For a week's holiday.
Technically it takes less time to fly to Malta than to take the train to Glasgow, but not when you factor in a minicab taking a very, very circuitous route to Victoria station, the Gatwick Express, mysterious delays getting off the ground, a passenger having to be debarked to ( Read more... )

Is it actually the case, as reported here, that if people have theoretically unlimited holiday-time policies in their job, they actually conform to informal peer constraints on how much to take? If anything, people often end up taking less time off, not more. Nobody wants to be singled out as the office slacker, so people try to take roughly what ( Read more... )

Took tomorrow off, so I am off work until the Monday after New Year. I would have taken today off, but I had two public desk slots scheduled and was highly sceptical that I would be able to find swaps, given how many people had taken today off.
But, anyway, I was able to tidy up some outstanding things, like finishing off a small cataloguing job ( Read more... )

Paper I am trying to get at least drafted during this week off is definitely being a performing seal kind of act; I totally have the red ball on the nose thing down, and I can honk the hell out of those motor-horns, but where's the challenge?
Am also getting some serious sleeping in.
Less Sekkrit Projekt reading than I might have hoped.
Constraints ( Read more... )

'There was no chance of a walk that day...'

Though it's not doing anything particularly Gothic, just persistently drizzling on and on.

In days gone by, you used to see sad rows of cars full of families not having a jolly seaside day out. This may no longer be the case.

It may, though, possibly be jackpot time for the variously twee or poncey shops ( Read more... )

Currently back at the old family mansion, on a week's father-sitting duty (92 and a bit frail) while my sister and family are having a collective camping holiday. I am hoping that this will be a) relaxing and b) productive (writing conference paper, Sekkrit Projekt reading) and that there will be no crises.

Today partner and I went out for a short ( Read more... )

But how much do I hate those Summer Reading this-is-the-silly-season/new-book-drought-season columns?

Today in The Observer New Review.

Yesterday in The Guardian Review.

These are always weighted heavily towards SRS new books critically-acclaimed, with a leavening of classics, either re-reads or ooops, never got to (okay, props to the couple of ( Read more... )

Spotted just out of the corner of my eye while reading the paper on the Tube, ad for holidays exploring England's coastline.

Well and good.

What thikkt blud with cold was the promise of 'local personalities' to be one's guide to the delights of the various places.

We bet they are just like the proprietor of the Mad Hatter cafe in Margate and of a ( Read more... )

After a somewhat less restful journey than anticipated, though I was already aware of the 2 changes thing and the unreserved seats on the St Erth-Newton Abbot local service.

Anyway, this morning, after breakfast and packing we had sufficient time before our train from St Ives to descend into the town, do a few errands, check out the Hepworth in the ( Read more... )

Off to St Ives tomorrow for a brief weekend away. Not sure how much online contact I shall be in.

Yay Hepworth Sculpture Garden!

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Yet more academic spam: some kind of Academic Network deal that actually gets its own warning pages, and a publisher spamming participants at the Glasgow conference with interest in monographs based on - 20 minute ( Read more... )