When I arrive at work, I drop in at the kitchen en route to our office. This morning Jan, the receptionist, is heating porridge in the microwave. She is slender, toned, young, blonde, and predictably rather ditzy; everything I am not. She has a jar of Bonne Maman strawberry conserve with a teaspoon in it, waiting for the porridge. Did I mention I am on a diet? All I plan on having is a mug of hot water.

I set off the kettle, and while I'm waiting for it to boil we – kettle, microwave, Jan and I – all seem to be in quite close proximity, so I find I need to make casual conversation. We talk about porridge. I don't care for porridge as such, but I love oatmeal and oatcakes, so I transfer that admiration to the wetter mix. Jan won't appreciate what I really want to say but I have to say something, so I chat about the filling and sustaining qualities of oats and their excellent glycemic index. I could if necessary have gone into raptures about that childhood tobacco tin of long, pale, whole oats with which I fed the rocking horse each afternoon; I think Mum must have thrown the first lot away when I wasn't looking, because I distinctly remember two purchases from the pet shop, but only one tobacco tin. However, before I am forced to such depths of inanity, Jan's microwave time runs out and, bearing her steaming bowl with its deep red clump of jam, she departs to Reception. Time: 9 am.

I teach all morning, presenting my students with law in the form of the Data Protection Act 1998. Then we do an exercise in writing a Data Protection policy for an organisation, based on a scenario with which they are familiar from an earlier assignment. They work well, despite a few pauses when one or two look unsettlingly blank. I nearly start to talk to them in those pauses, but instead I prompt them back onto the right lines, so by mid-day they are all in possession of appropriate notes, and away they go to lunch. Un-talked-to.

Neither one of my colleagues is in the office, so there's nobody to talk to there. I walk downtown to Waterstones and I do some critical shelf browsing; but I don't buy anything. The coffee-scent drifts over from Costa's and their pastries behind the glass call to me. Soup from the corner cafe is what I actually buy; a tasty stock with lots of vegetables in it and the odd lentil lurking in the broccoli as though furtively seeking a friend. I buy a BIG mugful though, which does feel faintly indulgent, and I follow it with an apple. I carry a cup of coffee (made with semi skimmed milk) down to the lab for the afternoon's one o'clock lecture. Same students, different subject. We approach XML with care; but these are keen students and before the end of the afternoon they have done so much exploration via the Internet that they probably understand more about XML than I do. They're all so engrossed that the subject on my tongue once more goes back into secrecy and I know by now it won't dare pop out at all.

End of the day. I drive home – slightly sleepily – and arrive home an hour later. All I want now is a quiet sit before making supper. I drink another cup of coffee and I log onto the Great Writing web site for a relaxing read. I look at the Poetry section. One of the poets has had a short comic poem accepted by a magazine and he is going to be paid for it. Congratulations: write review, Well done Oli! Ah well. I return, refreshed, to the kitchen and concoct a prawn and vegetable curry for husband and self. This is clearly not the day to tell the world, even on Great Writing, that I've found a publisher for my poetry sequence, “Pearl Wedding”.