Quirks

Yesterday I found myself teaching study skills to a gaggle of disorientated urban dance students, while the dance lecturer was bonding with a group of hip-hoppers that should have been mine.
It was all OK in the end; just as last week I sat waiting for the students at one end of the University while they sat waiting for me at the other, these things happen and get ironed out if you say sorry but not in a frightened way.
In the middle of it all, the estate agent phoned. He has now decided he can boss me around, which is silly, because I'm employing him to sell the too-big too-expensive house.
'Phone your solicitor and tell her we want to sign contracts next Friday', he commanded.
I have had enough of him. I am paying the solicitor to help to sell the house, and the estate agent to sell it. They must sort it out between them now; I have a job to do, two Offsprogs to be a mum to, and music to make.
And packing, too.
No more Mrs Nice Guy!

Ths pile of stuff to go into storage grows daily, and the cats think I have made a wonderful cardboard edifice specially for them to sharper their claws upon. Every time they pass the boxes, the smell of cardboard diverts them from their intended destination and they veer over towards a box marked 'Old Musicals Etc' in black felt-tip and claw at it like demented JCBs excavating an urgent building project. Tattered boxes?
What-ho, who cares!

Today was another typically University of the East Day; I had prepared a really interesting lecture, part of which circled around the difference between Eric Clapton's and Bob Marley's versions of I Shot the Sheriff.  I was going to begin by asking the students to make a time-line charting the emotional journey of the vocal in I've Been Lonely For so Long,  and I was going to play them Poly Styrene as an illustration of hollerin' and declamation, and Sinatra as an example of crooning.
Just to be prudent, I went to my teaching room half an hour early.
Hole and below, the DVD player that we use to play CDs was jammed. 'Aha', thought the early bird, 'Plenty of time to phone Technical Support and get it fixed or replaced'.
I went to the phone on the wall and picked it up. it was dead, and its socket had been completely destroyed.
I tried my mobile: no signal.
A student came in and I begged to borrow his. The Technical Helpline number rang... and rang,... and rang.
Heartily, I described the tracks to the students, and led them down to the room for their practical songwriting session.
The room was locked.

You see, a morning like that makes the journey back round the slow and dirty North Circular a journey of perfect bliss.
Every cloud has a silver lining!