Or at least, the office. Covid itself long gone, though there’s a bit of a residual cough, a bit of fatigue, a bit of general tetchiness. I did eventually get the COMP0160 marking finished, though it was like pulling teeth sometimes. A few students got pretty bad-tempered feedback; next year’s brief is going to be a bit more upfront in stating that vacuous marketing bullshit is not welcome, and neither are appeals to AI magic.
Meanwhile, tomorrow is the COMP0088 exam, which means those students are just getting around to revising and, in consequence, plying me with questions that they really ought to know the answers to by now. On the whole I have managed not to be tetchy with these, by a supreme effort of will. No wonder I am tired.
But anyway. Word association reminds me that I went to Kidd Pivot’s Assembly Hall back before Easter, and it was great. Pite & Young’s dancers are brilliant, so fluid and detailed and precise, and the conceit of dancing to recorded dialogue quickly escapes the initial incongruity to feel natural and illuminating. Their previous show Revisor was the last thing I saw before lockdown in 2020, similarly brilliant and memorable, maybe marginally less fun. It haunted me a little through the long dark months when it seemed there might never be dancing again. I had a relatively good lockdown, all in all, but it still feels like an open wound, raw-edged and tender, a hole in the world. Assembly Hall maybe helped heal just a little of that.
Getting Covid not so much, of course.