Right, I can drop off now.

I slip into bed with my book after a nice warm bath in lavender oil and I nod off my 11.30pm.

And then - 2.30am - awake again. Like someone has screamed "up you get, lady" in my ear. Bright, wide, stark and clear awake. And so I stay, more or less, till the alarm goes off at 6am.

I am kind of used to it now. I lie there, passively, pondering verses of poetry I can remember... Lyrics of songs... Sometimes counting sheep wearing jerseys with 'zzzs' on them. But it is getting on my wick now.

It's making me a right bad tempered madam for a start. I've taken a voilent dislike to Ben Fogle and that's like hating puppies, isn't it? Well primarily I'm loathing that programme on BBC2 that's on at tea time where he takes a variety of people on lovely adventure holidays and they whine and bitch all the way there and and all the way back.

The script is the centre of my loathing for this programme. I mean there's 'top-spin' and then there's just taking the piss isn't there?

It's clearly made for some foreign market where it'll be chockful of adverts because every five minutes we have to recap on the 'action' in terms like:
* 'See how one of our team is struck by the potentially fatal, possibly lethal and sometimes deadly altitude sickness.'
* 'Will our trip be blighted by disaster as Joan takes a trecherous 25 metre slide back down a mud bank?'
* 'Can the team rally to escape the evil, vicious, man-eating rhododendrons that stalk the Himalayas in packs, creeping through the jungles with their big pink flowers, redolent of the Victorian garden?'
Ok, I made that last one up. Obviously no-one has used 'redolent' in a BBC narration since 1974.

What it should be saying is something that at least is half honest. I wouldn't mind if they at least faced up to the fact six people and a TV crew wandering around in the most astounding place on the planet still isn't that interesting. How about:
* Watch how the team act like a bunch of complete sissies when confronted with an iddy-biddy leech;
* Marvel at how inept people can be at putting up a tent, working together or showing any compassion for colleagues who are clearly very ill;
* Write to your MP in outrage that your licence fee is being spent taking people on holiday.

But no, we have to dress everything up like it's riddled with death, doom and destruction. Ben Fogle should know better - that's what's also annoying me, the fact he's willing to read out that rubbish.

And then they put it on at tea-time when I want to watch something interesting. Not something that should be hidden away at 4am for insomniacs who can actually be bothered to get out of bed. Hmmmm....

On my Saturday morning reccie down the river, jogging along to see the ducks and herons and the bob-tail bunnies scatter through the track to the wood, I thought the water looked to be moving fast.

Then, when I jogged home, sliding around in the mud, I suddenly ran out of path. The river had burst her banks.

So I scrambled right up the banking between the river and the golf course and, now covered in mud and leaves, picked my way along the overgrown boundary path. I had to climb over branches and scramble under others and it was all really quite exciting.

Sometimes there is nothing like rolling about in mud to make you feel like an eight year old kid again. It really is quite exhilarating, i can't recommend it enough.

So this morning I decide to check out the other end of the river. It's way too muddy now for running and we all know how I suffer with that right ankle (bought strapping as advised, bearing up, thank you).

Walking boots and waterproofs on today and I set off down Boat Lane and arrive at the weir to discover the weir has compeltely disappeared. Just torrents of muddy water swirled over that. Up towards Didsbury the river was moving with an incredible energy and had burst her banks on both sides. The golfers can't get to the golf club because the road's under water and the ducks appeared to have given up and gone home. All I saw was a few seagulls and some toughy cormarants making their way up river, very slowly.

Time for it to stop raining I think. I haven't seen the news yet but I'm guessing Gloucestershire is under water by now.

Poor Bobby Fischer, check mate at 64 and after a life that flashed so much brillance only to come crashing down.

Beating Spassky in 1972 gave America just what it needed in the Cold War years, a win against the monumental brilliance of the Russians' chess masters.

