Unbelievable insomnia last night. Kept thinking about my colleague who was found dead yesterday. Went to bed as tired as you like about 12.30 and straight to sleep. Woken up ~ 2.30 by multiple sirens and (oh joy) a police helicopter wheeling endlessly overhead. Quite took me back to my East End days when you’d get one of those every other night.

Was still awake at 6.15 and the next thing you know I’m still exhausted and late for work to boot.

Things considered while attempting to get to sleep and not think about mortality, the fragility of life etc etc :-

1) If I was designing a habitable ring habitat how would I design my space ship docking facilities. Which in turn led me to contemplating some quite involved equations (well, involved for in your head) which in turn led me to consider the nature of momentum and in particular it’s relationship with force acting on a body.

Conclusion : momentum is not as straightforward as it looks.

2) A Quizilla style quiz about the letter K.

Conclusion : There are a lot of funny things that start with K

This afternoon I am (Oh God) starting my Christmas shopping. You may wonder why I haven’t done it all already, and I’m wondering that as well. Because I never do. I always leave it till the last minute and it’s always a nightmare. This is because I’m always in denial about Christmas because basically I loathe it. I wish my Mum would let me cook the Christmas dinner cos at least then I’d feel like I’d contributed something.

So far I have an idea for 1 present – which luckily is a tricky one, but all the same : I’m screwed.

Actually I’m not screwed. I have this afternoon and then Saturday, Sunday & Monday to get gifts for about 10 people. How hard can that be?? Not very perhaps?

God I hate Christmas. I hate the false jollity, I hate the invalidity of the media driven ‘common experience’, I hate the jokey childhood regression, I hate the enforced civility, I hate mince fucking pies.

I think sleep deprivation is making me cranky and Christmas depresses me. This probably isn’t the right frame of mind to hit the West End in, but needs must when The Devil calls the tune.