David Peter
I'm retired and enjoying the role of grandfather. I'm interested in Classics, History and Literature and visiting places where the Emperor Hadrian is known to have passed through.
Location Llandrindod, Powys
Activity
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David Peter made a comment
My father sustained a shrapnel wound in his hip on 8th August 1918 and although physically he made a complete recovery, I have always felt that his experience of the war damaged him in other ways. With hindsight I feel that he lacked a degree of empathy.
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David Peter made a comment
I found this interview really good, and was impressed by the apparent sensitivity and empathy with which Eaves dealt with his subject. I will certainly add 'Murmur' to my to read list.
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David Peter made a comment
Extract from 'The End of the World' by Mavis Gallant
(the narrator is from Canada)
Another time I had to go and look after my brother Kenny in Buffalo. He had stolen a credit card and was being deported on that account. I went down to vouch for him and pay up for him and bring him home. Neither of us cared for Buffalo.
"What have they got here that's so... -
David Peter made a comment
I haven't read the book but from the extracts I'm impressed by the quirkiness of the characters which ring true and it is their quirkiness that reveal curious aspects of their character that points to their veracity.
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David Peter made a comment
My favourite character has to be Darley in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria quartet, he is almost on the edge of the story observing but sometimes interacting with the main characters. It is through Darley that the various aspects of the story are revealed as he interacts with the main characters and they reveal their stories to him.
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David Peter made a comment
There is only one novel that I re-read annually, Lawrence Durrell's 'Alexandria Quartet'. it is the vibrancy and tendency to melancholy to the romances all wrapped up in the essential espionage plot.
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David Peter made a comment
Not sure if it's useful to be overly concerned about differences in environment and/or culture. At the end of the day each of us as an individual is responsible for our own health and well-being, and instinctively each of us knows when we are harming our health, whether we are prepared to acknowledge it or not.
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David Peter made a comment
To me, being healthy means having the capacity to enjoy life free from pain and anxiety.
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David Peter made a comment
Hello - My mother was diagnosed with late onset diabetes in the early 50s and lived with daily insulin injections until 1969. Now at the age of 71 I have recently been diagnosed as being a borderline diabetic, whatever that is. I am already careful about what I eat - everything in moderation and no snacking - and am keen to find out what else I can do.
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David Peter made a comment
Ciao! La mia famidlia ha 2 persone: mi e mia marito. io ho 70 anni; mio marito, 65. abitamo in bungalow in Galles. Quando ero piccola, abitavo all'estero in Svizzera.
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David Peter made a comment
Ho visitato lo Promontorio del Gargano, Bene!
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David Peter replied to David Peter
It simply struck me that after having stressed that in Italian nouns have gender differentiation, they should, in these very feminist times, choose to give us a masculine example rather than a feminine example. Suggest we forget it now.
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David Peter replied to David Peter
Hi William, yes i know that, I was trying to be ironic. Clearly I'll have to try harder in future.
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David Peter made a comment
Avvocato, but why not avvocatessa?
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David Peter made a comment
Ciao! Mi chiamo David. Sono gallese, di Llandrindod. Sono pensionato
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David Peter made a comment
Enjoyed the course tremendously, I had little idea what to expect and consequently have found it very interesting. A BIG THANK YOU to all involved.
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David Peter made a comment
I have three editions of Notre-Dame de Paris par Victor Hugo: A French edition in two volumes from Nelson published in 1932/34; an English edition entitled 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame published as one volume by Collins in 1953; and, a CD audio book 'Notre-Dame de Paris 'lu par Andre Dussollier' from Fremaux et Associes and issued in 1999. The English edition...
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David Peter made a comment
On a personal level the cell phone has made only a marginal difference to me since I use it rarely. I have never liked using a conventional telephone, regarding it as intrusive and forcing me to privilege the person calling me over the person with whom I'm having a face-to-face conversation. Because of its sheer mobility and the expectation of others that I'...
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David Peter made a comment
Clearly, distant reading can provide a great many interesting insights about literature and studying literature. However, I remain sceptical as to whether distance reading adds much of real value to the total knowledge of world literature. Given enough data on any topic it is possible to apply statistical analyses to derive interesting insights about that...
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David Peter made a comment
I tried Pound, Eliot and Thomas, but quickly realised that I had to refine the search to Ezra Pound T.S. Eliot and Edward Thomas and then I added Robert Graves. The result is telling which must be attributable in part to the success of the TV series 'I, Claudius'.
I then changed the language to French and put in Balzac, Hugo and Dumas and again it seems...