Bobby Fischer once said 'chess is better than sex' which might be pushing it but there is certainly something deeply satisfying about wiping the smug smile off some smart-arse's face with a couple of sweeping moves and then grinding him into the board. It's an interesting perspective.

I wonder if America will forgive him for everything he's said about them and honour him for what he gave them.

The Guardian claims chess kept him sane and he died a madman. I'm sorry if that's true. His win against Spassky sparked a worldwide fascination with what has to be one of, if not the finest of games ever devised. In many was he was a hero.

I'm a Kasperov woman myself. I found him the most incredibly exciting player to watch and I'm afraid during the Nigel Short-Garry Kasperov challenge in the 1990s I made our press officer keep him tv off ceefax and on Channel 4's chess games coverage every afternoon so I could watch over his shoulder.

I have a great deal of respect for what he is now trying to achieve in Russia. He is a very brave man. Some might say his open criticism of Putin is madness. Maybe there is a link between chess and sanity.

Yes, it's a sad song, and a lonesome song, and a massively time-consuming and very, very, very long song. It's full tilt now into The Dissertation Badlands, where i wander and sing the Dissertation Blues.

So, kittens, I must keep my Blogland fun under control and accept I'll be shackled to my desk reading papers, leafing through journals, drafting research surveys and trying to make decisions. I can't come out to play like I used to.

I'm rationing myself to an hour every other day and so at least you'll be spared excesses of my hissy-fits over Anna Friel's perceptions of torture, my parallel universe theories surrounding my cutlery drawer and by appeals for my running mojo.

But it'll all be over on April 23 and then I'll be like a normal person but with 20 extra hours every week. God help us all!

So, really just saying I'm not dead, I'm not being mardy or idle I'm just horribly busy - but dipping in on the news - so let's keep it interesting out there!

Not often I hear something that makes me laugh... and then laugh again.

Best joke of the day.

Kevin Keegan is Newcastle Manager - again. After the last time! Ha!!

Someone call Amnesty immediately. One of our finest actresses is suffering unspeakable anguish. It must stop.

Rochdale-born beauty and one-time Brookie starlett, the luscious pouting Anna Friel, is in America.

It seems the Golden Globes Awards have been cancelled due to those pesky striking writers and poor Anna has been robbed of the opportunity to grace the red carpet, having already bought her dress.

Miss Friel, 31 told the Metro: 'On the day I found out they weren't going to happen my stylist was in the car and I had all these dresses in the back of the car. It was like torture.'

Torture? Maybe just an unfortunate choice of words but good to see playing Beth Jordashe didn't affect her. If, indeed, actually touch the sides.

It's been a funny weekend, what with nagging ankle injury (which is now swathed in crepe bandage and that will have to do until I get to Boots on Monday).

Confined to barracks I've been hopping around, making courgette soup and vats of chilli and generally making the house look semi-respectable and not the lair of Britain's greatest living slattern.

I've changed bed linen, ironed bed linen even. I've dusted and vacuumed and cleared up the piles of text books scattered all over the study floor. That's the trouble with day jobs and studying. Suddenly you look up and everything is filthy.

I've got everything together to write Ellie's little holiday guide to Costa Rica and spent a happy couple of hours rereading my journals. I laughed and laughed.

The entries from when I worked on a leatherback turtle conservation project were hilarious. I start off with great enthusiasm and as the draining experience of patrolling beaches in tropical storms in the pitch black wears away at said great enthusiasm... by week three I'm clearly sick of the sight of turtles and fantasising about chocolate cake.

Night One: 'Twice got lost on way to basecamp and almost garrotted myself on someone's washing line. Was then taken on some kind of Blair Witch Project terror tour through the woods. Mostly I could see nothing. I just followed the rustling of waterproof clothing.'

What follows reads like the description of a slapstick comedy with me being eaten alive by mosquitos from hell, fending off the attentions of my host's lascivious uncle, swearing I'll kill the howler monkeys if they jump on the roof of my hut one more time, debating what to do with the bat that's in my bedroom and falling over constantly.

