I graduated today :-)

I wore a silly gown and hat. I let my family try on my hat. I spread the wings of the gown in order to look like Batman. We ate Italian food. Champagne was consumed in moderation. One of my tutors knew who I was and congratulated me without me needing to tell her what I got. I carefully threw my hat in the air for staged photos of spontaneous joy. My father ended up in the middle of a proper Oxford graduation in his car by mistake but made it to mine in time.

Surprisingly, despite the cat-herding drama of getting everyone organised, the day itself went extremely smoothly and was very enjoyable. My Mum told quite a lot of people what I got, whether or not they asked. She also took enthusiastic photos of the pizza man at La Cucina throwing the dough in the air, so I think she had a pretty good day too.

One of the professorships conferred was in the History department to a Professor of Blasphemy. I will never be that cool.

andyluke has a very interesting article about the intimidation of the elderly by custom officials here.

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I'll reserve comment on tonight's Red Dwarf until they've all been aired. I missed a lot of it because I'm currently at home, and my stepfather managed to knock his wine glass over and smash it on my dinner plate. The subsequent drama about whether my dinner might have shreds of glass in took quite a lot of family debate and I therefore missed a fair amount of the episode.
(For the record I was happy to risk the glass. My mother, however, would hear of No Such Thing. All was eventually well, however, and everyone got fed)

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Also, we went to see Marley and Me tonight. It was considerably better than I'd expected, despite not being my type of film. Our dog got a lot of fuss when we came home :-)

So apparently there is no work around home.
This is bad.

However I will draw your attention to the fact that there are currently two elephant keeper jobs going in BIAZA institutions - one at Chester and one at Twycross. Why the sudden defecit of elephant staff?

It's probably libellious to suggest that the previous holders of the positions met on an elephant care conference and ran off together, leaving sudden vacancies behind them :-) Anyway, in case anyone's contemplating a drastic career change, the jobs are here. You do need elephant experience, however...

I'd fancy that animal records post if it wasn't in Cumbria, though.