Look, I know I’ve said this before, but—futile though it may be—I’m going to keep saying it.

These days—and I know this is a shock, but bear with me—these days, lots of people are women.

I know! But it’s true.

And—brace yourself, now—we actually have the franchise.

Some of us are even allowed to have money, and thus to exercise some degree of influence over the country’s economy.

So, bearing those points in mind, do you think maybe these factors—now that you’re aware of them, that is—might perhaps shift the way that you approach television advertising?

That would be great.

And if you could speak specifically to the people who are responsible for Mark Loves Sharon—whatever that is—I’d be really grateful.

Because I can’t even articulate the ways in which getting your kicks out of keeping bikini-clad women in otter enclosures is wrong.

In a brief hiatus between finishing one set of marking (miraculously early, but a small group) and receiving the next, I resolved—in an unusual spurt of physical activity—to tidy the study.

Well, my desk—I’ve long since decided that Nick’s desk is his job alone, partly because it’s frustrating to have someone else determine how your work space should be organised and partly because I don’t want to be responsible for that disaster zone.

But I need to be responsible for my own desk and, frankly, in the aftermath of my submission, it wasn’t in great shape. Or, indeed, in any kind of shape.

I only wish I’d taken a “before” photograph, because it’s a difficult thing to ask people to imagine. Rest assured, however, that it was essentially covered with teetering piles of every piece of paper that I’d generated in three-and-a-half years of research work, with a small space carved out on the very edge, for me to rest my laptop on each night.

It certainly wasn’t a work space.

It wasn’t somewhere where I could write journal articles, prepare lectures, map out tutorial exercises, or mark student assessment.

So, really, what purpose did it serve, except as a repository for uncategorised papers? And, to a postgraduate student and university lecturer/tutor, what are uncategorised papers? They have no value, since they have no explicit shape or form.

But now—now, the desk looks like this:

(I hope people notice it’s even tidier than the last time that I decided posting photographs of my study was a legitimate blog update! I do notice, though, that the James Jean picture of Hansel “interrogating” witches is as creepy as ever. I also notice that the space above my desk is a good place for my other Jean print. Hmm.)

I notice that my glass of wine is prominent in the final shot—and my Diet Coke in the second one, which really tells you all you need to know about my habitual liquid intake—but such, as Ned Kelly allegedly said, is life. The fact that the government has just trivialised the issue of binge drinking by defining it as three or more drinks a night—regardless of circumstances—isn’t going to stop me enjoying this rather nice White Shiraz (which is, of course, neither white nor, I suspect, actually a Shiraz).

But this is all a distraction from the reason why I started writing this post—and the reason why I put it under “Writing” and not, as with the previous instalment, “Life, The Universe, And Everything.”

And that’s my conflicted relationship with the study.

Since I posted that first piece about the value of my study, Lisa Gunders over on The Memes of Production has written a thoughtful piece on the way in which “[m]uch intellectual work still takes place amidst the noise and messiness and constant demands of family life and interactions with ‘ordinary’ people in all their spendid diversity.”

So that’s why I love my study—it is a separate space.

But it’s not the ivory tower, if such a thing even exists. This may be a detached house, but we’re barely three metres, if that, from our neighbours on either side, and their daily lives impinge on ours. How can they not? I’m sure ours impinge on theirs.

But when, for example, you’re trying to finalise the editing of a chapter—and not, as in the writing stages, borne up by sheer euphoria of the writing process, but drearily replacing all the full stops that you’d mistakenly put outside the inverted commas—and the people painting the guttering next door are holding a loud conversation from opposite ends of the house, it takes all your self-control and awareness that you must, after all, recognise the rights of other people to move through their daily lives to keep yourself from leaning out of the window and shouting, “Oh, sod off!”

You don’t do it, of course, but it’s a distraction—like running errands, doing the housekeeping, paying bills, answering the phone, preparing meals, dealing with telemarketers, and all the other pinpricks—or joys, depending on your mood—of daily life.