Ah, happy days...

Isn't it typical. You're all set for galloping about in the sunlight. The air's chilly but at least you can see the sun. You get half way down the river and 'oww, oww, oww'. Niggling little ankle injury is back. Pah!

I wouldn't mind but I didn't even do it running. I fell off a kerb climbing on a bus. And I did it in September. And I've been a good girl and rested it all over the November, December period and the little git is back. Nag, nag, nag... ow, ow, ow...

It feels worse when you walk on it, than when you run on it and for that reason (and yes, I know it was a stupid thing to do) I jogged gently up to the copse and then spent half an hour playing my favourite game - running up the hill and sliding back down and round through the silver birch trees.

And I'm very glad I did. I saw a fox trotting up the slope I use for running up, carrying a dead rabbit in her mouth. Yes, I know it sounds a bit brutal, but that's the reality of nature. And it seemed an amazing thing to watch of a chilly, January morning. And I quite forgot my ankle hurt. And I had a bit of a ponder to myself about how sometimes you feel like the fox and sometimes you feel like the rabbit, but that's just life and there's no point analysing things to death. Stuff just is.

Of course I haven't mentioned the dodgy ankle to his nibs, he'll only try to take my running shoes off me. I'll go and get it sorted next week. Maybe I just need new running shoes... if not, anyone want to trade right ankles? Mine's a bit useless.

Excuse the double negative there, and just to be more confusing it turns out I can. Sleep that is.

And what comes with sleep, bloody nightmares, apparently.

I am up with the - whatever is making that sqwarking noise outside my back bedroom, but I'm guessing it's not a lark - because the thought of dropping back into the hell my subconscious concocted was way more scarier than 4.45am.

I won't go into detail, suffice to say it was a messy, realistic mixture of crimes. Yuk, indeed.

So in celebration of Insomnia I give you this, a fine tune that reminds me of a fine night's dancing my backside off at Glasgow Barrowlands when I saw them in concert eons ago.

Maybe that's what I need... dancing!

It may be that I've noticed this because I am of an age where we're constantly told that our biological clocks should be ticking like Big Ben and 'it's have that baby now or never' time. This, of course, means means more than half the women I know are either pregnant or new mums or desperate to be both.

Well it's either our age or Gordon Brown is planning a tax on epidurals and I missed that one in the Metro.

But every baby boy seems to be called Fin these days. Really, that's three Fins in the past 12 months I know of. Guaranteed to be the Jason of his generation. Where's it come from though? Jason, well it could have been Jason King, or maybe Jason the cat from Blue Peter... maybe not. But Fin? Finley Quaye? Fin Family Moomintrol? Where do these name fashions come from?

While I'm having a day of tutting and moaning, something caught my eye this morning as I stood perishing in the wind/rain/gloom.

Our local high street bookies has the words 'Sale Now On' plastered all over its window. How can it be that the bookies is having a flamin' sale?

'Normally we'd offer you 10-1 on Stumbling Fool in the 2.30 at Haymarket but as it's January sale time you get 15-1 and a free burger guaranteed to give you a coronary before you can spend you winnings?' How does that work? No don't tell me, I don't want to know.

Ever noticed everything has a name these days?

I can understand naming houses, there's a fair tradition there, though I passed one while at home for Christmas called The Moneypit which maybe true but mostly speaks volumes aobut how incredibly tasteoless its owners are.

But now sofas have names. Cups have names. Yesterday I had an entire conversation about a mug in the Habitat range called Rex. It's a flamin' mug, how can it be called Rex?

Thank you to all who have come up with cunning plans to lure my hyperactive noggin into the land of nod.

I have cut back on the caffiene, I am drinking milky drinks before bed, lolling in warm baths and practicing my corpse position yoga relaxation techniques.

Now Assignment No 9 is in the bag, hopefully I won't have the words of James Curran, Simon Cottle and Stuart Hall rattling around my brain along with the general cacophany of nonsense that accompanies sheep nos 300 to 1 as I count them backward over the hedge.

