My report is coming on distressingly slowly. There are a number of reasons for this:
1. I know I’ve been working all year, but it all feels very unfocused and disorganised. Progress? What progress?
2. I responded to the reminder on Tuesday that it needed to be in by the end of next week by… going out on the town on Wednesday night and to the seaside all day Thursday (and compounded it by staying overnight so I didn’t get back until Friday lunchtime). I was led astray by my wicked friends.
3. I have been punished for my bad behaviour with what might be turning into a monster cold (almost certainly caught in Brighton). My head hurts and I feel very sorry for myself tonight. (Sympathy welcome.)
So expect blogging to be light at best for a few days more. And by way of advance warning, there’ll be another break next weekend because I’m moving my stuff out of the London flat and (hurray!) going home to Aberystwyth.
15 comments on “Blearrgh”
I’m sending sympathy down the line, and a small nip of rum - well maybe make that a big nip with lemon juice and sugar.
Also advice, if I may be so presumptious - sit down at the computer and write the easiest bit, then the next easiest bit, and before you know it there’ll only be one nasty bit to go and it’ll be finished: that’s my theory of writing …
Don’t you ever worry that you’re giving a lot of information to burglars?
Oh, get well soon by the way.
I have no rum in the house, sadly. (Red wine helped a bit.) And I’m about to run out of lemon and honey. But the report is virtually done now.
I have occasionally got paranoid about burglars after posting… But I regularly get paranoid about this anyway; and if it’s not burglars, I worry about fires, burst pipes, power cuts leading to defrosting freezers, leaving things switched on gobbling electricity… Let’s just say I’ll be happy to be home and in one place.
(A quick message to any burglars thinking of taking the trouble to find out addresses: both places are pretty secure (and in Aber, surrounded by attentive neighbours), and neither contains much of any value to a thief. Unless you have a removal van and an unusually profitable market for a lot of secondhand books, I suppose. There are surely much simpler ways to find profitable burglary targets…)
I’ve been doing much the same sort of thing, in terms of procrastinating or rather working veeeery slowly on something. Not sick yet, but pseudonymous kid is, so it’s only a matter of time…..
Feel better soon! Drink lots of nice hot tea and nest with your work!!
My report is virtually done and should go tomorrow. Not sure I can say the same for a conference CFP that I’ve been dithering over for some months with a deadline tomorrow. (I just can’t decide whether what I had in mind is worth doing…)
This cold is still disgusting. I hate being surrounded by soggy tissues, and not having any appetite for my dinner. I should be going into the archives tomorrow - I have things I want to do and only a couple of days left to do them - but unless I feel a lot better, I shan’t want to go anywhere. Bah. As if I don’t feel guilty enough about the day I missed last week…
It’s awful having a cold in the archives. It’s so silent in there and everyone can you sniffing and dripping snot. Or that’s my experience anyway! I’ve closed down my blogs until I finish the thesis but I’ll keep surfing around under my real identity as I’ll miss it too much if I don’t! Hope you feel better soon
Me ‘n all. With me it’s exam monitoring (which I am carrying out with remarkable thoroughness, I can tell you). And (failing) to write up a whole bunch of little things that I can’t put in the RAE. Kid ill and fracious, girlfriend tired, me coming down with something. SAD beckons. Luckily _The Archers_ is very funny this week.
As for the report, Sharon, find someone who has done similar and bribe them to let you see a copy. Repeat, remembering that the AHRB are highly unlikely ever to send out a crack hit-squad of auditors to interview all your friends and collaborators. ‘Networking’ and ’scholarship’ are nice words. And nobody’s expecting you to have written anything yet - that’s the point of 3-year postdocs.
Thanks Chris. Only one year in: I know they can only reasonably expect so much. I think they’ll be satisfied. But…
I dithered over it but eventually I put in a mention of the blog (with the word ‘experimenting’, not to mention ‘dissemination’ and ‘communication’…). No idea what they’ll think of that.
The cold is getting much better, too, thanks everyone. Took the day off, stayed in bed till the afternoon (but had to go down to the shops for food: appetite back! But still tissues everywhere. I hate that.) Back to work tomorrow.