And there are distractions from within this shared space, as well: this is Nick’s study, too. But, for Nick—with his fixed desk-top computer and his passion for all things Internet orientated—it’s his space for leisure, as well. And that’s a further distraction, although he has every right to use this room as he sees fit.

Nick once, for example, bought a keyboard with which he was delighted, because it simulated the tactility of the old-school keyboards.

“Listen to how wonderfully clacky it is!” he exclaimed.

There must have been something in the tone with which I responded, in a break from working, “Yes, I can hear that,” because he replaced it shortly afterwards. And, although I never actually asked him to get rid of it, I’ve always felt a little guilty that he felt he was obligated to. (Of course, he may have just become bored.)

Hence, the conflict: I want my study to be something that it can’t possibly be. I want it to be a haven, to be sound-proof, to be inspiring, to facilitate my creativity and my focus. No one room can possibly carry that burden.

But, before this post strikes anyone reading it as entirely self-centred, I do recognise that I’m writing this from a position of privilege—and that these problems would only occur in that privileged position.

Lisa’s post stems from a reading of the movement of the working classes into universities, and the fact that these pioneers—usually the first in their families to be able to pursue tertiary education—had no choice but to work among the bustle of everyday life.

That makes me feel petty.

I know that having had, as I have had, the leisure to pursue university study for thirteen years and, specifically, to spend eight years chasing postgraduate degrees, is a wonderful thing.

I do know that, and I’m grateful for it.

But somewhere in my mind, there’s an ideal study.

Right at the top of the house, so that the windows catch every available breeze instead of reflecting the setting sun off our neighbour’s corrugated-iron roof, and overlook the hills and valleys, instead of someone’s bathroom.

And with shelves all the way around the walls, from floor to ceiling, so that I never have to determine which books should be at the back of the shelves this time.

And a desk that will take all my notes, and books, and files, and still leave room for writing.

And, since this space is in my head, I may as well add tea, and a cushioned chaise longue for reading, and a pot-bellied stove for the winter that never comes in Brisbane.

I love my study—after all, haven’t I just spent an hour in it, writing this blog post?

But perhaps part of what I love is the fact that when I occupy it, I can occupy my ideal study somewhere in my mind at the same time.

TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENT FOR CSI: A crime so shocking, so mystifying . . . is this a case for the Mythbusters?
(Caption: Special Guest Stars: The Mythbusters)
ME: What?
NICK: What?
TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENT FOR CSI (sotto voce): Hang on, what did I just say?

Seriously—I realise that, as a good nineteenth-century scholar, I should be watching the BBC’s adaptation of Northanger Abbey. (I am going to watch it, but I was a bit scarred by an earlier adaptation that was apparently scripted by someone who has no understanding of the concept of irony.)

Perhaps my current confusion is a fair return for my decision to record Austen and watch CSI and Supernatural instead.

But I seriously think this belongs on my list of the most perplexing things I’ve ever seen on television—and I’ve seen at least one episode of Mutant X.

Well, it’s one way to make Nick interested in interior decorating—for a creative man and a designer, he has remarkably little interest in the appearance of his domestic environment.

But there is a reason why his design company is called RetroRocket, so this might work.

The chairs do look rather as though they should be part of the interior of the Discovery One, but they also suit my fondness for sleek, 1960s’ design.

Sure, there’s some lovely, sleek design work being produced now, but I like the clean lines of good 1960s’ and 1970s’ design, so these also mesh well with my little plastic nested tables and the plethora of old lamps that I keep picking up at auctions and in antique centres.

Best of all, I can get rid of the hideously uncomfortable sofa that made its way here from my first share house—it’s always called “the black sofa,” despite the fact that all three of our sofas are actually black.

(On a similar principle, we have a table called “the swan table” that is completely free of any kind of swan or swan-shaped object. That’s the table in the back corner in the first photo—see, completely swan-free.)

