Now (Shhh!)

 

 

Someone asked after the blog yesterday, so I’m back here taking a peek. How are you? Where are you?

 

I am in the university library which is where I hang out these days, although still not as much as I should. People in their final year are coming up to dissertation deadlines so every computer is in use and there is a conga line snaking around the carols, hunting. It’s the silent floor though so no singing.

 

It’s a tense place. Important work to be done. Deadlines. Yesterday, the young woman beside me started to cry, silently. She was searching through her files. A few seats along someone was playing music through their headphones and the sound leaked. I snatched them from her ears and bit through the wires. I leant her my cyber-mum headphones that have padding to keep it all in. I barely noticed as I got on with my work. Those things happened in alternate universes. In this one I gave her a dirty look with a little tut. In the afternoon, there was a rattle through the metal pipes and everyone looked up and at each-other except one who got up and ran out. Ghost in the machine?

 

Nick has taken to making me a flask to take in. I wonder if it is allowed. `Sealed containers only’ is the rule, so I’m safe until I pour tea into the lid. I cradle it in my hands and drink it like a shot, sneaky. They have a purple-shirted posse to root out that kind of behaviour.

 

This is how the Uni part of student nursing is winding down. On my desktop is a partially complete pretend report about a service improvement plan. I have never seen a real-life one. If they exist, I doubt they come with Harvard references. Sleeping uneasily in a closed file is a quarter of my dissertation on suicide. I have promised myself time to work on it after the service improvement plan in the way that people plan their treats. The parents of two boys who died by suicide were on the news this morning, reminding me of what it’s all for. The future’s on the way.