After lamenting another late Friday night, and suffering the consequences for most of today, here I am in bed. The promise of a decent night’s sleep is facilitated further by it being clean bedding Saturday. Aaaaaaaand relax.

Today has been a trial and I’ve been met with a number of challenges that are so much more difficult when you only have one pair of hands:

What is it with parents that they have to bombard you with queries as soon as you set foot inside their house?

“Tina, can you have a look at this, what does it mean?”

“Just a sec, my nose is dripping, let me get a tissue.”

“Oh fine, don’t help then!”

It’s the curse of the smartphone: Mother has discovered Google. She was trying to look up a particular hotel in Riccione, near my dad’s family. I found the hotel’s website, but it was all in Italian, so I had to pass it onto Dad to translate, but his translation skills only go so far against a backdrop of poor eyesight and technological blindness. And then they started shouting at each other.

They all shout in my family. They’re all mental.

This gift horse has halitosis
It’s nice to be thanked for the work I do; just an e-mail from an academic is lovely. I don’t need any more than this since I’m not doing people any special favours just by doing my job. I rarely go out of my way to get things done; I just get things done (eventually). I even get paid for what I do, so it’s always a little bit embarrassing when somebody drops by with a treat for me, but welcome all the same and I’m always grateful when it happens.

On returning from work after my period of leave and those few days off sick, there was a bag waiting for me under my desk. It contained a bottle of wine, which I brought home yesterday and put in the fridge. I’d had a look at it before putting it away and it seemed to have a few suspicious-looking floaters in it and when I opened it earlier, the cap unscrewed with worrying ease. Yes, it had already been opened a LONG time before being passed onto me and yes, what was unleashed from the opening was like a thousand years’ worth of curses from the fiery depths of hell.

Despite washing it down the sink with lots of very hot water, my kitchen now smells of stink bombs. There’ll be news headlines tomorrow of a chemical spillage into the Irwell that has caused the deaths of thousands of fish. Apologies, it was me.

I feel so appreciated, but in many ways I’m glad. I didn’t need another booze-fuelled late night and a Sunday fight against torpor.