Morning Office

What. A. Day!!!

Up early, as usual. Drive to town, park, get bus. This was then the scene from 8.00, as I finished my lesson planning in Costa - accompanied by a bowlful of latte and, er, 2 bits of extra breakfast. Tiredness meant that I simpy couldn't worry about food any more. I decided Costa made a much better office, with its comfy chairs, music, and plentiful coffee, than the college classroom with hard chairs, colleagues racing around, and a ban on eating and drinking in classrooms.

Then to college. It wasn't the best way to end the half term. Reprographics was unexpectedly closed, so making of handouts and overhead slides meant searching out photocopiers and racing around like mad things. Half way through my listening lesson the CD machine packed up, which wasn't great. Three of us taught, and our tutor must have been in seriously grumpy mood, since I was the only one of the three of us who didn't end up in tears at some point during the morning.

I removed myself from college before I said something I might later regret, consoled my two colleagues, wished them a lovely half-term holiday, and decided it was time to forget about English lessons for a bit - after all, I'd worked until 11 the previous night and had been working from 8 that morning. Time to take a break.

I was also running on empty by this time, and had consumed rather a lot of high-sugar, high-caffeine energy drink. In order to calm down after the frenetic morning I poddled round Poundland and bought a couple of colouring books and some "plastic crap" to calm myself.

Then I got the bus to Scharwenka's, where I had lunch and went next door with Scharwenka to visit the very very small kittens that the cat next door had recently had. I wish I'd taken the camera, because they were SO sweet - about the size of Moses, but cats - tiny little ones, like our lot, but in miniature miniature miniature! They even made Smudge seem gigantic, and were probably about the size of Felix's head!

Then we had an indulgent tea. More sugar. More caffeine. And I headed back into Oxford to where the Wonderspouse was introducing a whole load of women reading at a women's reading festival. Quite why they have a man to introduce them is unclear, but then the Wonderspouse is a man with unashamedly girly tendencies, so he fits in rather well with the womany crowd. It's me who feels a bit odd in womeny things, since I think of myself as rather more blokey!

Anyway, they had a short "open mic" thing after the mid-gig break, and I penned (well, typed into the "notes" on my iPhone) a short pome, which I then read out. This was the first time I'd ever read a pome as a grown up (think I did once or twice at school), and they seemed to think it was OK. By this stage I'd consumed a litre of energy drink and was definitely getting rather buzzy.

Despite all the caffeine coursing round my system I could still have fallen asleep since I was so tired. However, I managed to stay awake, and sat with the lovely Banana the Poet, and Mr Banana on a comfy sofa. Then the Wonderspouse and I headed back to the car.

We arrived at Sainsbury's to do essential shopping at around 10.30. It was surreal - cages of stuff everywhere and the night time shelf stackers busy stocking things up for Saturday morning. By this time the combination of sugar, caffeine and exhaustion was making me feel very very peculiar, and Sainsbury's was starting to spin round me. I walked very slowly, while the Wonderspouse got the shopping, and clung onto various things from time to time so I didn't fall over. It was basically like one of the feelings I get when I'm in a manic.

Fortunately, one of the few things I can do when I'm feeling really strange is driving. Once home I had some wine and crisps in an attempt to correct the balance a bit. Once the room stopped spinning I finally made it to the bath, and then to bed.

A very long day - leave the house 7.00 am, get home 11.30 pm. Just the bottle of drink alone provided me with 121.2% of my RDA of "sugar", which was seriously bad, but I got through.

Time to rest for a day or so now.