ia play

Last week didn’t quite work.

There was a live rat in the bedroom on Monday morning (thanks cats!), my beloved purple climber on the front of the house tried to kill itself by ripping the trellis off the house, Iain broke a rib, I got absolutely drenched in a 3 minute downpour during my precisely 3 minute walk home, some **** stole our truck, some seriously trivial IA thing at work got escalated to my uber-uber boss, one of my authors pulled out at the last minute leaving me scrabbling for an August article, and I managed to ruin a favourite jumper with chewing gum from a mysterious source. Oh and I had to go to Peterborough again.

Other than the truck and bones, mostly not disastrous things in themselves. But combined they definitely make me feel picked on.

Reading BBC News this weekend, my attention was drawn by a positive story Meningitis cases ‘at record low’. I was struck by the positive reporting and wondered whether that reaction was fair. Looking at the index of stories below it was noticeable that the positive tone was unusual:

.

Just look at the language: “blunder, suffers, plea, assault, deadly, carnage, weakest, attacks, weak, shut”.

Now the bottom right corner sounds more positive:

• Cow genome ‘to transform farming’
• Cheryl Cole to record solo songs
• Facebook users say yes to changes

But really the positivity depends on where you stand on genetic research, manufactured pop and the ethics of social networking businesses.

I’m knackered. What with work, freelance stuff, studying, and then trips to hospital with PW, it’s all been a bit too much.

I’ve noticed that being tired has made me more abrupt and more likely to put voice to my frustrations. It isn’t very me and makes me uncomfortable, but it is more honest and there’s some satisfaction in saying how annoyed you are, rather than going home and kicking something (hopefully not the chickens).

Sorry if you’ve been on the receiving end but the chickens are grateful.