I have found the solution to procrastination and writers block. Do something unbelievably dull. I am doing some marking at the moment and suddenly midway through an essay I come up with all sorts of good ideas and have to stop myself opening new documents and stopping the marking.

Strangely though housework never does this. When I have a chapter looming over me I could easily clean the entire house and not get bored. Maybe it has to be desk related.

In other news I think it should concern us that a writer this morning on the radio, who wrote about her experiences of growing up asian in Australia, said something pretty much along the lines of 'Asians and the Orient have always been seen as the other, as the Occident.' I hope I heard wrong.