For a teacher, May, not April, is the cruelest month, and the busiest, because on top of all the tests, papers, classes to be prepared, that monster, the Jabberwocky of Italian school wakes up and demands feeding: bureaucracy. Mounds of uselessly long documents to produced.

But there’s working, and there’s reading, and I want to mark the fact that I have finally finished Ted Hughes’s Winter pollen. It has taken me more than two years, but it was worth it. More about that, I don’t know when, in a separate post.

I haven’t read from Birthday Letters for weeks now, but it’s there, they are too good to drop, though very sad most of the time.

I am enjoying Never greater slaughter enormously. I didn’t expect an essay on the battle of Brunaburgh to be rich in poetry quotations and even elucidations on how Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry worked.

The Deor Hoard is still on, too, only, it is a slower read. As is maybe to be expected, this Anglo-Saxon bestiary is great for the weird zoology and charming illustrations, but not exactly something that keeps you up at night.

And now, back to work. Today, 1st of May , is Workers ‘ day and a holiday, so I allowed myself a glorious lie in, but now the time has come (the teacher said) to do a lot of things. Much less enjoyable than The Walrus and the Carpenter, I’m afraid.

So: revision and illustrations when I have time.