Academic related....

Hardest working weeks so far

2011-06-12T18:00:00.000+01:00

So it's Sunday afternoon and I'm trying to catch up on last week by doing some more work. I've slept a lot this weekend, and I'm still not sure it's going to be enough rest to get me through the next 10 days. I've worked harder the last two weeks then I have ever worked in my working life. I haven't been up until midnight - my poor CFS riddled body can't do that - but my brain has not taken a vacation once.

I'm about halfway through the hell that is exams and assessment season - peak season for the part of my job that supports the processing of serious academic misconduct cases. So wish me luck for the second half, I'm going to need it.

Thoughts on the Dawkiniversity or 'Bloomsbury Polytechnic'

2011-06-05T19:46:00.003+01:00

Ok, so I've had a mooch around their website now. I'm amazed that they've got this far into the set up without it being leaked - or am I just not in the right gossip loops?

My thoughts to date:

- By hooking up with the University of London they've managed to bypass the long and (necessarily) laborious degree awarding powers process. I want more info on how the governance and quality assurance of this 'collaborative provision' is going to work. I know UoL is a ~~weird~~ unique institution but how is this new relationship going to work?

- It looks, frankly, parasitic. Leading researchers who are current or emeritus professors at top universities and have had/still have all the benefits of plugging in to a full flavoured university, take all that experience and reputation and set up on their own, and charge fees only £3k less than Harvard.

- Related to the above, this is effectively a teaching only institution, undergraduate only in fact, so a polytechnic. How about we campaign for the name to be changed to Bloomsbury Polytechnic?

- With the government promising to fund up to £6k loans for students registered at private institutions this will mean students will have to find £12k just for tuition up front. This is equivalent or less than the top private secondary schools in the UK - they might find a market, but I'm still not sure exactly what type of students are going to want to go here when you could go to Standford for a top liberal arts education at a bargain £8k, rather than an untested quasi UoL degree.

- If they're planning on recruiting international students...they'll need to be accredited by QAA if they want highly-trusted sponsor status. Bagsy fly on wall for that Institutional Review.... {update} just been corrected by a friend, UoL will be the sponsor, so they've bypassed that set up issue too!

And I second @WilliamCB - who is financially behind this venture... answers on a postcard please.

P.S. Currently reading Arum and Roska's Academically Adrift so I'm all for us re-focusing on undergraduate education... but I don't think this is the way to do it.

Promises and perils - reflections on the ethics of international funding

2011-05-09T20:35:00.000+01:00

I'm afraid dear Blogger, you have been usurped. Today's blog of mine appears courtesy of the Guardian online - Promises and perils. Me is proper writer now.

Pacifying the bear

2011-05-07T10:08:00.000+01:00

There is a bear in my workplace. It is seemingly constantly in that state of post hibernation grumpiness, and I, in particular seem to anger it. Things came to a head this week and now I need to find a way to pacify the bear as I know that although I'm being asked to change my behaviour, the bear will never be asked to change, and as grumpiness is in a bear's nature I'm not sure that is possible any way. I've found the whole situation very upsetting but after getting over the shock (and significant irony) of someone complaining about my behaviour who I find a passive aggressive bully, I've decided that peace is far more important to me in this situation than justice. So now I'm going to be unfailingly polite and a civil servant to its crazy minister as much as that will stick in my throat, it's what I need to do.

Now, where can I find a giant pot of honey.....?

The cost and price of an education

2011-04-19T20:17:00.000+01:00

Lots of people more articulate and intelligent than me are spending a lot of time talking through and about the tuition fee announcements that have been revving up over the last couple of weeks. I heartily salute all of them. But the thing that gets me isn't the price, it's the cost. Because what universities are choosing to charge is definitely a price, not the cost of running those degrees. For the lower HEFCE funding banded subjects - mainly arts and humanities - by charging about £9k you've added approximately £2.5k on top of the current tuition fee plus HEFCE grant. I haven't seen any discussion of the actual cost of delivering different types of undergraduate degrees during the course of the tuition fees debate. If I've missed a decent analysis please enlighten me by leaving a comment.

As a large part of my job is about trying to set up the delivery of degrees somewhere other than our main university campuses and without HEFCE funding, the underlying budgeting model doesn't apply. I have tried to push the academics I work with and the decision making structures to pursue accurate costing for these projects. The majority of these activities are meant to at least cover their costs and ideally make a contribution to the running of the School they are based in. But if you haven't costed it properly, and that includes working out an appropriate overhead contribution, then you won't know if you are meeting that goal. Frankly the attempts at costing I've seen - both involving and not involving accountants - are dismal, deeply limited and unrealistic. This is a big part of why the great white hope of internationalisation is not all it is cracked up to be - if we costed things properly most of the time we wouldn't actually be able to justify doing them.

