Clare thinks that this picture should be called ‘Death and Rebirth’. Perhaps it’s also an attempt to produce a combination of terms that has never and will not again appear on a single Google search. My last day at home for some time. See you later.
My job title is Reader, and I agree with a senior Professor of my acquaintance who, a while back in my ‘annual review’, said — “You’re a Reader, do some fucking reading”. Yes, I do write in my books: call it ‘annotation’ and you can get away with it. Yes, this book does start with a discussion of Star Trek. But it’s all work, I promise.
It was a tense one, but I think Jack (on the left and playing white) just nicked it in the end.
Found another excuse to leave home for a while and come for a weekend in Milton Keynes, which may not sound the most immediately glamorous destination, but it does have the significant draw of Bletchley Park. It was here that World War 2 was won, arguably, when a (largely female) staff of thousands worked tirelessly to crack German ciphers, mainly produced by the now-famous Enigma machines, of which the museum still has a few dozen, out of about 450 surviving ones apparently.
Do you know that if Enigma had ever enciphered a letter as itself, the code would have been near-impossible to crack? But this was its fatal weakness, giving just enough indication that particular strings of gibberish might just be commonly-used phrases like “Wetter für heute” [‘the weather for today…’] and allowing each daily machine setting to be worked out.
I am not often to be found at work after 5pm — not ‘in the office’ anyway — and heaven forbid that uni’s now seemingly random system of allocating timetable slots gives me a 5-6pm class next year, or any other year. I can feel the ennui even when spying on them from across the corner of the Ellen Wilkinson Building.
A day spent at home was enlivened by the arrival of a travel itinerary, map and other stuff from the very competent people I’ve been dealing with at Expert Africa regarding my upcoming travels — which will certainly get me out and about. As I may have already said on here more than once, I do like a good map. It was my flights over Namibia last year that prompted me to want to go there, and in April, I will.
This picture epitomises the week, not just the day. This is what ‘research leave’ means for me, at least this time round. I could tell you what it all means but it would be out of context and take too long. If too dulled out by it all you could, like me, get annoyed by the little speck of whatever between columns F and G and try to wipe it off — but it will be there forever, at least digitally.
Students often give me gifts. Nothing major — I have never received an outright cash bribe, in case you were wondering — but things like tea, or things representative of their country somehow. I don’t solicit these, in fact I often wish they wouldn’t because I’m just doing my job. But some of them are nice and have made it into a kind of permanent residency status in my office at uni. This little idol is an example, and to my shame I can no longer remember who gave it to me or even, with any certainty, what country it is from, though it might be Indonesia.
One could say this is an ‘early’ sign of Valentine’s Day but of course that particular commercial outbreak has already been with us for weeks. Nevertheless: a big kiss to you all, courtesy of my optician, hence the spectacles lined up above.
Sat in my room after work, a strange flapping noise started in the corridor outside. It must have lasted ten minutes, coming and going in volume, before my curiosity was piqued enough to have a look and see what was causing it. Turned out it was a gentleman just walking up and down the corridor in his flip-flops. Clearly someone who needed to get his step count up — yet couldn’t be bothered to go outside. Anyway, the thought then crossed my mind about trying to get this shot through the spyhole in my door: a technical challenge that means, at least, I haven’t ended up with yet another shot of Torontonian buildings. The other alternative was a cheap brown squirrel pic, so let’s run with this one.