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Source A describes an urban landscape that is both overwhelming and alienating and in terms of 'In a Station of the Metro' can be seen as 'the crowd', whereas Source B depicting the quiet beauty of the cherry tree in blossom is suggestive of the less frenetic and aesthetically more satisfying 'petals on a wet, black bough'. For the New Historicists it...
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David Peter made a comment
Yes, social reading can allow for a free exchange of equals, but that does not necessarily mean that some in the group will not try to, or even succeed in, dominating other members of the group. Moreover, the differences in skill and experience that each member brings to the group will inevitably create an imbalance that is likely to inhibit the free exchange...
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David Peter made a comment
I'm puzzled by de-authoring. Years ago when I used to blog I frequently included links to other sources that might be of interest to my readers, I never thought of this as 'de-authoring' because I was acknowledging the author of sources I had used or recommended.
Never juxtaposed because splitting screens remains a mystery to me. Frequently scan, how else...
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David Peter made a comment
I like to think that I am fairly focused when hyper-reading and stick to filtering for the specific information that I'm looking for, however I do find that I am distracted by things that are interesting but not relevant to my particular search and have to guard against becoming distracted by things that are interesting over things that are necessary to my...
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David Peter made a comment
I'm not conscious that I do a lot of 'filming' but perhaps I do it subconsciously and am thus not aware that I do it.
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David Peter made a comment
Foolish thing and wise things - in conversations between ourselves we talk of all sorts of things, some foolish, some wise, but then 'our' conversations are so much more than simple conversations - to be in each others presence is enough.
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David Peter made a comment
It's not the faces themselves that are referred, rather it is the 'apparition' of 'these' faces. In a sense the poet is distancing himself from individual faces by aggregating them within the apparition yet somehow inviting the reader to consider each one individually.
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The close reader tries to conjure up the same visual image that the poet is describing and seemingly 'adds' detail and a personal interpretation of what s/he sees. This very personal interpretation is no more reliable than that of any other reader and perhaps that is its weakness.
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David Peter replied to David Peter
Your community of friends must be the exception that proves the rule. All I can say is that your experience is not the same as mine.
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Yes, I thought A Tale for the Time Being was the best on that year's Booker shortlist.
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About ten years ago I picked up a discarded copy of Gormenghast but I had difficulty finishing it. I found it very strange and couldn't place it in any sort of context. Perhaps I'll have another go
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David Peter replied to David Peter
But surely it has to be 'calculated'. What intrigues me is that they are having an open conversation in the sense that everyone, even me, can see it, and they must know that everyone can view their comments and that fact must influence what they write. The question then becomes - how does that affect what they write?
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David Peter made a comment
Historical contextualization attracts me because I find it difficult to imagine the words on the page as entirely divorced from the times that they were written. However, I had not previously heard of surface reading and I find the idea intriguing.
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David Peter made a comment
Hang on! These aren't just seven women at random, these are well-established literary critics. And more to the point why only women?
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David Peter made a comment
For someone like me who is easily distracted, hyper reading helps my understanding only to a limited extent. Following up references when hyper reading gives a false sense of security that I know more than I actually know because I haven't taken the time to reflect and digest what I was reading in the first place. Thus I am forever skimming the text and only...
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David Peter made a comment
I wonder if girls and boys have significant differences in their span of attention? I have also wondered if boys somehow think that reading, especially reading fiction, is not something that 'boys do'?
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David Peter made a comment
I am coming to the end of six years of part-time study with the UK's Open University and over these six years I have, of necessity, been required to read text on line. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so, my eyesight has deteriorated noticeably, and I now suffer from 'dry-eye'. However, this may have nothing at all to do with increased reading on the computer...
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David Peter made a comment
I'm an avid reader of literature and other texts and I'm possessed by a pressing curiosity for things literary. Though I have an e-reader I don't tend to use it that much because I hunt down cheap books of authors I want to read. My favourite literary text is the four books Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea that comprise Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria...
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David Peter made a comment
1 NHT weapon
2 KHQR word or speak
3 KHR sleep or death
4 PSJ light or day
5 AN beauty
6 AHW irritation or itch -
David Peter made a comment
Oxen (meat), fowl (swan?), prepared food (wrapped) and grain of some kind? All to be eaten with the bread and washed down with the beer.
I seem to remember reading the word Buisans but that wasn't in the commentary. -
Yes, that's the idea.
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David Peter made a comment
I'm not sure that it is possible to draw any firm conclusions about this artefact other than it is likely in some way to be associated with the worship of Osiris. The fact that it is crude in form would suggest that it represents a common soldier rather than a wealthy person of high rank. The inscription seems rather formulaic.