But the black sofa (now a pleasing shade of light green) has been relegated to the back verandah, where it gives the space the slightly dissolute air of a student house (which I suppose it isn’t, now. How sad.)

I think Nick was a little uncertain about this, but it’s great—we moved it out this morning, before going to pick the new chairs up, and I’ve been sprawling on it at intervals throughout the day, basking in the sun.

I don’t think I’ll care to bask in the sun in summer, but in winter I think I’ll get a lot of use out of my verandah sofa.

You are extremely beautiful. You are also enormous.

And you scare the pants off me. (Almost literally, in this case, since I found you while I was searching for clean clothes.)

I don’t know why you and so many of your brethren are coming to Brisbane these days—I believe it has to do with increased rain on the coast and therefore a plentiful food supply.

That’s fantastic! Eat and . . . well, no, don’t multiply. Much. Just don’t die out, because you are lovely.

But, and correct me if I’m wrong here, I don’t think that my bedroom is your natural habitat.

And I am very, very scared of you.

Does that make me a coward, giant moth? Probably. But I think I’ll just stay out here in the living room for now.

So I want to make a deal with you, giant moth.

There’s the window. Can you see the window? If not, I’ll just pick you up gently—no, let’s be serious for a moment. Someone else—who is not scared of you or, perhaps, is more scared of me than of you—will pick you up very gently and take you to the window.

Because we don’t want to hurt you, giant moth. We definitely don’t want to kill you. But I find not being able to enter my bedroom rather inconvenient.

So we’ll see you out the window, and you can fly free to eat thistles—or whichever food source you prefer—and find a companion, and circle futilely around lampposts on balmy Brisbane nights.

Does that sound like a fair compromise, giant moth?

But, before you go, I will say one thing.

I am grateful to you, giant moth, for one thing.

I am grateful that you are not one of those Hercules moths with the twenty-seven-centimetre wingspans that you find in Northern Queensland.

Because if I found one of those in my bedroom, I would have to abandon the house.

One of the advantages of being Generation X—which almost outweighs the fact that you have to call yourself Generation X—is that the people moving into writing and directing positions now are often our age, and are mining our childhoods for reference material.

That’s one of the reasons why Nick and I so enjoy Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law and find it amusing when Unicef bombs the Smurf village.

So we’re already conditioned into looking for and delighting in intertextual references.

But that doesn’t quite explain the strange kind of madness that overtook us when we were watching Press Gang and realised that it uses an enormous number of actors who also appeared in Doctor Who.

This wouldn’t have concerned us, if it weren’t for the Steven Moffat connection.

Let’s face it: Nick and I are geeks.

We converse—not quite exclusively, but largely—in quotations from various books, movies, and video games, up to and including lines from WarCraft 2 (largely “Stop poking me!” and “Hi-ho, matey!”).

(Nick has, in fact, just been speaking in an appalling ‘European’ accent, and ended up by saying, “I don’t know why I’m trying to sound like Gunther, the Eurotrash vampire, but Sam and Max is a great game.”)

We’re prone to saying, when faced by events in the real world, “You know, that reminds me of [random episode of random show].”

I could go on, but that would just lead to me explaining how I once said “The geek shall inherit the earth” while I was giving a class on punctuation, and we all know how that story ends.

But the point is that we know how geeks think—which is why we’re not sure that this influx of former Doctor Who actors into a Steven Moffat—run show is entirely coincidental.

Of course, few of the major Press Gang characters have appeared in Doctor Who, if you don’t count Julia Sawalha’s appearance as the companion in the Comic Relief special “The Curse of Fatal Death”—and, since that was written by Moffat, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Apart from Sawalha, there are only two exceptions: Lucy Benjamin, who played Julie Craig—once Head of Graphics, later Deputy Editor—also played the young Nyssa in “Mawdryn Undead” and Angela Bruce—Chrissy Stuart in the first two seasons of Press Gang—was, of course, Brigadier Winifred Bambera in “Battlefield.”

