Writer's block.

Dave sat staring aimlessly at the blank screen in front of him. He had actually tried to be a hard working student, putting in the extra hours on his project, but it had all come to naught. His project required the use of several computer programs. A grand total of zero of these programs wanted to work on this machine. 'Ah pooh.'

Now he needed something else to do. He'd already read todays Garfield strip and dirty pictures wouldn't be the best idea in the middle of the libary with his wife by his side. What else was there?

Faithfully he had turned to his Blog. Good old blog was always there for him when he had time to kill. Only he couldn't think of anything to write. 'Hmmm....'

He could do a 'Mac', slag off his superiors and be removed from civilisation for all eternity.... tempting, but no.

He could write about his week of training. Yes, that was a good idea. His week of training. When he learnt ... stuff. What had he done exactly? 'Hmmm....'

Surely there must be something he had done that was worth writing about... 'What have I done? What have I done?'

'Oh well,' he surrended, 'White is a nice colour, I guess I'll just leave it blank.'

Remember remember the 5th of November.

Dave was having a blast. He was at his three year old god daughter's birthday party surrounded by all his old friends. Both of them.

He had arrived on time, around 12 noon, and spent the following 5 fun packed hours learning all about 'Dora the Explorer' and 'Laura's Star'. Children's programs, beneath his PhD intellect, though amusing none the less. Finally the host, her father, Dave's good friend Mac put something more mature on.

Totoro, one of the finest movies ever. About a giant fat teddy bear-like creature, who makes trees grow with an umbrella and drives around in a multi-legged cat-bus. Fantastic.

After the 5 hours, his second old friend arrived, completing the set. Five hours late for any normal person, Aline was actually early by her standards, with almost an hour to spare. The 4 of them chatted away together happily, the 3 year old leading the conversation and usually making the most sense. It was good.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and Dave and Aline were soon driven back to there respective homes. Dave sat down with a sigh.

He had work to mark.

Spending Bombfire night marking a pile of student homework was not in channel 4's top 100 ways to have fun on saturday night. It didn't help that about 50% of them had clearly just duplicated the other 50%. It was soo obvious. Why couldn't they just all hand in one paper with all there names on it? That would save time and trees.

Things however, went from bad to worse.

Having finished his marking, it was time to collect his dear sweet wife from the station. She had spent the day in Manchester with an old friend of her own. She had called 20 minutes ago from her friends phone to say she was on her way and that she couldn't call again because her battery was dead. Fair enough.

An hour later, Dave was still waiting at the station.

'Tum tee tum, stupid trains.'

Another hour later, Dave was being kicked out of the station, "I'm sorry, no more trains are coming tonight."

Where the f*%$ was Jean?

"She must have gone home," he said outloud. Talking to himself outloud was a common sign of stress for Dave, not good. "She must have missed me somehow and gone home."

"But why hasn't she called? She could charge her phone if she's home."

Having missed the last bus he, very calmly and sensibly, ran like a bat out of hell untill his side split open and more.

"Where is she? Maybe she forgot her keys? She could have been locked outside, waiting for me to come home..."

He arrived back in record time. No sign.

He conntacted her friend from Manchester. No news.

Another hour passed. Then another. Still nothing.

He fell to his knees and prayed his heart out.

Then he called the police.

Thats when she walked in. "Are you calling the police?" she asked in an innocent surprised little way.

Women. Can't live with them, can't kill them.

Her train had been cancelled, she had been provided with a coach, but the coach had been a few hours late and very slow. Dave's sanity slowly reformed as he reverted back to his original statement.

'Stupid Trains.'

Jean was home, life was good.

I won! I WON!

The group came back in after lunch. They were on a creative training day to help them with teaching skills. It was going well.

Having introduced themselves in a round robin manner, they had spent the rest of the day playing games and colouring pictures. Several people thought it was all a stupid waste of time, like being back at nursery again, hardly fitting for a group of 11 PhD students. Dave loved it, it was like being back at nursey again! He didn't know a PhD got so good.

Lunch had also not been seen in the most favorable of lights.

"What is this stuff?" one person had commented on the insides of his sandwich, "I think it's suppose to be beef..."

Yes, they where awful sandwiches to go with the less than fantastic tea and biscuits, but these people seemed to forget the important aspect. They were FREE. As such, Dave helped himself to several platefulls and since he didn't drink tea he cut back to only 3 cups. Yum.

The session had started again and the group gathered to play Bingo. Human Bingo. The rules of Human Bingo are very much the same as the regular kind, only you are given a sheet full of descriptions like "I've never been to an Ice Rink" and then you have to find a person in the group who matches that description. Match all the descriptions in a line and you win a line, match all of them and you win a full house.

It was a tense game, everyone asking everyone else all these strange things, each desperate to win the grand prize. Finally someone shouted "HOUSE!"

...it was Dave. Dave had done it. He'd won first prize. A set of cheap pens!!!! A whole set!!! From black to pink, the complete range!!!

Everyone tried to hide there envy but Dave could feel it burning in there eyes. When the day finally finished, he packed the pens quickly into his bag and made for the door. He had to watch his back.

Luckily, no attempt was made on his life this time and he was left in peace to savor the moment.

"I won! I WON!!!!"