Dutifully, I booked a morning off because we were anticipating the advent of a roofer at home, and I didn’t want to be torn between roofing conversations and research work. The afternoon was my own, apart from a couple of rescheduled meetings at the end of the day. (There wouldn’t be anyone on the roof by then, surely.)
‘Anticipating’ was the word I just used, and it was just that. The storms a few weeks ago played havoc with more roofs than our own. Anyway, here I sat, two laptops in front of me, nothing happening on our roof, and Scholarly Satan started tugging at my conscience.
- “You could sort out your timesheets, you know.”
- “You can reschedule that tutorial. Do It Now.”
- “You’ve got to update your CV, haven’t you? You LOVE formatting documents and getting the bullet-points and punctuation just right.”
- “Oooh, look, you can action that email straight away – wouldn’t it feel good to be so on-the-ball?”
And then came his masterstroke.
“This is Scholarly Stuff, you know. There’s nothing sinful about Scholarly Stuff.” Which is true, of course, apart from the fact that I wasn’t meant to be working! Anyway, it’s now 4 pm, and I propose to walk away from the laptops for half an hour, until the last and only official duties of the day. I fear I’m too old to mend my ways now.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 