Surely this is just as important for mainstream teaching on our home campuses.

How much does it actually cost to teach an undergraduate these days?
In addition to the direct costs (time of academic staff, classrooms etc.) what indirect costs do we need to apply?
What's fair to add to the student's bill and what should we be funding from other sources?
How fair is it for arts students to subsidise more expensive subjects, or is that ok?

What would a breakdown of where the new £9k fees are being spent look like.... anyone.... anyone?

Plagiarism and the importance of learning how to write

2011-04-14T14:36:00.000+01:00

Just over a year ago I took over as secretary to my university's academic misconduct committee. As a university level committee it only deals with the most serious cases of plagiarism, cheating in exams and other forms of misconduct so if it makes it to us, it's either pretty bad, or pretty complicated, or both. As an aside to my normal international work I find it a refreshing change and both an interesting and challenging addition to my job.

Some students are what I would call out and out 'chancers', they fully know and understand the rules but they have made a calculated decision to break them anyway. They have normally done something fairly daring, and they always continue to deny any wrongdoing no matter how damning the evidence against them...

'Just because my dissertation is 86% the same as this other one, with only the country in the study changed and my dedication page, I still don't see how you can say I've plagiarised'.

'No, I composed the survey questions and conducted the analysis on my organisation entirely myself. It is purely co-incidental that the questions and data are exactly the same as in that published report'

These, I have no sympathy for and I am pleased when the committee throws the proverbial book at them. However, they actually make up the minority of our serious misconduct in coursework cases - perhaps as little as one in ten. The majority of students fall into one of two other categories: ran out of time and panicked or really just didn't get what we expected from them and what academic writing is all about. We can try and help the first bunch by staggering deadlines, compulsory submission of drafts etc. but its the second lot that really makes me worried - because isn't it one of the fundamental qualities employers need in graduates the ability to write well?

Of course when I say write, I mean all the critical thinking and analysis that goes behind it as well - it all goes hand in hand. The opportunity and encouragement to truly learn to write was one of the greatest gifts given to me in my undergraduate arts degree. I was by no means the perfect student - I didn't do all my reading, didn't turn up for all my seminars. But I was lucky enough to be studying something that would regularly touch on areas that really piqued my interest. So I'd pick my essay topics carefully and dive in to the primary and secondary sources with gusto - trying to pull them apart and put them back together to make the argument I wanted to make. Goodness knows if you ran one of my first year essays through Turnitin you might find some fairly 'poor academic practice' but through understand my marks through feedback and by the process of writing itself, my maturity as a student grew and by the end of my degree I really loved writing.

Not every student is going to start out and progress of their own accord with the minimum of specific help like I did. I had a fantastic foundation laid for me by certain teachers at school and most of all my mother, who proofread and commented on endless pieces of GCSE and A-level coursework. For many however, who lack those foundations, and perhaps a particular passion for their subject of study, it seems like going to university is just going through the motions or just too baffling a new universe to comprehend. Maybe if we were more creative at the start of degrees, in introducing materials and topics that are more likely to spark interest, and in doing so introduce them to the art of academic writing rather than just giving them lessons on referencing styles and baffling them with our official definition of plagiarism.

In US universities I think its almost universally compulsory for students in their first year or two to take 'freshman composition' classes - for tales of this see the blog College Ready Writing, in particular the recent post about using Fahrenheit 451 in an exercise about developing a central argument in essays.

This level of attention to developing students as scholars and writes takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Often it just seems easier to say - 'well we print study guides and run sessions if they want them', 'well they should have learnt this at A-level' or 'if they don't understand UK higher education we shouldn't let them in'. I feel that this is just abdicating our responsibility for actively developing our students. Its always argued that students need to be active learners, but before that can happen at the start of the process we need to be active teachers.

Einstein and IELTS

2011-04-06T17:44:00.000+01:00

So its not been a great day today, still recovering from my CFS hangover after attempting to be social on Saturday night. Day two on twitter and I gave the UEL VC some tourist tips on visiting Malaysia so I'm counting that as a success.... But its got to past five o'clock and I need some distraction so I'm drawn to the wonder of TED, and today I fell upon Patricia Ryan's - Don't insist on English.

Wherever I've travelled in the world I've found speakers of English - whether it be western China, the hinterland of Kazakhstan or a taxi driver in Madrid. And as an often solo traveller finding an English speaker, particularly when I'm jet lagged and desperately trying to find my hotel in a strange city, I find a wave of relief often washes over me. Somehow, some way I will be understood. Then when the jet lag wears off, and I start the process of acclimatisation, a subsequent wave washes over me - tinged with a bit of shame and sadness that I am still, pretty much monolingual.

