Friday

Husband's new job meant a very early start for him. I had some really good ideas for the book in that dozy time before you really wake up but didn't get round to writing them down soon enough so now they're lost forever <sigh>. Went into work first thing to say hello to Mike Wallace and Alison Wray who are running their excellent course on critical reading and writing today at my suggestion. Anxious moment when they appeared to be late but had in fact been misdirected. Collected a book from the library and stopped for chat with the librarians.

Returned home to write but was distracted by discussion on LinkedIn about the notice of BSkyB's AGM - the date doesn't include the year and someone was asking if this meant it was invalidated. Rang colleague at ICAEW who was a company secretary to check (she said probably not if the full date was included in the other associated material) and had a lengthy chat with her about corporate governance issues, and cats.

By this time it was lunchtime and I got stuck into a cheese sandwich and Daniel Kahneman's new book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" which is fascinating and full of little tests for the reader from his experimental research, to demonstrate how our minds work. I am always keen to read about *how* people conduct research - what sparks off the question, how they decide to investigate it, what problems they have and how they solve them - it's often much more interesting than the actual outcomes of the research. The book I picked up at the library is "Models Behaving Badly: why confusing illusion with reality can lead to disaster on Wall Street and in Life" - I hope it lives up to the promise of the title! (In case anyone is actually reading this - hi, Emma and Maja! - I do read potboilers too and I am greatly enjoying Jo Nesbo's Nemesis on my e-reader)

An email from our research manager reminds me that there will be less attractive reading ahead shortly for the REF audit - looks as if I shall be reading papers by colleagues in economics and information management which could be challenging. And of course I still have that 11,000 word paper and the four dissertations sitting on my desk.... Better get on with it...