10 ways not to survive a full moon

After I'd crawled home this afternoon I remembered that it was a full moon tonight.

That could go some way to explaining the ringing in my ears and the use of my classroom as a racetrack today...

There are a number of stories about the 'lunar effect'  including the following:,

• Senior police officers in Brighton announced in June 2007 that they were planning to deploy more officers over the summer to counter trouble they believe is linked to the lunar cycle.
• In America, police in Toledo, Ohio and Kentucky claimed that crime rises by five percent during nights with a^] full moon.   
• In January 2008, New Zealand's Justice Minister Annette King suggested that a spate of stabbings in the country could have been caused by the lunar cycle.
• David Tredinnick, a British mp reckoned that  surgeons will not operate because blood clotting is not effective and the police have to put more people on the street.

So maybe people are generally more bonkers than usual on a full moon.  Whatever!  Here are my top tips to how not to survive a full moon.

1.  Go to bed late, after a few drinks maybe and with a caffeine rich drink, so you'll stay awake for most of the night - and have a headache in the morning.
2. Make sure it's a Monday morning, raining hard and blowing a gale.
3. Ensure your cat - or even better your neighbour's cat, who has sneaked in for a quick fight with yours - is sick in the night: double points if you step in it in the morning.
4. Get to work on time but then realise you've forgotton your glasses, your lunch, your purse, your work and your front door key.
5. Ensure computers are not working properly - though with no obvious cause.
6. Make sure you have a flickering fluorescent light in your room.  The more random and intermittent the flickers, the better.
7. The only pencils you should have must be blunt or broken.  Likewise pens should be out of ink or oozing the stuff, all over you.  No pencil sharpeners or rubbers allowed of course.
8. Suggest a fun game of Gatwick Airport to start the day off.  Don't let people choose whether or not they join in.  
9. Take a phone call during your few precious minutes of break and spend it trying to get rid of a printer cartridge salesman.  Buy 12 boxes with your own money before putting down the phone.
10. Spill your fifth cup of coffee (after the others have all gone cold) over your students newly finished work.