Isn't it bedtime yet? Everything went wrong today and I want to sleep just to cancel it out. First of all I woke up an hour late due to my stupid drunken tinkering with the clock last night. Which meant leaving the house without tea or breakfast. Never mind, I thought, I'll get some toast when I get to work (a good hour later due to usual terrible bus service but at least I got to have a little nap). But no, I get to my desk and I'm immediately confronted by evil scary colleague huffing and puffing in front of me. She insists that she booked the teaching lab, but another class are in there. I check the booking form and no, she booked it for Tuesday mornings, not Wednesdays. Most of the tutors at this point would go 'oh well, silly me' and return to their normal classroom. She, on the other hand, blames me entirely, will not believe that she said Tuesdays, and ends up by trying to STARE ME OUT. As if that would make me realise that she was right all along despite the form and despite emails confirming it. Then just to give her another thing to get angry with me about, I gave two of her students the wrong coursebook because it had been changed without anyone telling me. Just as I finally got my coffee and a hot cross bun and turned to my computer, internet and email fell over, at which point I just gave up on the day really.

Tags: work gripes

16:41

. . .

Topical crossword clue of the week (by Paul in yesterday's Guardian):
'Leaders in Brighton and Hove Albion alarm shambolic Palace' (8).

Better not show that to my depressed Palace-supporting colleague...




(Answer: Alhambra.)

Tags: crosswords

09:46

. . .

Mmm house full of apples and pears, thanks to a) a colleague's groaning apple tree and b) buying too many pears for a recipe. On Friday I made, logically enough, an apple and pear cake. It would have been Liz's birthday and, rubbish baker though I am, it seemed only right. Of course, Liz would never have burnt the damn thing round the edges but it was delicious anyway, and gave a sweetness to the sad memories.

Tags: cooking

10:59

. . .

Book 61: Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear
The second Maisie Dobbs 'mystery'. More of the same really. Feisty heroine, irritating mentor, dark secrets, the enduring shadow of the First World War. Still enjoyable, but if there's going to be any more books I would hope to see a bit of branching out.

Book 62: The Fantastical Adventures of the Invisible Boy by Lloyd Alexander
Vague memories of the Prydain chronicles led me to pick this up in the library - it's less full-on fantasy and more semi-autobiographical flight of fancy. Sweet.

Book 63: The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
I decided to search out the Prydain books themselves after some stimulating discussion on I Love Everything. I'm not sure I read them myself as a child, but I think parts were read to me by a friend's parent at some point. Reading them now I can see how exciting they would be to a younger audience, very fast-paced and with regular helpings of scary action. Some of the characters seem to owe an over-large debt to Tolkien, but there's a lot more humour and variety to make up for that.

Tags: 50 Book Challenge

10:22

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