Devil finds work for idle hands to do

See, I was too busy completing a project all Saturday to know anything about 'the riots' of Dublin until 8 o'clock and friends rang with stories of rescuing their kids from a public transport-free Dublin city centre, but all that was soon over, and the offspring were able to go in there for a night of binge-drinking, gambling and whatever other vices their sweet little selves reckon is an appropriate Saturday night's entertainment. No, they aren't up for chucking bits of concrete about......to lazy, if nothing else. Saved from a life of crime by sheer indolence.
Now begins the big post-mortem inquiry....Who's brilliant idea was it to set that little riot up? With the tools conveniently to hand? Don't they know that Saturday is the day Holy to all shoppers? It could have passed off quite quietly on Sunday.
I don't even know what the stupid demo was about, but if that lot from the North want to complain about people hurting/ killing each other, I suggest they start with their own bunch up there. That should keep them busy for the next hundred years.
Next thing, they will be insisting that they have 'the right' to 'celebrate' the great victory of the Battle of the Boyne, here in Dublin. Well, why not? Freedom of speech and all that...
Recreating the wonderful July Days that cause so many Northerners to have to come and live here for the whole month, uprooting children, etc. We could have people burned out of their homes and bonfires in O'Connell street. I'm sure there is someone in this crazy government who would think that was very fair.
Thank God I am not a Christian; it's all too violent for me.
My only concern is that this doesn't provide the Government with a ready-made excuse to ban our little protest parade on 18th March. I am afraid that it might just prove too tempting for them to resist.

Funny thing, that...

A few posts ago, I noticed the odd fact that I posted only on dates with a '1' in them, so I deliberately posted on the 9th February, just to break the pattern. Then I forgot and it was only after I published today's little whinge, that I realised I have reverted to the same pattern!!!
Ha ha, I promise not to try one way or the other, next time...

Crank it up, baby

Suddenly, we have clicked into exam mode. I am already feeling under pressure with the 3 essays and half project which I had been determined to finish by March 10th, looking increasingly impossible to achieve. I did the first of the three essays last weekend, but it was exhausting and I am unsatisfied with the result, so I will probably have to redo portions of it.

The project deadline looms, so I will have to tackle that before the other essays. It begins to look as if my Spring "break" will be spent essay writing and completing the compulsory Part II (fieldwork) project, instead of beginning my revision process, as planned.

This is the point at which all sorts of extra trips, lectures and field trips suddenly loom out of the fog and bite, unexpectedly hard, at the ankles. Lecturers start to deliver their exam talks (which usually turn out to be singularly unrevealing).
I start turning down all invitations; the Sunday papers pile up unread.
I put on weight, with the inactivity, and snap back at the offspring, when they are demanding - well, - anything.
I almost wish it could be last September again, when everything seemed so splendidly full of potential, instead of February and nothing to look foward to except work and pressure and exams until June.

more of the same

Yesterday was a crappy day - I took the wrong folders to work, my glasses fell apart at the seams and I lost my favourite gloves, but today everything went running the right way and feel really smug, for no justifiable reason.
I got my glasses put together without a hassle at the opticians, in a jiffy. I found my gloves this morning, where I left them yesterday, in the cavern in the basement that is the computer room.
I managed fine without my folders and put things together in the evening.
This afternoon, after staring at the Lindisfarne Gospel Book for an entrancing hour, I was ready to leave college to do the weekly shopping run - my life is so thrilling - when I got dragged off to a meeting.
The meeting was unexpectedly delightful and rewarding. Our demands are to be met and we are to be left unmolested, as it were, by the Americanization of the college educational system. We shall be allowed to finish our degrees as we started them. We shall not be expected to change horses in mid-stream, etc., etc. Those who have deferred or are off on Erasmus schemes, will return to find the new system in place, but them's the breaks.
I am delighted. Apparently some schools, or even all of them, will even come clean about the choice of topics on the elective syllabus for next year, which will make a change, since it has been normal practice to have no notice before the beginning of the Autumn term and sometimes not even then, leading to incredible confusion. Of course, when they intend to examine people in December, it does help to let them know what they are doing from the off, in September.
So I feel this was a good day.......