Will this essay never get writ!

Yet again the demands of life transcend art, and I have omitted my daily writing task.  I can of course plead pressure of work and the demands of an OU course which has taken over my waking moments, but it would be false.  There is always time to write.

Anyway, I haven’t but am now trying to make up for it.

Part of the problem is my approach to the first assignment in the new course.  I have been hunting around for something new to say on an area that must be worked dry from the point of view of the poor marker!  I have read more about Greek Attic Vases in the past weeks than I have ever read in the whole of my previous life!

And very interesting it has been too, though I have been less than academically rigorous about saving my references so there is going to have to be a wholesale rewriting of the sites that I have visited before the piece of work can be thought to be finished.

I do at least have a rough draft, and I have crafted a fine ending but it’s the painstaking putting of it all together that takes up the real time.  I have two days left and, ideally, I would like to send the thing off today – but we shall see how far I am able to get through the nitty-gritty.  To say nothing of cutting down the words that I have used to ensure that I stay within the Draconian limits demanded by the OU!  I fear that some of my more interesting details will have to be sacrificed in the interest of brevity.

As a welcome change from sitting in front of a class doing an examination, I am now in front of a class preparing for one – with only one sainted child opting to complete the work on Billy Elliot that we have been doing over the past week or so.

I have also been informed (and it always comes as a complete shock) that this will probably be the last class that I take with this particular group as exams and the end of term will eat up the rest of the time!  Prepared as always!

It is rumoured that summer might have come at last.  Today is hot, especially in Building 1 where there is no air conditioning and we are threatened with a tomorrow which will be scorching.  As we are in the elevated purlieu of the rich in Barcelona we do not have the muggy closeness of the city, but even here it is on the verge of being unpleasantly hot.  At last!

This has been an odd build up to summer and not a very pleasant one; I trust that it does not bode ill for the rest of the sunny season.  Even though I will be hard at work on the course during the summer I do not want the weather to be so un-Catalan that I am forced to my books for solace!

I am also telling myself that it is time for me to finalize my decision about what I am going to study next year.  And, more importantly, pay the grossly inflated fees that we overseas students are expected to pay!  Still, that’s what the money is for: to be spent.  And it is hardly the action of a wastrel to follow a degree course!

When I leave school in quarter of an hour’s time, there will be eight (8) working days left.  The lack of belief in my going is shared by staff and pupils alike and they confidently expect me to be sitting in my usual place, typing quietly come September. 

The kids have reasoned that one or both of the ladies who will be teaching my timetable will get pregnant and therefore I will be called upon once more.  The calls, I regret to say, will go unheeded. 

The siren call of the Third Floor will prove stronger and, as incentive, I must remember that I will never have so agreeable a timetable as the one I am working out now!  With, as I might have mentioned, single digit, eight working days to go!

Now lunch with Toni and a final push to finish the OU work!