A little bit of French lingers from school, and I am still persevering with my Mandarin studies, but basically I am still a monoglot - like most of us who have English as our first language. Patricia Ryan's TEDtalk wasn't so much about how terrible the lingua franca of English is, but the benefits and value of language diversity.

As hard as it is to find the time at the moment, I have really enjoyed getting to know an entirely different language system in Mandarin. It's a very rich language, by building its words out of individual characters and sounds it can be very flexible in its standard vocabulary, perhaps even more flexible that our immensely wordy English. We may have grandfather and grandfather, they have distinct words for mother's father, mother's mother, father's mother and father's mother. There are also specific words for older sister and younger sister. I also love the compound words for everyday things - 'baoguo' money bag for wallet.

So what do we lose when we make English almost the only language for science and higher education? Do we stifle creativity by forcing our research and thoughts into a single set of signifiers? Why do our 'internationalised' universities still placed such little value on learning different languages (come on we all know its mainly 'lip service'? Maybe we should make more effort to interact with our partners and colleagues around the world in their languages, rather than teaching and publishing almost exclusively in English and only recognising what has been published in English language media. It doesn't mean we all have to be fluent, we are increasingly moving towards a situation where the 'universal translator' of Star Trek fame may become a reality - so why should we continue to get trapped by our English?

All the way back

2011-04-05T20:38:00.000+01:00

Ok, I'm not going to try and fob you off with an excuse that I was too busy to blog for 10 or 11 months. I have been busy - travelling, selling a house, buying a house, moving house, working getting sick etc. But I really should have found some time to write. But I'm back now, all will be well.
As well as the usual movie, books and me posts, I'm also going to try and blog a bit more about higher education and stuff that gets me ranting. I thought about starting a new 'HE confidential' type blog, all anonymous and super secret identity like. Even went so far as creating it on WordPress. Then I realised I couldn't be bothered keeping up an alternate identity and that I was semi-anonymous on this blog so I should just suck it up and start blogging here again.
I've also finally joined the twitterverse after figuring out it could fed my information addiction and maybe some fellow HE ranters will find some interest in what I say. Well even if they don't, it gives me a place to rant. See you soon.

I am that woman

2010-05-27T11:07:00.004+01:00

So I've been basically working my arse off this year. Harder than I've ever worked. I've travelled to: India, USA, Kazakhstan, Trinidad, China... and I've got trips to Greece, South Africa, Malaysia and France to do by the end of September. I've written ridiculously long and thorough reports on stupidly complex problems. I've commissioned £100k's worth of market research and worked with lawyers to solve the problem of China. Not to mention turning 30 next month, that one's going to be a kicker.

And this week a momentous change happened in my working life. I became a line manager to L. She's looking like she's not going to need 'managing' per se, but she is going to need a lot of support and attention to bring her up to speed and train her for the next 6 months to a year as this is a very new kind of work for her. She's coming to Greece so hopefully we'll have some girly bonding around the Acropolis.

In home life, Hubland has a new job (with my employer, but at different site) so we can finally move to near where I work, ending my 3 hour a day commute. So we're DIYing the house to death, hopefully to get it on the market at the start of the first proper week of June. We've sorted a week day place to crash from when Hubland starts work in July, and then we'll be able to start house hunting proper - and ye gads our budget is now up to £250k. That's a quarter of a million people.

But... thankfully... I do have the weekend off for my birthday... and we have our supercool Texan friend coming to stay in July/August so we'll do some chillaxing (Hubland hates me using that word) when she's here.

It's pretty much all good, even my health is holding up ok, it is just crazy busy.

Zim

2010-03-02T16:41:00.003Z

Hubland and I ending up watching the documentary 'Zimbabwe's Children' last night.... we didn't mean to, most evenings we're just not up to coping with that sort of programming, however much we want to know about what is happening in the world. I'm glad we watched it as sometimes we all need to be reminded of the everyday suffering of ordinary people in places like Zimbabwe.
I'm just about to finish reading a book entitled 'Dinner with Zimbabwe' which is a psychological biography of the premier based on a series of interviews with people inside and outside of Zimbabwe that know and knew him, and even an interview with the man himself. It tries, from a psychological point of view, to understand how a shy, intelligent boy, hero of his people, became one of the world's most loathed dictators.
When I've finished I'm going to send it on to my uncle, who with my wife and cousin lived in Harare in the late 80s early 90s. Things were not easy then, I remember sending various things in the post to my aunt, including bras, but they are nothing compared with what has happened since the farm invasions in 2000. I know that what has happened in Zimbabwe has broken their hearts.
The tragedy of Zimbabwe - 1 in 7 of the population HIV positive, one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, half the population surviving only due to food aid - was a completely avoidable tragedy. The rest of the world has stood by and let it happen and that is unforgivable. Without the tacit support of its neighbouring countries (and governments further afield like China) Zimbabwe's decent into chaos would surely have been halted by now.
As Britons our hands are largely tied, with the fear that any intervention could be seen as more colonial interference. Our present Labour government, while not responsible for Mugabe's madness, contributed significantly to the descent when it refused to honour the agreements that had been made regarding compensation and land distribution by the Conservative government at the moment of independence. We also managed to communicate it through one of our least tactful citizens - Clare Short.
Despite all of this, our complicity, our responsibility, and our penchant for following other country's tragedies as they unfold, there is so little ongoing coverage of what is happening in Zimbabwe. I simply don't understand why that is.... and I'm not sure what I need to do about it.

