The Lag

There’s been very little to do at work for the last couple of days but I know that tomorrow a minor tidal wave is coming, meaning that I’ve spent much of this evening feeling a mixture of tiredness and dread. After having fun last night with my entirely civilised prep programme colleagues I didn’t feel entitled to take sick leave today (and my sinuses were feeling a little better), which I’m paying for now to an extent. I feel like I’m neglecting the many people to whom I owe emails or even phone calls, but tonight, watching TV and stacking the dishes has been about all I’ve been able to do.

However, it was the first episode of the new season of Six Feet Under, so all was not lost (despite the fact I haven’t done much reading for a couple of days).

A number of the journal writers and bloggers I read have mentioned the well-meaning but hurtful comments relatives can make, especially for those of us in higher education who get the variation on “when are you going to get a [real] job” each time we meet and greet extended families. What happens to the relationship between aunt/uncle and nephew/niece pairings? It seems so often to go from idealised delight to bafflement and confusion in a relatively short period of time (although my extended family, on my father’s side at least, never exactly felt much delight in me or my brother, since we were among the youngest of a very deep heap of cousins). I was thinking as I was watching Child of our Time this evening how the general adorability of small children (for some people, at least) shears off us as we get older, so that by the time we’re about fourteen, it’s all gone, or at the very least obscured beneath a slick glaze of sebum and hairspray.

I wish I wasn’t sick; despite (or perhaps because of) dining on pizza and chocolate this evening I haven’t really felt much able to enjoy getting my dissertation handed in, which can’t only be because I didn’t format my list of references with hanging indents. Hopefully in a few days, or maybe when tomorrow’s long run of lectures and tutorials and orientation speeches is hatched and dispatched, I’ll be able to rest on my laurels for a moment or two.

No more book-length qualifications. This I solemnly mean for the moment at least.