But consider the following list of guest stars, compiled by someone who has finished one major project and not started the next, and therefore has a lot of spare research energy floating around (or, at least, knows the URL for imdb.com).

Michael Jayston, who appeared as Colonel X/John England in “UnXpected”—an episode about a children’s television show that was a strange hybrid of Prisoner and Doctor Who, with a touch of Bond—also played The Valeyard, a shadowy semi-regeneration from between The Doctor’s twelfth and thirteenth regenerations, in “The Trial of a Time Lord.”

Also in “UnXpected,” were Eric Dodson, as Sir Edward, who played the Headman in “The Visitation,” and Brian Glover, as Dr Threeways, who played Griffiths in “Attack of the Cybermen.”

But it gets better, because in the same episode, as the psychiatrist Dr Clipstone, was perhaps the coolest guest star of all time: Michael Sheard. Not only did Sheard play the evil Mr Bronson in Grange Hill as well as once being choked the death by Darth Vader in the best of the three films (what prequels?), The Empire Strikes Back, but he was also in no fewer than six different Doctor Who stories, going back as far as 1966: as the headmaster of Coal Hill High School in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” Margrave in “Castrovalva,” Supervisor Lowe in “The Invisible Enemy,” Laurence Scarman in “Pyramids of Mars,” Dr Summers in “The Mind of Evil,” and Rhos in “The Arc.”

Or perhaps the coolest guest star was David Collings, who appeared in Press Gang as Mr Winters. He doesn’t have quite the Doctor Who credits on his CV that Sheard has, but he was in three episodes: as Vorus in “Revenge of the Cybermen,” as Poul in “Robots of Death,” and as Mawdryn in “Mawdryn Undead.”

Of course, while he was never choked to death by Vader, he was Silver in Sapphire and Steel, which is another degree of geek cool.

Also in “The Invisible Enemy,” as an opthamologist, was Jim McManus, who played Station Master Dutton in the Press Gang episode “Friends Like These.”

And “The Trial of a Time Lord” didn’t just have Michael Jayston—Sam Howard, who appeared as an unnamed “Teacher” in three Press Gang episodes, played Asta in that story.

Even the minor characters frequently appeared in Doctor Who episodes.

Peter Childs, playing the proprietor of a cafe, was also Jack Ward in “The Mark of the Rani.”

Tessa Shaw, who was a librarian in “Picking Up The Pieces,” was a UNIT Officer in “Spearhead from Space.”

Sharon Duce, who played Katherine Hill, was also Control in “Ghost Light”.

Paul Jerrico, a “TV policeman” in “Windfall,” was The Castellan in “Arc of Infinity”—“No, not the mind probe!”

Kevork Malikyan, who was Fahid in “Day Dreams,” was also Kemel Rudkin in “The Wheel in Space.”

Even the younger actors—the ones who haven’t been jobbing in the industry for twenty years—appear in Doctor Who episodes.

Christien Anholt, who was the tragic Donald Cooper in the two-part “The Last Word,” had previously played Perkins in the wonderful “Curse of Fenric.”

And, of course, Gian Sammarco—playing Benjamin Drexil in “Something Terrible,” a train-spotter who wanted a new image but didn’t think to mention that he was a black belt in judo and an accomplished mime—had followed up his role as Adrian Mole with the part of Whizzkid in “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.”

It’s even moving in the other direction, now—Raymond Sawyer, who played Councillor Peter Mayhew in “Breakfast at Czar’s,” recently played the desk sergeant in Moffat’s new-series episode “Blink.”

(And do you think that character name is a coincidence? Or are we supposed to think of Chewbacca?)

But is there any more to this than a strong indication that giving me a blog was not necessarily the wisest move?

Probably not.

But I would like to think that it’s not just coincidence—that, on some level, Steven Moffat is thinking, “Now, who can we get to play this role? I know, there was that guy on Doctor Who once!”

I said I wasn’t going to post much while I was marking, but this is too weird to pass up.

ME: Hello?