All over the world

2010-02-27T19:41:00.004Z

Shamed by the fact that even adventuringjen with baby boo can blog I thought I'd better update this beast for any of you that check occasionally.

It has been an insane 2010 so far - with two continents covered so far, prospects of a new person to help at work, a realisation that I really can't keep up this commute... and today, a new baby born to my sister-in-law - so I'm now officially an auntie.

It doesn't look like its going to let up anytime soon... hubland has to has to has to has to has to has to has to finish the professional qualification he started over 10 years ago. His studying will hopefully be helped by the fact that I'm out of the country for one week a month for the next three months - Kazakhstan, Trinidad and China.

Life is hectic, but mostly good... just wish I had a little more energy to enjoy it!

Who am I?

2009-12-19T16:20:00.003Z

So yesterday was my last day in the office for two weeks. I'm not going to say it was my last day at work, because I no longer have a job where that happens. Hopefully a bit of puttering around on Mon-Wed will allow me to finish what I needed to finish and keep on top of developments. Thank goodness the University does close completely for a bit so nothing much will happen between Christmas and New Year..... so during that time I'll catch up on some reading.

As much as I bitch and moan, and particularly get bumfuzzled by some of the insanity behind the running of my workplace, I do really love my job. I bought myself the boxed set of the West Wing a few weeks ago and I've been using at as my own personal therapy. I'm hoping that these two weeks off will hopefully let the lessons of the West Wing sink in a little more. I think, at the moment I'm Josh - very enthusiatic, good at assimilating information, but sometimes a little overwhelmed by my own momentum. I want to be CJ (just appointed Chief of Staff as I'm watching season 5) who is learning how to not have to do everything herself, but use the people around her to achieve more than she can achieve on her own.

At some point soon I might get some admin support, and some 'back fill' for a mysteriously undefined secondment that I may or may not fully undertake.... so I'm going to have to learn to delegate and trust that other people can do the stuff I do... without hand holding. I do trust and respsect them, they're bright, talented... but they're Donna, not Josh. I need to figure out how to let go a bit and help them develop.

Who needs management develoment... WW all the way...

Guilty pleasures

2009-10-26T14:43:00.005Z

Although a fan of last.fm, I've pretty much converted to Spotify these last few months. Music has always been a big part of my life. This fact was brought home by listening to Dale Winton on Radio 2 on Saturday as we drove back from the North. His Pick of the Pops was 1989, I knew 19 out of the top 20 tracks for that day. I was nine years old so I think that's fairly impressive.

So that gave me a guilty pleasures to follow up on on Spotify - Cher. Today I'm listening to Michael Bolton. Should I feel guilty? Probably not, because ultimately who cares what's 'cool' anymore, everything is 'cool' to someone, otherwise how would the rest of us ever here about it? But who gets to decide? So much is 'cool' at the moment which I think is totally nuts - skinnyness, binge drinking.... and don't even get me started on John and Edward.

Spending a week with pregnant ladies and new babies has made me reflect (again) on whether we'll have kids. As always its still a maybe - we never stay on one side of the fence for long. But I hope if we do we'll be able to raise them to spend as little of their time worrying about what is 'cool' and just focus on what they enjoy. So many people seem to spend their lives worrying about 'coolness' that they never have time to find out what's 'cool' to them...

So come on - what are your guilty pleasures?

Multitasking...

2009-10-14T20:28:00.003+01:00

So, I'm still feeling pretty crap. But this week is not allowing me to acknowledge that at all. I've been in the office three straight days so far - something I haven't done since July I think. I have two major things due on Friday - one I've known about for ages and is 95% there. The other, I thought we'd missed one deadline and I therefore had 6 months to fix it, but no, we got an extension so I now have 4 days to fix it. And I had to make it to all my usual meetings and answer email and phonecalls. Email lawyers, berate bad translation companies, give a two hour lecture on quality assurance. Cue manic multitasking.

