JAMES BAER – London – 2014

A glorious spring day in London, sunny and a ridiculous 15 degrees Celsius – and I in no shape to enjoy it. Thanks to my procrastination over the past week, I have to spend the whole day working on a report that’s due tomorrow, something I could have been done with by Friday had I been working more diligently. I get up very early to see off my friend Mary June, who’s been visiting for the past week and has to get a car to the airport at 4:15 a.m. Thoughts I’d had of sitting down to work once Mary June has left come to nothing, since I’m too exhausted to do anything but go back to bed. Last night my choir gave a concert outside London which I didn’t get back from until just after midnight, and I’m not going to manage on four hours of sleep. And so the day goes by with birds singing their spring songs outside, the occasional chatter of people going past the house on their way to a park or a cafe, and me staring at the computer screen trying to make sense of the documents I have to synthesize into a report. I finish at 1 a.m., relieved but not particularly happy with myself.