The tide is out and the boats are stranded …until the next time the tide comes in! Looe was once one of the most important ports in England – it was where the boats shipped tin, copper, arsenic and other minerals mined from districts like the one in which we live to their destinations around the country and the wider world. These days it’s a small fishing port and a tourist haven.

Tonight it was the venue for a much needed bit of respite from my studies, which today spanned about 10.5 hours and I’m slipping further and further behind with every day that passes. Now my hopes of getting a couple of days off before going back to school after the Easter “holiday” are basically Bob and no. Bob Hope, no hope geddit???

We met up with Alan and Dee and went for a ruby. They are exactly the tonic I needed – somehow they always make me feel a little better about my chance of succeeding at this insane, stupid quest that I have set for myself. When I spend most of my days now wondering why I didn’t just go on the dole and try to get a job on a supermarket checkout after finishing my degree last year, they manage to make me think that I may just make it. Of course, the morning after the night before when it’s 8am and I’m already at my desk and about to start work, my little modicum of confidence has drifted off like the sun burning off the Cornish mist from the hills this morning and the tears of sheer misery and frustration are setting in again.