Middlesex is a very groovy place just now, mainly because of the European Social Forum coming up this weekend.

We've got Zapatistas selling coffee and CDs at the union. Yesterday marquee tents and a 'bender' (a tent whose frame is made from large bent branches) were put up on the grass outside my office. And today there are impromptu seminars happening all over the campus. I ate my lunch next to 'squatting history'. It's as if the wave of student apathy and the corporatisation of academia had never happened. Makes me feel like I'm back on Woodcraft camp.

Together with the unusually lively students this year, it's making me enjoy my return to academia rather a lot. Which makes me a rather irritating presence to the more typical (i.e. depressed) academics I keep smiling at.

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