Day 1.

Greeted by boss R, shown my hot-desk and laptop. I am required to read over 20 official NHS policies before I can start anything else. Ethical Activities policy; Financial Standards and Standing Orders policy; Policy on Driving While Using Mobile Phones (summary: Bad); Information Quality Policy; Smoking Policy (summary: Bad); Fraud and Probity Policy(summary: Fraud Bad).

There's a rather sweet Website Development Policy tacked on the end, but you can tell it's a fake, it has none of the appendices or version-control notation of the real policies.

Boss R tours me around the Institute website with that sad, world-weary project-manager air which I recognise instantly, the rare bird calling to rare bird across silent acres of jungle. The website one is responsible for is desperately inadequate - and yet - the struggle to get it as good as this has been so hard - "You must think I'm very despondent" he says mournfully.

Later Geoff takes me through current projects, and I exclaim out loud when I see the budget figures the developing company is charging. Geoff looks me in the eye and says, "You're a contractor too, right? Well, I stay out of internal politics".

Back to my tiny student cell, to eat cold M & S pasta salad and watch the final episode of David Tennant as Dr Who, on BBC iplayer. Pretty good! That Master, always a sexy bit of rough. It's still only 6.30. At 8.30 I head off to the campus arts centre to watch "An Education", beautifully done, set in 1961 and filled with the china, fabric patterns, furniture which I distantly remember from childhood. There's a shot of a wooden table with a red formica top which almost makes me choke up with sudden tears.