Wednesday night.

Listening to The Moral Maze - which is either brilliant or excruciating, depending on who is on. They just made a complete fool of Kriss Akabusi - who was there to defend AV, and was totally out of his depth, it is supposed to be a debate about celebrity, and how powerful a political lobby they have become - and does 'celebrity' equate with 'good' or 'right' - Stephen Fry has more Twitter followers than all the broadsheet newspapers together have readers etc. Claire Fox had to rescue him just as he was about to self combust or start crying, by making a joke about her own celebrity. I like Claire Fox, I always have - she is by far the best thing on the program. I also went to school with her, she's only a year older than me but has obviously achieved rather more... possibly because she's quite a bit brighter than me.

There is some fucking stupid American pseudo academic on now insisting that George Clooney and Bono are justified in saying they represent millions of Africans "I know - I was there when he asked them". sheesh!

My neighbours seem to have taken up the mantle of the folks who lived there before - by spending summer evenings smoking industrial strength grass. He's still really fat and bald with a shiny head ( she's put on weight too ) - when he walks along the garden the dogs can see the shiny top of his head along the hedge and bark hysterically at him - I have to bring them in.

The garden is looking good, if a little shabby. I still really need to spend money on it - but some things are looking very chipper - and some things are not going to make it through to the summer.

I'm starting to think about giving up teaching, at least running the course - the amount of stress and work for so little reward is getting me down - I don't seem to be able to remember anything form the last 12 months ( It's been a year since I was on contract ) and the students are so demanding - I'm sick of being expected to be on call 24hrs a day, and getting emails at 2am saying 'I forgot what you said today, what was it again". The fees are going to go up to nearly 9k next year - that means each student will want full time 1-2-1 attention and frankly, I don't think it's practical. I need to put my mental health and well being first. The last week working at home and getting on with my clients has made me remember what I'm missing.