Whales and worlds

Today the light was soft. Sunlight hazed through billowy clouds, gilding the edges of the harvested fields, getting caught in the golden trees that have already started losing their hair. English weather really. Most mornings, frost glitters on everything, and once the mist clears, the sky is blue as ice.
Quite a lot has happened in [...]

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Flowers for Kate

The celebration of Kate’s life was a week ago. I couldn’t make it, but I was thinking of her. I found this beautiful tribute from her supervisor. And I read the transcript of the celebration. They wanted it to be a celebration, because she was a beautiful person and the only way she lives now [...]

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Kate

I met Kate in the Lake district in autumn. I remember the wet leaves on the paths, the clean air. It was a walk organized by the University of Leeds hiking society.  Kate was friendly, and tall like me, and doing a PhD in chemistry. She told me how much she loved living in her [...]

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Graduation

Was brilliant. Loved my hat, which in fact was black, not green, but the robes were green which suits me fine. My supervisor said she always associates me with green jewellery.

It’s past bedtime now but I just have to tell you about it. It was very formal, and just so much fun. The staff of [...]

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Snapshot

I walk the long way back to the train station. The street is wide and the Victorian shopfronts glow faintly bronze in the fading light. The sky is opaline, scalloped, pink and blue. Two aeroplanes pencil bright orange trails beside the crisp white rind of the moon. My belly is just slightly too full of [...]

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Bingley Footbridge, 8am

On one side of the bridge, the misty moon hazed and floated. On the other, the sun thought about emerging. When I returned, ten at night, the moon had shuffled to the other side, and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

(And you all come here for photos of the same places in different lights, [...]

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Walled Cities

I finished reading the most beautiful novel the other day. Gatty’s Tale, by Kevin Crossley-Holland. I first realised what a lovely writer he was when I read his translations of Norse Myths, and I vowed to get hold of his King Arthur trilogy. I did, and have read the first one so far, and loved [...]

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Christmas lights

They lit the Christmas lights in Leeds last week. There was a party on the street. On every corner you could buy plastic lazer lights or sparkly butterflies. The lights are great. There are giant champaign bottles, and glasses filled with fizzy gold. I overheard some people complaining that this was too early for Christmas. [...]

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Rare Sunshine

It’s mostly been low clouds and rain you can walk in.
Meeting went well today. They liked my introduction. We went through it together, in detail, and they had lots of minor suggestions to make it better. But they are small things. Stylistic things. (I need to keep an eye on the ends of some paragraphs [...]

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Planes good, trains bad

I’m back in blighty for a last sustained assault on the library and meetings with my supervisors. My flight got in early yesterday but the utter horribleness of the British train system on Sundays (delayed trains, replacement buses, misleading information) meant it took forever to get back to Bingley. I’m staying here again with my [...]

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