Now the day is ended…

Finally, our reward for the day - a speech from the Dean (ahem) and a performance by our house band, Cruel Brother, unfortunately sans Deer Friend, who has decamped to Berlin and then Egypt. Perhaps some beer may be forthcoming too.

Testing… Testing… 1, 1 2, 1, 1 2

Let's see if this works - then I can torture you all with my 'taste' in music. A gentle one to start with: Deer Friend and Zoot doing 'Waltzing's For Dreamers'

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Didn't we have a lovely day the day we went to Oxford?

Hello again. How was your Thursday, and Friday morning? I had a spiffing day in Oxenford, then a lie-in this morning for the first time in years. Thanks to Zoot for driving and Mark for his incisive commentary: he told Zoot that 'you two were by far the best - and I wish that were a compliment'.

I took some photographs - most of Deer Friend and Zoot Horn performing at Catweazle (yes, I know, what a cringe-makingly hippy name). I didn't bother with many of Oxford - you'll all have been there or will do one day, and wandering around with a camera in such a place is likely to see me filed under 'tourist'.

Not that I'm not a tourist. We wandered around the market, visited several bookshops which was highly profitable (for the booksellers), drank fine beer in quaint pubs, then adjourned to East Oxford Community Centre for their open mike night. And open it certainly was - from enthusiastic youngsters, grizzled old folkies and the world's worst storyteller (and a racist Indian comedian channelling the spirit of Bernard Manning). Outside, smokers admired each others' poetry. I'm not joking.

All this was forgiven, however, when Zoot and Deer finally got on stage - last, as they'd been forgotten. Wiping the floor with the competition, they sang Richard Thompson's 'Waltzing's For Dreamers' and the old spiritual 'I'll Fly Away' to rapturous, well-deserved applause.

And now Deer Friend is quitting these shores for ever. She's off firstly to Berlin for recuperation, then Egypt from where she'll no doubt keep leaving comments here and doing her PhD, leaving her friends and bandmates bereft. Deer: it's never going to rain there. Just think about that! No blossom, no snowball fights, no sledging, and sand in your ice-cream every single day!

So what books did I buy? The Collected Letters of Saunders Lewis to Margaret Gilcriest, The Dent Dictionary of Fictional Characters, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, The Rise and Fall of Communism, Hoffman's Struwwelpeter, and Lafferty's Fourth Mansions.

A random accretion of things

'Anonymous' (must be a big family) has left another Twitter alternative which absolutely deserves your applause.

Twitter for dermatologists: Zitter.

I shall inform Vole's father, a dermatologist, forthwith.

It's raining today. Being a watervole, this makes me very happy indeed, even though I'm stuck in the office rather than being up a mountain. The Map Twats are off stargazing on Saturday night, without me. I'm competing in the Shropshire Closed on Sunday and just can't manage the logistics to do both. Very disappointing.

Still, I did my own stargazing yesterday. While ironing, I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture. To be honest, it's a bit cheesy, a little too touchy-feely: the climax is Decker achieving 'a higher state of consciousness' rather than a deep-space battle, which isn't a very subtle way to drag the franchise into the 70s. Still, the industrial architecture is beautiful, and McCoy's still irascible. There's definitely a subversive streak in that man.

Tomorrow I'm running away for a day off. More specifically, I'm going to Oxford with Zoot and others to buy books, leave CVs at their establishment (ho ho ho) and see Zoot and Deer Friend perform live. I'll take some pictures, but won't be blogging so you'll all have to entertain yourselves.

Weep, you brutes

I'm off home now - the first time in months that I've gone home before 7 p.m. Before I go, I'd like to plug a song I heard for the first time today.

Unfortunately, I can't post The Deer Friend (vocals) with Zoot Horn (guitar) performing 'Waltzing's for Dreamers' utterly heartbreakingly, as this blog can't do sound files. Instead, here's Richard Thompson's original, followed by June Tabor's slow, sadder version - which is still not as evocative as Deer/Horn's version (see what I did there?). I thought I knew a lot of Thompson's stuff, but he always has something more to surprise us. I've just had to buy the Tabor album, The Quiet Eye.

Have a good weekend. I'm calling into the Great Western later, then off to Doves at Delamere Forest tomorrow, so won't be blogging at all until Monday.

