"Everyone knows, that I'm just second hand Rose..." (Streisand)

I start this particular post with a long sigh - or I would if I knew how to spell it.

I'm still in the throes of marking - my dining table is covered with essays and their damn pink cover sheets waiting for me to re-read them (preferably without crying or screaming with (hysterical) laughter), and to make insightful comments on them in purple ink.  The pile doesn't seem to diminish - how does that happen?  Some of them, to be fair, are very good.  And some of them are very bad.

When it comes to the bad ones, I don't mind so much if they're produced by a student who has attended next to no seminars.  What I do mind a little more is when the students who have attended next to no seminars produce very good essays.  That seems a little insulting, somehow.  But, I can get over it.  With the aid of chocolate.

The ankle (three torn tendons according to the physio) is well on the mend.  I hope to be able to dispense with the crutch today, and be back in the gym in a couple of weeks.  This would be handy - the shadow from my ample derriere is threatening to block out the sun.

University campus is in the grip of a Mathematical symposium at the moment.  The woolly jumper quotient is high, and there are swathes of men who look as though they've been sent to work with a packed lunch made by their mum - as the SweetChild observed.  It would appear that as a breed, mathematicians are not the most stylish.  Not that I can talk in my pink DM boots.

But, most excitingly of all, last weekend I  picked up my new bed.  Well, a friend was kind enough to lend himself and his van to help me collect said furniture.  I have a passion for eBay.  I sell my cast-offs, and I buy clothes, and furniture.  My Victorian basement flat has evolved furniture-wise dependent on what I've been able to find.  My greatest buys have been the mahogany table in my sitting from (£85), some very pretty chairs, and this weekend, my glorious bed.  I reckon it was made in about 1930, it is stained dark brown, with a monumental footboard and headboard, and I love it.

It's comfortable, but more than that, it has a sense of history and character.  Bit like me really.

The dank clouds are gathering over Seasidetown...

... as I face the mountain of marking on my desk.  

Progress, I have to say, is being made.  I have sorted out piles of essays, I have done the first skim read and have allocated first marks (on post-it notes), and have sorted the essays into mark order from the most terrible through to the best.  

And, then, to completely ruin my day, I see this on the BBC website.   

Just what the world needs.  I haven't quite forgiven her for Harry Potter...