Of time hoovers.
I’m still here, and have been meaning to write various things this week, but…
1. I spent Monday to Thursday feeling pretty dire with a sickness bug which meant that my sum total for four days in terms of dining experiences was half a sticky bun and a lot of water.
2. I have 10,000 words to copy-edit and proofread by, well, as soon as I can manage it.
3. We have Quercus’s mother with us so that we can juggle the small girl between us in order to lay a patio, finish various bits of landscaping in the garden, put drains in around the front of the house (there’s a saying about a good hat and decent boots being the best thing for cob houses, and it’s true; we have a good hat in that the roof is Norfolk reed and is in reasonably good nick, but the drainage around the base of the walls has always been utterly rubbish, frankly, so here’s hoping that this will improve things, courtesy of half a mile of flexible perforated pipe), and generally bugger about with the house, because, well, that’s what we do.
4. I spent last weekend on a dumper truck, meaning that this weekend finds me battling the Washing Mountain while realising that the entire house is coated in dust to rival Miss Haversham’s set-up. Hello, housework – long time, no see.
5. The small girl has a yen for a blue dress, so I have been cutting out pieces of fabric today. The material is left over from a tent thingy which Quercus and I knocked up when we were about twenty, so that we could go to various craft fairs and flog our wares (incense, glasses, oils and whatnot) looking suitably exotic; little did I think that I’d be turning it into a dress for my daughter ten years later.
6. I am trying to get my brain around rejigging various bits of my thesis in order to submit an abstract for an academic article to a journal that an old friend of mine set up a few years back. It’s right up my street in terms of its focus; now I just need something which doesn’t sound like the rabid ramblings of a half-cut fruitcake. I’ve also been talking to my examiner from my PhD viva about, well, things, and much to my… delight? disbelief? he thinks I should do something with the research I put together. The words ‘post’ and ‘doc’ may have come together in a sentence. They may have been accompanied by things like ‘inter-departmental’ and ‘supervisor’, and he may have said that he’d like to supervise any project I undertook. It was, er, illuminating, in that it was exciting. Exciting. That was not the reaction I’d thought I would have, but the idea of doing things which really stretch my brain to its (tiny) limits was thrilling, if I’m honest, after months of proofreading idiotic screeds of a dubious nature. I thought I definitely didn’t want to be an academic, and I think that’s probably still the up-shot, but I do like the idea of working my brain, and if I could do it while attached to a university, I suppose it wouldn’t do the freelance work I do any harm at allllll. It’ll probably come to nothing, as funding is scarce these days, and competition is ever-fierce, and the other chap I’d be looking at as a potential co-supervisor is a bit of a law unto himself (as well as being reasonably pompous, if we’re honest), but hey – it made me realise that my PhD is something about which I care sufficiently to make it worth actually pulling my finger out and sorting that abstract. On my examiner’s advice, I’m thinking that, given the other time hoovers currently sucking about the place, if I can get a draft to him (he’s volunteered to read and comment) by November, then that will be just dandy. (Gone are the days of Dire Academic Deadlines of a Brain-Defying Nature, thankfully.)
So. Those are my current preoccupations. And you?
Hmmmm. I’m embarrassed to say that my current preoccupations consist of:
1. Job
2. Knitting
3. Walking dogs at the beach
4. Swimming
5. Reading
6. Eating
7. Picking veggies and fruits and making yummy things with them
8. Watching movies
My list looks incredibly frivolous next to yours.
PS: Good luck with the drainage project – if you’re proceeding with that in the same manner that we would over here, I completely understand the challenge and can relate. I’ve got my fingers crossed for you!
Not frivolous – stuff of life, innit? Drainage has so far included a three-ton digger, so yes, I think we’re on the same page.
Hey – that’s truly fab on the thesis front! A post-doc would be a lot more fun than a PhD (well, really, it would be wouldn’t it, and from what I hear this totally is the case). There were rumblings that I should do the same at one point, but I never got onto it. Still get the odd email now and again asking me to submit an article or two, but I am a lazy-arsed wench.
If you did do a post-doc, then this would be an extension of your PhD? Developing this further? Or an off-shoot? I am intrigued. Anyway, it could be a lot of fun. And you’ve as much chance as anyone else to get funding. Ok, I’ll back down now. Me, who frequently complains about academia getting a bit excited about academia then. Think I need to go and lie down and stare into the middle-distance for an hour or so.
Just a thought, but I don’t know anyone with a PhD who can operate a dumper truck. Respec’!
Love the idea of a dress that was a tent : ) And also love the image of you and Quercus with a market tent selling your wares – very cool indeed.
trust you feeling much better? as regards the blue dress: amazing what differences a few years makes in our lives, isn’t it? woof! that’s a lot of work to be doing in the midst of summer heat!!! the post-doc sounds a great opportunity, as does the article for your friends journal (which, if you should publish, i would greatly enjoy reading). my doings look pathetic compared to your list
. i hate summer–it’s only good for growing tomatoes, & mine aren’t ripe yet….
As long as the anything academic doesn’t involve Almost Always Absent Supervisor, it will be fine, I’m sure!
Oh congratulations! And I do hope it gels if that’s what you decide you want to do. It sounds like the perfect combination of academics and personal interest – and without the stress of the dissertation looming over your head.
Me current preoccupation – deciding what I want to not be when I grow up (much easier than figuring out what I want to be) and, MUCH more importantly, where I want to be when I am not doing it!
Nettles: well, we’ll have to see how it pans out. I have a notion it’ll probably come to nothing, ultimately, but it did at least serve to remind me that I didn’t just see out the PhD because I had to – there was at least a grain of interest in there somewhere! I think a post-doc would probably be a development; I dropped one of the three case studies that formed the second half of the thesis quite late into the project, because I was running too close to the word limit, so I might be able to pick that up again, and perhaps add another one, with a view to turning the PhD into a book. I dunno; have to see how it goes, and this is probably all castles of the air variety, but hey. How’s life post- going?
petoskystone: I’m with you on summer – it’s fine, providing it behaves, and isn’t too hot, and doesn’t go too long without raining and clearing the air…. and a whole host of other provisos on which it mostly fails to oblige.
BW: well, it might involve someone who I think might prove almost as bad, but at least at that stage, it wouldn’t be so dependent on him. I dunno – just have to see. Fingers crossed, though, or something.
Megan: what you want to be when you grow up? Is there some sort of equation that helps one work such things out, and if so, can you tell me how to do it, please? I still have no idea either… Where is easier, I hope – are you pondering a move?
Yup – pondering a move next year. It’s really a question of where to move and discussion has happily wandered among: Pacific west coast, New Zealand, Ireland, Italy…
Also, have decided it’s much, much easier simply not to grow up at all and then the burden is lifted!