The Elections Are Over

We have a new executive committee, I have had 6 hours sleep, and I'm facing a half-written essay with my mind on one thing, and one thing only. Food. I am starving, but I can't bring myself to heat up food and put it in the hole I breathe out of.

We're quite gross, us human beings, when you think about it.

But elections are over, so let's focus on that before we lose our thread and realise we're just fleshy bags of mostly-water held up by a framework of bones. Elections are over! And we have a shiny new Sabb team with a few faces from the old guard.

The experience over the past few days has been something quite astonishing, because it turns out that people are actually curious about all this democracy. Over 2,000 votes were cast, or one in seven students: a result that's really very, very exciting. I spoke to so many people and did not get a single blow-off or mean comment. People who love me have said that's because I'm good with people. Personally I am loathe to trust anyone who says they love me, because most of those people have seen me early in the morning and even I struggle to love myself at that hour - but there it is. Let us leave it as a moot point and accept that either I am good with people or people are generally good and democratic and inclined to give people a chance if they stop them in the street. I hope it's the latter over the former, to be quite honest.

She did it! V did it! And I helped.
(Not to choose the socks. That one's all on her)

The campaign with which I was helping, themed around Rosie the Riveter, saw Veronika elected to the position in which you see her above. There were tears and roars at the announcement, but unfortunately had to skip the ensuing party - which I feel I can safely assume was legendary - to make sure I got some work done before the USA trip, which is a fairly frightening five days away. My agenda between now and then is, thankfully, almost empty: gods bless reading week. I've still to pack and, quite possibly, buy a new suit - and new shoes - after all, what sort of savage only takes one suit across the pond?

In any case, the work plods on. I am about a third through an essay, which is a massive improvement on the last time I did an essay (if you imagine me at 5am shaking because of a massive caffeine overdose and feverishly writing then you have (a) an excellent imagination and (b) an exact image of me writing my last essay.) I'm helped in this regard by the fact that I really enjoy the subject: the course is well structured and the lectures are fascinating. The reading is fun too: the end of Monsieur Vénus is the kind of twist Dahl would have considered inspired.

If, by the way, you didn't know Roald Dahl wrote fantastically twisted stories then I urge you to read Tales of the Unexpected at once. That the man had a gloriously bizarre imagination is evidenced in his "children's" books (though, let us remember, that an awful lot of awful people get their very unpleasant comeuppances in them....) but it's in these tales that his imagination really explores some darker places.

Look, we're getting off topic again.

The point is that my life is actually flowing along quite nicely. I am proud of the work I've done with Veronika, I am excited beyond all reasonable measure about the incredible sabbatical team next year, and I'm going to New York New York in six days.

And The Woman is still alive, which is reassuring.

Life is good. And hey, we raised £2m for cancer research! Let's kick cancer with our naked/made up faces. I've done and donated. I hope everyone reading this has done so too.

If only all charity was this easy. And made me look so good.

Many spontaneity. Such luck.

Things other than blogging I should be doing right now:

• Prepping an essay, topic: "Discuss the representation of the body in Mistriss Henley" as I will need to hand it in at least a day early.
• Ringing round various hotels and conference centres to ascertain prices for a grand, black-tie event in May. It's going to be cheap...right?
• Learning approximately 100 new cocktails
• Learning five new words in Russian
• Tidying my flat
• Reading the frankly spine-busting pile of books about French secularism I have accumulated
• Reading the impossibly thick book on the same that is its own pile
• Re-reading The Great Gatsby and annotating the life out of it
• Preparing exercises on further trigonometry (ie doing them)
• And other things which I have, for the moment, forgotten - but will no doubt spring up on me half an hour before their due date.

Things I am actually doing:

• Looking at doge memes
• Blogging
• Seriously considering taking a nap.



The Internet. It speaks the truth. In a Pythian sort of way.