All tricks tried so far have been met with mixed success. I managed four hours of sleep last night, broken only by being robbed of any duvet coverage by the Beloved who, once asleep, loses any notion of what it is to share nicely.

How do you cope with a duvet-hogging partner? Other than smothering him with a pillow, of course?

Yes, yes, yes!!!!

I've finished. Hu-bloody-rah.

You know, being a student part-time, while trying to hold a job down full-time, does have it's rewards. Sometimes I feel truly supersonic and not to say a little smug as I learn stuff, and write stuff and get told how well I'm doing. Over-achieving, proper little madam? That's me.

But sometimes it's just bobbins. You're ploughing through papers on democratic theory, wading through books written in some kind of strange language, you know there's something good on tele but you can't watch that and read this, and not forgetting all the work stuff that has to be kept going...

This essay has been a nightmare. But it's done and dusted and in the post tomorrow.

I've already treated myself to a little something shopping-wise and this weekend I'm not going to read a thing written by an academic. Not a sausage.

However dissertation next; days locked in libraries and nights lashed to the computer as I fight my way through the storm of study await me - until April.

When I shall be free, free to squander my evenings any way I choose. Did I mention learning to play the violin is next?

Who'd have thought it - nuns brawling in the street. I'm sure it's not really that funny, but it's not often you hear about a nun beating the living daylights out of a pirate.

I really must do something about my early morning reading matter.

Ok, so what do I have to do to get some sleep? Run to Birmingham and back?

I have been missing any proper sleep for three nights now though I know I've had catnaps, because I remember the dreams - beyond bizarre. But I also know I've looked at the clock in despair at 1.45am, 3.30am, 4.40am...

Of course last night's lying there thinking 'go to sleep' over and over again was accompanied by a howling storm. Don't know what it's like where you are, but it's raining battery acid here today. Pah, roll on spring.

Any ideas on cures for my sleeplessness eagerly anticipated.

I've just taken a break from being a swot to make tea and scan the Guardian.

Apparently in spite of the fact we can't move on the tele for celebrity chefs we aren't cooking at home we're hooked on convenience food, eat out loads and love our Asian food.

So all that Jamie Oliver, Wittering-What's-His-Name and the One That Shouts, all to no avail then? And I can't imagine Nigella Lawson's much inspiration to actually cook anything. That woman spends so much time licking her fingers her kitchen has more in common with a lap-dancing club.

Clearly we've now somehow got making food muddled up with entertainment. We can't be bothered spending time creating something, it's just got to appear. Are we really that busy? Or just idle?

Either way I think is an excellent reason to turf these celebrity chefs off the tele. Let them earn a crust cooking something.

Right - onwards!

What with the blackness of winter, and me hurling my teddy out the cot when one of my friends died in December, I'd kind of hung up my running shoes.

But when I woke up this morning I thought: 'It's time.'

So I unearthed my running togs, slapped on the ipod and headed for the river. An hour and a half later and I was home covered in mud, sweat and a few leaves I picked up sliding about trying to run as fast as I could up a slope in the copse.

I've kind of lost the ability to run for six miles non-stop and it'll probably be a while before I can join up the dots, but given the fact I've done little more than mope about the house like a lost ghost for a month it was a champion effort.

Right - I have an essay to polish - later my dears.

So there I am in the supermarket, it's 7.45am and I'm doing a poor impression of consciousness as I wait to pay for tonight's tea ingredients.

Girl comes up behind me in the queue, clutching a pair of pink fleece gloves and a selection of candles. One great chunky one, two boxes of household candles.

