The end of the first week

I am so knackered someone needs to invent a new word for it.

This week, my first at the internship, has been tough. I get up at half past five in the morning, to make sure I have time for lunch and to watch the morning news, and then it's fantastically tough days of research and writing. There's not much else I can say about my work, except it's fun and the people are great.

So what else is there to say?

Days are long. Commuting is hard, but the company is good - a very old friend who's also interning in the city catches the same train, so it's a good opportunity to talk about current affairs/talk about the horrifying way our peers are getting married and producing spawn like frogs in the springtime.

The weather in London has been horribly hot all week, so the women of the City have broken out smart dresses and skirts. Meanwhile, the men are sweating enough to fill a swimming pool the size of Hyde Park, because we're all essentially constrained by the same structure and it's dumb. I am tempted to get a kilt and just wear it to work every day, because this is becoming untenable. It'll also make sure everyone remembers me, so - win?

I met up with old friend and excellent feminist blogger +Monique Bouffe a couple of times too; the first for a pint, a burger and a game of Scrabble; (which I lost at the last moment because of an excellent placement of "quint," a run of five cards in piquet) and the second for the Battle of the Bands, Prom number 30. The conceit was essentially a bit silly - Count Basie's band against Duke Ellington's - but the songs they played were fantastic and done with huge amounts of passion. I was struck, however, by the fact that for Big Band music, the players were almost entirely white.

Pictured: more black people than were playing in both bands last night.

It's a bit odd.

It was also frustrating that, since it was the BBC, "Battle of the Bands" became "Gentle Competition between the Bands" where everybody won. It's a competition. These are grown men (and a couple of women). They can deal with it.

In any case, it was amazing. There's nothing quite like seeing a Big Band play Cottontail live.

So now it's time for the weekend, and a run that was cut distinctly short by the fact that my running partner decided halfway through that he'd had quite enough and was going home after a measly 2.5km. This is my running partner, by the way:

Quitter.

Getting a phone call saying your dog has found its way home by itself is more than a little worrying, especially when there are roads between there and the woods where we were running. On the other hand, he got home okay, so I suppose that's the most important thing. He's limping around now because he overdid it. 

Silly dog.

And now it's time for dinner and it looks like steak and chips, so I'll write some more next week but in the meantime, here's my friend John on the news.