I haven’t had a moment’s insomnia for a couple of months – having been so busy I slept for weeks like a whole lot of logs – but the beast was back last night. Probably not unconnected with the fact that I didn’t leave the house all day yesterday and had very little exercise, physical or mental. I thought that a couple of days of being at home would do me good and rest me completely after my exertions over the summer but unfortunately it just seems to be a time when the twin demons of depression and boredom creep in and throw sticks & stuff at my mental well-being. Thankfully I was more up to battle than I have been for a couple of years and managed to beat it back with a big stick of my own but in the middle of the night it always look a bit black – something to do with the lights being off probably.

Anyway I had to get up and lug my book downstairs to read for a bit as once one is awake it is a whole more difficult to get back to sleep with an unending series of bodily noises going on next to me in the bed. Stertorous breathing accompanied by machine gun style farting and the accompanying sighs of relief are so NOT lullaby material.

I have now got to a point with the ole HP that I am completely confused – having last night watched the Goblet of Fire followed by few more chapters of the Half Blood Prince I am really struggling to remember which characters have died and when. Mind you, watching the film (with the twin sex-pots of Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape) reminded just how much the bad guys appeal. Ok I know that Severus is really a good guy in disguise but is a good disguise and he’s hottest when he’s being mean. And as for Malfoy, well hose me down….please!

Why is it that one has a secret hankering for the bad guy when one’s husband only has to slip below perfection by a wee jot to be vitriolically condemned? Such is life I guess – such are the fantasies of the bored middle-aged woman!

It is time I think to post another bulletin. Not that there is much to tell really. I am having a few lazy weeks because the play is over and dancing practice is cancelled for a couple of weeks because of holidays. Why? I’m not on holiday am I, tch! This is the first year in many-many that I haven’t taken time off in the summer holidays and it is very strange but strangely pleasant. All my babies (all two of them) have finally finished with school and college (the girlie got three B’s btw and a place at Kent so all’s well) so I don’t have to take time off in the school holidays to amuse and entertain them. In fact it has thrown me completely with having so much year to choose from for holiday purposes and I can’t think where to put in the last week. I’m sure it will come to me; I can’t like work THAT much!

We had a party after the show, an after-show party in fact, and I realised after necking a good pint of Strongbow, and throwing caution and my tongue to the wind, that I was laughing more than I felt I had in years. It was a great feeling, liberating, but the trouble is that now I want to do it some more!

I have got completely in a tangle with my Harry Potter familiarisation. I recently read the Deathly Hallows (7) – only really because the girlie had read it and threw it on the bed (disdainful of the treacly epilogue) and said ‘you can read it now’ – so I did. All the time I was reading it though it came to me that I had not actually got round to reading the two previous books. I started the series ok but wandered a bit. Then on Monday we went to see HP and the Order of the Phoenix (5) at the flicks. Very much darker and grimmer than the early ones – much as LOTR was really. But I realised that I hadn’t seen the previous instalment on film. You see the pattern! Then this week I decided to read the Half-Blood Prince (6) which I am working through and today I went out and bought HP and the Goblet of Fire (4). So you can see I am doing it all arse about face. Not surprising really from someone who couldn’t quite work out which came first, marriage or babies, and did both a couple of times and in no particular order really.

Chicken and egg stuff all over again. Which reminds me I haven't done my on-line Tesco yet, tsk tsk.

Yesterday I was very bored. It was one of those days when your arms and legs feel like lead and your brain feels like it’s coated with some kind of anti-think compound. Work – all eight hours of it – was tedious. I was pushed to the limits of endurance. So I went to visit my colleagues in other offices on my chair. I have done so many times before in the interminable hours of a Friday afternoon, scooted off on my swivel chair along the corridors (of non-power). Yesterday was slightly different in that I took in a lift journey and went to visit colleagues downstairs. They were all pretty bored too!

Days like that are when I think I must be in the wrong job but quite frankly I think on Friday afternoon, in August, the week after I have been a play, I would be bored anywhere.

I stayed up reading until 1.30am last night because I felt I needed to get the whole Harry Potter thing out of the way. Reading it of course I realised I had not actually caught up with the series and had missed out the previous two books so I shall now have to go back and read those which will be quite confusing and disorientating – so what’s new.

But I really must get started on my distance learning course which has been with me nearly a week and I have barely looked at it. I have to wait a week after a play is over for the anti-climax to drain out of my system before I can give things the proper attention. Criminology – well it’s different.