The thing is, there is much new in my life and all of it seems so dull compared to last year - I genuinely think I'm never going to get over the time I spent there. Everything will be compared to it. It is the ultimate in awful breakups, when you never quite get over the other person and everything reminds you of them. Food - is that a baguette I smell? Sights - was that a glimpse of a beret worn non-ironically? And sounds - my head now pivots so quickly when I hear spoken French that my eyes roll the opposite way as inertia takes over. If you can't picture it, don't worry - Walt Disney could. And did.

"Et moi, je lui ai dit...mon dieu, qu'est ce qui t'est arrivé ?!"

However, to take my mind off that French love, I'm going transatlantic for a short fling with a country I only recently left - those fifty United States of America. More specifically, I'm going with the Politics and IR society, and we're going at the end of the month - on the 27th. This is why I need to submit that essay a day early; I'll be somewhere over the ocean at hand-in time. Once Stateside, we've an interesting itinerary with a lot of free time - so I think introducing my classmates to The Book of Mormon or Matilda, if it's still running, might be an excellent idea. 

The itinerary includes a tour around the UN and watching a game at +Columbia University (and hopefully chatting to professors about postgraduate possibilities!), and then we're off to DC to have a tour around +The White House and the Pentagon and various other internationally renowned buildings. Plus more free time. I am disgustingly excited. Friends of mine on politics/IR courses are threatening that they shan't be my friends much longer if I open one more conversation with... 

So the Capitol building, is that where the President lives? Oh, never mind. I'll just ask on the tour.

...or something similar.

I am a good friend. Honest.

Tickets are booked, thanks to the voucher I got from +American Airlines for being a good sport and giving up my seat coming back from Chicago, and all is in readiness. Now I just need to make back the money, which will hopefully be a little easier now that I have a job at TGI Friday's. The whole process was surreally easy; I dropped in and asked if there were vacancies, someone took my CV, and then a second later I was chatting to the GM. The next day I came in for what they call an "On Job Experience" - essentially a trial shift - and was offered the job on the spot. I signed my contract today and got my training book. (Nerd alert).

I'm actually really excited about this because it reminds me a little of Revolution, which has (to date) the best training program I've ever experienced - really well structured and with good supervision and coaching.  In addition everyone on the bar seems wicked and the floor staff seem to have fun all the time, so I cannot wait to get stuck into the cocktails. Unfortunately I can't share them with you here -

Those are some serious legal words, but you can understand why - can't have people nicking recipes.

- so you'll just have to come in and try them.

Since TGI Friday's started in New York, I'm actually planning to see if I can blag my way onto the bar where it all started - and interestingly, the company actually has an internal social network, so I'm hoping to connect with the staff over there beforehand. Hopefully then I can jump on for some photos and Anglo-American high-fives and collaboration. It's going to happen people. Let's do this. Hashtag getJonathanonthebarinNYC

All joking aside, I'm really excited about this new job and the energy everyone has, and I can't wait to feed into it.

Alright, enough soppiness. I have a job, I have good friends (to whom I'm not always a great friend, so - sorry), I have ten thousand projects to keep me busy and I have you, mostly anonymous 100-odd people who read this weird ramblings. I am incredibly lucky. Plus, soon there'll be ASCAs and then...the world.

Oh, and why's it called the Pentagon? Ah, you know what? I'll ask on the tour.

AGM - Speeches and democracy

I ummed and ahhed about this. I especially ummed and ahhed at 3am because I'm supposed to be teaching at 9am, ie 6 hours from now. This is because I am unable to sleep, and this is as a result of having a very troubled mind about all sorts of things, including ASCA (more on that (maybe) later), abortion, relationships, and money.

I should assure my most maternal reader at this point that she does not need to worry about any of these things, and that they will pass. Honestly.

For now I want to bring the attention of UoA readers to the AGM, which took place on Tuesday and was, as ever, the glorious democratic process of 300 students stuffed on pizza being ushered through motions they either didn't know about, hadn't read, or couldn't care less about.

All of the motions were fairly uncontentious on paper and I went with the confidence that - give or take the usual argy-bargy, nitpicking nonsense from the Tory benches (who seem to be pandering to an invisible panel of Thatcherite judges) the whole lot would pass without question.

I was surprisingly wrong, but not surprised at all when it proved so.

