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Now that the clocks have gone back, my cycle home is in the dark. I have fairly decent hub dynamo lights, but even so, the way is unlit across parks and open spaces and on moon-less nights, I can really only see a patch of path about 3 m in front of my wheel. That makes for quite an interesting trip, particularly as most pedestrians seem to wear dark clothes at night. There seem to be a lot of ninja dog walkers. But I’ve found that as my visual panorama is restricted, the olfactory landscape unfolds.

In the past week, I’ve been acutely aware of all the smells that drift into my path on my route home. There are the natural smells, of course: the warm, sweet scent of wet grass, the cool, earthy tang of the river, and the distinctive smell of the canal, which is different from the river in a way I find hard to describe. There are also less natural smells: a particular whiff of sewer on one stretch of path, the dizzy smell of solvents as you pass a place where kids have been huffing, the sharp, metallic buzz of a metal pressing factory, chinese take away food, and the omnipresent fug of traffic fumes. I even pick up the smells of people as I drift past them: strong perfume, laundry detergent, cigarette smoke.

It all adds an interesting new dimension to my commute, as long as I can avoid crashing in to anyone or falling in to the canal.

In our house, we have our bedroom at the front. Generally, this is fine, because we both prefer the rooms we spend more time in (the kitchen, Mr. Bsag’s studio, my office) to be at the back of the house, with a nicer view. However, there are two drawbacks to the location of the bedroom. One is that there is a pub opposite, so we sometimes get disturbed late at night by drunk people reeling away from a night spent imbibing as many lagers and/or alcopops as is humanly possible. The second is that there is a street lamp just outside our house. While it’s handy as a free security light for the front of our house, it does make our bedroom rather light.

I can sleep through noise once I’m asleep — I’m infamous in my family for sleeping through the Great Storm of 1987, while chaos raged all around — but light invariably wakes me up. Over the year that we’ve lived here, I’ve more or less got used to the light levels in the room at night, but last night the wretched light decided to start randomly turning itself on and off as frequently as once every 20 seconds. It woke me up at 1am, and it was like being in a really tragic disco, with one white light randomly flashing away to the deafening sound of silence. I could see the change in light levels even with my eyes shut, so I was lying awake, waiting for it to turn on or off again, which nearly drove me crazy.

I think that it’s about time we actually got our act together and got some light-proof material to line the curtains with. Otherwise I’m going to have to tie a bandanna around my eyes and blindfold myself before I go to bed.

I saw a van belonging to a local bathroom fitting company today — a company which has the word Classique in its name. Now, what does that word bring to your mind when applied to bathroom fittings? What logo would would say Classique to you?

• Luxurious Roman baths, decked out with fine mosaics?
• Basins with Doric columns supporting them?
• A Victorian claw-foot bath?
• Something redolent of ancient Greek temples?

Evidently, that wasn’t what the graphic designer had in mind. The van featured a large logo depicting a stick man sitting on the toilet, reading a newspaper. Classy.

One endearing characteristic of Somali cats (well, one of their many endearing characteristics) is their chirrup. Where other cats miaow or yowl, Somalis chirrup. Imagine someone pronouncing a rolling ‘r’ (as in Spanish¹) with a rising, musical inflection, which sometimes ends in a miaow-like sound. I’ve never heard a cat make a sound like that before, and it makes me smile every time.

The other night, during a protracted chirruping bout before her dinner, I realised that the sound reminded me of something else: Chewbacca on helium. All she needs is a little bandolier and a cat-sized space ship, and she’s all set.

¹ Which I have just discovered, courtesy of Wikipedia, is called an alveolar trill. ↑

Do you ever get the feeling that your sub-conscious is trying to tell you something? I’ve had ‘Make dental appointment’ on my todo list for a few weeks now. As far as I know, my teeth are fine, but I need a check-up before I go to Brazil again in the autumn. For one reason or another, I’ve been very busy, so I haven’t got around to booking an appointment, and the item has languished on the list, overlooked.

Last night I had an extremely vivid and disturbing dream in which I felt my teeth loosening, and then falling out. The sound of the teeth clinking in my hands like small, white pebbles, the metallic taste of the blood in my mouth, and the creeping horror I felt while exploring the blank, soft pockets left by the teeth with my tongue were all horribly real. The first thing I did on waking from the dream was to check my mouth with my tongue and fingers, just to make sure that all my teeth were still there.

If it was a strategy by my sub-conscious to push that particular todo item up the list, it was pretty effective. It’s a pity I can’t get my brain to devise a disturbing dream to get me to finish my grant proposal.

