Unexplained Absenteeism

Apologies for not posting round these parts lately (although I see not very much has been happening in my absence). I have been settling into my new post - which has largely entailed making a mess of my office, working out how to use the photocopier for all important article-copying purposes (it is now broken, but this event has nothing to do with me), and finding the supply of coffee down the art history corridor. So not too shabby, then; I suppose I did do a couple of lectures and some seminars along the way, too. I also found the first case of plagiarism this academic year in my new institution - a dubious honour, indeed.

(The less said about the 'research' malarkey, the better, I think. I have good intentions, I promise.) I have also been exploring whole new worlds with regular study trips to places with large classics libraries in buildings with classically-inspired exteriors. Whole new worlds, indeed. (See, I have been doing research, it just hasn't materialised into anything cohesive yet. The ideas, they are amorphous, and in my head but not yet on the page.)

On Wedding Discos; their effect on concentration

We've all been there: a slightly darkened (although not dark enough) village hall/hotel function room, glitterball throwing sparkly lights over the slightly uncomfortable crowd, the rather well-oiled father of the bride throwing shapes on the dance floor, all to the righteous sounds of the Jackson 5, ABBA and other, inoffensive, inter-generational grooves.

In fact, I'm there right now. Rather, I'm outside said wedding disco, trying to write my Phd in my institution's library in a race against time to meet the supervisor's impossible deadline ("of course I can turn it around in three days; in fact, make it two!"). Yet I'm losing that race, due to my institution's lucrative sideline in corporate hospitality/events. Every 20 seconds or so, I get a good blast of Take That delivered to my desk through the open doors of my institution's function room, peppered with whoops and shrieks from rather over-excited children and rather over-indulged bridesmaids.

Not that I'm against weddings or discos. Far from it. I'm just the kind of person who, unfortunately, requires total and extreme silence when they're working. I have been known, in the past, to throw 'looks' at my colleagues who do not adhere to similar policies on noise - I have no control over it, it's just something I have learned to live with. I actually require this level of pure peace and quiet else, for some reason, I end up writing what I hear. And right now I'm hearing Dolly Parton's '9-5'...which is ironic, as I'm going to admit defeat and quit work for the evening.

* p.s I should have mentioned that the Phd is in classics, and that the bride was wearing a truly awful green number, just to fulfil the classics/fashion requirement of this blog.