I do work well under pressure. I work my best under moderate pressure - this week has exceeded this. My brain ran out of steam on the phone at 5.30pm. But luckily its quite clever and woke up to the solution to the problem by 6.15pm when I was on the train home.

I've learnt so much in my job of the last two years. A few weeks ago I thought I was really starting to get it - now I realise I've just moved to level 2 of the game.

Blogging when you're (not) winning

2009-09-03T17:19:00.004+01:00

So it's the end of the summer. High winds, driving rain, and feeling chilly enough to consider putting the central heating back on. Frankly, I've had a crap summer, gradually getting sicker and sicker for no reason that I can identify. I'm on annual leave this week and getting dressed and brushing my teeth are considered great achievements. I haven't the foggiest how next week back at work, a conference, then another conference in Madrid the week after are going to work. At least after that I won't feel quite as guilty if I collapse. I worked out that its been about 3 1/2 years since I was this poorly - I had a major crash just after hubland and I got married which took about 6 months to work its way out. This is feeling like a similar scale of crapness, only this time I live 90mins away from work instead of 5.... so slightly more tricky to handle.
Trying not to feel too stressed, or too sorry for myself as I know people close to me who are having crappy times at the moment. Anyway, send me positive thoughts if you've got any to spare.

So where am I again?

2009-07-14T09:48:00.002+01:00

I seem to be missing ten days or so, can anybody help me find them. I spent most of last week in bed feeling all kinds of rottenness, not sure if it was the old bastard CFS or a virus or a combination of the two. Made it in to work on Friday mainly due to absoloute boredom and prospect of free lunch. Saturday night, just sat down to watch Iron Man (good Robert Downey Jr chest shots, could have done with a lot more plot) when the now all to familiar eye wobblying began.... a migraine was inbound. It is now Tuesday and I am just about surfacing, although my eyeballs are still hurting when I look at this.

So.... I'm pretty hacked off with my body. I'd like a new one now please as this one just isn't working for me.

Pondering

2009-06-21T22:33:00.002+01:00

I've just returned from a lovely weekend in Pembrokeshire with Hubland. A wonderful time to catch up with each other after a month of either missing each other through my far flung location of me being asleep recovering from travelling.

While we were away I got the email (magic phone) telling me that I'd not been shortlisted for a job I'd applied for at another Uni. I was pretty disappointed as I thought I pretty much fit the job description perfectly... but obviously not quite closely enough. It was a perfect job, but not at all perfect geographically so Hubland and I were also rather relieved. For a couple of weeks, however, it had distracted me from the disatisfactions with my job. I still like a lot of the things about my job, unfortunately various institutional circumstances, massively worsened by the economic situation are currently frustrating the hell out of me. I seem to spend my day solving trivial problems while being prevented from getting stuck in to solving the big ones.

Unless something magical comes up I doubt I'll be applying for a job again in the future..... but I definitely need to work on a way of being a bit less 'aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' about work so I retain my sanity.

A different kind of city

2009-06-04T18:00:00.003+01:00

Why is it that a feel at home in continental European cities? Despite my love of Hong Kong and KL somehow Krakow feels like what a real city should be. I haven't had a chance to see much as I've been working since we arrived yesterday lunchtime. Thankfully as of about an hour ago I am now off duty, K arrives late afternoon tomorrow so I've got a day to wander around on my own but with the lovely knowledge that a friendly face will be arriving just in time for dinner.

K and I had been discussing if we were going to head out of town at all - the salt mines look very, ,very cool so I think we will try and make it to them - if I was here longer I would go to Auschwtiz, but in such a short break I know I just can't take it. I want to bring Hubland back here and explore the area as the nearby mountains also look so lovely.I've got an hour to rest and then its off for dinner at Polish restaurant followed by 'Jazz Club' (haven't had the heart to say I hate jazz... might sneak off at that point).

Uptown girl

2009-05-26T03:13:00.002+01:00

So I've done the hotel shuffle and moved uptown to a posh hotel that work had booked for the two nights I'm here on 'their dime'. Yes it is swish, but it is also about another £60 a night which if I'm paying is a lot - and still doesn't include breakfast.
I've had a love day exploring Toronto island (did you know it had one?) then failing to locate Kensington Market - was it meant to be a building like the picture on the map showed, or was that street it? Finding nice places for brunch and dinner and having a walking tour of downtown Toronto pointing out where all the ghouls and goblins reside.
My feet are killing me. I've done more walking in the last two days than in the last two months. I have blisters on my soles..... but it's been worth it. Although it has been strange having a full two days and two nights on my own in a strange city, I'm glad I came early because visiting places and never seeing them is just crap, after Vienna I swore I'd never do that again (all I saw was the train station and the Hilton which was opposite the train station). Travelling is much better with someone to share it with, it feels more 'real' somehow, but on your own is definitely better than not at all.
Luckily for my trip next week to Poland I will be joined by my friend K for the weekend so we can explore together. This is turning into a rather expensive few weeks...

