Zzzzzzzz....

I can't stay awake today.... I am so sleeeeeeeeeepy....... dissertations to mark (they're not boring, in case you're wondering if they have their own special soporific qualities). They seem to be stretching endlessly into the future at the moment. Until March??? O.M.G.

Ok, so not really endless as there is always an end, but it's still a wearisome thought today for a sleepy person.

I've had a nap, some coffee and some fresh air. They haven't worked. There is a strange smell of potatoes in my living room which is quite distracting. Where's it coming from?? It can't be the man in the flat below having a baked-potato barbeque in this weather, though he might be.... he is prone to solitary, badly executed barbeque experiences on his balcony, you know. Or maybe not, as there's no smoke billowing into the sky in stinky grey clouds.

I thought a student's brain had been replaced by Google last week, as he typed every question I asked him into it, instead of thinking about the questions and drawing on his own little grey cells* before answering, like people used to in the old days before laptops and WiFi and the internet. It wasn't a quiz with facts for answers, you know, I was just trying to find out what he was interested in. Maybe people can't be bothered to have thoughts anymore, but luckily the internet steps in to fill that intellectual gap. I was slightly disturbed by the incident, but he's been fine since. Phew. Maybe he was having an off day.

Well, writing this drivel has woken me up a bit. I think I'll have my tea now and get on with the dissertations later. Sounds like a good plan to me, if I say so myself.

* Yes, it's a Poirot reference.

Free-range office worker

We've moved offices again. I feel like I've gone from being a battery-farmed office worker to more of a free-range creature, happily frolicking in the extra space and breathing in the presumably normal, non-fuggy air that other people are used to. Sounds ok for a New Year start to me. Hopefully increased job satisfaction and then utter contentment will follow in due course. And I'm not being sarky either... the contrast between how I feel now and back then is surprising, so the environment must have affected me more than I realised. I felt like I was on a train to deadsville for a while last year, but now I've hopped off.

Next we've got a video by The Monkees, an extremely tenuous connection with my post I know, but hey ho, it's a pleasant song anyway. Not terribly good quality, but the less blurry ones available were either subtitled in Spanish or showed bizarre, unfunny 'romps' from their TV series, both of which detracted from the music in my opinion.

New Year post

It seems a bit weird to to think back to Christmas rather than ahead to the New Year, but it's a shame to waste the only photo I took at the Duckie 'Copyright Christmas' extravaganza. It's Dickie Beau in a sinister looking Santa's knee scenario at the Barbican, December 2011.

Lots of very good mini-performances about consumerism in a promenade around the Temple of Shopping that Robin Whitmore designed, though it was days ago now so I can't remember very much. The finale was brilliant and full of technical wizardry, with Scottee as Carole the Helpful Store Manager rising up from a tower of crap and the audience being bombarded with screwed up rubbish paper by assorted elves and other employees. Kath Bird's job hunting performance was very good and I'd like to see it again, as a few minutes wasn't enough. I think it would go down well alongside other political satirical performances as it was very well observed and executed. So was the VSS shopping channel - what tempting products they sell so convincingly. Their Snack Saver (below) is a great idea and so very timely in this age of enforced austerity. The Frugal Fruit and the Brush! are very good too - have a look at the videos if you're after some more money saving products.

The recycling and corporate responsibility idea struck a chord with me - it is indeed so worthy (and necessary), but can be so very dull. I'd better put that notion speedily behind me and try to get interested in it, as I've got to do an assignment this term on sustainability for that PG Cert. Must find an interesting angle on it but not today, as I'm not quite back at work properly yet.

And a belated Happy New Year to us all - let's hope so, eh.