Flowers

Every time Thom comes to visit he buys me flowers. He says that he does it because he knows it makes me smile, and that everyone deserves flowers to make them smile. And he is right, I smile every time I see them. Number one, because they are beautiful and number two, because he took the time out to go and buy them to make me smile.

Today is going to be a long week.

I have an essay deadline for next week, and the fact that I didn't do any French language work over the holidays meant that today was spent frantically doing it before the classes. Got to love last minute work I guess! Having to do all the catch-up work meant that I didn't really leave the building that much, hence the flowers. The next few weeks will be a mixed bag of photographs, not going to lie. Stick with it!

Today I also received a reply to an enquiry that has not only made my day, or my week, but most possibly my month as well. So over the holdays I had tried to book an appointment with an RLF fellow to read over and critique my essay before I submitted it. Problem was that I hadn't heard anything from them, so decided to email them directly and see if there was anything they could do. The answer I received was priceless:-


'Here's what happens: over the vacation, people put in their bids for tutorial slots via The System.

I don't do Warwick work over the vacation. Shortly before the beginning of term I assign those bids to available tutorial times. This is done strictly in the order that those bids were made.

By the time I got to yours, all slots for this week and next week were long gone, which is why you'd have had a request (I'll send you a copy of it) on 2 January to bid again.

That's normally where we'd be now. But for no good reason that I can think of -- someone may have put the milk of human kindness in my tea, who knows? -- I will make an exception and see you on Friday from 1:15 - 1:45pm.

This unspeakable generosity of spirit comes at a price.

(1) Since I'll be giving up my lunch break, you'll have to make an equal sacrifice and bring me up a sandwich (non-vegetarian; I only eat things with a mother or a face or preferably both) and a double espresso. I'll pay you on delivery.

(2) Send me as soon as you can a copy of the essay, and a note of whatever it is that's bothering you about it -- at any rate, no later than lunchtime tomorrow. Send it as it is. Don't tart it up on my behalf.

(3) (Or, really, 1(a)): I'm not sure about those panini things they do. They can so easily go wrong, like wallpaper paste and weeds stuffed into an unfashionable hat. I leave it to your discretion.'


As I said, it made my day.