Moving sideways

Or, subject-specific drifting: the early adopter.

I moved sideways yesterday. The plan is for us to be in offices by department next year. The English Department will be in the IB office and graciously hosting IT, Music, and some scientist. I can see the point of grouping subjects in particular offices because of the expansion in the programme, but I’ve enjoyed being in a mixed-subject office this year.

Perhaps it isn’t so much the office as its liveliness. Sooner rather than later, we seem to end up in some fairly left-field conversations. Yesterday it was about the technical details of methane production, and how much poo would be needed to power a hotel; and the tuning of a guitar led to g-strings, but that was end-of-term hysteria making us behave like schoolboys. Or perhaps we are schoolboys at heart.

The office to the south seems to have lacked that critical mass to be as vibrant as our office has been. Quite often the place has been deserted. I also note that no one who was originally in that office is planning to return.

The IB office has had something closer to the mass, but there was a cultural dichotomy and no real life in the place. I’m hoping that once things are up and running next term, some of the old spirit will be revived, but I think that without that mixture of science and humanities, we’ll never quite recapture the same élan.

In unrelated news I note that the RSS feed from the BBC is being blocked. Could it be something to do with a Mr D. Lama of Тйbэт and his friend, a Mr C. Windsor of Highgrove, having a meeting? The feeds themselves aren’t blocked, but trying to access stories via the feeds without opening channel D is impeded.