The key point from the evening that I'd like to present is a motion by Eva Nohe, the President of Environment and Ethics, to lobby the University to divest from fossil fuels. As +Rob Henthorn pointed out, this was about the University's money. Not ours. Eva just wanted the University to stop profiting from fossil-fuel burning power stations because those same power stations are pumping out climate-changing C02 gas.

At the end of the day, that's a fairly uncontentious desire - one that would be quite easy to get AGM behind. However, Eva's third point was:

To mandate AUSA to lobby the university to stop giving honorary degrees to CEOs of fossil fuel companies 

 And this caused a susurration of...unhappiness, I will call it. A sense in the room that perhaps this was not being well received. However, I feel like it could have been rescued at that point, but in presenting the motion Eva stated that she did not believe that anyone working in oil and gas would have a career in 20 years.

To a room of UoA students, many of whom have travelled across the world to work in this sector, she may as well have stuck two fingers in the air and announced she'd be supporting England in the World Cup. You know the noise that goes through a room, a sort of low rushing breath out? If you've ever been joking about with friends and then, in a fit of madness, overstepped the invisible boundary that everyone instinctively knows is there, then you will know the sound I mean. It is always followed by a second of silence and then a buzz of chatter as each person turns to their neighbour and asks,

Did they really just say that?

The "against" speech was mostly just noises from a very annoyed Environmental Science student, but honestly I think he could have just said "I don't agree" and dropped the mic. The damage was done. The motion fell.

With a single sentence, Eva shot down her own motion. For me, its just hammered home that even if what you are proposing is the most logical thing in the world, if you cannot consider it from your opponent's point of view you might as well pack the whole thing up and go home.

So we did, shortly after. AGM was brief, briefer than it's ever been, and while that was glorious - it hasn't happened before in my memory - I was a little unsettled by the breakneck pace which left more than a couple of questions unanswered on several motions. That would be my only critique; in all other aspects the Chair did an incredibly good job and keeping the room energised (and in the case of more than one student, drunk - drinking games get harder if the Chair finds out the word that triggers a swig!).

Oh! I almost forgot! ASCA!

Not tonight. Maybe later. Promise.

A brief pause and a lack of chocolate

The number of books I should be reading instead of writing is impressive. A visual may help to demonstrate the extent of my procrastination, to whit:

There is a theme. Unfortunately the theme is "Bloody complicated"

But things are slowly coming together, and I have another 5.5 hours before they finally throw me from the building, so all in all not too bad. Aside from the fact that the vending machines are empty. I suspect that's going to become more of a problem as the night wears on, especially knowing that my last chance saloon of cocoa-based goodness closes at midnight. Can my resolve beat my craving for a dark chocolate KitKat?

(probably not)

Since the last time I blogged there has been rather a strange conversation with The Woman, the details of which are complex even in my mind but seem to be paradoxical to say the very least. I shall have to bend my mind to the subject, which actually provides rather a pleasant break from the dissertation.

That needs more emphasis.

The Dissertation

To which the majority of the books in the picture above are dedicated. However, the whole thing's hit a bit of a snag - I opened a book I rather hoped would be one of my core texts and read "research on sexism in language is rare in English and even rarer in French." which has really put a dampener on my whole mood. On the other hand, a friend of mine who's also likely going to spend all night here has expressed jealousy in my chosen topic while two others, one all the way in St Andrews, have told me that it's terribly exciting to be at the forefront of human knowledge (admittedly in a very small area of human knowledge, but still) and I should quit moaning and get writing. 

And since I've finished my soup and that seems like a fitting end, I shall do as advised.

Postscript: The reason I never seem to have any time free is becoming clearer to me, after I spent twenty minutes pondering whether or not I should go to work like this:

Can you believe I've ever had a partner? I can't sometimes.

I am not a smart man.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

At least, it is if you're a fourth year student of French at the University of Aberdeen. If not - if, say, you're a final year student of a real subject like my friend (and superior writer) +Monique Bouffe - then I guess this is a special kind of awful time of the year. She's actually the inspiration for this post because if she can blog while revising such awful things as the Polish constitution while I sit here sipping a ginger and pineapple and vodka drink...