Many of the stations along our local line have got new automated train information boards, plus automated announcements for approaching (or, more frequently not approaching just yet because they are delayed) trains. Sometimes they seem to get themselves a bit out of sync with reality.

It was absolutely slinging it down with rain this morning, so I decided that rather than starting the day completely drenched on my bike, I’d get the train instead. On the return journey, I was waiting at the station as a fast, non-stopping Virgin train ripped through. As the noise of the train finally receded into the distance, and the wind turbulence caused by its passing had returned the litter and leaves gently to the ground, the announcement tannoy crackled into life (this is paraphrased):

“This is an announcement for customers on Platform 1. Please stand well clear of the platform edge. The next train calling at Platform 1 will not be stopping at this station.”

No. Really? There was a ripple of laughter around the station, and someone piped up, laughing, “Ah, it’s the way they tell them…”

I’m rather tempted by this alarm clock which wakes you with the honeyed tones of Stephen Fry (as Jeeves). Who wouldn’t enjoy the illusion of their own personal Gentleman’s Gentleman rousing them gently and politely from sleep, bearing a tray of freshly brewed coffee in a silver pot, precision-cut toast, and — if necessary — an astonishingly effective hangover cure? Sadly, only the audio part of that illusion is included with the clock.

I did, however, notice a rather disturbing thing (disturbing to me, at least). If you go to the downloads page, you’ll see some samples of both the ‘Good morning, sir’ and ‘Good morning, madam’ greetings. The first thing you notice is that the ‘Good morning, madam’ samples are conspicuously more verbose than sir’s. Second, a good number of them deal in some way with issues of dieting, clothes, beauty or — gah! — horoscopes.

I feel that a female Bertie Wooster would give this kind of morning routine the short shrift it deserves¹: “Dash it all, Jeeves, if you’re going to trouble me early in the a.m. by blithering on about shoes and suchlike, you can jolly well biff off instanter and start perusing the Sits. Vac. for a new position!”

¹ With humble apologies to P.G. Wodehouse, who would have put it a lot better. ↑

It is evening. I’m listening to Aerial by Kate Bush while finishing reading Northern Lights by Philip Pullman — not for the first time. My mind un-focuses, as it sometimes does, and themes start to twine together.

Dust. Blackbirds. Daemons. Invisibility. Light. Blackbirds.

I think back to the morning, when I was trying to explain to Mr. Bsag how to let blackbird song lull you back to sleep rather than keep you awake. You see, we have a blackbird who likes to start to sing at about 4 am, just outside our bedroom window. It wakes Mr. Bsag, and he finds that he can’t go back to sleep while the bird is still singing. The odd thing is that it has exactly the opposite effect on me. I tend to wake when he gets out of bed to go and read, and I lie and listen to the song. I don’t try to analyse it, but un-focus my mind while I let the sound wash over me. Unconsciously, I synchronise my breathing with the rhythm of the song. In the pause between each phrase, I inhale, then exhale as the lovely, dark gold, bubbling notes tumble out. It’s almost as if his voice is mine as I drift towards sleep, and we have a conversation of souls — as if he is my daemon.

These are fanciful thoughts of course, but the early hour and that odd state between wakefulness and sleep leads you to fanciful thoughts. As I feel myself on the point of moving into sleep, I feel a profound sense of sadness and loss that I can’t stay to hear more of the song. I want to prolong that precious moment of contact.

My thoughts return to the present, and I listen to Kate duet with her blackbird on ‘Aerial’ with a secret smile.

After all the rain last week, we’ve had some wonderful Spring weather recently. It’s been bright and crisp, and at long last, I can smell Spring coming — literally. Now that my cold is finally going, I can smell the grass beginning to grow again, the bulbs blooming and — best of all — the almond trees along my route to work are in full, delicious blossom. Taking a deep breath and filling my head with almond blossom smell is my favourite part of the day.

Sod’s Law, Section 16.8, Paragraph 12:

Commencement of a severe cold or other non-life threatening but messy and energy-sapping illness with implications for the vocal chords shall coincide neatly with the only important public event at which the aforementioned party is engaged to speak within one calendar month either side of the aforesaid illness.

And so, the public lecture I’ve been looking forward to/dreading¹ delivering for several months has coincided with a really horrible cold. I hope that I’m going to still be able to do it (so long as my voice holds out), but I’m likely to be doing my uncanny impression of a 13 year old boy whose voice is breaking. It should be… interesting.