TELEMARKETER: Hi, ma’am. My name is Sam and I assume you’re the owner of this telephone number?

ME: Well, technically I rent it from Telstra. (I get a bit stroppy when I’m marking.)

TELEMARKETER: Well, that’s not important, ma’am, because I’m calling to tell you we’re giving you a brand-new mobile phone.

ME: Ah. Well, either there are fifteen companies making this kind of call, or I’ve received hundreds of calls from you despite asking for them to be discontinued. But I don’t have a mobile phone and I don’t want a mobile phone, thank you.

TELEMARKETER: You receive all those calls because you’re a big celebrity in Australia, ma’am.

ME: Right. Well, I’m still not interested in a mobile phone.

TELEMARKETER: You have a very lovely voice, ma’am.

ME: Sorry?

TELEMARKETER: What’s your name, ma’am?

ME: Why would you need to know my name when I’m not interested in your service?

TELEMARKETER: I’m just asking your name, ma’am.

ME: And I’m just asking why you want it.

TELEMARKETER: How old are you, ma’am?

ME: Why on earth would you need to know how old I am?

TELEMARKETER: You look to be maybe 24 or 22, ma’am.

ME: And how on earth do you know what I look like?

TELEMARKETER: I’m just imagining it, ma’am, because you have a lovely voice.

ME: I beg your pardon?

TELEMARKETER: What’s your name, ma’am?

ME: I’m not telling you my name.

TELEMARKETER: I just want to be friends, ma’am. Has anyone told you you have a really lovely smile?

ME: Okay, I’m either going to have to hang up now, or ask to speak to your supervisor.

TELEMARKETER: Okay, I’ll hang up now, ma’am. Bye!

Okay, maybe this is what I get for engaging with telemarketers in the first place.

But part of me really hopes that that call was recorded for training purposes.

Since I’m marking the work of writing students for the next couple of weeks, this quotation leapt out at me during this evening’s leisure reading of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Clouds of Witness.

(Note that I’m careful to call it a quotation, since my supervisor once mentioned that when he read my chapter all he could hear in his head was the voice of an old school teacher saying, “Quotes are what plumbers give.”)

Wimsey looked with a new respect at the lady in the Russian blouse. Few books were capable of calling up a blush to his cheek, but he remembered that one of Miss Heath-Warburton’s had done it. The authoress was just saying impressively to her companion:

‘—ever know a sincere emotion express itself in a subordinate clause?’

‘Joyce has freed us from the superstition of syntax,’ agreed the curly man.

‘Scenes which make emotional history,’ said Miss Heath-Warburton, ‘should ideally be represented in a series of animal squeals.’

‘The D. H. Lawrence formula,’ said the other.

‘Or even Dada,’ said the authoress. (135)

As long as I never receive assessment written in a series of animal squeals, I should perhaps stop complaining about inability to accurately punctuate a subordinate clause.

It’s never occurred to me question the sincerity of whatever emotion it might contain. But then, as my students keep saying, that’s academic writing for you.

Final assessment needs to be graded for semester one.

In addition, I have double the amount of exams to mark than I anticipated—entirely voluntarily, due to an unavoidable set of circumstances, but still—and only four days to turn those around, which works out at roughly twenty exams a day.

And, on top of that, I’ve just realised that I’ve scheduled a Doctor Who night right in the middle of those four days, which was jolly clever of me. (Still, I’m not postponing it—it’s the Steven Moffat episodes!)

That’s not even going into the administrative issue that’s thrown me into a right state today.

So, much as I love my blog—and, frankly, probably won’t be able to stay away from it for any length of time—I’m not planning any long updates for the next couple of weeks.

But that won’t stop me commenting on stupid television advertisements, which probably makes up about 60% of the content at the moment anyway.

(Slight aside: I have no idea what happened to my tone in this entry—it seems to have gone oddly hearty and hail-fellow-well-met. I haven’t even been reading any of my girls’ school stories, so I have no idea why I’m suddenly using phrases like “jolly clever,” but there you are.)