I imagine that it could be... -
David Peter made a comment
Oh dear, I've addressed this question in the previous topic. I'd better not comment anymore.
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David Peter made a comment
Mass migrations of people can occur for both positive and negative reasons. Many migrations represent a fleeing from poverty, famine, insecurity etc towards a land which promises better and more certain opportunities. Other migrations are deliberately encouraged by receiving populations in order to create viable economic populations. So at the moment many...
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David Peter made a comment
Could be that the Hyksos were a nomadic people who wandered into the delta in pursuit of grazing or perhaps because they were retreating from a drought-hit area in the Levant. Finding the delta to their liking, they settled and established a governing administration and trade links with neighbouring peoples. Their success probably led them into conflict with...
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David Peter made a comment
Behind the bluster there is a firm nationalist and liberation agenda. Kamose clearly thought he was expanding Egypt's sphere of influence. It seems to be an example of a city-state, Thebes in this case, moving to carve out an empire for itself prompted by the ambitions of its leadership elite. The subsequent awarding of land, slaves, etc was an attempt to...
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David Peter made a comment
All three kings made an impact, but Ahmose seems to have completed the task of expelling the foreigners, clearly building on the successful campaigns of Kamose.
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David Peter made a comment
Coincidentally I've been reading Christopher Logue's 'War Music', a poetic retelling of Books 16-19 of Homer's Iliad, and have become interested in chariots: their construction and use. So the various photographs of the chariot pieces are fascinating and have me imagining how they were put together and why they were used in preference to riding as a means of...
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David Peter made a comment
They died as a result of violence. They died some way away from where they were found and left where they fell. Animals had access to the bodies. They were not identified at the time. They were placed in the pit to prevent further animal damage. Location of the pit could suggest high status of the dead or high status of those doing the burying,
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David Peter made a comment
Raiding parties from the surrounding tribes would have been acutely sensitive to weaknesses in Roman defences and administration and seemed to have taking their opportunity. After all there has been a long period of gradual decline so the Roman administration is left with fewer,poorer troops on the Wall, and they are led by inferior officers. If there was a...
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David Peter made a comment
What is the full extent of the site? and can I see the results of the aerial surveys as a prelude to carrying out a geophysical survey?
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Yes, it feels a bit like that
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David Peter made a comment
Having returned from holiday a week ago, I have worked through three units in one week - not ideal. I'm amazed at the range of topics that have been covered and how good the video material is. I have also enjoyed the quizzes and found them very useful as a learning device. Ive also been inspired to walk the Hadrian's Wall Trail later this summer.
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David Peter made a comment
Language can be both unifying and divisive. I have experienced language used as an instrument of propaganda, coercion, exclusion, and above all, as a weapon of a curious kind jingoistic patriotism.. If the number of native speakers of a minority language declines naturally, it is an indication of the language's ultimate decline and the question then becomes,...
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David Peter made a comment
Sure Zineb challenges our western prejudices about Islam and the role of women within it. Nevertheless, secularism is important to some people in the west, particularly so in France, and is a reaction to thousands of years of religious oppression where the religious hierarchy attempted to control lives totally. If freedom is to mean anything, one of those...
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David Peter made a comment
The Ara Pacis in Rome, I've never seen it but to me it symbolises the attempts by Augustus to legitimise his effective dictatorship but also points to a long period of relative stability and prosperity and it does this by emphasising the foundation myths of Rome and the importance of tradition. For me tradition is double-edged, on the one hand tradition is...
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David Peter made a comment
Like Cleopatra's needle on the Embankment in London, the obelisk has always struck me as being out of place and a symbol of a discredited European colonialism. Monuments like these should be appreciated within their original context and not displayed for the glory of European capitals. like the Elgin Marbles, they must be returned.
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David Peter made a comment
Perhaps the most poignant memorial I have visited in my adult life is Oradour-sur-Glanes (I hope I have spelt it correctly), the site of a 1944 massacre of French civilians by Das Reich Division of the SS. As ever one is forced to ask Why? why? why? Why is man compelled to reveal his inherent inhumanity?
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David Peter made a comment
As a sixteen year-old in 1960 I visited the site of Bergen-Belsen and it is an experience that has stayed with me ever since. Most importantly, it prepared me for an ever increasing understanding of what happened, why it happened and why it should never be forgotten. But I have to say, that this memory and understanding is a burden and not one I would wish...
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David Peter replied to David Peter
Yes, I really meant treachery in a broader senses, rather than what might be called these days 'treason'. Treachery in the sense of betrayal of trust. As I've grown older, I begin to think that trust between people is crucial to the functioning of society. Betrayal of trust, as in the case of bankers, politicians, and various betrayals on a more personal...
