Seven hours sleep always helps

Coming back to the computer this morning I realise just how pooped I was when I wrote the last entry yesterday evening. Tired, but in a very happy way. Although I’ve enjoyed the predictable and dependable routine of an 8-5 job (and the similarly regular pay cheques) I’ve missed the busy and demanding studio atmosphere. I’m only worried because the term hasn’t really kicked in yet, and my first major deadline is stil five weeks away.

Ever one for making my life more complicated, I’m now heavily involved with SUAS (the Sheffield University Architects Society). This means lots of running around, checking room bookings and chasing phantom architects who promised to give lectures. However, things are shaping up for the new year, and I’m looking forward to the SUAS launch next week. I just need to find some straw bales and lots of bunting. Any suggestions? I’ve been ploughing through the Yellow Pages and begging for help on Sheffield’s online discussion forums with some success, although I know Tuesday (when SUAS starts selling itself to the school) is going to be chaotic.

Things aren’t helped at home by a series of successively difficult nights: I’m using the same duvet and pillows, and a new set of bed linen, but every day I’m waking up at around six o’clock in the morning with extremely short breaths. Not once in Canada did my asthma affect me, despite living with four cats and letting much of the apartment get extremely dusty. My health was so good, in fact, that I spent much of the year free of any of the medication on which I’ve been dependent for so long. To come back to Sheffield at such a busy time, and find that I can’t breathe easily at home isn’t helping. I have this urge to clean our rather old and uncomfortable (landlord supplied) mattress, although now that I’m actually thinking about doing it, I’m not entirely sure how one goes about it. Do you beat it with something? Scrub it with soapy water? Or should I just douse it in petrol and set fire to it?

That last one might actually make it more comfortable.

The weekend should give me some space to think (and probably to breathe as well) and to write lists for next week. I’m going to Glasgow on Saturday, and look forward to some uber-trendy partying with long lost friends now studying architecture at the Mac. So, see you Monday…

SUAS is coming

Oh, sweet lord, I am tired. It’s 19h45 on Thursday evening, and I’m sitting at the bottom of the stairs in the University of Sheffield Main Library. BMM is upstairs collecting some books for her live project, meanwhile I’m falling asleep here in the gentle half darkness of the library foyer. I love the Main Library at this time of year. During the run up to the examination period and final hand-ins, it’s a twenty-four hour hell hole of stressed people who are all managing to work more than you are. Right now, just four days into term, it’s blissfully calm. Only the architecture library seems to be busy right now, as sixth year students make the final dissertation push towards ten thousand words.

Although it’s only the first week, things have been busy. For the first six weeks of the autumn semester here, both fifth and sixth year architecture students take part in what is called the Live Project. The M.Arch course has divided into ten project teams, each with a real client and a real project, that will take us out of the studio and into real life architect-client relationships. It may not be the Rural Studio, but it’s a valuable opportunity to get some hands on experience, if not just with the building, but also with clients.

But that’s not what’s keeping me awake at night. SUAS launches soon, and much is to be done. I promise to blog more very soon.

Sheffield, 06h30

I woke up early this morning. Old habits die hard, and despite the somewhat different body clocks that now coinhabit our room, I was awake and itching to get up at 06h30 this morning. I slipped downstairs with the big box of letters, bills and paperwork that had been collected, opened and collated during my year abroad in Québec. Inside the flimsy plastic box was a year’s worth of credit card bills, phone bills, tax statements, credit card mailings, student loan statements etc. etc. etc. It had to be sorted out sooner or later.

I made a coffee, starting sorting, and listened to the radio (thank whoever you pray to for BBC 6Music… I’m back and I promise not to leave the dial again). While the rest of the house slept on, I tore up unsolicited credit card cheques and sorted bank statements into chronological order.

The night before we had bought some more household essentials, including some Ecover laundry detergent. It’s a small step, but a big one for me, the purchase of environmentally sensitive detergent. Perhaps that’s one of the advantages of living with someone who has the same socially conscious aspirations as you: when you’re together you both feel obliged to actually follow them through. The washing had run overnight, and I’m already getting annoyed with the damp sensation left in the house when clothes are dried inside. So I took the washing basket outside to our newly cleared garden - cleared, incidentally, by our new housemate David, which was a wondrous welcome. Long may he stay.

It was a beautifully clear morning, with a blue sky above me and closely packed terraced houses all around me. I’ve not really used our back yard yet, so it’s still a new place for me. Now that the overgrowth has been cleared, it’s a large square of concrete surface, surrounded by brick walls and a low fence. It’s overlooked on both sides, but that doesn’t detract from it’s situation. It may be a bit ugly, but I hope we can get a bit more out of our summer from this yard. I put the washing out, and watched birds twirling above me. It’d like to be informed and poetic, and tell you what sort of birds they were, but I’m useless at identifying living things (humans included).

Soon, it was almost eight o’clock. Knowing the alarm clock would be going off upstairs shortly, I put the kettle on, and made a cup of tea.

Not really on the road

It is Monday. The week begins today, and so does my two year Masters in Architecture. I am back in Sheffield with many old friends and many new friends. For the first time in the history of the course, fifty percent of the fifth year students who are starting today have joined us from outside the school. As well as some of the students who started here with me on the undergraduate programme five years ago, we now have new colleagues who join us from Bath, Edinburgh, Westminster and Glasgow School of Art. Sheffield’s postgraduate course seems to be poaching people from all over the country, so it’s almost an honour to be back here in the thick of it.

I will write more tomorrow, but for those of you who have missed me, we’ll catch up soon.

Snapshot: tickets

Unpacking and putting things away, these tickets fell out of an overflowing envelope. Was that really only two weeks ago…?