Greed, duplicity, hypocrisy, and callousness have typified the attitudes of many politicians, businessmen, and sports celebrities during this decade. When achievement and gain are idolised, then ‘success at any cost’ becomes an inevitable and acceptable conviction. But it’s better to fail honourably than to triumph unjustly. Better to be poor with good conscience than be wealthy with guilt. Better to confess one’s sins than hide them for others to unveil.

The week began with module administration; the new term commences next Monday. Over the past fortnight, I’d begun to digitise my analogue back-catalogue of Aural Diary sound recordings:

To this end, I’m presently sourcing a cassette-player. (My old devices died years ago.) Professional and portable versions of the hardware are no longer manufactured. So, I’ve resorted to eBay and obtained a relatively inexpensive period-piece.

The final section of ‘Image & Inscription’ required a summative list. The source text covers two chapters and a great deal of ground. Distilling the essence was a challenge. Once completed, all the sections were revised a third time in order to make their terminology and syntax consistent.

A little intellectual sustenance was required:

The revision took all afternoon to complete. This wasn’t entirely surprising. I’d not undertaken anything like this before, so I trod more cautiously than I would otherwise. In the background, emails were variously discussed, dumped, or distributed. In the sound studio, I made the one necessary and outstanding adjustment to sections 8 and 9, removing a ‘descent’ motif from the close of the former and inserting it at the opening of the latter. Easy-peasy … or not, as it turned out. The software refused to accept the insertion of the new file and locked the ‘spline curve’ feature (by which a sound sample’s volume may be controlled).