8th November
Feels like it's been a busy week. Still, it started with a nice long run across the Plateaux on Monday. It is nice to have such wide open spaces to run across, with a soft surface for my feet to pound (or plod!) and free from traffic and pollution. Mind you, it's also largely free from trees too. I hadn't previously noticed quite just how tree-sparse (i.e shade/sun-protection free) the route I used on Monday is. But then I don't normally get four plus hours of pure, unbroken sunshine from a cloudless, blue sky. When I set off shortly after 5.30 am it was acceptably cool (ok, around 21C) but the sky was bright and I had to put sunglasses on before 6 am! I assumed clouds would gradually gather from the east or north as they usually do but the sky remained relentlessly blue and clear. And that's how it remained as I chugged along a series of narrow footpaths (and occasionally simply across the clumpy grass plain where the path has faded away) and a few larger sandy vehicle tracks, up- and down-hill. Thankfully I'd set out with the intention of running moderately easily so the conditions didn't take as heavy a toll as might have been expected and it was nice to see the countryside in such bright conditions (the previous long run a fortnight earlier had been in five hours heavy rain!). My pint of diluted juice and two small handfuls of rasins kept my body moving and though, by the time I arrived home four hours seven minutes after setting out (26 miles?), I was more tired than usual after a moderate paced run I was still feeling and moving ok and wasn't even noticeable sunburnt. Yes my knees were a little red and there was a clear line at the end of my shorts and t-shirt but nothing hurt. Five-six pints more of rehydration fluid, water and tea throughout the day kept any dehydration headache or other aftereffects at bay and I was even able to get a few small DIY jobs out of the way. A good start to the week.
The rest of it? Got a reasonable amount of linguistics and text analysis work done with Therese, and confirmed my theory that the only way Latege signals a yes/no questions is by elongating the last syllable of the statement! No wonder I've had trouble making my qustions understood, especially because if you ask anyone they transfer the explanation from French and claim there's a difference in intonation. Wasted time for a training class for the church outreach group which didn't happen. Spent a good chunk of time preparing the translation mini-workshop for Fri.-Sat. Only three people turned up on Fri. and two on Sat. but that was no great surprise since they hadn't informed any of the other churches. Oh well, we still drafted about fourteen verses of Abraham's life as well as debating how to deal with some of the titles and name for God in the OT in general. The provisional decision (which will have to be reviewed by a larger group later) is to simply to trasliterate the tetragram, as we do with any other name and thus maintaining the distinction between this and the title "Lord". I'm not sure how that is going to go down for general consumption. It will be interesting to see reaction, though at least the various French translations in use are divided on the issue so they're not going against one set tradition.