The thing I've never done....

2009-05-24T02:24:00.002+01:00

Is travel on my own. I've just realised this as I was sat in a pub in Toronto, eating a pizza and testing a local lager. It is a strange phenomenon, truly being on your own, a little scary, but not too bad. And after all it is Toronto so a lot of it is strangely reminiscent of home. My first observations so far are:
- Oreo Cakesters are a great invention
- The UK really has gone to town investing in 'street scene' recently - shiny paving, signs, street lights etc. I'm sure there are bits of Toronto that I'll find fully shinified but in London nothing within the circle line isn't. That isn't the case here.
- People are friendly, and responsible. I was a bystander in a lost cat rescue situation on the way back from the pub.
- I can't work out how to turn on my bedside lamps or properly lock my bedroom door (don't worry, there is a latch). I'm hoping this diminishing brain capacity is due to lack of sleep and/or the beer I had.
So, I'm on my own until late Monday light, when the cavalry from work arrive. I'm glad I made the trip early, I hate travelling and seeing nothing of my destination. So tomorrow it's straight up the tower...

Wonderful b****ks

2009-05-04T19:52:00.005+01:00

We've had a lovely weekend - 100% home town based - which is blissful. On Saturday we had a few friends and neighbours to (very loosely) celebrate Beltane, the celtic spring festival which takes place at roughly the beginning of May. As with many paganesque festivals it is basically about sex, this time about the fertility shown by late spring and early summer, and about ensuring a good harvest for the growing season. Beltane is one of the four fire festivals - the others being Lammas in August, Samhain in October and Candlemas in February. So burning stuff seemed a good idea and our new fire pit came into its own. I'm not really pagan, but I like the idea of the wheel of the year, marking the passage of the seasons and it was a good excuse to catch up with old friends.

Sunday was gardening day - trip to the garden centre, some edging panels to stop the garden falling into the garage, and a couple more plants. Rest of said day was spent installing the panels and sieving the soil in the bottom corner of the garden getting rid of three buckets of stones. Looks top now.

Today we visited the open day of our local 'adult education college'. We had never been to the college before. It sits high on a hill looking down over a very green valley. It has a working cooperative farm, a metal work studio and a sculpture studio. It isn't a normal educational establishment, apart from the 10% of courses which are about artistic activities, the rest are well and truly alternative. Want to find you chakras? Join a western mystical order? Learn how to breathe? This is the place to come. It's a beautiful house, in a beautiful setting and its primarily a venue for the promulgation of this wonderful b****ks. B****ks because I think it is, wonderful because it's a wonderful peaceful place that offers all sorts of support and experiences to take part in totally harmless and probably pretty relaxing activities. Normally houses like this are either hotels or in private hands with large gates and walls. This college is open to the public, trying to be environmentally friendly, a source of organic vegetables, and a place for all our local hippies (we do have a lot of them) to get to together and chant. How truly lovely.

Conversations

2009-04-24T12:51:00.004+01:00

WARNING - some readers may find this post distressing

I am a very open person, on occasion too open I think. But last night I was glad that I'm an open person and that I come across as an open person. Someone I've met on only a couple of occasions asked me to do some research for them - they knew I was good on the internet and knew how to find things out. They asked me to look up some information for them on date rape - as their daughter had just been the victim of a drug facilitated sexual assault.

Their daughter, let's call her Kirsty, she's 26. Kirsty had been out with a couple of girlfriends dancing in a club in London. Kristi is married and has a little child but she loves dancing. A guy began hassling them, when he wouldn't go away a 'knight in shining armour' stepped in and got rid of him. The Knight wanted a reward and he asked for a drink using that phrase . They felt obliged so they went to the bar and bought drinks for the Knight, his friend and themselves. They don't remember anything in detail much after that until they regained full consciousness in a bed, together, with a used condom nearby. Kirsty described the events to her mother as if she was aware of what was happening but was very detached from the experience and wasn't able to stop it. She knows that someone had intercourse with her that night.

Kirsty has been to the police and the STI clinic and has decided she doesn't want to press charges. She hasn't told her husband yet but he is a very difficult and emotionally abusive man. At the moment Kirsti doesn't see what happened to her as sexual assault or rape and is blaming herself for the entire incident.

