CYCLE 4 DAY 18

Today was an up early, down drugs, drive to the station, catch a train, go to London day. There in the smoke I made my way to a meeting at the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP). All of this journey done on automatic and reading my Kindle. The meeting was okay and a chance to catch up with colleagues. Lots of tricky issues but all manageable in the scheme of things. As always the world of the RCP was busy and a lot was going on today so people dipped in and out as they needed to. By 2:30 we were done, or at least some of us had trains to catch while others had more contributions to make. So it was a swift walk to Aldgate tube station with a colleague and then on to a train to Leicester from St Pancras. I tried to read a paper from the Justice Quarterly, “Exploring the Relationship between Prison Social Climate and Reoffending”, by Auty and Liebling. Fairly dense stuff for a packed train, so it is something I shall have to take at my leisure at some point, but I was left wondering why they had used parametric statistics on nonparametric data. I need to check that. On getting off the train it was nice to find the station car park barrier raised, so I just drove off home.

On getting home there was time for a dish of pasta before my partner and I set off to see Lenny Henry at the DeMonfort Hall. He is witty, talented, and entertaining, which he used well on what is in fact a book sale. His impression of Tommy Cooper and the mans relentless humour had the audience laughing freely. I did not buy the book, I think he probably read the best bits, but an entertaining evening. Drove home to blog and get myself organised for tomorrow. My youngest daughter and her boyfriend are coming to stay for the weekend which means there will be the annual aroma of Christmas cake baking through the house.

I note that the blog is short these last couple of days and I wonder where my inner Marcel Proust has gone, where is the reflective detail, the observation of the world and people around me? I think there are a combination of things going on. Firstly I’ve been active this week and probably more tired than I realise. I am also struggling with the Blog platform which has taken to restricting block size and changing cursor position. Added to this I have lost the Plugin that did my statistics and the system will not let me reload it, so I’ve no idea if anyone is reading it anymore. It feels like a system that is eroding or breaking down bit by small bit, and it is tiring to continually battle with it. It parallels my cancer, small bits of me not working until ultimately a major failure will occur. It would be nice just for once for the IT to actually work as it is advertised to work.