Being idle is one of the worst tortures ever devised.

I have completed packing up my house, but can't move to Marchway for three more weeks. That only gives me about 10 days to get ready before the students arrive, and lecturing starts.

Elaine's offered to take on some lecturing, but I prefer to know exactly what the students hear. So I'll do it myself. She's capable, but if she gets wind of just how capable she is, then she'll realise she could get another job elsewhere. It's taken years to find an assisstant I can work with. I don't want her running off just yet.

There's a conference in Southampton at the end of September, but I've found out who's chairing the main session. So I won't be going.

Now I have to find something to do while those wretched workmen sit around my new house in Marchway drinking tea.

Took longer than I expected.

Even though the medium's assistants were in full view the whole time - in both cases - the punters pretended not to see them. Incredible. Well, I saw them, and I pointed this out in no uncertain terms. Grimshaw is going to have a purple hissy fit about it but too bad - I've already resigned.

I don't think they were using hypnosis to fool their clients, at least I didn't detect any. More likely the gullible victims saw what they wanted to see, and ignored what they didn't want to see. Self-hypnosis, perhaps unconscious. I must look into that.

Elaine found a pshycic test on the Internet and nagged at me until I tried it. Ridiculous. Standard five cards, circle-square-star-waves-cross. After I'd done eight of them, I knew it was a setup, some kind of joke. Nobody gets 100% on those things. It isn't possible.

Now she's smirking like a cat with a key to the birdcage. Honestly, it wasn't that good a joke.

Saw a marvellous article in new Scientist this week (30 July 2005, p32) about those frauds who call themselves psychics. They deceive, they lie, they promise to reach the dead but they're all tricksters. Cold reading, that's the key. Get the info from your victim. It's good to see the press agreeing with my point of view.

Well, I'm of to Leeds for a while to visit a couple of these charlatans and bust their reputations. It'll take no more than a week. Elaine can handle things while I'm away, it's not as if she has to worry about students at the moment. They're all on holiday, and anyway by the time they get back I'll be in Marchway.

So will Elaine. She's seen sense, and she's coming with me. There was never any real doubt. Her only alternative was to stay here with Grimshaw, and we all know he's descended from 17th-century witches. He's as much a fraud as they were.