[Stevie] That's it.Trowse. And stayed for a couple of months during the week in a lovely ivy-covered and tiny hotel somewhere near Loddon that I can't find on Google Earth. Monsieur le Patron was a Cypriot who used to bring me tea in bed in the mornings.

I'm trying to write a new standfirst for my article in the next issue of the alumni magazine. It's tough. So I'm faffing about in here instead.

(pen) We should be flattered that you have considered deriving inspiration from our musings. Er, what's a standfirst? Is it the head of the queue at a bus-stop or sunnink?

[penelope] And why do the Dutch have a magazine just for aluminium formulations?

Standfirst = the meaty chunk of text at the top of the page that gets you salivating to read the whole article.
It's a magazine for all the alumnuses/alumnas/alumni (I try very hard to stop people calling them 'alums') that I hoik together twice a year. Some very clever freelancers write the three or four tricky articles, under the direction of our managing editor, but I write one or two, and pull together all the news pages, and the message from the Dean (in my guise of professorial ventriloquist). It takes bloody ages.

Now using my wireless raspberry Pi to make posts. It's triffic. A linux computer no bigger than a packet of fags. The cables take up more room.

The GUI is still flaky though.

[Stevie] Impressive. I've never even seen one.

[pen] Are you hinting that the "message from the Dean" is — gasp! — not all his own work?

I did actually get a list of bullet points to compose into a message this time.

This week, I am mostly writing parts of a booklet to accompany a new professor's inaugural lecture in June. It helps that I find the subject interesting.

Going to view a house this afternoon. I'd buy it if only for the delphiniums in the garden and the uninterupted view out of the kitchen window across fields, rows of aspens, willows and alders, countryside and rivers to Europoort and the Pernis oil refinery and its flare stacks on the south bank of the Maas/Rijn (Meuse/Rhine), but the windy miller might take a bit more persuading. As many of you know, every time I moved jobs, I moved house (and usually at least 150 miles). He has never moved. Ever. This might be an interesting experience.