(It needs a name. I'll get to the name later.)

...then I should really be able to gather my thoughts to write a blog, especially when so much has happened in the last few days. Not because I've made a resolution to live a more exciting life, but because my birthday was 4 days ago and an old flame crossed the water. That's a remarkably fancy way of saying that Mary came to visit Kate and me, but I am a fancy sort of chap.

We trekked around a lot of Aberdeen and Aberdeen repaid us with the best weather it could provide: rain, a side helping of rain and torrential rain to follow, with a theme of gale force winds throughout. Never have three people been so unpleasantly wet in the pursuit of things to do and see in Aberdeen, but we came through it with the aid of home cooked meals and Canadian whisky.

Last year I bought Mary a fancy pocket-watch; she likes clocks where you can see the gears moving. She was very pleased with the gift and I was very pleased with myself, but thought nothing more of it until she rocked up with my birthday gift: a book called The Devil's Picture Books, a tome about cards that was published exactly 100 years before my birth. I now own something that is a century older than I am and I confess I think that's wicked cool.

I've also received money from relatives, which as a student is the most perfect gift to receive - it can go on anything: from heating my little flat a bit more as the winter draws to a close to meaning I have enough for a little treat from the supermarket. It's probably going to be chorizo or beer. I've also got cards adorning my mantlepiece, reminding me that I'm not quite out of mind. It's peculiar and wonderful that people I saw only two weeks ago wished me a happy birthday and still felt they had to send a card. Love them.

Cards. The one on the end is on cards because inception.

The last night was spent in the good company of the many beers provided by Six Degrees North, a Belgian-style beer bar on Littlejohn Street over by Morrison's. I have no doubt you've already been there but if you haven't go there immediately. I insist. I do. Kate took charge of the camera and went fantastically snap-leaving me free to teach Mary how to play rummy - a game at which she immediately beat me three rounds in a row. My mother would be deeply unimpressed.

She left the next day, but I managed to introduce her to a Scottish breakfast before she left. She fought bravely but it defeated her; the only thing in all the rain and gloom that had. And that is the end of this blog; my procrastination now over as I refocus on French theatre of the 16th century. I'll be doing my best to blog more.

Not a resolution. Just a promise to try.

P&IR Event: Who Runs The World: Do women make better heads of state?

The P&IR society, the best society on campus™ hosted an event this evening in conjunction with the Women's Forum with the title indicated above. I have come back absolutely fired up and will write briefly on what happened, with the customary diversions and digressions as thoughts arrive in my head.

Please also note that I have not done as much reading as I should around feminist and gender theory. I apologise if any offense is caused either by my realisations, which many will think either blindingly obvious or utterly incorrect, or by incorrect data or information. If the latter is the case please make me aware through comments and I will make changes as quickly as I possibly can (generally within 24hrs).

I confess that I went to this event intending to give the organisers a stern telling-off. The title is deliberately inflammatory; to ask Do women make better heads of state requires an object for the comparative better. Better than whom? Men, the suggestion seems to be, though I will acknowledge that "drunk hippopotami" is also theoretically suitable. However, this seems a bit odd when you unpack it. To be better than men, women must have some innate quality which makes them superior heads of state.

What is it? Is it only found in ciswomen or do transwomen acquire it? I prod fun at this idea because it seems as utterly laughable to me as the idea that cismen are better leaders. It just so happens that because of a whole litany of reasons, from religion to tradition to gender stereotypes propagated from Middle-Age literary fantasies to literally everything we see in the media today that cismen have acquired their position at the top.

I don't think that means cismen are better leaders. I also don't think we can say that ciswomen (or indeed any group of people defined by gender) are better leaders because it requires gender to also have some magical leadership component. I don't think that's true.

Anyway, this was what I had prepared in my head and was going to say until within the first five minutes of her talk the speaker, Prof. Marysia Zalewski, promptly said it. And she said it much better than I could have done, and she's left me rather wishing I'd recorded her talk. However, from the notes I took - a page of scrawls that would leave the CIA's cryptographers disgusted - here are the important points from her talk.

