Dissertation Blitz

I was supposed to be in Tel Aviv right now, but the Home Office thought differently. They bungled my visa extension application and I had to stay. Instead, I am watching the days grow short as I am waging the last battle of this five-year-phd-plan. Comrades, if all works according to plan this will be nearly over in three weeks. So, from morning to early hours, it's thesis time, no weekends, no procrastination. Some of us may not survive the campaign, but the greater good will benefit. How exactly, I am not sure.

At the meantime, I am leaving college in late hours and find my dinner on the way to the tube. Last week I was looking through the trash of a cafe-branch in Holborn as a man in a suit and tie stopped by and joined the picking. 'Anything in there today?' he said. 'Well you know they mess it up so people can't take anything, taking sandwiches out of their packaging' I said 'but there's always some exceptions'. I handed him a tomato-and-brie baguette (still in its wrapping). 'No thanks' he said. 'It's for my neighbour, an old woman, I bring her food on my way home. The baguette is too hard for her teeth.'

He also was suspicious of a salmon sandwich. I told him I never got ill from food I found in the rubbish, not once in five years. I can't say the same about food I paid for in restaurants!