My acquaintance and I talked for nearly 2 hours - about Kirsty, about her husband, about my acquaintance's family and life. I told her about my life as well. For two almost complete strangers it was a startlingly honest conversation. That's when I don't think I'm too open - when it helps.

I've done the research. Pulled off details from the national rape crisis website and the equivalent in the US which had a lot of details on the drugs that are used to facilitate sexual assault - and I've emailed them to my acquaintance suggesting that even if her daughter won't get in touch with the local rape crisis centre than she should for herself.

I honestly don't know what else to write. Reflecting on it, last night was one of the most surreal and interesting of my life. I hope Kirsty survives, and my acquaintance finds a way to help her. And I hope I never have to go through anything like they are going through.

Updates - Chinese and Saudi Arabia

2009-04-22T10:35:00.004+01:00

So I've been studying Mandarin Chinese for a few weeks now so I thought I'd write an update. I'm still loving it - studying for 1-2 hours a day, mainly utilising my long commute. Progress is slow but steady, I'm up to around 250 words and about 200 characters. You need at least 1000 characters to give you some kind of fluency in reading. My pronunciation and verbal fluency is of course leagues behind, but I'm hoping that once I've got a decent grasp of it I might be able to find a private tutor to help me with the verbal aspects - or bribe my colleagues with cake.

It isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. It's hard, learning any language is hard, but I don't think Mandarin is as bad as it is made out to be. You do have an extra step as you need to memorise the connection between the English-Pinyin-Character trio but using the wonderful Anki that seems to be happening. I'm pretty good at recognising characters and I'm starting to remember the most frequent ones enough to write them from memory when I see the English phrase. I think truly memorising them enough to reproduce them easily will take some time.

I do love the simplicity of the the language. A far simpler grammatical system - no verb conjugation, past tense and questions indicated by the addition of a syllable at the end of the sentence or after the verb, very little us of 'is', 'of' and 'and'. Simple sentences just run pronoun-noun-verb-question participle i.e. You today go out? which translates into normal english as Would you like to go out today?

I've bought a couple of books to help me understand the context of the language, particularly the written characters. A small percentage of characters do have their origins in pictographs (although not as many as you might believe) and understanding how these evovled is useful to me in understanding the structure of the language. So the two characters for morning relate to 'sun rise' and represent the sun above the earth and up.

On the other matter.... I have only found one other colleague who feels the same way as I do. Most just didn't see the problem. I did quite a lot of research and soul searching after writing that last post, just to confirm that women really are in a pretty poor situation in SA. I've decided I don't agree with academic boycotts because I don't think in 99% of cases they are justified - economic and political boycotts are a different matter. But I don't think we should enter into a partnership with any University in a country where we are forced to compromise the way we work and our own obligations under UK equality legislation i.e. how would we handle an admissions process where women are automatically excluded? If I can be convinced that working with a SA University does not force us to do this, then I might be able to reconcile myself with it, but otherwise I'll take a personal stand.

Two words

2009-04-10T21:32:00.004+01:00

I've done pretty well not to think about work this week. I've been at home, chilling out, attempting to drill some more Chinese into my head, baking, and hanging out with friends. And then two words popped into my head, two words that really make me stressed. They are a rather strange couple of words, and they've been coming for a while - I knew they'd pop up eventually.

The two words? Saudia Arabia. I work for a University helping it to work with other Unviersity's around the world. I'm not entirely comfortable about the human rights, equality of opportunity and democracy records of all the countries we work with. But somehow I manage to rationalise myself out of the problems with most of them: China, India, UAE etc. I argue that they're on a course towards improving the situation in which their populations live, my favourite is China - and despite what you read in the press - visiting and working with Chinese Universities gives me a lot of hope.

Before I headed off on annual leave we had an approach from a Saudia Arabian University, and I had a discussion with a colleague about a scholarship scheme operated by another. I'm not sure everyone thinks that working with Universities from this country is problematic, but I seriously have to think about whether I'm willing to work with them at all. It's an Islamic monarchy. Women's and children's rights are not recognised. There is no democratic involvement whatsoever. I believe that by working with them my employer might breach its duty under the various pieces of equality legislation.

I don't want to be a trouble maker, but I know that this isn't something I'm going to be able to let lie. Obviously nothing has happened yet, but the approach is a genuine one, and they will be visiting. I want to work for a University that is true to itself as a bastion of free thought and academic critique, and I hope that I will be able to raise this issue for debate and have the senior staff engage with the complexity of this issue - rather than being blinded by the glamour of the opportunities that might present themselves. Fingers crossed.