Primarily: the first question. Who runs the world? The simple answer, of course, is men. They are at the top of every institution with power: politics, business, religion. The number of women at the top, if imagined as a triangle, is similar in every way to that of a standard business hierarchy (less people as we ascend) with one crucial difference. It is shorter. The peak of the "women in business" triangle is always one of two levels below the peak of the "men in business" triangle.

(I appreciate that it is standard notation to call these diagrams "pyramids", but a pyramid is a three-dimensional shape and quite frankly I will not stand for misnomers here. The same goes for those of you who insist on calling helical staircases "spiral". Begone and darken my door no more.)

However, there are certainly some female heads of state. Are they better? Is it desirable to have women as heads of state? If so, why? The questions kept coming, with no answers in sight. I was starting to realise that this question was not as simple as I'd thought - and I wasn't the only one.

Marysia broke down the question. Do we think they'll be better because they'll bring in more equality? She quashed that idea pretty quickly. There's no evidence to support that at all, she noted. So what else? Are female heads of state more likely to bring justice? Whence that idea? A sudden horrible flash of insight on my part leads me to the thought that it's because we've all bought into the idea - the gender stereotype - that women are caregivers, nurturers, mother-figures. Marysia invited us to consider Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia. A waitress interviewed by the BBC said "We need a woman to put things right." Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf herself said she wanted to become president in order "to bring motherly sensitivity and emotion to the presidency"

Hmm. This seems a bit odd. We're back in the realm of "women = mothers" and "men = soldiers". Is that true? I think perhaps not. Marysia moved on to mention an idea in political theory that when there's a critical mass of women - around 30% - the whole institution changes. Again, she said, doesn't this rather rely on the idea that all women are the same? That they all want to change the institution? I rather suspect that many Tory women are rather keen on the way the institution is run because Tories, be they minority groups or white heterosexual men, have bought into the idea of the status quo as the way forward. This may be the right way. If anyone could convince me of that please be my guest.

(Again, I generalise - many Tories, some of my acquaintance, have practically revolutionary ideas. But they are not ideas that would revolutionise social justice; in fact, they are ideas that would simply further cement the status quo. But I digress.)

The fact is that "women" are not a single, hive-minded creature. They are, much like everyone else, individually moulded human beings with their own thoughts and desires. One need only consider the vast, yawning gulf of ideological differences between (say) Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton to see that women are not all united under a feminist banner.

So why are we so keen to see women in politics? Marysia pointed out that it is fantastic from a symbolic point of view - but is it merely symbolic? Do we get to three women in Cabinet and say "Welp, equality achieved"? (This author suggests this is on a par with Bush Jr standing on an aircraft carrier declaring "Mission Accomplished" in 2003). The question at the beginning was Do women make better heads of state? - but do they actually make worse heads of state? Not many minority groups would argue that Thatcher made the world a better place (aside from the gay Thatcherite I met the other day, whose cognitive dissonance I still cannot get over.) and she did invade the Falklands. A bit. And break the trade unions. A bit. And took milk away from children. A lot.

However, one bad egg doesn't necessarily spoil the basket - but to me it points towards a larger truth. Women don't make better heads of state. Neither do men. There must be some other qualities, other than their gender, which make men - or women - good leaders. So why aren't there more women at the top?

Let's look at the women at the top. They show typically masculine qualities. Is that because you have to be a man to get ahead? I would say no, because we're once again linking gender to sex in far too strong a way. Say instead that you need to act in the way the institution demands you act. You have to become institutionalised. You can't be a man or a woman who doesn't act in the way the institution demands you act. To be a woman in business the institution demands you work long hours, that you are superior to your male colleagues, that you are alternately queen bitch and office mother. It's a game; not the Game of Thrones - not quite - but close. And the only way to win is not to play, because every failure is held up by the institution as the reason they don't hire more women. It's a heartless circle, because if a woman "wins" - if she makes it to the top - she's not her own person any more. She becomes the institution; internalises the sexism and then pours it out again. There's no escape.

