Wednesday, April 12

 

 

Bang, bang, went the roofers as I woke up at 7:00. I found the cat hidden under the breakfast table, refusing to come out. He stayed there while I ate my Weetabix and berries.

I got to work to add a final few touches to my Powerpoint slide shows for this morning, and then let Naa into the house. After a short hello, I walked up to A4017 to start my class. By 9:20 I was beginning to explain about the madness of Joseph Campbell and the controversy over the status of his concept of the monomyth.

When the class finished I had to sit down and upload the final assignment for Digital Mediascapes to Its Learning. This meant that I had no time for lunch so Naa, who hadn’t slept well last night, left to get something to eat, and decided not to come back.

At 13:00 I had a tutorial in which a thesis finally got to the launchpad and took off. I will get a final draft next week, proofread it for English spelling and grammar, and then pass it to Liisa, if she agrees to act as examiner.

At 15:00 I had a second tutorial in which a thesis left the hangar and we fixed a date for a test flight. This thesis may cause some issues, since nobody could describe it as normal, or as following the usual guidelines. I decided that, rather than another tutorial, we will spend a whole day in a workshop that will take all the pieces and put them together into something I feel able to defend. I will supervise the final cut of the movie, and the assembling of the autoethnographical documents that will accompany it. I will justify this, if asked, on the grounds that it counts as the first thesis from the Convivial Mechanics group and thus sets a precedent.

As soon as the tutorial had ended I raced home to free Sunshine, who had hidden himself in Irma’s cupboard all day.

I get home at 16:30, open Irma’s cupboard, and Sunshine races out into the garden, now empty of workmen. I decide to follow him. I climb one of the scaffolding towers and photograph the roof. It has the new, modern, wonder material on, and the wooden beams that both hold it down and act as supports for the tiles. I have learned one thing from this process: the tiles mostly act as decoration. In theory the roof can now withstand rain and snow.

I will spend the next three hours cleaning. I will begin by vacuuming Irma’s cupboard where, out of fear or rage, Sunshine has spread half the cat litter. I will move on to vacuuming the rest of the house, because I already have the Dyson with me. I will then sweep up the huge piles of sawdust in the carport and on the drive. Finally I will move the cut logs that they have left for us into the wood shed.