Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse

It's a little bit creepy. I'm the only person left in my entire building, though the automated lights flash on occasionally, making me think nervously of poltergeists, not that I believe in such rubbish. I've been here on my own many times - I usually get locked in late at night - but rarely has it been so empty in the late afternoon. Stranger souls than I would be wandering around naked or breaking into colleagues' offices, but I'm content to put on some Steve Reich and enjoy the warmth.

I've actually had one of the best afternoons for ages: Zoot Horn picked up me and Gandalf and we went to his warm, comfortable, art-and-book lined home for pizza, Beefheart and erudite chat - leafing through his Library of Poststructuralism, learning the guitar (I still don't understand: violin = four strings, four fingers; guitar = six strings, four fingers). Returning to the office, and thence to my cold house, was a struggle. I felt like Mole leaving Badger's place in the depths of the wintry Wild Wood.

Feeling (Zoot) Horny

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the life and style of Dr. Zoot Horn. Feel free to download and frame by your bed.

So, farewell then

It's the last official day of term. I've seen and been phoned by many students and there's an air of good will about the place. To ensure its continuance, you've earned a break from my humourless ranting. Apart from the habitual weekend break (this week enhanced by a charity ball), I'm off to visit my personal banker for Monday and Tuesday.

No, not as a one-man lynch mob: the gentleman in question is a distinguished friend, despite his possession of two model light sabres. Who'd have thought he works in the IT department?

I won't be back at work until Wednesday. As the proud possessor of an enhanced CRB form, I'm considered safe to present some poems with Zoot Horn, to an audience of literally several enraptured sixth-form students.

Have a good weekend.

How do you produce a scintillating Ireland-Italy football match?

You pick 3 Stoke City players, all set-piece specialists, one of whom (Whelan) scores in the 8th minute from a free kick by another (Lawrence). Italy were very, very lucky with their 89th minute equaliser. Read all about it here.

Off to prepare my Research Methods lecture now: dry but important… Then it's Carter's Wise Children tonight, PR with Yvonne Gaskell tomorrow morning, then something for Communications, then Zoot's doing the Poetry lecture. After that, I simply have to dream up a 2 hour lecture on Much Ado About Nothing. Any ideas?

Poetry corner

Inspired by Zoot Horn's poetry lecture and the subsequent seminar, here's the Mayakovsky poem we looked at - now I'm living in the urban centre, it means a lot more to me.

Great Big Hell Of A City

Windows split the city's great hell
into tiny hellets - vamps with lamps
The cars, red devils, exploded their yells
right in your ear, rearing on their rumps.

And there, under the sign-board with herrings from kerch
an old man, knocked down, stooping to search
for his specs, sobbed aloud when a tram with a lurch
whipped out its eyeballs in the twilight splurge.

In the gaps between skyscrapers, full of blazing ore,
where the steel of trains came clattering by
an aeroplane fell with a final roar
into the fluid oozing from the sun's hurt eye

Only then, crumpling the blanket of lights
Night loved itself out, lewd and drunk,
and beyond the street-suns, the sorriest of sights,
sank the flabby moon, unwanted old junk.

(1913!)

Save a few American lives

The US healthcare debate is still being distorted by malign ideologically-motivated forces, aided by the vested interests of the insurance industry, leaving 46 million Americans (20% of the population) uninsured and many others not covered for serious industry. Old people, let's remember, organise coach trips to Canada and Mexico to buy their prescription drugs, whereas here, they're free for pensioners and only £6 for everybody else, whatever the real cost.

The College National Republican Committee is openly asking for 'Your Health Care Horror Stories' via email or on their blog. How about filling it with our actual experiences, or adding your story here, a joint effort between British political site 38 Degrees and US magazine Mother Jones? I know the NHS has its limitations, but it's essentially brilliant - I know several people whose lives have been saved, and others who have received brilliant treatment (I'm looking at you, Zoot Horn). I've made a polite, measured start on the CNRC blog.

Here's one for Deer Friend

It's a modern folk song. Zoot won't like it because there's no guitar picking. Or guitars. It's Éamon Doorley, Muiréann Nic Amblaoibh, Julie Fowlis and Ross Martin singing Pe in Eirinn I, from the fantastic Dual album. I think this song's in Scots Gaelic rather than Irish, but the difference is marginal anyway. I'm sure Emma will correct me if I'm wrong.

It's good news for me too: some Habermas and a Diana Jones album in the post. I spent my parents' generous birthday present on a Nikon 55-200 vibration reduction zoom lens and some cycling gear.

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Yes, it's Friday.

Morning all. I've got a stupid amount of work today, including the entire essay on Threshold Concepts that I've been reading for all week (yes, even staff write things at the last minute), so there won't be time for blogging. Here's Ashes Central: they'll post the Over-by-Over link there soon, I would think.

So what about today's Friday Conundrum. I'm feeling slightly delirious and spent yesterday discussing Art and Morality with Zoot and others (on another post), so how about something a little more relaxed? What's the rudest thing anyone's said to you? My choices are a tie. My headmaster's university reference for me told them that I was going to fail my A-levels, that I was a troublemaker and that I didn't deserve a place anyway. I know this only because the kind man at Derby University who interviewed me said that I didn't sound anything like my reference and sneakily let me read it. The other contender is the cousin at my sister's wedding who plainly said that I'm so repulsive that I'm doomed to a solitary life (the actual words were 'well, romance isn't for everyone, is it?' after she noticed that I was attending alone).

Today, I have mostly been listening to…

Your Girlfriend's Evil, by Zoot Horn, reproduced below for your aural pleasure.

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And Christy and Emily's Superstition album, which is a lovely mix of torchsong, folk and indie into which an awful lot of love has clearly gone. Recommended!

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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I used podbean.com - slightly fiddly but got it working in the end.

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.

Zoot Horn has a cunning plan

He's buried it in the comments to another post, so here it is.

I've just worked out how to structure my reading and stop you buying books.

I'm going to systematically read all of those books that I've told people I've read, or that people think that I have read, but that I actually haven't. I figure that this way I can be better read without actually appearing so, and when somebody recalls a conversation about books that we once had I will appear to have total recall of the discussion and be able to convince people that my contributions were much more interesting than they actually were by asking tricky questions that only someone who actually knows the book in question and remembers the debate with uncanny clarity would know about. This will add a subtle mystery to my character by persuading my friends that their memories are fading but mine are crystal clear and, indeed, intensify with the passage of time.

You, of course, will then be forced to re-read more thoroughly books that you already know and have spoken to me about, which means that you will desist from book buying and begin re-visiting those you already own.

Unless you were faking too of course...

I'd like to point out that I have read everything I talk about, that I do re-read books, not that I ever have any piercing aperçus, and that your plan WILL make you extremely well-read!