Hungover

Oooh me head. Went to Clapham Common fireworks last night with Steph and Dr D., Camden having finally given up, after regular cancellations due to weather and massive insurance premiums, on the Primrose Hill event.

I have ambivalent feelings about fireworks night, mainly because I think there's still a tinge of anti-Catholicism buried somewhere there (I'm talking about normal places. Lewes is a different matter.) In addition, I've always had some sympathy with the theory that Fawkes & Co. were set up by Robert Cecil, keen to raise levels of anti-Catholic paranoia at the start of the new reign. (If you think that's too much a bonkers conspiracy theory, consider Titus Oates and the Popish Plot a generation and a half later.)

Whatever. Pretty fireworks go crash bang. Then we went to the pub. Why do I do this to myself?

Maybe pictures sometime, although my digital camera really isn't suited to taking pictures of fireworks, it simply isn't fast enough.

Edited to add: some here.

Pictures

And some random pictures of people here, of little interest except to the people in said pictures.

Patrick Wormald, Historian, RIP

I've just discovered that Patrick Wormald died recently. I feel rather sad: I knew him well enough to say hello and chat for a bit at drinks after seminars and similar when I was in my third year and then at Oxford. One of the best Anglo-Saxon historians of his day, and a genuinely interesting and friendly guy, at least when sober.

I remember him chain smoking throughout a seminar once, much to the chair's despair. I also remember seeing him drink... which was sad -as most who knew him were well aware, he was a heavy-duty alcoholic. His work was, even with that burden, an impressive body, despite the fact he was only 57 when he died.