Further timetabling and the Sniffle Olympics

Am once more neck-deep in timetabling issues for the refresher talks but, thanks to the totally wonderful Safety guy, it all seems to be relatively under control. For the moment. I’m sure most things are more successfully sorted when I’m actually not there. Which is much like the play, The Dog It Was That Died, where lots of things happen but everything would have been just the same without the main character existing at all. Ah, life’s a wonderful thing, eh …

I also seem to have developed a cold, dammit – just what I need for this week. Not. Still, I am dousing myself in Lemsips, Lucozade and Echinacea so I’m hoping for a clean bill of health by the time the operation comes round on Thursday. I don’t after all want to be too sick to go to hospital. It would be too much like the time many years ago in my pre-marital days when I was planning to go to the Healing Service in Lord’s H’s church, but in the end was too ill to attend. Sad but true.

As a result of all this, I struggled somewhat during my reflexology session – well, it’s very hard to lie down when all you want to do is snort like an old horse for a while and make good use of the local spittoon. Heck but I’m so refined, you know. Obviously. Post-reflexology, I was even rather shaky and had to really concentrate in keeping upright and looking normal (always a tricky combination) on the walk across campus back to the office. I can’t be frightening the students by fainting after all. Mind you, I hadn’t eaten anything by then, so that might well have been the problem. Once back at my desk, the Dean very sweetly offered me some baklava (provided to all of us by the Islamic Society for helping them during Ramadan) and a nice cup of tea. Which were both much appreciated, though I did pass on the baklava. Thanks, Colin!

Meanwhile, the boss and the Project Welcome Officer have also bought me some Ferrero Rocher chocolates to say thank you for the work put into the whole of the Freshers’ Week project, which I was really touched about. Thank you, David and Tamzin – much appreciated. Plus Ferrero wrappers make excellent bling. I feel a pair of earrings coming on, as it were …

Tonight, I was planning to visit Gladys, but have neither the physical nor emotional health for it right now, so I’ll see how I feel over the next couple of days. Instead, I’ll have to do the ironing, even though there’s nothing on TV except the glorious Claudia. Who is a tonic unto herself of course.

I’ve finished reading Salley Vickers’ The Other Side Of You. The interview at the back tells me that she thinks it’s her best so far. Um, sadly not, in my opinion. I loved the main character, David, but the whole Elizabeth/Thomas love affair in the middle manages to be both hugely irritating as a flashback and hugely overwrought. I would rather have stuck purely to the MC. And anyway if anyone’s going to be irritating and overwrought around here, it’s me. Obviously. Some of the writing is also rather clunky, it lacks her usual charming subtlety and it even trails off to the point where I lost a great deal of the interest factor. If you’re going to read your first Vickers, I wouldn’t start here.

Today’s nice things:

1. Reflexology
2. Baklava and chocolate gifts
3. Claudia Winkleman.

Anne Brooke
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