We have trouble with Miss Best Friend again. She was sick last night, so we are hardening our hearts to Withhold Food For 24 Hours. For the last hour, viz., about 18 hours since she was last fed, she has been cycling in and out of my study door. I’ve let her because at one […]
Our bathroom is not at all well. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised given that it’s one of the last projects Wee Stoned Mark perpetrated on our premises. There seems, briefly, to have been a lot of silliness. The good Barry is now removing it, and at the current rate of progress, by the time he’s […]
We have folded our tents and stolen away, admittedly, not far. The good Barry has got down to floor level in Dr Biswell’s bathroom. Tomorrow he want to move onto sorting out ours, starting at 8 am, so we are decamping to the Biswellry. We ruled out the front spare bedroom. At some point in […]
Miss Best Friend, who looks more like a sealion than ever, has decided that she is senile. This is her excuse for a whole lot of things. ‘I can’t count up to one any more’, she says. ‘I’ve forgotten I was fed half an hour ago’. Stealing Miss Kit’s breakfast? Surely we can’t expect her […]
I’ve been thinking about colour, because I treated myself to the big V&A book on Diaghilev, which is most sumptuously illustrated: a lot more of the actual costumes survive than I’d known about, and they’re quite extraordinary. It’s often been said that the Ballets Russes’s explosion of colour produced a sort of Russian revolution in […]
I have a disgusting cold. If anyone were auditioning for Snow White I could certainly try out for Dopey, Grumpy, or Sleepy, but without doubt, my best bet would be Sneezy. Fortunately, with me, these things tend not to last too long, though the virus is certainly being aided and abetted by the weather, […]
The Real World Consultant and the Arts Consultant gave me a splendid book by the Wibbly Wobbly Situationists (I refuse to advertise them, they do this themselves with great success. Think Heston Blumenthal crossed with Gilbert and George & work it out via Google). The example of their quivering oeuvre I’m most likely to attempt […]
We have acquired the services of a handyman. He is tall and very calm, and has been moving quietly about the house for the last couple of days sorting things out — gutters, patches of rotten wood, the lights in the kitchen. There’s rather a list of things because we haven’t had a domestic […]
We had a surprise visit yesterday from our dauntless acupuncturist. The day was raw, cold and intermittently sleety, but she turned up out of the dark, having finished work, with a little basket of flowering plants and some tea, determined to wish the Professor a happy New Year. It’s the year of the Hare, or […]
I’m back in touch after a perfectly horrible few days: in September, I inaugurated a new first year course, massive take-up, I had three teaching assistants and four co-examiners so trying to get all the information about all the students including the ones who came for the first three weeks and changed course, etc. etc. […]