In which I make myself know to the public at large.

Have you ever read David Copperfield? It's the first novel in which Dickens uses a first person narrative, and with each chapter title the hero of the story tells the reader a little - tantalisingly, amusingly little - about what is to happen within the next few pages. Copperfield was my introduction to Dickens thirteen years ago and this style of chapter naming struck me at the time as both unusual and charming. It wasn't that unusual for its time, of course, but it was fresh as a shower on a hangover to me.

Today, I finished Peter Ackroyd's biography of Dickens an was disappointed. As a book, it looked reassuringy big, and Ackroyd seems to be fairly well regarded as a biographer. Only he's not very good at writing biographies. Yes, it includes a thorough itinerary of Dickens's life - the where he went and with whom, the what he wrote when - but it doesn't give you a great deal else. As usual, Ackroyd is more interested in talking about London than he is about concentrating on his subject, and the picture he paints of Dickens is done so in the broadest and most nebulous strokes as to make it little more than idle fancy. Ho hum.

I've actually spent a whole day at home today, which is unusual. At the present time, I have three jobs, all of them part-time, tow of them on a 'casual; basis. 'Casual' in this sense meaning that my employers have absolutely no obligations towards me, and can choose to give me work or not at their whim. Work, for me, is therefore a bit of a game of chance. If there's work there, I have to take it, because I never quite know where the next pay packet is coming from. If I get no work one week, I need to make up the difference the next. If I get no work for two weeks, I live on toast.

Having said that, for the next two months I shall be unceasingly busy, and don't appear to have a single day of Not Working until mid-December. This is, on the whole, good.

Except that I'm also supposed to be training as a teacher of Stage Combat (more of this later), which requieres not only practical classroom time as both student and teaching assistant, but endless hours of writing up notes, known for some reason as 'Logs'. This takes up a lot of time - moreso for me because I have terribe eyesight that doesn't like working for hours at a computer. All of which means that training and work are in constant competition for my time. This is, on the whole, bad.

The purpose of this Blog, then, is an attempt to record how I spent my time in the last three months of this year, in case the sheer volume of work ends up killing me. Wish me luck.