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8.20 am: Off to the surgery for my third blood test. The nurse will have only two days off at Christmas. That’s all the holiday that staff can afford. During the week between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, the surgery and A&E will be inundated with patients who either injure themselves by falling over after drinking too much, or suspect that they’re experiencing a heart attack, when they’re suffering only heartburn, after eating too much. What a waste of NHS resources. I suggested to her that she shut-shop and put out a defibrillator, packets of antacid tablets, and a sign stating ‘Help yourself!’

9.10 am: With antibiotics in hand (again), I headed down the hill to take a swift, late breakfast and begin work. (In the background, King Crimson’s ConstruKction of Light (2000).) Back to the grant application and a write-up of the sonic descriptions in Edmund Jones’s text:

11.15 am: My abstract submitted to the Call for Participation had been accepted. So, I’ll steam ahead with this project after the Christmas holidays. Typing out the relevant extracts from Jones’s text (as opposed to cutting and pasting from the source document) made me re-read them closely.

1.40 pm: A quick scoot back and fore to the School to retrieve parcels before continuing with and completing the morning’s task. 4.00 pm: A little Christmas card dispatchery, by email:

I will forget someone; I always do. Some are on my list but no longer in this world. And there are few who are still in the world but no longer on my list. Throughout life, family, friends, and acquaintances are in a state of flux. Some, like comets, are pulled into one’s orbit for a brief period before shooting back into deep space, to return again in the distant future. Others, like meteors, arrive at great speed in dazzling light and disintegrate on impact. And yet others must of necessity overcome the planet’s gravitational pull and launch-out far beyond one’s sphere of influence. (In the background: Van Der Graaf Generator’s Godbluff (1975).)

7.30 pm: The clocking was ticking down to the beginning of my Christmas holiday period. There was much still to do both academically and in preparation for the transition from Advent to Christmas. First on the cards for the evening was a long-overdue editorial review.

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