I've spent pretty much all of today pouring over papers, nose deep in books and giving myself a headache over focus group research techniques.

I was spitting this morning as the weather was too foul even for me to go out running and so, after I'd scurried round the market and grabbed a paper I sat down to pour over the Guardian.

At our last uni conference, when we talked about our research projects, I met a woman from Palestine. God knows how she'd managed to get permission to attend. I'm ashamed to say I can't remember her research project details but I can tell you it was very serious stuff.

Again Gaza looms up like some great looping news nightmare where children die daily in rocket attacks, homes destroyed, lives ripped apart. Whether they are Israeli or Palestinian lives.

Why on earth do people still believe killing each other is ever going to solve anything? What hope is there for any peace when the Egyptian mediator cancels his visit because of escalating fighting?

Studying got put on hold for an hour while I went for a brooding walk along the river, slammed on the ipod, and let the wind blow me about.

And since then I've buckled down and stopped 'poor me-ing' about the amount of work I have to do at weekends. Because it did strike me, as I watched a moorhen flapping about on a path looking incredibly cute, that my lot is a very lucky one and my Palestinian colleague might not be alive this afternoon to work on her dissertation.