The news that my friend Freyja has written six chapters of the great Australian novel has galvanised me into blogging again- along with the urge to preserve for posterity the pain I'm going through with this goddamned motherfucking honours business. The last six weeks have been spent suffering and making regular excursions across the borders into utter derangement- some days I can feel my mind beating around in my head like a moth stuck in a lampshade, and think that I know what it means to crack up. I didn't know (oh limited imagination!) that it was possible to feel like this over intellectual endeavours as well as emotional ones- that said, it could lead to a divorce and then I'll have both. So, in order of magnitude, since last I wrote the world has inflicted the following trials on me.

1. Crisis of confidence of unheard of proportions
2. Computer misbehaviour
3. a mysterious pain in my left breast (today fondled by an ageing mincy doctor who may well never have touched one of these objects by choice)

In return I have had one compensatory vision. Two days ago, the library was evacuated by a (false ) fire alarm. There were sirens and shouts, the firemen came, they left. The library staff were allowed back inside. One librarian (the hairy one with a bald patch which is overcompensated by the tufts of hair sprouting from every orifice further south) stood in front of the library, arms askew, holding back the tide of nerds poised to overwhelm him and roll in a wave back to their computers. One boy (an Asian with a wispy moustache) can wait no longer.... he breaks loose from the crowd and bolts for the library door........ despite his youth and desperation he is intercepted by the hairy librarian, who turns him away. Without losing any speed he turns around and runs off in the other direction.

I still haven't stopped laughing.