I talk about Beowulf for five minutes (while you get yourself geared up to work), set myself a slightly-too-difficult task, find it is slightly-too-difficult, pick myself up, dust myself down, misquote some poetry, and decide to do something easier next time.

Referred to in this episode: Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf translation, The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), and Night Mail (W.H. Auden).

Today’s sound: sleet dripping off the cherry tree (with the noise of the stream, and a passing tractor, in the background).

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