Every now and then I start feeling quite low about my thesis. I started it four years ago; it was only supposed to take me a year to complete and it’s still not finished. The truth is, I don’t know what to do about it. Then I look at my brothers, both highly successful academics, Mark just having started working at world-famous Cern, and I feel like such a failure. Part of me thinks that people like my parents and my old university friends are looking at me and thinking ‘what the fuck’s he fucking about at?’ Part of me agrees with them, that I should stop gadding about, get my head down and get the damn thing finished. But another part of me says that I have other priorities, and that even if I’m not the academic I once wanted to be I still have reason to be proud of myself. Life with Lyn is going well; I’m now pretty independent. I get out and about; I volunteer at a local special school. I constantly experience new things: the event I went to last night may have been unconnected to either film or writing, but it may well lead to things which I can apply my specialist knowledge to, and anyway satisfied my interest in art generally. Most importantly of all, I’m the partner of a wonderful person, and that’s more important to me than any damn certificate.

I guess I’m not an academic like my brothers, or the student type I was three or four years ago. Yet part of me still misses it, a part which surfaces every now and then, such as when I chat to James or hear Mark Kermode talk. I miss reading, writing and talking about ideas, and having conversations with people who reference writers like Marx, Lacan and Zizeck as casually as the fellows down at the royal oak talk about football, weed or women. When I feel such pangs, I know it’s time to get back to my studio, take my books from where I left hem, open my thesis and start work. I may not have finished it, but I will one day.