Posted in family, leeds, lovie, meli, phd on Thursday, July 23, 2009 | 10 Comments »
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 [...]
Posted in phd, work on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Weddings and conferences and sleeping in friends’ spare rooms make for plenty of blog content, but not much blogging time or head-space. For now I’ll say: the wedding was gorgeous, the conference was tiring but brilliant, and it has been most enjoyable catching up with old friends and taking advantage of their hospitality in the [...]
Posted in adventures, birthdays, halden, norway, ocean, paragliding, phd on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 | 8 Comments »
It will never be today again. Never. He would not, in all his life, make another discovery more shattering.
Randolph Stow, The Merry-go-round in the Sea
In the last few hours of being 29, the loss of my twenties felt like some kind of a death. When you are in your twenties you believe you will be [...]
Posted in phd on Sunday, May 31, 2009 | 13 Comments »
As I was waiting for my examiners to arrive, I made friends with a first year undergrad who was waiting to apologize to my examiner about a late essay. He seemed more terrified than I was. He confessed that he’d been five minutes late to his medieval literature exam, and I told him I’d taught [...]
Posted in phd on Saturday, May 30, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Every single country seems to examine PhDs differently, so I thought I’d just explain how it works in the UK, and what happened for me, in case anyone’s interested. (And because it was a big big day and I want a record of it!) I left my camera in Norway, otherwise I’d intersperse all these [...]
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 [...]
Posted in phd on Thursday, May 28, 2009 | 10 Comments »
No corrections!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My cheeks are sore from smiling and my feet still haven’t touched the ground.
Posted in phd on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | 5 Comments »
I’m happy with all of it, aside from chapter four and the last ten pages of chapter two.
I’ll see you on the other side.
Posted in phd on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I’m about to read over my thesis. My viva will take place exactly one week and four hours from now, taking the UK/Europe time difference into account. I had a bizarre dream last night in which I had to play my flute and paint a picture of a castle on a wall as part of [...]
Posted in disasters, domestic, houses, norway, phd on Friday, May 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
We arrived back very late Wednesday night, or, more specifically, early Thursday morning, after discovering the car had flat batteries (brand new batteries, as it turns out, after the old ones died decisively during the relentless months of snow). Anyway, the car park attendant helped us out and the car seems fine now.
But the washing [...]
