Archive for Maundy Thursday

Winding Down for Easter

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on April 2, 2026 by telescoper

When I was a lad, back in England, the name for the Thursday before Good Friday was Maundy Thursday. That term isn’t used here in Ireland, where it seems to be known as Holy Thursday. Anyway, Maynooth University is closed tomorrow (Good Friday) but not today (Holy Thursday). Although today is not an official holiday, some campus facilities are in fact closed – including Pugin Hall, where I often have lunch. This helped me plan my activities for the day.

My agenda for Holy Thursday included:

  • giving a 9am Computational Physics lecture;
  • grading the submissions from the last Computational Physics lab test and writing feedback;
  • meeting with my masters project student;
  • supervising a computer lab session,;
  • meeting with my undergraduate project student;
  • going home, and collapse in a state of exhaustion.

To get to the last item as quickly as possible, I decided my strategy to make use of the lack of availability of food on campus would be to work all the way through lunch to get my grading done.

On the way to campus for the first item on the agenda I noticed how quiet the town was this morning. The schools are on holiday this week and next so there was no school run. The lack of people was even more noticeable when I got to campus, with many fewer students than usual, even at 8.45am. I did consider the possibility that nobody might appear for my lecture, but in the end I had about 30% of those expected. That’s a disappointing number but I gather it’s a better attendance than some of my colleagues got today. When I finished at about 10am, I walked back to my office through a still very quiet North campus.

As usual happens in a day’s work, there were quite a few interruptions – mainly to do with postgraduate matters – but I managed to do all my corrections ahead of the lab this afternoon. I also had my two project meetings, just to keep up-to-date before the break next week. It’s a stressful time for students as we approach the end of the academic year, so I advised them to make sure they book took at least a bit of time off to regroup for the final push and the submission of their reports.

Anyway, I’ve now ticked off every item on my to-do list except the last and will shortly make my way home to complete the job.

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Jueves Santo

Posted in Barcelona with tags , , , on March 28, 2024 by telescoper

Today, Jueves Santo (Holy Thursday, aka Maundy Thursday), is a public holiday in many parts of Spain but not here in Catalonia, where all the shops have been open. I mentioned that Barcelona is not the most religious city in Spain and this is another demonstration of that. I am glad the shops were open because I used the occasion to stock up for the approaching long weekend.

Nice weather having resumed, the tourist areas of Barcelona were extremely busy today. I’m not sure what the Spanish or Catalan words are for Chuggers but they were out in force. One guy stepped right in front of me and I couldn’t avoid bumping into him. As someone who is often very nervous in large crowds I find this sort of thing very irritating. I gave him an earful (in English) and walked on. I still don’t know what he was plugging.

Like everywhere I’ve stayed during this sabbatical, the apartment I’m on is equipped with a Nespresso machine. This one, however, is different from the usual type and takes larger capsules like those shown above. While you can get standard Nespresso pods in supermarkets and other stores, these funny hemispherical pods have to be purchased in a Nespresso shop. There are plenty of these shops around – there’s one just over the street from my apartment – but it’s quite hard work just buying the capsules at them. You can’t just pick up a box of capsules and take it to a till: you have to queue to see one of the assistants who will try to sell you some sort of subscription. On the other hand, they also offer you a coffee to taste if you don’t know which of the myriad types you want. You can also recycle used capsules there. Anyway, despite my broken Spanish, I did succeed in buying what I wanted and will be sufficiently caffinated for the next few weeks.

P.S. As well as the ceremonial purchase of coffee, one of the other rites performed on Jueves Santo is the Lavatorio de Pies which means “the washing of the feet” and has nothing to do with lavatories or pies.

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