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On a normal week I can got for five days without any meetings except for the one-hour team meeting on Tuesday afternoons (which is often cancelled) and the departmental huddle on Wednesday mornings which is often over in twenty minutes unless there's something really exciting happening. On a bad week I might have two or three other meetings if someone drags me along to something somewhere or if there is something afoot with the department requiring more people than can be fitted round a desk or involving bits of paper and printouts rather than proper data on computer screens. Today I had somehow managed to end up with meetings filling the time from 09:30 to 16:00 with only half an hour between 12:30 and 13:00 to attempt to get a little walk in which inevitably didn't happen. One of the morning meetings had finished slightly early which at least meant I was able to eat my sandwiches and apples without having to attempt to do so quietly in the afternoon's departmental quarterishly review/anticipation session where the crunching would have attracted attention.

Everyone else was off out for a departmental pub/fringe show session following the meeting-thing but I already had tickets for The Last Witch at the Lyceum with Nicky, meeting her beforehand for tasty(though possibly slightly over-rich in places, particularly the lemony chicken which was swimming in fatty grease)food at Zucca next to the theatre (and joined to it by several doors, though we didn't know this and walked out the front to get from one to the other) including a chocolate mousse second only to the free chocolate mousse served by the branch of Howies (which later became Blonde) on St Leonard's Street when we got some free food as part of the newly-opened restaurant's opening event to appease people living in the same building so that they might not complain about the cooking smells and noise at a later date. Some of the loudly-droning poshoes on adjacent tables were probably amongst the droning poshoes droning and barking in the theatre. Although I was dressed only slightly unwillingly in trousers and a shirt (for Nicky's benefit rather than either venue) I was still one of the scruffiest attendees, the poshoes wearing various forms of white or beige jacket and (in far too many cases) bow ties. There's no need for it and it only puts people off. Somewhere there must a theatre or concert venue which does not permit either jackets or ties to be worn, requests attendees with their upper-body garment tucked into their lower-body garment to untuck themselves before entering, declines entry to anyone perfumed so excessively that it would irritate the snouts of people sitting nearby, requires anyone wearing excessivly clanky old-money jewellery to remove it or wrap it up in a tea-towel to silence it and offers free interval coffees to anyone not wearing shinypolished shoes. If not there should be. The play was good, though. Though the bloke dressed as a Georgian dandy playing the harpsichord at the back was never really explained his plinking added a nice atmosphere to the first act, though not a particularly Scottish atmosphere unless they were really into harpsichords in Dornoch. A little bit of overacting but simple and effective scenery and the odd bit of funny.