Oh, for my sins, I am a student again.

Actually I am now rather excited!

Today was Doctoral School induction, which was frightening at first to turn up and be faced with all these thirty, forty year olds. But the Dean of the school gave a lovely welcoming speech and then divvied us up into DEd, MPhil/PhD and MRes - the latter being my group, which consisted of all the younger people in the room, and very happy we all were to see each other too! I had a slightly traumatic moment when, in our group, we were asked to introduce ourselves and say our school and research topic - and guess who got pointed at and asked to go first? We're virtually all teachers, so everyone knew we were all bluffing anyway. "Err, I'm Nat, I'm from London, I think I'm in the school of Policy, help, and I'm interested in girls' education in developing countries." - You can tell I've been speaking to laymen too long. Down the other end of the room, someone else sniffily introduced their area as "gender and international development" - yeah, that's what I was meant to say!

Never mind, met nice people to have lunch with and it all degenerated into staffroom talk in no time at all; life is good, even if some people have a chip on their shoulder about MRes not sounding as good as MPhil. The year will be fun! I have a library card and an email address and I've changed networks on Facebook (yes, it's all important!). Head of library services gave the best talk: "Here are the rules of the library: be nice to librarians and don't steal books." Must get my Athens account set up. Whee!

* posted by nat 11:46 PM

Friday, September 14, 2007

Ian has gone off to Singapore - after packing trauma, the sudden need to go out and eat a full english breakfast in Giraffe trauma, and, yesterday, deer-stalking in Richmond Park trauma followed by spending several hours driving across London to see El and Mo trauma (the driving and the traffic, that is. Seeing El and Mo is obviously very far from traumatic).

Erin and I saw Ian and Ben off at the airport and then got the tube out together. And I rushed home to continue with my gin and tonics, and to continue with some fine RP. Which I am currently continuing with!

* posted by nat 11:44 PM

Sunday, September 02, 2007

It's only taken nearly two years, but Ian and I finally achieved what almost counts as a proper holiday with a week in France. We met up in Bordeaux; Ian came via a weekend home, and so bussed down and flew from Dublin, and I trekked across to Luton. Bordeauz turned out to be 36C and I was instantly very happy - even if it didn't last. We did beaches, swimming in the sea, wave-jumping, swimming in the lake, aerodromes, a seaplane museum (Biscarrosse is very interesting) vineyards in the pouring rain, Bordeaux, the zoo at La Palmyre, more swimming in the sea, and the Ile d'Oleron with more swimming in the sea. The week involved, also, a lot of salmon pizza.

And Ian and I are now on more of an even keel again, which is good. He is not the world's most spontaneous man, but on the evening we walked all the way up the beach to Royan, and after eating takeaway pizza followed by churros on the seafront, Ian turned to me and said, "Right. Now I am going to win you something." So we circled the grab-a-toy machines, and, failing to find frogs, I set my heart on a parrot, and two euros later, Ian delivered. (He nearly delivered two, but these grabbers are fickle things.)

* posted by nat 2:21 PM