9.00 am: Back on the marking trail, with every expectation that I’ll be off it, finally (for this module), by the end of the day. I’ve been battling with a few non-standard submissions — those that have been made on other than PowerPoint. I was forced to reverse engineer from the document file type to the software that generated it. Thus, I engaged OpenOffice for the first time. It’s freeware, rudimentary, but adequate for most purposes. 10.20 pm: The sky darkened subtly. My mood shifted moderately, in response. (In the background: Keith Jarrett’s Hymns and Spheres (1976). Suitably melancholic and introspective.):

This suite of organ improvisations invariably summons feelings associated with particular moments in my past that lie beyond memory. That’s to say, I know assuredly that they took place, but I cannot recall where or when or, indeed, what they were. Such sensations (always tender and poignant) are abstractions of experience: emotional echoes of events that would be otherwise inaccessible were it not for music. (This is one of the powers of art.)

Outside my study, in keeping with the torporous weather and still air, there was silence, broken only by the passing and parking of cars and the occasional shriek of a lone gull in the distance. (I’ve been here — known this experience — before. Tomorrow, this will be a memory of a memory.)

1.40 pm: To School to deal with a little business:

2.00 pm: Home:

After I’d resourced some equipment purchases of small degree (retail therapy), I continued marking. Four more to go. There’s light at the end of the tunnel (as in a near-death experience, perhaps). It’s a mistake to think that all young people are enthusiastic about, and instinctively capable with, new technologies. The problem with technological revolutions is that, eventually, you’re either forced to join them (he said, being a most reluctant, Johnny-come-lately, mobile phone user) or else risk getting left behind.

3.40 pm: The best of the day came as it closed. Now there’s a lesson in life:

6.30 pm: Practise session 1. 7.30 pm: The final(ish) lap. The night stains like ink:

Once all the submissions had been marked, I return to both those given the lowest marks and those that I’d marked first. This was in order to ensure that I can live the outcomes in the light of the higher banded endeavours, and marks awarded to those that were assessed last. Thereafter, I returned to all the first-class marks, in order to confirm whether the distinctions between them were justifiable. (For example: Why is one submission given 73%  and another, 75%? What does that additional 2% represent?)