Of course, if I ever find my copy of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, I might make an exception.

1. “Damn it, stop blocking my spells, you daft Fire Elemental! I’m only trying to relight the Elvish beacons! Don’t you want to help the Elves?”

2. “Why do you get all the skulls, just because you’re the Undead?”

3. “Stop killing me!”

4. “I love you, Patch, you sneaky little rogue Gnoll! Stab more people in the back!”

5. “Hang on, why have I just missed five turns in a row?”

6. “Well, what does that spell do, then?”

7. “No, wait—why are you draining all my mana? I need that to cast spells!”

8. “Stop stealing the gems that I want!”

9. “Why do the Undead get all the cool spells?”

10. “How am I supposed to kill you if you kept attacking me?”

11. “Seriously, stop blocking my spells! I don’t think you realise how annoying that is.”

12. “How can a Wyvern be such a rubbish mount?”

13. “Look, do you want me to win this game, or not? Because it’s very difficult for me to win if you won’t let me have any skulls!”

14. “Why are the Elves angry with me? I was only following the quest! And, anyway, it’s not as though the giant, magical eyeball originally belonged to them.”

15. “You know, I’m getting pretty sick of teaching these Minotaur slavers a lesson.”

16. “Hang on, did I just torture that Harpy? Oh, well.”

Ah, RPG gaming. It’s good for the development of your moral code and for your temper.

So today is one of the two greatest days on the Brisbane calendar: the Queen’s Birthday long weekend Lifeline Bookfest.

(The other greatest day is, of course, the Australia Day long weekend Lifeline Bookfest. And, yes, technically they take place over more than one day, but Nick is strangely resistant towards allowing me to go on more than one day, so as far as I’m concerned they’re one-day book sales.)

I love the Lifeline Bookfest.

The Lifeline Bookfest is, in fact, almost the sole reason why I will probably end up like that professor—I think he was Italian?—who spent a week trapped under one of his own bookcases while everyone assumed he was on sabbatical. Which I suppose he was, in a way.

As a book sale, though, it is variable; you won’t always find books that you absolutely have to buy (although, to be honest, I’ve never come away empty handed.)

But I’ve found some treasures: the Lifeline Bookfest yielded my lovely hardback facsimile reprints of a couple of Baum’s Oz books; a little copy of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; a fat little copy of Keats’s poems bound in puffy, disintegrating, orange suede; a tiny Victorian copy of Clara Reeve’s early Gothic novel The Old English Baron; and girls’ school story after girls’ school story, often with their original dust cover.

I wouldn’t miss the Bookfest for the world.

But this one was bad timing: with a Doctor Who night last night and a party tonight that involves dressing as vaguely Victorian sideshow freaks, we were always going to be a little pressed for time.

But then the Doctor Who night turned out to be unusually convivial, thanks to the need to open a bottle of champagne to toast success and then, obviously, having to drink the rest of the bottle so it didn’t go flat. So Nick and I dragged ourselves off the bed somewhere about 1 a. m., knowing the Bookfest opened at 8 a. m.

The night was slightly punctuated by snoring, but mostly by me waking up regularly to think, “My head really hurts, and I bet it will hurt worse by morning.”

Next thing I know, Nick’s shouting, “Get up, get up, the alarm didn’t go off!” and we’re rushing to shower and dress without the benefit of coffee or breakfast (but thanks to the magical power of Nurofen.)

Still, a successful morning of book shopping will cure even the worst hangover: and not only was this not a terrible hangover, but it was a great sale.

I don’t know whether someone had liquidated an entire, jealousy guarded collection of Victorian novels, but I found some lovely things: a copy of Margaret Oliphant’s ghost stories and her gothicky novel Salem Chapel; a pile of Anthony Trollopes, including the fabulously titled Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite and Phineas Redux, which I’m pretty sure completes my Pallister series (only I can’t remember where I put the others, so I can’t check); some Oscar Wilde short stories; Wilkie Collins’s Basil; and even a copy of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame De Paris (I checked: it is a translation, despite the misleading title.)

