Master’s in Creative Writing Update: 11.30 on Thursday 11th December.

It’s an odd feeling and amusing.

Odd in that I’ve rarely felt so nervous as a few minutes ago, submitting two essays to Exeter University. The umbilical cord is cut. The two babes: a short story and a self-reflective essay, are winging their electronic way to my tutor’s inbox for her and a.n.other to mark and moderate.

And amusing, as, apart from a huge sense of nervous relief, my second reaction is to tap away on this ageing laptop and write about it! You’d think I’d have reached some sort of saturation point with writing!

Here’s the reality.

A sense of incredible weariness getting off the train yesterday evening. The kind of weariness that forces the surrounding world to recede into the background so far that the funniest joke or most tragic of incidents would barely register a flicker on my face.

Home, and switch into Chemistry A-Level tuition mode. Energy returning after a cuppa and toast. It seems that the brain has compartments. I’m fully awake now, enlivened not by the rules of grammar but by discussing the purpose of nucleophilic addition of hydrogen cyanide in situ to carbonyls with student A.

Bed. Slept through to 5. Up, usual routine followed by a return to the two essays. By 9, I was drowsy and crawled back into bed for an hour straight. Deep sleep.

In the following hour, awake again, finishing touches made before hitting the Submit button and…nervous relief.

Of course, relief is short-lived. I now have a Poetry Collection and a Self-Reflective Essay to submit before its deadline a week tomorrow.

But it’s time to collapse and watch some daytime TV with coffee and dark chocolate

But it’s time to collapse and watch some daytime TV with coffee, dark chocolate, ignoring all claims on my time. Christmas cards and messages…in the In-tray. The mould on the wall upstairs…can grow happily for an hour or so before chemical warfare is unleashed. Shaving? Nah.

That 5K run? Jog on.