Drouth (Anon)

‘Oh Western wind when wilt thou blow, that the small rain down can rain?

Christ, that my love were in my arms, and I in my bed again.’

Lovely Hub brought me a big mug especially for Uni, it says –  ‘I’d rather be in bed’

So I’ve spent nine years studying with the  Open University and always managed to avoid residential courses. I’m glad to have participated in this one but didn’t realise just how much I’d miss Lovely Hub and the boys.  I’ve been at Nottingham Uni since Saturday and it’s now the early hours of Thursday morning.  I have finally extricated myself from the pirate party  – which has had its highs and lows.

It doesn’t help that at this time of night only the hard core are left and they divide up into the young, free and single ones who are angling to get off with each other, the party animals, those seeking to regain their lost youth and those, who like me, have families at home and have no desire to spend the rest of the night groping sweatishly with someone that you won’t be able to look in the eye in the morning.  (My conscience is clear I have only bestowed maternal hugs on my very favourite people).

Hub and I have been texting for the past hour or so – he’s on a night shift and is relieved to find that I am safely back in my room knocking back the San Pellegrino to dilute my alcohol intake  and blogging tearily whilst my lappy sings ‘Building a Bridge to my Heart’.’

Residential school has been good.  I have met some fabulous people;  a couple of the tutors are rather up themselves but the majority are delightfully eccentric – or just delightful. There are definitely some people that I’d like to keep in contact especially my lovely partner L who had to leave today because work called her away.  We had a great time working on the project together and our tutor, although this was only his first residential school (and I’m definitely old enough to be his mother) has been incredibly supportive and has almost awakened a desire in me to do statistics – Argh! Hold that thought.

Time passes …..

I started this blog but I didn’t finish it due to pressure of work  on the project – a hard, hard life as well as a wild, wild one.  It’s over a week later and this is the first chance I’ve had to finish this blog  – I’m blaming lack of blood in the alcohol stream and a carb-heavy diet that has left me sluggish and unresponsive all week.  I still have to write up the project and – for my own warped satisfaction only – run the stats programme all on my own to ensure veracity.  I must be mad.

I was given ‘a village idiot’s guide to doing  2×2 Mixed ANOVA’ by me (residential) tutor – and when I read it last night I actually understood (some of) it. Maybe these old brain cells still have some life left in them.  Mission may not be Impossible after all.

No regrets about doing the residential school now,  just saddened to hear that Lovely Hub felt that life was suspended whilst I was away.  Feel very humbled by this and will do my best not to run off again.  Knowing that he missed me so much is an added incentive to lose weight, get fit and hang around for many years to come.   I missed my men too though, and it was only the fact that I was kept so busy, stopped me drooping into the doldrums, especially late at night when all the fun and alcohol had dried up and every bone in my body was wanting to be home.

Enough of all that; once the food shopping was accomplished and my neglected sons were replete (hands up anyone who thinks they starved whilst I was away – No? – didn’t think so) Lovely Hub and I had time to hit the seaside at Crosby, eat ice creams in the sunshine and drive home through a belter of a thunderstorm.  We also managed to take the boys out to dinner (good old Nandos) and actually get through a meal without major domestic trauma.  The situation deteriorated rapidly when we hit Tesco for a spot of late night shopping – so let’s not go there.

Back to work on Monday and at least a day of trying to remember what the hell I do for a living.  It is gradually trickling back so I guess the cocktails I was drinking last Tuesday night didn’t kill  off that many brain cells.  It’s good to be back with my team – even if we are slightly depleted due to holidays and stuff.  I enjoyed being a student last week but I enjoy being a worker more – except for when my path crosses that of the terminally arrogant and dim who blight our lives by being jobsworths.

Ah, but I’ve only a couple of weeks at work before we take off down South to visit family and friends, especially those who couldn’t make it to the funeral.  It will be good to be back in the bosom of the family and to smell the salt air again.  There was a time when I was at college in landlocked Brum and I used to take jars of seawater back with me for a sneaky sniff whenever I got homesick.  Until the day my Mum phoned me at college in a tizzy because they’d discovered typhoid or something horrible in the water.  After that,  a crowd of us sea-siders had to content ourselves with sitting around Edgbaston reservoir making mournful foghorn noises and wishing we were home.

So, no more prevarication  – me tutor has sent me an email with stat-speak in it and after all his efforts at kick-starting my brain – I will not let him  (or myself ) down.  One more essay and the exam after this and the Psych degree will be mine! (I hope).  A final course starting in October on Crime and Justice and the Criminology degree will be mine next  year.  Toying with the idea of doing an online masters in Forensic Psych with Liverpool Uni – but I promised Lovely Hub that I’d take a break from studying and spend more time running wild with him.  Now there’s a happy thought for the future.

Bring on those stats!