The latter led to me making the following disclaimer to Nick: “This really is an essential book. In fact, it’s so essential that I may already have a copy, but I’m pretty sure I don’t.”

I was also able to thoroughly indulge one of my other main hobbies, which is early crime fiction, thanks to a couple of Dover reprints of 1930s detective stories (one set in Oxford—the murder of an unpopular tutor in the Dean’s study! Horrors!—and one set on one of the Channel Islands), a collection of Edwardian stories of cosmopolitan crime called More Rivals to Sherlock Holmes (which leads me to hope that somewhere out there there’s a book called Rivals to Sherlock Holmes; I already have one called In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes), and 1913’s The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu—how could I turn that down?

I didn’t just stick with books of at least seventy years’ vintage, either: I was going to cite Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop here, but of course that is exactly seventy years old. But I did buy Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, some Italo Calvino, and Umberto Eco’s Reflections on The Name of the Rose.

Even the children’s books were worth perusing this time; they’re often not, unless you’re looking to complete collections of Babysitters’ Club or Sweet Valley High books. But I dragged out a couple of later Wombles books, and two new (to me) Dana Girls Mysteries: the Dana Girls books—private-school girls who solve mysteries in their spare time—were written by “Carolyn Keene,” the “author” of the Nancy Drew Mysteries, and are essentially exactly the same books but with an additional detective.

But my crowning delight from this sale was a beautiful—still dust-jacketed!—copy of Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopaedia. I’ve said before that Benet’s is perhaps the only book that could challenge Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable as my go-to reference book, but now I don’t have to chose between them.

On the downside, I think my double-strength coffee and the Nurofen are wearing off simultaneously.

On the plus side, I have forty-five lovely new books to try and fit onto my shelves this afternoon.

While driving home, listening to what turned out to be “Bizarre Love Triangle” on the radio:

NICK: Ooh.
ME: What is it?
NICK: An extended mix, I think.
ME: Of?
NICK: This song.

Sometimes, it isn’t even worth trying to control the Fist of Death.

You see, my marking is beautifully spaced out this semester, with three weeks between the two main pieces. So I have a little time in the afternoons for some leisure activities.

So I thought I might drag out Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.

I played it through last year as a Druid, so I thought I’d try another character class, maybe a Knight.

That was yesterday.

I’m Level 17, now, and this time around I defeated the two-headed ogre in significantly less time.

Puzzle Quest has no significant storyline: you’re a knight (or druid, or one of two other character classes that I haven’t played yet, because I can’t bring myself to delete my lovely Level 50 Druid), who’s trying to defeat the incursions of Lord Bane and his army of the Undead into your peaceful kingdom.

Nothing new there.

As you work through individual sets of quests, you move further and further through the map—you don’t need to go back into the early areas unless you have a specific purpose in mind.

(I, for example, am trying to defeat a Griffin three times, because then I can capture the next one and use it as a mount. I currently only have a Giant Rat, which has the power of Rabid Bite, sure, but is also really slow and annoying. The Griffin, on the other hand, has a Power Swoop, which . . . but, you know what? That’s not important right now.)

But the story is not the main point, here.

The point is that for the first time I actually understand why Nick frequently says “I’m just going to game for a little while” and then disappears off the radar for six or seven hours.

I thought, this afternoon, that I’d just try and learn the Charm spell from a captured Harpy. It’s a “very hard” spell to learn—they are ranked from “very easy,” like the Skeleton’s Chill Touch, to “very hard”—but I thought I’d spend a little time on it.

(It occurred to me halfway through that, since I have this Harpy in the Mage Tower in my Citadel and I’m trying to encourage her to reveal her secrets, there’s probably some torture involved. But then I decided to stop thinking about it.)

So, the Charm spell should have given me a short period of relaxation.

Next thing I knew it was 2.30 in the afternoon, and both my legs were asleep.

I think it was about noon when I sat down.

