primary colours

sept 13th

Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3
Hair day: Captain of Team Lacklustre

Things I have been doing:
1) Getting to grips with new full-time employment....primary school is ok: grappling with dribbling three-year olds who tell me they've forgotten their make-up today and start some serious bottom-lip trembling if I raise my voice above a whisper, to the boisterous, 6ft tall top year who will be a handful; weirder are the Stepford Wives-esque staff, who are very keen to talk about Weight Watchers and Supernanny on Channel 4 and who are all a bit tense and scary. They make me - a happily-bounding soul in the right company - rather meek and bowed of head. Shall just get on with it I guess. At the other end of the scale is Junior Trinity, where I've now got a full day (shall miss Final Score EVERY SATURDAY CURSES!!!) of teaching 10-17 year-old clever clogs, including one lad who's got 10 times as many compositional accolades to his name as I have. Eeek. So, with BRIT School piano teaching about to be added into the mix, I am truly Loud-Voiced-Folded-Arms-Teacher-Kerry by day...
2) Which is why instead of completeing PhD work as I really should be doing if I had a scrap of sense, I am getting stuck into the idea of becoming the female Nick Hornby and writing a book about football, my love of Wycombe Wanderers mingled with autobiographical details and social comments on girls and footy. Have been inspired by boyfriend's publishing know-how and general encouragement...
3) Got mildly interested in the cricket rather too late... Andy has been attempting to explain to me the riddles of the game, from LBWs (which I keep getting confused with the rather more girly acronyms LBDs and VPLs) and bales to the pseudo-religious 'offering the batsmen the light' and I was just starting to feel involved. It helps that this is a sport which stops for tea, a sentiment I can't fail to admire, as well as one played with a gentlemanly tip of the hat and shake of hand rather than my preferred sport's face-spitting and torrents of potty-mouthed abuse, but dang! Couldn't they have gone on any longer?!
4) Making plum jam - our Brixton garden has sprouted forth with fruit, our plum tree raining merrily down after months of me squinting up at small hard green fruits and wondering what they were. Have been so inundated I've been giving them away to all and sundry in order to avoid breaking my record of 10 in a day - but now the jam experiment is bubbling darkly on the stove...
5) Oxford University Press are publishing another choral piece of mine in January - hurrah! That'll be another 60p in royalties a year then...