So that was a cheering thought. But Marysia hinted that this is where she felt we should look. There's no point having a symbolic few female politicians, or even fifty percent female politicians, if the institutions stay the same. After all, the money that funds the political institution comes from global capitalism - so maybe there need to be more changes there. The question is whether you can get more feminist women to the top in business to effect this political change - and, indeed, if you want to keep the whole rotten political system intact. Why not wipe the slate clean and try something new?

This was a startling - but fascinating - idea from the floor in the discussion that followed Marysia's presentation. Why not make like the ancient Athenians and make election to the halls of power contingent on a lottery? It's an astonishing idea. Every Athenian, if elected, had a duty to represent his fellow men (Ancient Greece being what it was) for a set term. He would be given a wage if he spoke, turned up to meetings, and remained sober. If all our politicians knew they had only a limited time to make their changes, would they act differently?

Of course, this is contingent on your average member of the public being inspired and fired to help his fellow person and not, for example, being the sort of person who comments on Daily Mail pieces.

Text reads: "There'll be the usual rush of female fans writing to him when he is banged up inside no doubt fascinated by him and deeply allured [sic] to him. Meanwhile there's a million other decent hard-working ordinary blokes looking for relationships but they're probably too boring. What a world." Regarding paedophilia charges against Ian Watkins, lead singer of The Lost Prophets.

Can we all look at that for a minute and then imagine him in charge for one minute and then agree to never speak of this again? Ever?

The fact is that sexism is all around us, all the time. Consider the X-Factor, Marysia said. Look at the turnover in female judges. I wasn't the only blank face, but since there were nods around the room, I'd bet a penny to a pound that it's a whole lot higher than the male judge turnover. She mentioned the Everyday Sexism Project, that daily reminder that there is still a so much latent sexism in the world, and the disgraceful attacks on Caroline Criado-Perez on Twitter as well as the inability of police forces to do anything about it.

The last thing to consider (in an evening which was as enlightening as it was depressing) was quotas. Are they useful? Should they be encouraged? Marysia reminded her interlocutor that quotas for men already exist; that the bias to elect/promote men already exists. Why not balance the scales? She also noted that there is hugely widespread resistance to quotas, both from men and women - all of whom are taking the neo-liberal line that we are already equal, and we don't need quotas because we are a meritocracy - we just take the best.

This line of thought has only one logical conclusion, however, and it is that white heterosexual men are the best. That's not a conclusion I find particularly convincing.

So what's to be done? There aren't really any answers. If there were answers, one rather suspects there would be more being done. But there were some incredibly smart people with some really good ideas in that room this evening, and if anyone can find the answers, I suspect it might be them. 

And me? I'll help where I can, try not to get in the way, and recommend that everyone get involved in this because it involves everyone already. I've already learned enough to know I don't know much at all. Here's to learning more.

Special thanks to Veronika, P&IR President, and Monique, Women's Forum Co-Convener, for a fantastic event and a very stimulating discussion.

What a week

Alright. The last five days have been an absolute, non-stop torrent of stress and I'm through. I have reached the other side. I have survived - but not without taking some hits along the way.

Thursday was the deadline for two essays, one of which I wrote in French as the most passive-aggressive, idiotic protest ever. That's right, I wrote an essay for French in French and I'm pretty sure it'll get marked down - not through a petty aversion to French from the staff but because I'm not very good at expressing myself fluently in French. (This is in itself because from the very beginning of the course we've been encouraged to write in English - but I digress.)

Thursday, the day of deadlines, I managed to get everything in, relearn straight line mathematics and ask pertinent questions in my Atheism lecture/seminar without pissing anyone off. I appreciate that you may not realise this, dear reader, because you see only this highly edited and time-intensive portrait of me but occasionally I manage to irritate people through not thinking through what's about to spring from my face-hole.

I have managed this in every single one of my Atheism lectures this term, although this fact is moderated somewhat by the infrequency of these lectures. However: I managed to ask questions without getting a single eye-roll, patronising sigh, or aggressive response.

I will further note that it's always the same person.

