My annual revelation this year is the sheer variety of ways in which a human being can feel bad. My least favourite is the sensation of cold shock, where your soul shrinks into a tiny kernel deep inside, leaving your extremities frozen and useless. This sensation cannot generate tears, but brings on an urge to smoke cigarettes which has been dormant for more than 2 years . This is the king and queen of bad feelings, but it brings with it a retinue of lesser bad feelings to do its dirty work when it is not available: general malaise, loss of the will to live, a sort of magnetic (as in opposite-poles magnetic) anti-enthusiasm which makes my mind turn away from any thought of the thesis and bolt, scattered, in a million different directions. Today I am under the influence of lost-the-will- to live. Tune in tomorrow for more of the same.