'I like the light,' she says by way of explanation. 'And besides candlelight is cheaper than electricity isn't it.'
'Uh-huh,' I respond (I am not at my most erudite before two buckets of nescafe).
'I've just been in to see my mum. She works in the bakery. It's early for me.'
'It's normal time for me and I can barely see,' I reply, watching the woman in front of me pack three carrier bags before saying 'I only came in for a loaf of bread.'
'I'm not working just now, I've been ill.' continues Miss Candles. 'Got rsi. I used to work in customer service, For White Arrow, do you know them? I'm going to go into health care. At the hospital. I like helping people.'
'That'll be a great job,' I say.
'Yeah, it were really stressful at times at White Arrow. Talking to people with one of those headsets on, and typing. People from London were the worst. They used to be really nasty. Used to threaten to drive up here and set fire to the depot if they didn't their stuff right away.'
'Really?'
'God, yeah. Right nasty. You have a nice day at work now,' she says as I sling the spaghetti in my bag.
'Yeah, good luck with the health care job, see you,' I reply, stumbling off towards the door.

I mean, I know we prattle on a bit up here and I know living in London can be stressful, but is it really necessary to threaten arson? Do people pander to their regional stereotypes? I'm from the south and I've lived up here 22 years. I have to say it was living in Sheffield as a student that converted me but I thought I'd just found my spiritual home. Any thoughts?

When I get to the Cornerhouse the Beloved is already there, buying the tickets, even though we've time for a pint. 'I'm really looking forward to this,' he says.

He's so excited he starts a conversation about the exact lyrics of Acapulco (...does he say 'soft girl' does he say 'soccer' does he mean 'soca', as in soca music...) and as I drink my pint of guinness I am silently praying this film doesn't disappoint.

Well I need not have worried, I'm Not There is inventive, intelligent and astonishingly well acted. Cate Blanchett is breathtaking as Bob. As she skitters and weaves she is Bob. It's worth seeing for her performance alone. They're all good, very good. Charlotte Gainsbourg surprisingly good.

Several actors playing one man seems strange, but Bob Dylan is an artist who has moved through many phases as a musician and those transitions are probably more completely achieved than any other artist I can think of (though I'm sure there's someone out there who'll just love debating that one) so why not? His inspirations - from protest to rock to god - have certainly taken his music in dramatically different directions.

He may be referred to as His Bobness in our house but it's not me with the 64 books about Bob Dylan and the shelves stacked with CDs. The Beloved was clearly delighted. Apparently for the Bob fans there's all sorts of references. Lyrics quoted, characters from songs brought to life in a country town.

The soundtrack alone is worth having. I Want You, is of course in there but there are over 30 corking covers. Eddie Vader (of Pearl Jam fame) belting out All Along the Watchtower, Highway 61 Revisted by Karen O, Knock'in on Heavens Door, Anthony and the Johnsons - all beyond expectation. The Beloved keeps talking about the Basement Tapes and I'm sure that means something to someone.

So, good for me, who knows next to nothing about Bob. Good for him who knows just about everything you can read or hear about His Bobness. A Top Ten film of this year for us and for sometimes to come.

So having staggered out of bed this morning at 10 to 6, I just about manage to co-ordinate getting ready for work, catching a bus, a train and staggering into sainsbury's to buy coffee, milk and anything else I can see that might keep me awake.

On the way in there, there they are, carefully displayed near the door... hot cross buns.

Is it me or are we galloping through time like we're on the waltzers these days? Can't we ever stop and smell the flowers?

As I wandered into a clearly empty building I did notice the Christmas tree still there, looking how I feel - mostly dead with limp baubles. The office cleaner hasn't turned off my radiator like she usually does so my office is quite cozy, my bat phone's not flashing so I've no nagging inquiries to sort first thing and my spider plant appears to have survived without me. I'm on my second cup of coffee. The corridor is silent.

I'm off to see I'm Not There tonight. The Beloved is massive on Bob Dylan. All right for him. He's still in bed. No work for him till Monday.

But I'll be fine. I'm prepared. There's a can of redbull lite in the handbag now.

So the Beloved is on a roll now... 'Let's go to Ikea,' he says. Now he's been and bought a sofa there's no stopping him.

