nailing both feet to the floor

Yesterday was our Shire Valentine's event, with some hysterically funny themed heavy fighting - men with poisoned blades dealing drunkenness and paralysis, men with handicaps devised by their opponent's lady ("I put jumping beans in your food"; "I nailed your right foot to the floor"); men fighting to protect the hearts on their sleeves, which were plastic bags filled with pink powder paint, and exploded very messily when hit... I had some difficulty in persuading the Shire to take seriously a subsequent Court of Love, since the topic - how do you select the most chivalrous fighter on the field? - kept on circling back to the inevitable answer, "the one with the best legs". Sigh. Chivalry is so dead.

Term starts tomorrow. *pauses to flee in terror*. Fortunately, my seminar teaching only starts in the second week, so I have a brief pause for breath before the plunge. Memo to self, must finish deciding which medieval romance bits to unleash on unsuspecting second-years. And brave the library again. Which has, I discover, a huge advantage: it's air-conditioned. Oh, yeah, baby.

Work progress: some today, mainly inhering in the discovery, after a three-day break, that the stuff I wrote three days ago does not, upon re-reading, sound like utter codswallop. There may be hope.