This and that

A strangely empty day, punctuated by jolly telephone conversations with friends.  When you are a long way away from some of your friends it is odd how the telephone creates an equality of perceived proximity: talking to the UK and to a small village just outside Castelldefels were just the same.  All helped of course by the fact that I was talking in English to both!

I got up relatively early because my internal clock is now in a sate of flux because my normal waking up time has had to be adjusted again and again as my circumstances changed.  The last week or so working in a school that was substantially nearer than my usual place of work meant that I could get up earlier as well. 

But my body clock is attuned to getting up at 6.30 am and the luxury of an extra half hour in bed meant that everything felt wrong by the time I was having my shower. 

And now glorious release!

After what felt like a wickedly self-indulgent lie in, but was actually only 8 am, I got up.

And started my OU work.  Thanks to my efforts when I was stuck in front of the kids I am now in advance of the proposed timetable by a couple of weeks and so am beginning to worry about the first tutor marked assignment that we have to complete.

This assignment is the construction of a Wiki which has to be written by a group of we students on line, working together and producing an explanation of the concept of “authority” found in a choice of designated texts and explain our analysis for a group of students in another arts course.  This is not something to which I am looking forward, but other students have written that they found this a very interesting piece of work.  I remain to be convinced!

The work of going through my books and deciding which ones make the growing number of bags of rejects that will make their way to the school that I have just left is soul destroying.  As I put each one on the pile to be given I can remember buying each and for many of them where I bought them.  But reality is a hard taskmaster and I know that I have not cut down very much on my buying of books and there is a limited space available and something has to give.

I have decided to release my critical books unless they have a value as literature as well.  Fun books which I read through and kept and now going.  Frivolous books which years ago I found mildly amusing have been stacked ready for redistribution.  An agéd atlas is staring mournfully at me as I type, topping off a bag of soon to be displaced books.  I am giving away a tome version of my life.  But to make way to the new - that is the concept I use to make it possible.

Tomorrow more bags and the slaughter of innocents continue!

And it will be good to see the books which at present are hidden behind the front row of books on the shelf.  And furthermore I might even be tempted to do what I should have done years ago: sort the books out!