wednesday
This morning, I read Sophocles’ Antigone. I thought it was a little more dry than Oedipus Rex, but still very good (and I felt it got more engaging at the very end, when people started dying and stuff). I then did a Massolit course on it with Edith Hall and added a plot summary to my analysis of the Oedipus Cycle.
In the evening, I went to my first Rangers meeting with Tilly. I’ve been in Girlguiding since I was about 10, but I haven’t been to a session in ages because of coronavirus. During lockdown, when I turned 14, I moved up from Guides to Rangers, so the break in lockdown means I could have my first (socially distanced!) session yesterday. We made a campfire (if you could really call it that; we’re not very good at keeping fires going) and toasted marshmallows and chocolate over it. It was absolutely freezing cold and even snowed very briefly at one point! Still, it was very fun.
Thursday
I started reading Sophocles’ Electra today. It’s not a part of the Oedipus Cycle, but follows on from Aeschylus’ trilogy, the Oresteia. It tells the story of how, after Agamemnon was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, Agamemnon’s children Orestes and Electra avenged their father by killing his murderers. In the second play of the Oresteia, Orestes kills Agamemnon, with Electra as a background character. But in Sophocles’ Electra, which tells the same story, the play focuses more closely on Electra as opposed to her brother Orestes.
In the afternoon, I had a maths lesson with my teacher Niall. We did some more binomial expansion from last week, and then went onto factorisation or bracket expansion. That was something we’d already covered in Damian’s Monday lessons, so I had a bit of a heads-up on that!
Friday
I read a little more of Electra today and polished off my summary of Aeschylus’ Antigone. In regard to my Great Books reading list, I’ve now read the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides by Aeschylus, Oedipus Rex and Antigone by Sophocles, and am currently reading Sophocles’ Electra!
In the afternoon, William came over for his bi-weekend-ly (is that a word?) stay, and we watched a film called Coach Carter together, starring Samuel L. Jackson. I’ll write a review soon which you’ll be able to find in my Film Reviews tab on this blog!
Weekend
Over the weekend, I made a delicious lemon and poppy seed cake. Andy, William and I then spent a lot of the afternoon playing Trine and Rayman Raving Rabbids on the Xbox!
