Kerry's Student Card Is Finally Out Of Date, Aged 27

november 8th

Current level of conviction in own genius (out of 10): 6
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: None, too busy teaching small annoying squirming things
Hair day: Currently brown with few remains of goldish highlights... quite au naturel pour moi. But shall prob not be too long before I can resist the urge to murder with cheapo blonde hair dye.

The good news is that the PhD is IN, baby. Trained it up to the land of cobbles to hand it in, with some light feelings of frazzlement at 5 years of occasional hard work suddenly being boxed up and deposited in impatient hands of stern lady in half-moon specs. So that's over with, at least until I am viva-ed up by cool composer Gavin Bryars and (hopefully) bowed down before as new doctor-of-music-type. Which'll be nice. No more cheapo student tickets to footy matches and things though, alas.

Not much other news to report, really. Too busy/financially-underendowed to launch into crazy world of gigging and theatre-going etc. School is hard work, occasionally rewarding but mostly would much rather be wafting about at home with mugs of tea and an aura of extreme artiness than toiling away to make lessons cool and groovy fun by storyboarding The Simpsons' theme tune or studying Arrested Development lyrics and writing our own raps before simply being reduced to Person Who Stands At Front of Room And Tries To Shut Children Up. There are occasional moments of hilarity, like the news of my hair colour change spreading like wildfire among the amazed 6-year olds, or a boy asking me quietly, during rehearsals for his nativity musical, whether this story was real or not. This being a C of E school (albeit one with plenty of Muslim kids), I had to say yes very quickly and pop him back in his place. Elsewhere, I am trying to encourage myself to oil wheels for Kerry Self-Promotion Bandwagon (choral music, poppier demos, football book, juice, oh, anything really) and doing very occasional juice stuff, like performing a lunchtime concert today to 7 (count 'em!) people. Ah, fame beckons, I can smell it...