A ridiculous amount of good news for one day

I got an email from Oslo University last night, asking if I wanted to teach a course on colonial and postcolonial literature in the spring. I emailed them ages and ages ago, and they said they didn’t have anything at the moment but they’d keep me in mind. I hadn’t expected to hear from them [...]

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Eeeeeeeee

We bought a house! It is very cute. And that yellow ’sold’ sign? It doesn’t mean someone else snapped it up before we got our act together. That’s us. We did it.
It was nerve-wracking. We made the offer yesterday morning, then had to wait twenty-four hours to see if anyone would up the offer, and [...]

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Cold fire

Last Friday, on a rare blue day, I walked across the bridge, through the town, and into the park.

This autumn is so nearly over.

But one tree was incandescent.

Its branches were like fiery rapids,

like all the warmth one could ever need.

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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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But did they take the weather into account?

Australia, apparently, is the second best country in the world to live in. But guess which country is the best?

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Sunday afternoon

And then we threw a frisbee in the sun.

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October

It is, all of a sudden, cold. There is something exhilarating about the swift change of season. We swapped lapping up the sun in Berlin parks for scraping ice off the windscreen at 7:30 in the morning. The trees are swiftly turning gold, and I drive through wreaths of mist to get to work. All [...]

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Status report

Michael says this blog is dying a slow death. I say no, it’s just a quiet patch! It’s been a very nice week, really. Our lackluster summer has finally given way to a most gorgeous autumn. The mornings are cool and misty, but the afternoons are warm and shiny-bright. And I’m rather grateful to be [...]

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Extreme kindergartening

Last week I picked up my new raincoat, waterproof  trousers, ‘warm dress’ and a pair of gumboots. The ‘warm dress’ is pretty much a ski suit. I nearly died of heat stroke when I tried it on. The sales assistant told me I looked like an astronaut. They tell me I’ll be glad of it [...]

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Speaking of stone

I have been thinking about stone. Partly because of some lovely posts by Jeffrey Cohen which include extracts from an article he is writing, and partly because, in the past few weeks, I have seen many strange and beautiful stones. I don’t have a theory to share. But I have three images. Jeffrey, they are [...]

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