Tuesday 9th June 2026, 10.50am (day 5,402)
So much so that, apparently, she had the sign ready beforehand. So it goes when we are both working at home on a given morning.
Clare’s immediate desire
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: office
Keela’s rig
Thursday 26th June 2025, 11.00am (day 5,054)
It’s nice when my students can still impress me, and, currently, Keela’s dissertation project is certainly doing that — although I can’t tell you what it is, not for any sinister reasons but just because it’s not finished yet and not my business to tell you. But, yes, it involves virtual reality, she doesn’t wear a rig on a regular basis. I do not believe my office noticeboard has featured before so there you go, a chance to check out the randomly accumulated display of items upon it for the first, and who knows, perhaps the last time.
Trying to work
Monday 23rd June 2025, 11.50am (day 5,051)
I seem unable to get outside much at the moment — this is the fifth interior in a row and the 11th in the last 13 days. But I do have some work to do. For now, at least. Note: Drew is not a student midwife. The journey that mug has made in order to now reside at our place has been a saga in itself, in fact.
Wet day in the office
Tuesday 27th May 2025, 11.55am (day 5,024)
You could say there’s been a change in the weather over the last couple of days. I managed to get to and from campus without getting wet but others were not so fortunate, including Susan in the next-door office, it seems.
The latest planning exercise
Monday 12th May 2025, 10.15am (day 5,009)
Down the years I have acknowledged our Clare’s planning fetish. I share it, to some extent, but I tend to stick to one medium (a diary) whereas C.’s various lists, diagrams, files and so on spread and multiply. This board has just appeared in her half of the attic/office. This is planning as board game, as one of those models football managers or Napoleon would use to organise their troop movements. And it didn’t even appear until May — though I am guessing we will be seeing more of this even after 2025 has played out.
The online conference experience
Tuesday 13th August 2024, 6.55pm (day 4,737)
If you ask me, ‘hybrid’ meetings and conferences are a disaster, certainly if you’re one of the online participants. But online-only gigs work well enough, particularly when most of the others in the ‘room’ are located in Canada. So let’s proclaim from the upstairs office, instead: from where we get to look at the little details of other people’s offices.
Office idol
Friday 16th February 2024, 11.30am (day 4,558)
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.
Boring, but with effects
Tuesday 30th May 2023, 10.45am (day 4,296)
Having walked around eighteen miles yesterday, I did not leave the house today and got on with necessary work, stuff like online teaching (two of those), marking (lots), etc. Exciting it was not. Playing with some effects on my relatively new camera was as much as I managed. This is a truly naff image, I accept that, but so went the day.
Mark in his office
Thursday 4th May 2023, 10.10am (day 4,270)
Another photo of a pack member — in a sense. Mark is one of the colleagues with whom I work most closely. We were recording a podcast this morning, hence the microphone.
Lancaster House, Princess Street
Monday 16th January 2023, 2.25pm (day 4,162)
There still doesn’t seem to be a great deal going on in Manchester, but at least the light was good today. Lancaster House stands on the intersection of Princess and Whitworth Streets, and is a good example of the Victorian tendency to stick these grandiose flourishes at the top of any given commercial building. Does it assert some kind of dominance, or did they just have a lot of stone left over? Either way, I like it.
Being 42 