You have had a busy few weeks. At first it felt good to be occupied and getting things achieved. Now, however, you have spent a weekend with deadlines hanging over your head and have had to sacrifice time which you would have preferred to spend with family and friends, especially since you will be leaving them in under a fortnight. You stay up late trying to work but you get nonsense numbers. The magnetic fields in your solutions are big enough to rip the earth's core out through its crust. You haven't had a full night's sleep for a while. You dream strange dreams about equipment malfunctions. You have come down with a respiratory infection and each cough rakes your throat. You have bags under your eyes. What do you do?

1. Do not think about all the other things you would rather be doing, such as, for example, testing out a brand new camera you may have recently purchased, or reading the five books you're in the middle of, or going out into the sunlight, or going shopping for all the things you might need for, say, Antarctica, or resting to get well again.

2. Do not cry. Your contact lens will most likely swim around to the back of your eyeball and you will have to spend ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror trying to fish it out again. Remember the last time it happened and refrain.

3. Dark chocolate is good for you. Buy it. Eat it.

4. Tell everyone around you to fuck off, and then sit down and do your work!