Exchanges

I finished reading ‘We need to talk about Kevin’ yesterday and it left me rather speechless (a rarity I assure you). It took me a bit of time to get used to the style of the book but I found it really engaging and was a bit stunned when I got to the end of it. I suspect it is one of those books where you ‘pick sides’ in it - probably coloured by your own past. Really interesting read though and it quite cleverly intertwined real life events with a fictional story, which given that the book was about a high school shooting must have been a challenge to write. Anyway, I would recommend it, but it is perhaps not for the faint-hearted - or anyone with access to weapons who is feeling a bit disgruntled.

Work has been really busy. I finally got home from work about 9pm last night. My head of unit has hardly been about so it actually hasn’t been too bad and today she is due to be on leave, so I am hoping for a day of being able to get things done. I am slightly concerned that whilst I am doing lots of work, I am not really bringing much to a conclusion and there still seems to be an awful lot to do. I hope it just means that things will suddenly start to progress rather than just unravelling in front of me. My head of unit seems to think she will have to work at the weekend though, which therefore means that I will have to as well, but if I have to go in, it will just be to appease her rather than to do anything constructive. Anyway, it looks like it will be another late night tonight. I just need to focus on the fact that at some point this will end and I can return to normality.

My landlady has some exchange students staying at the moment. The first turned up late Monday night and the second late last night, so when I go downstairs in the morning there is an ever increasing number of strange people there to be polite to when all I really want to do is operate on auto-pilot and then walk out the door and go to work. When I was really young my parents used to have exchange students to stay and one day at school I’d had to paint on a black beard for some reason and for some even more inexplicable reason refused to wash it off. I then went with my mum to collect two poor unsuspecting students from the station with full beard still in place. I think they probably thought I was just some weird English child and I confirmed every odd story they had ever heard about the English. I haven’t been tempted to do this to try and welcome the exchange students. The things you can get away with when you’re young.