Fare thee well

After a delightful and sophisticated lunch with the Deer Friend, I'm off to Cardiff, so have a good weekend - you probably won't hear from me, which may constitute a good one.

I've just noticed with some glee that my friend William's book Jean Baudrillard: Against Banality is in the same typeset as my copy of Moominpappa at Sea (except for the front covers). Must look up the name of the type.

Treason doth never prosper

What's the reason? Why, if it prospers, none dare call it treason. (John Harington)

Well, I'm in the office for a few hours - need to write a module leader's report, if that excites you in any way. lair

Today is both glorious and tragic. Glorious in that I'm having a cup of tea with the Deer Friend, recently returned to these shores from a few weeks' grave-robbing in the pyramids. Weren't they a cheap rip-off of After Eights in the nineties?

Tragic in that bitter, twisted, selfish, self-important, deluded, reactionary no-mark Blairites are stabbing Gordon Brown in the back. As I said before, I've never rated him as much more than a capitalist stooge, but I like dour, eeyoreish monsters. Now I feel sorry for him - the unwanted dog in the pound, whipped, beaten and beneath contempt.

Who the fuck are these people? Does Blears think she'll be a rallying point for the Blairites? Does Purnell think his moment has come at last? Frankly, I wouldn't recognise him if he was alone in a room with his name on the door - and I'm a politics obsessive. They're not saving the party by knifing the prime minister. They're making it clear to the country that they'd rather get some headlines by treating Brown like a gimp than run the country or make Labour electable again. They're clearly neither socialists nor Labour supporters, because all they're doing is helping the Tories. How does guaranteeing a Tory government help the working people of this country? Blears, Purnell and Hutton are traitors, pure and simple. Watch as they pick up lucrative directorships and turn their backs on the people who (mistakenly) elected them.

The Guardian's live-blogging the shenanigans here.

Thursday's Friday Conundrum

I'm off to Cardiff tomorrow, and so rather depressingly missing Cruel Brother Featuring The Deer Friend, but I urge you to attend. I don't know if I'll be online tomorrow or over the weekend as the posh hotel charges extra for wi-fi, the skinflints.

So Friday's Conundrum will have to go up early.

What words would you take back, and what words should you have said? What have you said/written/hinted to someone that you regret? What have you failed to say to someone that may have changed your life, their lives, or simply been the right thing to come out with? Feel free to post anonymously! I'll think about mine for a little longer, as I've only just come up with this one.

(I've only just popped into the office after a full day in Walsall: well worth it - remastered double CDs of Slanted and Enchanted and Terror Twilight).

A quick plug

For two events: Cruel Brother (named after an old ballad, or the mirror of Pentangle's 'Cruel Sister' album, or Rachel Unthank and the Winterset's album of the same name?) and the Deer Friend are performing this weekend, at the Chindit on Friday night, and supporting an ex-member of Fairport Convention at the Newhampton Inn on Saturday. Highly recommended folk/rock stuff, everybody. I'll hopefully be at the Chindit, depending on whether I have to go to Cardiff that day or early on Saturday.

Before that, however: please vote tomorrow. As long as you aren't planning to vote UKIP, Tory or BNP. If you are, the elections are on Friday. I always try to vote at 7 a.m. so that the Tories are losing straight away.

A little sunshine

OK, The Deer Friend left a comment asking for some sweetness and light on educational matters. Luckily, I've spent the morning in a meeting with our Dean. Although what she said doesn't entirely fit what the Vice-Chancellor said, she was upbeat and positive, and it's clear that staff research is going to be supported. So you students may hear new and exciting discoveries made by staff in the time we're going to be given. That's proper good news!

Also, I have found my niche. I am a B-grade PGCE student and therefore a B-grade teacher. Despite my 1st class degree with prizes, MA with prizes and PhD, my technology-supported learning PGCE was deemed worthy of a B. Perhaps because I was 'creative', though the feedback objected to a lack of theory (there isn't any on blogging and pedagogy) and my use of the MHRA referencing system - which I used because Harvard's rubbish and I'm damned if I'm going to learn yet another one for a one-year course after struggling for years to get MHRA right for the MA and PhD theses.

Perhaps I'll sink even lower for the other assessments.