hey

I am very busy. It’s busy season. I have enormous amounts of marking to do for four separate courses. I also have to set up Flowers For Turing 2025, which is hurtling towards us, submit accounts for eQuality Time, look after the kids, and keep everything on track. It’s busy.

The most important thing I can do to keep myself together is gratitude.

I’m grateful for good weather, new sunglasses, a real find of a piano, fixing gates, a tidy and organised garage, and all manner of similar domestic things.

Thank you to Kat for really making time for me, taking on lots of the childcare this week, and cooking me a lovely dinner last night. I’ve been playing a lot with my new 3D printer, which arrived courtesy of Wayne, and I’ve been getting lots of useful tips from people like Tom. Thank you to Liz for repeatedly helping me manage the last 50m of the school run. I’m grateful for an amazing science-based party the kids got to go to, for friends who visit after operations, for making it to meetings on time, for nice strangers who help me get to meetings on time, and for all the lovely new colleagues who have taken time to explain things, give tours, and save me from my glorious mistakes.

I gave a proper lecture today — my first in months — and I was pathetically pleased to see my students again, even if I’ve forgotten almost all their names.

I should explain the photo — about six months ago the kids did a party trick where they came into the room with Leo dressed in my clothes and Nova dressed as their mum. This week they swapped, and it was:

a) hilarious
b) a sign of how Nova might look as a grungy teenage girl
c) a sudden realisation that I dress like a grungy teenage girl.