Crossing the Rubicon – When I’ve put the washing away

It is half past twelve.  I should be in bed.  I must get up in seven hours and navigate across London in the face of one Marathon, one closed motorway and two giant football matches.  It will not be soothing.

I am not feeling that it is time to slumber yet though.

After having spent all day at granny’s house I had to come back to a house that needed my attention.  Because I am leaving Jason with the children tomorrow, and it is a busy day for the Boo minors that meant leaving him prepared.  This involved washing and drying karate gear, sorting out paperwork and addresses for karate grading, sorting out presents for the birthday party Oscar is going to tomorrow, wrapping the presents, finding the cards, etc…

Oh, and repeated ministrations upon the ear of Jason.  Despite the meds it has not stopped swelling yet, and is in fact rather alarming to all.

Then there was the three lots of wet washing to deal with, and all the dry laundry to sort and put away.  Apparently balancing it on the edge of my desk next to the teetering pile of paperwork is not very convenient.  The dishwasher was full of clean pots, which is very frustrating when you want to fill it full of dirty pots so that you can excavate to the bottom of the sink.  The hob had the remains of yesterday’s supper on it, which Jason swore he would eat later.  If he eats it any later it will kill him quicker than his mouldy ear.  That all had to be humanely disposed of too.

I have just finished.  My body is tired, but my brain is whirring, whirring, whirring.  I think I shall feed it a cup of white tea and sit and read a chapter of my book.  That sounds like a nice, civilised thing to do.

I am currently reading a book that Andrea recommended called ‘Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of The Roman Republic’.  It is by a chap called Tom Holland.  I am thoroughly enjoying it.  It is, despite the title, a thoroughly absorbing read.  Holland writes history the way I like to read it.  He writes a coherent narrative which can be read much like a story, rather than a series of dreary facts.  The facts are presented in an interesting way and lead to me reading out great chunks of it to Jason, who is not in the slightest bit interested in them.

He tells me that one of my most annoying traits is my insistence on filling his brain full of random facts that he will never need, whether they be about Pompey, or Justin Bieber.  I tell him that I am training him to be the king of the pub quiz for when we retire and he needs a hobby that doesn’t involve dressing as an orc and smoking pork pies.

He is not impressed.

It does not stop me doing it.  I am nothing if not tenacious.

I have studied this period in Roman history before, which helps.  I have vague memories of having to write an essay comparing the leadership styles of Pompey and Julius Caesar including references to crossing the Rubicon, when I was at university.  Lots of things in this book jog my memory and make me think; ‘Goodness, I knew this once. I must have been quite brainy.  Now I just think about pottery and cake all day. Where did it all go wrong?’

Other things I read about are things I didn’t know before but which I am intrigued by.  Things like:

A bourgeois Roman oyster farmer who made his first fortune selling oysters to the rich Romans who lived round Naples, invented the first recorded heated swimming pool, and installed it in his villa. It was so popular that he made his second fortune by building luxury villas complete with their own heated swimming pools and flogging them to the same people he sold his oysters to.

The romans mined so much silver in Spain that there were hundreds of miles of tunnels, and the smelting works were so toxic that birds who flew into the vapour clouds they emitted dropped down dead instantly, and if it touched your skin, the skin would go white and then peel off.  Ewww.

It took something like 100,ooo tons of rock to get 1 ton of silver and the Roman mint used 50 tons of silver every year.

Strabo was a very unlucky general, who not only suffered miserable defeat at the hands of his foes, but died of the plague during one of his disastrous campaigns, and just as he was about to expire, lightning struck his tent and burned it to the ground.  Not a happy camper.

I am only about 100 pages into this book so far, but I am having an utterly wonderful time.  I highly recommend it if you are in the slightest bit interested in Roman history.

Apparently Holland has written other books about the Persians, and one about the Dark Ages. I shall be looking out for them.

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