I’m seemingly being haunted by this damn magpie. On Tuesday morning, I diverged from my usual route into work… and saw something that simultaneously both disturbed, and made things abundantly clear, compounded by a subsequent odour of hemp-like viscidity. Corvid solitariness is apparently a scary situation.

These are troubling times. I have another dilemma – one of my bosses is leaving for another institution. So: (i) can I move with him? (ii) do I move with him? (iii) do I stay where I am? (iv) can I stay where I am (I do, after all, now have a supposedly ‘permanent’ position)? (v) do I want to do either or neither?

Maybe my flimsy, patchy data might start coalescing into something more robustly convincing, in which case I’ll start to get back that urge to get up in the morning (and skip Frasier). However, although I love science, its pursuit is causing problems and I have, for various reasons, been contemplating getting out of this game for some time. Nothing lasts forever (excepting spots on a leopard). But then again, isn’t that what makes life interesting? Why settle for dull, safe monotony when you don’t have to, when you don’t really want to? Perhaps a visit to the Job Centre might be in order.

Anyway, there’s hope. I’m off to Florence to think about things; well, actually I’m off to Florence to think about art instead of science (sticking my head in the sand again).

Magpies ‘steal’ shiny things. Procrastination is ‘the thief of time’.