Another Bumper Holiday Special

Hope you're finding time between Clearing duties to relish our new Holiday Special series, in which we invite leading figures from "the Poppleton scene" to tell us about their vacation adventures. This week, it's the turn of our very popular Head of Personal Development, Jennifer Doubleday. Over to you, Jennifer.

Hello everyone. How are you? Or, as we more often say to each other at this spiritual healing centre, "How am I?"

Yes, I'm taking time off from the hustle and bustle and radical restructuring of Poppleton University and recharging my psychic batteries at one of North Shropshire's leading locations for Holistic personal development.

I was only intending to spend a week here, but as the Head of Spiritual Rejuvenation explained to me after he'd outlined this month's special offers, it was really a contradiction in terms to take a part-time Holistic course.

But I've no regrets now. After only four days, I find that some of last term's traumas - the unfortunate outbreak of fisticuffs in the role-playing session, the regrettable behaviour of Mr Odgers in the sexual healing class - have now all melted into the damp Shropshire air.

I spent most of yesterday morning learning How to Breathe My Way to Joy with Master Kurt Grunwald, who has apparently been breathing successfully for most of his life. Then it was straight on to the qigong movement class, where I learned that my qi was probably unbalanced and that it could be remedied only if I completely emptied my mind and stood absolutely still staring mindlessly forward for an extended period of time (so much like our own dear Chancellor on Congregation Days).

Must dash now though or I'll miss the afternoon session on Improved Eye Contact for Pleasure and Profit. Meanwhile, Here's Looking at You (joke!).

In other news ...

Important Message to all Academic Staff involved in Clearing

Please note that despite the unprecedented demand for undergraduate places at Poppleton, a number of vacancies (37) still exist on the BA Pig Studies course.

It is therefore imperative that students who enquire about places at Poppleton should be informed of the manner in which this excellent course incorporates elements of Media Studies (the stereotyping of pork pies and sausages in the media), English Literature (the controversial roles of Napoleon and Squealer), Environmental Studies (the development of "greener" pork pies), Gender Studies (who brings home the bacon) and Forensic Science ("hunt the sausage").

This message does not, of course, apply to fee-paying students with hardly any appropriate qualifications, who are very welcome on any of the already oversubscribed courses.

"On the whole, and taking everything into account, and weighing one thing against another, this more or less proves that everything about the present system is, roughly speaking, on the whole, generally all right."

That was the robust response of Professor Lapping of our Media and Cultural Studies Department to the recently published report from the External Examining Review Group, which after very extensive research found that, on the whole, and taking everything into account, and weighing one thing against another, pretty well everything about the present external examining system was, roughly speaking, on the whole, generally all right.