— go back one page
— go back to the guide
This may have been the vacation in which my tutor had given me, among other tasks, that of reading the whole of Homer in Greek. I put myself at a table in our garden in Sutton, with the texts of Homer, and a large Greek dictionary. I calculated that I would have to read a line a minute, eight hours a day, for a considerable period. At first it was terrible. Homer’s dialect was very different from the Attic Greek which by then I knew quite well, and I was constantly using the dictionary. I fell well behind my target. But within two or three weeks I found myself reading the epics with ease, and with pleasure. I suppose that without that partly self-imposed discipline I would never have been able to taste and enjoy Homer’s verse. I speak of ‘Homer’ though it is debatable whether this poetry really had a single author.
Another possible vacation job which cropped up came from an extremely posh address in Mayfair in London from a man who wanted someone to ‘help out in his flat’. Though I felt a bit doubtful about this potentially well-paid job, I decided to ring his number.