After Atheism I taught a young man called Darren (not his real name) how to find gradients, tangents, and other exciting things to do with straight lines. Darren is a couple of years younger than me (that's not actually true; he's about 5/6 years younger than me, but in my head I'm still 21. I am seriously surprised every time people ask me what I want for my 24th birthday because in my head that's still three years away.) and has decided to join the armed forces - and to do so, he needs certain qualifications. So he picked me to teach him for the next half a year. I'm absolutely pumped, especially because Maths is what I want to teach when I (eventually) graduate.

I'm also teaching a young lady called Chloe (also not her real name), for Maths and English,  and a young man called James (not his real name either), for English. We're doing analysis on Edward Scissorhands and I'm about 90% sure we've gone way, way, waaaaaay too into depth. We made five pages of notes on the first 15 minutes. Film studies, eat your heart out. We rocked it.

In any case, by the end of the day I felt immensely tired and just a little pleased that everything had been tied up. There were no loose ends. (Unlike a certain long-running British television show - yes, Moffat, I'm looking at you.) So I went and had a long chat with a friend. She even cooked me dinner in a microwave/oven.

(I am, perhaps, giving evidence to those of my friends who say I'm hopelessly out of touch. But apparently the trivection oven that I thought was a made-up thing to make Jack sound like an executive ass in Thirty Rock is, in fact, actually a real thing. I have never been so excited. Never.)

I walked home at 1 in the morning, and the walk was exhilarating. Aberdeen is kind of icy right now, and there's nothing like unexpected ice/frantically trying to find your feet again to make a fellow feel alive.

In any case, that brought me to Friday, where your hero slept for approximately 14 hours and woke up with a pounding headache. I sloped around the flat, somewhat at a loss. What do people do when there aren't deadline looming? What, exactly, does one do when there aren't books to be annotated or essays to be avoided? So I cleaned the flat and ironed shirts. Conclusion? I don't like cleaning and shirts are annoying to iron. I need to wear more t-shirts. And somehow produce less dust.

Oh, and I realised I was an adult because I was ironing a shirt and a spider the approximate size of my thumb, fleeing the heat, ran out from under the collar and legged it down the sleeve to the floor. I realised I'm an adult because I didn't follow through my first instinct, which was throw the iron across the room and burn down the building. 

I really don't like spiders.

What followed, however, has been three days of long shifts where things just went wrong. And kept going wrong. Indefinitely. We ran out of glasses, spirits, staff. And that's an awful shame, because these guys are amazing. But we need more bodies to run a restaurant that size.

Today was the last straw. The restaurant was packed while staff was so bare bones it made the Grim Reaper look positively obese. Drinks went walkabouts, checks got lost, and people started getting snappy. At one point a previous member of staff wandered in and was pressed into working for a couple of hours in her Nike airs and jeggings. She absolutely killed it, too.

But it was essentially a six hour shift of what the fuck is going on. At one point people started ordering drinks from the future, because the drinks were from the new cocktail list and that's not supposed to even be available until tomorrow. I was getting drinks orders from people who'd seen drinks I'd not even seen. That was almost the last straw. We finished at last at eight, and did cocktail training with the hardcore of staff - the ones I know I can rely on in a pinch. It was great to see the waiting staff asking questions, because they're the most important ones - getting a drinks order for a "gin martini" is incredibly frustrating to any bartender. It sounds awful to non-bartenders, but it's like going into a clothes store and asking for a skirt and then saying nothing else. And imagine in this shop that each skirt needs to be sowed individually, and that you have a hundred different fabrics and thirty different styles.

But some of them came, and they'll know what questions to ask. And that makes me seriously damn happy. I don't expect waiting staff to be as excited as me about the difference between, say, bourbon and whisky. But just seeing them getting excited about the new cocktails, and trying them - wicked. Very pleased.

The rest of them went out for a drink, but I'm so far over my budget for this month that my wallet has an echo, so I've come home. And written. And eaten a plate of pasta with tuna.

I need something to occupy my mind or this happens. Mr Conan-Doyle knows what I mean.

"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."

Alright, I'm not quite at that level yet. But it feels that way.