¹ In approximately equal and alternating measures. ↑

I sowed some ‘Sweet Chocolate’ pepper seeds a few weeks ago in the airing cupboard, because they need at least 25°C to germinate, and apparently you need to get them started early in the UK to get a long enough growing season. They’ve done better than I could possibly have hoped, as you can see above. It’s really the first time I’ve ever grown anything from seed, and I was watching them constantly for signs of life. When I saw the first tiny white shoots poking through the compost, I was really excited. Despite the fact that I’m a biologist, and in theory know how it works, I find it magical that you can bury a tiny, dead-looking seed in compost, water it, and eventually get a whole plant.

One of the things I hadn’t anticipated was how rewarding it is growing from seed, and how it gives you a deep feeling of hope that summer will eventually come. When it is cold, damp and foggy outside, I peer closely at those vivid green, fragile little shoots, and immediately think of the hot summer sun turning the fruits sweet and juicy.

It’s not an original observation, and sounds irritatingly hippyish and new-agey into the bargain, but growing from seed, harvesting and saving seed for the next year (which I also intend to do) does seem to help you to connect yourself to the future and the past. It helps you to see life as a cycle with things to enjoy and look forward to as they come around again, rather than a kind of Sisyphean unending toil.

In a fit of messing about, I signed up for Twitter this week. I haven’t yet decided if it’s fun or a total waste of time (or both), but if you’re on Twitter too, my username is (naturally) bsag, and I’d love to know yours.

Incidentally, if you use a Mac, Twitterrific makes using Twitter much easier, and — importantly — easier to turn off when you need to concentrate.

I worked at home today and so enjoyed that rare weekday treat — a civilised lunch with my lovely husband, instead of the usual frenzied and simultaneous typing and sandwich consumption that comprises my so-called ‘lunch hour’. I blame my lack of familiarity with the format of a civilised lunch for the following.

As I wandered downstairs, I could see that Mr. Bsag had already started getting out bread, salad and other nice things from the fridge from which to construct our lunch. He called out to me from the garage as I came into the kitchen:

Mr. Bsag: I’ve put some mealworms out.

Me (opening mouth before putting brain into gear): What, for lunch?

Mealworms before cocktail hour? It’s just not done, you know. No, that would be lunch for the birds.

I’ve had one of those weeks when — out of nowhere — you get a sudden flurry of new tasks to do, which all have due dates for the end of this week, and all of which are important. Normally, I don’t schedule my day, or micro-manage tasks. I schedule what tends to be known as the ‘hard landscape’ (meetings, lectures, tutorials etc.), but just fit other tasks into the gaps left. However, many of the things I have to do this week will take more than a day to complete, and I need to make sure that I make progress on each of them every day, rather than being tempted into doing the easy ones first and then having a massive panic over the hard ones on Friday.

So I printed off a stack of David Seah’s excellent Emergent Task Planners, and have been using them to schedule work on my tasks during the week. There is an example of how to use the form on the page, but basically you list the things you want to work on today, estimate how long each will take (by colouring in blobs, which is quite fun in itself), then block out time periods as appropriate to do those tasks. I don’t think I’d do it every day, but it has been really useful and enlightening this week. I’m slightly hesitant about revealing what I’ve learned about myself, for fear that people will point at me, laugh and call me an incompetent wimp. But the hope that someone might say ‘me too!’ and make me feel better about myself, here we go:

• I am utterly useless at estimating how long a task will take. I’ve compared my initial estimate to the actual time I’ve taken, and I’ve underestimated by up to 100% in some cases. I’d like to think that this is because I’m an optimist, but it probably just means I’m bad at estimation.
• I can only work effectively on things that require a lot of concentration and deep thought for a maximum of 4 hours each day. True, I can spend the rest of the time getting little errands done (sending emails, organising course material etc.), but there’s only so much grant writing, manuscript writing and idea creation that I can do in one day. This is obviously bad news when you have a deadline looming.
• I’ve been doing a daily review while using the Emergent Task Planner, reviewing the day’s sheet at the end of the day, filling out the sheet for the next day by carrying over any uncompleted tasks, and adjusting my time estimates based on how appallingly inaccurate I’ve been today. This has been really useful, allowing me to hit the ground running the following day, and also getting things out of my head so that I can relax for a bit.

I’ll be really happy and really tired by the middle of next week.

I think it should be obvious from the picture that our Christmas tree this year was not of the greatest quality. I’m surprised it made it to Twelfth Night. Despite supplying it with copious amounts of water, it dropped piles of needles at the slightest provocation. By the time we’d finished removing the decorations on Friday, it was more or less just bare branches. It was also the most deformed looking tree I’ve ever seen, like a larger and only slightly less sad-looking version of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

Mind you, it was extremely cheap, so I suppose we got what we paid for, and I actually find hoovering up needles quite enjoyable. Still, it is quite nice to be able to open the dining room curtains without the accompanying patter of needles hitting carpet.