I thought I would bring you up to speed on my recent intellectual exploits. I suspect some of you get the impression that I come to university to drink and do pub quizzes; this is not so. I only do that in the evening – the day is for work.

I have begun writing my end-of-year film essay. It’s 2500 words, so I began it early. It is fascinating work. So far, I have set myself up in two, largely paradoxical, positions: I state that film has a grammar, which, if broken, would render a filmic text unreadable. However, I cite Metz in saying that film cannot be seen to constitute a language, as the shot-as-word analogy breaks down under analysis. What, then, is this thing with a grammar but is not a language? This is where I left my essay last night, having used up 1600 words already. I used to fear large word counts, but now 2500 does not seem enough.

Time to go look up protolanguages!