blink, blink

Is that the sun? How amazing to emerge from the chrysalis of exam marking to discover that it's spring. There's even blossom and greenery.

The thing about marking is, you leave the real world for three weeks and inhabit an alternate universe where time stands still and is only divided by the ends and beginnings of the essays. You no longer say "in an hour's time" but "in four papers' time". "Ten papers" is the new language for "this evening".

In this weird ellipsis of time, everything else gets a bit screwy as well. I have a pair of finished slippers that materialised during the marking period, but all my sewing needles have up and left while I was gone, so I can't finish them off (where you weave in the ends). I have two thirds of one, monster, sock, which is so massive I think I have to rip it out and do it again - though that might just be the marking-time perspective clouding my perception.

Blink, blink. I'm clawing my way back.