I have no real idea what it is about this game that compells such long periods of focus. It might be the ease of the combat engine—even I can range coloured gems in lines of three or more.

But I do know that now that Bones has finished, I’m going to see about uniting those warring Orc clans.

I was perhaps a little hard on CSI: New York when I said they were pushing the grotesquery angle too far this season.

Because now I’m watching Bones.

Just in case, and it’s possible, you’re not actually watching Bones, this is an episode in which they find a woman’s body, in a trunk, with the bones removed.

Which is a little odd, the lack of bones, given that the show is called Bones, but I think that’s designed to allow Bones to work out the personal relationship she’s been exploring for the past three or four episodes . . . or something.

I forget.

I get bored with that angle.

But, be that as it may, the body stripped of bones and then stitched back up was bad enough.

Then they said that the body had been boiled first.

Bear in mind that we’d seen the body from at least four or five different angles at this point.

ME: Boiled? Did they actually say boiled?
NICK: Boiled?
SEELEY BOOTH: Boiled?

Yep, we were all pretty much uncomfortable with that, even the character paid to read the lines.

Then, it got worse.

They tried to recreate the dead woman’s face by . . . you know, I don’t want to go into details.

(A football bladder was involved.)

But we had to watch it: in fact, we had to watch it inflate and then deflate.

I honestly don’t think I’ve seen anything more revolting.

You know, Bones, I will keep watching you. I have enough residual affection for David Boreanaz, thanks to Angel, to watch almost anything except Valentine or . . . well, any movie he might make, actually.

But I would really, really appreciate it if you would avoid boiled bodies with their bones removed and, especially, anything to do with footballs.

Especially the footballs.

Does anyone else have a partner who regularly snores like a water buffalo with sinus problems?

Every winter—even these balmy Brisbane winters, where it rarely drops below 10 degrees, if it gets that cold—Nick starts snoring. He doesn’t snore in summer, but it’s become a winter ritual.

And it drives me insane.

Literally.

I don’t really like to think about some of the things I’ve probably said at 3 a. m., when I’ve been woken for the sixth time by enthusiastic snoring. And I know my poking gets more and more vicious as the night goes on.

But, honestly, it’s nerve-wracking knowing that there’s not much point even trying to fall asleep, because you’re only going to be woken in fifteen minutes by what sounds like a jack-hammer.

Or dealing in the small hours of the morning with a partner who’s bewildered and a bit hurt because, after all, they’re asleep, and don’t really know how much confusion and distress they’re causing.

Or eventually snapping and kicking them out, when you haven’t slept in three hours because the snoring episodes are coming one on the tail of another, only to have your partner stumble out of the room, dragging their blanket behind them like Linus, mumbling that they don’t know what they were doing, they were only sleeping, they weren’t doing anything, really—so you relent, and then spend the next three hours with every nerve and sinew in your body screwed up in anticipation of the next snore.

And then!

Then, sometimes, you get the snoring episodes with the pauses. The pauses are the worst.

Because the pauses make you think that the snoring has actually stopped. That this time there won’t be another snore. So you lie there, counting under your breath, and feeling your mind expand with a new sense of hope and freedom . . . and then the snoring starts again.

That’s usually when the nasty comments come out.

I don’t think there’s any answer to the problems, really.

We’ve tried those strange nasal strips that I think athletes wear to enhance their breathing; I’m convinced that those just give the snores more room to move.

We’ve tried sprays to open the nasal passages: same problem, really.

I’ve heard that a small, round object sewn into the pajamas will work, since it stops the snorer sleeping on their back—but Nick doesn’t need to sleep on his back to snore. According to his frequent response to poking—“But I’m awake!”—he doesn’t even need to sleep.

I think the end result can only be the winter ritual we’ve slipped into over the past few years: three or fours days of midnight rib-cage poking and nasty comments, followed by a night where I sleep like the dead out of sheer exhaustion.

At least I’m not teaching again until the end of July.

I can always sleep in a little.