I think the jury’s still out on whether blogs are a good thing for British academics to have. I certainly don’t think it’s a bad thing in terms of the world at large.
Don’t forget echinacea whacked into a glass of fresh orange juice. It helps a lot. As for Claire’s comment above, I think the jury’s still out on whether academics at large is a good idea.
Anyway, burglars. I found this article in Guardian Weekend…
If you must invite burglars round, now is perhaps the wrong time of year and you’re liable to end up with some desperate amateur outfit eagerly looking for some X-mas money/seasonal smack. Better to wait until after the festivities. This is also beneficial regarding the local police - you are likely to get a visit from the local constabulary within the week if you wait till the Christmas rush is over.
I’m currently living in one of the more recently redeveloped areas of the North West and the professional standard of housebreaker is, contrary to popular myth, very high indeed. They really do an excellent, considerate job with minimal structural damage. Now for that vexed problem of just what to leave out for burglars. A good selection of best sellers is ideal (you can pick up half a dozen at Waterstones for around £30). Remember to sucker them in with some Nick Hornby (burglars are terrific listmakers) or a crime memoir in amongst the Zadie Smith and Alex Garland. A Dickens or two might also be a nice touch.
DVDs are always tricky. The embarrassment of being caught with a Buffy, or worse still, Star Trek Voyager box-set is not worth considering - you might as well paint a red cross on your front door! Best to leave a good range of undeniable classics lying around (Alien 4, Patriot, Scream 1) and then add a bit of education: an assemblage of tastes from the lives of the average middle class - Alias, CSI Miami, West Wing, Will and Grace, Seinfeld, Arrested Development - a British cultural education awaits your thief.
Remember, though they carry a sack and are probably have a red nose, burglars are not Father Christmas and warm sherry and M&S mince pies simply won’t cut it. A nice Shiraz pampers the throat after snorting a few lines and a simple chicken caesar salad is light, tasty and full of protein – perfect for the burglar-about-town.
Top establishments – North West
The Wilsons (est. 1890). A delightful family firm of hereditary psychotics with a colourful and esteemed history of bare knuckle fighting, classic car re-plating and Eastern European prostitution. Enthusiastic young staff.
FailSafe. Great cooperative of young burglars in training led by a knowledgeable and hard working tutors with a lifetime in the business. 10% of revenue raised goes to the Suited and Booted Foundation, providing outfits for rookie court appearances.
13. The burglary buzz word of the moment. Regional franchise of Johnny Vaughn’s noble idea of recruiting young underprivileged kids and passing on his knowledge of cocaine dealing, housebreaking and petty villainy in the hope of giving them a leg up into a whole new neighbourhood. Be warned there may be five or six month wait before they can accommodate you.
I hope this helps. S.
I think that if I had a bit more time, I’d probably start an academic blog. The problem would be splitting off the personal and the political from the academic. Rather hard to do. I’ve always enjoyed the informal and immediate communication of academic conferences - but this has the advantage that it’s not being taken down to be used in evidence against me in a few decades time, when the junior lecturer I slagged off is the chair of the grant-giving body that has me by the extremities. Anonymity is all very well, but I think that it would be hard to keep up if I was going to say beyond the personal.
The other problem is that I already spend far too much time writing papers, having fine ideas, engaging in stimulating conversation with those of my colleagues that I run into every few weeks, paging databases, musing in the stacks, etc. And not enough actually publishing stuff.
If I had a blog, it would be called ‘Work Avoidance Mechanism’. Incredibly, nobody else appears to have named theirs that already. Indeed, googlewacking on it only produces 7 hits. The world is truly strange.
Oh, go on Chris. With a title like that, it’s got to be a winner. Oh, and I only slag off famous people like David Starkey. Which gives me plenty to be going on with… Anybody been watching the Monarchy series? Yep, I’m really looking forward to getting home to my TV for that one (if the burglars haven’t made off with it). Steve, you are such an old
Scousercynic.Aw, shucks - we’re all prone to a bit of cynicism. I firmly believe it’s all a question of how you choose to channel it
…and if you don’t go along with that, at least trust me on the echinacea
I do. But my supply ran out.
And I’m a lifelong believer in cynicism. And sarcasm. But you know that already.