Marmite

It was Star Trek (Wars?) Day earlier this week (May 4th). It usually passes me by, partly because I’m not into sci-fi. The last sci-fi film I watched was The Martian (2015) with Matt Damon playing an astronaut stranded on Mars. I bitched the whole way through it, criticising all the stupid stuff happening because it was scientifically impossible. Mind you, Albert Einstein once said that the likelihood of transforming mass into energy, by bombarding atomic nuclei, was akin to shooting birds at night in a country where there are few birds. The swift-brick Twitterati are traumatised by that thought.

The deed is done, the doer (me) undone. The die is cast. I’ve only just gone an’ effin’ dun it, ’av’n I! Having believed so passionately in October 2023 that it was “ A PhuDder’s life for me ”, I’ve come to realise that, well, actually it isn’t. This week, I submitted a PhD-withdrawal request, which was processed quickly, unnervingly so. A bit like, ‘Get thee from our nunnery’.

After the first day at one’s new job, college, course, whatever, when one arrives home, shell-shocked, exhausted, hyper, one expects to be asked by one’s Hubby how one got on. Alternative niceties are, “Did you have fun,” or maybe, “Did you meet some nice people?” Not in this house. After my first day as a PhuDder (that’s PhD student to you), Hubby asked, “Did you behave yourself?”

Another quickie blog while I put the finishing touches to the one on Reparations, which has been anything but a quickie! Apparently even the most able students have been traumatised by the Year 6 SATS tests. Teachers are claiming they were stumped by some of the questions. The Daily Mail reproduced a sample few and asked their readers how many they could answer. I love a challenge! Except it wasn’t a challenge. I aced each and every one of them, English and Maths, while making a Béchamel sauce for a fish pie. Anyone who’s ever made such a sauce knows that it’s easy to mess up throughout, from burning the butter to not stirring vigorously or for long enough.

This is a slightly amended version of the third ever posting of my Warts and All blog, the blog I've hidden from public view for reasons I won't bore you with again. I've redone it because I have the urge to post something and reach out but can't settle to write anything new, and I'm currently nostalgic for The North. Nostalgic? That's code for, I miss being able to call a spade a spade. I miss the crap-cutting, eye-winking, luv-calling, bum-slapping, unpretentious, patriotic, woke-antithesis North. I'm not quite feeling nostalgic for Arthur Scargill but, heck, anyone and anything is preferable to Leviathan Lynch. When I was eight years old or thereabouts (so long ago I can’t remember exactly) I attended the local junior school in the heart of a West-Riding-of-Yorkshire mining-cum-farming village. The community was homogenously white, so when we were introduced to a new trainee teacher, who was Asian, our jaws dropped (that, I do remember). Up until then my ...