This summer actually made a difference. It came just after Middlesex University sent this letter to all its professors (See letter below). Many of us were spared summary redundancy. Yes I know its hard times in the UK public sector yet again but could there have been a marginally less alienating way of handling this? So I staggered into the summer with low morale and panic attacks (and a newly bought coffee grinder which is temporally laid off so to speak). I emerged having read Dharma Bums and Siddhartha and determined to give up work at the soonest opportunity and scale down my Cambridge terraced house for an isolated shack in Norfolk or Suffolk where I can live the life of solitude, more building projects and contemplation. The (re)discovery of [tag]Buddhism[/tag] for me came as a kind of answer to a prayer for some waft of spirituality and meaning in a degenerating life. So today I am back and what has three weeks of meditation and seeking refuge brought: my first row with a colleague in my working life. I am pleased. At last I am behaving differently.