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David Peter made a comment
If I were to write a work of fiction I would try to emphasise the importance of trust. As children we trust everyone, instinctively. As we get older we learn that some people are not worthy of our trust because they, or possibly we, are flawed in some way or other. As you get really old, you begin to trust no-one and this leads to an unpleasantly cynical...
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David Peter made a comment
I am surprised to find all forms of treachery deeper in hell than acts of violence, but perhaps that reflects how cheap life was generally then, whereas nowadays treachery is almost commonplace. (Does anyone still believe the promises of politicians?) I was fortunate to have a copy of a recent translation by Robin Kirkpatrick to hand and in that there are...
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David Peter made a comment
The director has created something of a stereotype grease-ball. If that character in the novel is more ambivalent, then I would prefer the novel. I object to the film director telling me how I must judge the character - I prefer to make up my own mind.
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David Peter made a comment
"Life is just a bowl of cherries" irony to defuse a general complaint.
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There is a photograph on the web of a JCB blocking a gateway at a |farm in the Peak District which is captioned 'They Shall Not pass'. I think this is in connection with a disputed footpath where the farmer and the National Park Authority disagree about the precise rout of the path. Whether the person using the caption for this purpose was aware of its...
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David Peter made a comment
Out of sight, out of mind, sums up for me, society's general attitude to mental illness. Patients with mental illness continue to suffer alone and their suffering is largely ignored by the general population.
Freedom is fine up to a point, but it has to be a freedom from anxiety for the patient and in the extreme, any such freedom has to be balanced with...
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David Peter made a comment
At last, now this is beginning to make sense but whereas i always thought i could read anything at a push, now I realise that isn't quite true. In reality I will try to read whatever is put in front of me, but I will only continue reading from the range of genres with which i feel an empathy. Does this make sense? Well, it does to me.
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David Peter made a comment
If only I was a lot younger, if only! Never mind, I've enjoyed the course very much. Having also done the Portus course I would like to say 'Well Done" to the archaeologists at the University of Southampton.
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David Peter made a comment
I remember this, at the time I was a Third Mate with Shell Tankers, and in hospital having my appendix out. Didn't the RAF have great difficulty in trying to destroy what was left?
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David Peter made a comment
9 definite plus another 5 that would bear further investigation. As you say, interpretation of such data requires a great deal of experience. Not sure I understand the notion that some suspected sites can be too small - surely wrecks can include very small craft as well as wrecks that are only partly 'visible' to geophysical methods?
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David Peter made a comment
It's a shame I only have sufficient time to chase up on a few of the many interesting references you point to. However, I particularly enjoyed the Greshem Lecture on the Hakluyts. I've long been interested in them. Thank you.
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David Peter made a comment
In my experience, skippers use charts rather than maps, and have always done so
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David Peter made a comment
Two ships entering port and one ship leaving. A depiction of maritime trade and with the sailor overboard indicating the ever-present risks involved. The dolphins? seemingly unconcerned would such peace rather than war. The scale of the figures is exaggerated, probably for artistic effect, but all are busy and vibrant as one would expect at the beginning...
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David Peter made a comment
Heyerdahl suggested what might have happened and proved that it was possible, but I have long wondered whether there is evidence that is what actually happened. Nevertheless, he was a great hero of mine fifty-plus years ago.
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David Peter made a comment
Everything relating to human interaction with the seas and oceans from pre-history to the modern day.
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David Peter made a comment
I'm an old grump from Mid Wales, interested in archaeology since completing World Archaeology with the Open University, and interested in ships and the sea since having served in the merchant navy in my youth - a long time ago.
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David Peter made a comment
I'm not at all sure that Clausewitz ever envisaged the notion of jihad as a war to preserve a traditional, enclosed society rather than adopt modernism as defined by an alien group of people intent on democratizing the world. Future wars will surely have to encompass ideas around systems of government, the nature and desirability of theocracy as opposed to...
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David Peter made a comment
It is clear from many of these comments that nationalism and admiration of the nation-state pervades ideas of the causes of war. Hence the post 1945 emergence of supra-national organisations such as UN, IMF, World Bank etc. Yet still we have wars. So perhaps war is the result of a tendency to listen, but not hear, what is being demanded and a failure to...
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David Peter made a comment
Neutrality in wars like WW2 is a very difficult trick to pull off and nowhere more so than Switzerland being surrounded by Axis powers. Yet neutrals seemed to have served a vital mediation function while being abused on all sides.
