Some serious reading.

Phew! Just made it through a book I've been trying to read for ages - Anthony Gidden's "The Constitution of Society". It's a very well written book but a bit like climbing Everest. Or maybe more like wading through dark sticky molasses in heavy boots. Yes, it's more like that.

When I'm doing this kind of heavy duty academic reading there comes a time - usually just before lunch - when I start to wonder if I'm going to die here, between pages 328 and 329. An 'energy low' and a 'psychic low' too but you have to keep going - go back to the last sentence yopu understood and try again . Reading is a strange business, it's not just sitting there and soaking it up like a sponge, you are as much involved in it as you might be in ballroom dancing.

At the end of this book he said something that encouraged me though. He was comparing doing research in social sciences with physical science and especially how traditionally social scientists had always felt a bit 'second-class' to their colleages in white coats because if you are researching sociology or geography or the like you never come up with the same kind of clean universal theories that physicists or biologists seem to do.

"Cheer up!" He said (not exactly of course!). Even though your theories might be untidy and your conclusions 'small potatoes' at least other people often read what you said about them and take some notice and even respond to it. No one except other scientists usually has any idea what scientific research involves most of the time, even if we like the new gadget.