So there we are this afternoon, rolling into Ashton train station with the big blue and yellow box that is Ikea looming on our right like a huge temple to the Swedish chipboard furniture gods.

We battle against the winds down the dual carriageway, walk around the huge blue box until we find the entrance and so begin our epic journey along the trail of mock mini rooms.

About the time we've found our way to bedrooms I'm beginning to lose the will to go on. But of course I can't go back. You can never go back in Ikea. It's like the Holy Grail but with no get out clauses.

'Sorry Arthur, the old horse got a bit tierd just past the day beds so we left Lancelot to soldier onto the checkout.'

Oh, no. it's do or die in Ikea. Arrows on the floor point the way and so I must pass through kitchens, offices, children's bedrooms, something called the market hall and through lighting and some plants into this vast cavern of flatpacked stuff, stacked high as an elephant's eye - if not higher.

I'm getting seriously grizzly now. Firstly because I haven't seen daylight for what feels like three days, secondly because the sea of people galloping towards the tills suggests there's queuing ahead and thirdly because it's way past my breakfast and lunchtime now and I'm not good news if my blood-sugar levels get too low.

You know that advert where the mother out-tantrums the child, throwing herself on the floor? I'm not quite that bad but I have been known to punctuate a point by stamping my foot.

Thankfully full-blown hysterics was avoided; a woman came and opened another till and we were out in 15 minutes and a bag of crisps was swiftly purchased for my inner brat.

Perhaps internet shopping next time. Snacks are only a staircase away.

For all of you with New Year's Day blues/hangovers/a general feeling of looming gloom that sweeps over you, leaving you wringing your hands and wandering the house aimlessly, I have the antidote.

Watch the dog when the landlord exits left, having declared 'this is more than I can stand'.

That dog is a comic genius. Laugh Gravy, I love you! Laurel and Hardy aren't bad either.

As mentioned previously, New Year's Eve is a fest of food, wine and board games at our house, accompanied by the playing of fave tunes and the occasional jiggle round the kitchen.

We also watch the Jools Holland thing for the countdown bit looms and as I spotted one of my work chums in the audience last year, dancing gamely and looking like he was actually having a good time, I was quite enthusiastic about seeing it again.

Now is it me, or has this programme's reason for being shifted from a celebration of music into some great celebrity worshiping exercise? What few real audience people I could see appeared to be standing up in Top Gear style, but behind a metal bar. Everyone allowed to sit down at a table had Jools weeble up to them, rabbiting all the way, before asking them the same inane question about their predictions for 2008.

Having enjoyed a brief moment of the Kaiser Chiefs, Kate Nash or... well that's more of less it for me... we were then plunged back into a pond of embarrassed forced smiles as a bunch of actors and comedians were forced to reveal that in real life they weren't very funny and, in fact, were more than a bit dull.

Best bit of actual music - Seasick Steve.

Best bit of audience - Bernie Ecclestone's daughter, Tamara, flagrantly flogging her sister's new business venture. (Have these people no shame? What is wrong with Bernie Ecclestone's hair?)

Most embarrassing moment - so many, but for me a close call between Kylie and Lulu attempting Madness-stylie dance moves and Arthur Smith taking the piss out of the Ecclestone sisters.

Most shocking revelation - Dr Who can't dance

Best bit of non-music - Paul McCartney revealing to the world his voice is shot and he dances like a frog.

Perhaps this programme did serve to show up celebrities as the deeply ordinary, unfunny, dullards we all know, deep down, they have to be. Because let's face it, they're just us with shinier jobs.

If I could have one New Year's wish it would be that we all cottoned on to that fact that the cult of celebrity is just that. It's the emperor's new clothes. It's not big, it's not clever, it's not going to solve world hunger, end war, change anything.

Right, now I've got that off my chest I'm off for a stomp about in a field to breath some air that's not centrally heated.

Happy New Year!