Ni hao

2009-03-21T19:20:00.002Z

So I went to my first Mandarin lesson this week. A group of parents in my county got together a few years ago to found a Mandarin School, they had all adopted children from China and wanted their families to learn Mandarin and so find a connection with the birth country of their children. It's very cheap, friendly, a little amateurish in its organisation (but in a good way) and so far there are 6 of us, so the level of teacher-student interation is top. So far I can count to ten, say hello and ask someone their name. I know a couple of characters, but in the early days its apparently better to focus on using pinyin and then properly focus on the characters when you've got the general hang of it.

I've also subscribed to Chinesepod after exploring the service through a free trial. The resources look amazing taking you from 'Newbie' to 'Expert' with hundreds of lessons, vocab, transcripts and a big online community. I've signed up to the £20 a month premium package which you can cancel any time - so seems like a good thing to take a chance on. I'm also going to try using Anki a 'spaced repetition' system - kinda like a sophisticated version of flashcards. I wish I'd had it when I was at school!

As you can probably tell I'm serious about this, and I hope I stay that way. I don't speak any other languages (ok a tiny bit of french but I've never been properly motivated to improve it), and having visited China twice in the last year I'm fascinated by the country, and I'd really like to explore it and perhaps live there.

So wish me luck, I'll keep you posted on my progress!

Ok, so it's not a virus

2009-03-17T13:22:00.001Z

Yes, I guess I knew it was going to happen, but I always hope it won’t. But the laws of the CFS universe say most definitely that there can’t be a boom without a bust. I guess this one threw me a little as it isn’t a classic bust, it’s an achy, grumpy no stamina, vertigo bust… it was the achy that threw me, and no brain fog (yet). Anyway, I am officially busted. Sat working in bed with a laptop, trying to finish the report I’ve procrastinated over for nearly a month. The thought of trekking into the office just isn’t pleasant, I’d get there and want to fall asleep. My arse hurts, my elbow hurts. Hubland and I went out on Sunday and after 45 minutes of him driving I was falling asleep on the café table before my baguette had even arrived. It’s seriously not fun for me, and it can’t be fun for him either. The sun is shining brightly and all I want to be is asleep. Can’t relax to watch movies or tv either as I feel like I need to do work – and frankly I do. I’m not fully off sick, I’m in that half and half state which is even more confusing.

But this is my life, it’s been my life since I was 10, and yet somehow it doesn’t get any less frustrating or annoying. I’ve stopped being able to imagine what it’s like not to need to lie down after planting some seeds in a seed tray, but that doesn’t stop me trying. I never want to complain as there are people, people I know very well, who are far sicker than I am, and it really isn’t that bad. But it’s my life so I guess I have the right to be a little pissed off.

Disaster

2009-03-11T09:36:00.001Z

It’s one of my guilty secrets, I love disasters. Obviously I’m not too keen on experiencing them myself, but I do have a strange fascination with documentaries about emergencies and disasters (not always so keen on film re-creations of actual disasters, somehow they seem too morbid). I guess there are probably two underlying causes for this interest: the obsessive organiser and planner in me wanting to know how best to survive and the scientific-technical investigation process that unravels the course of a disaster and the reasons behind it.

A new series of ‘Air Crash Investigation’ has just started on the National Geographic Channel. So far I’ve seen how pilot error cause a mid-air collision just outside New Delhi, which reassuringly also showed how new radar technology makes the likelihood of that far lower. Yesterday I watched the mid-air break up of a 747 on the Taiwan Straits – a dodgy repair 22 years earlier had turned into a fatal fracture and the tail fell off at 35,000 feet.

Yes, I know, I’m strange... the Horizon programme on how to survive last night was more useful. So these are my tips: never sit more than 5 rows from an emergency exit on a plane (beyond that survival probability sharply drops off), never stay above the 5^th floor in a hotel (the maximum height of rescue ladders), if an alarm goes off or there are other signs of an emergency don’t rely on other people to indicate what to do – get the hell out of there.

Apparently much of the loss of life in the Twin Towers was due to people’s inability to realise and deal with what was happened – people continued writing emails, went to the toilet, shut down their computers before trying to find their way to the emergency staircase. It just didn’t sink in, people’s minds were not prepared to deal with the reality of a major emergency.

One firm had a very high survival rate – only 14 Morgan Stanley employees perished out of 3,500 – because they had an obsessive head of health and safety who drilled them constantly what to do. So they did it automatically, they didn’t have to think, they just knew it was better to get out quickly and ask questions later than to hang around to see if it was a ‘drill’ (although in this case the giant bang and explosion should have given it away).

This inability to act and the problem of peer pressure was demonstrated through a film of the ‘Smoking room’ experiment – where participants were expecting to take part in a social science experiment and were led into a room to fill in forms before the experiment began. Smoke starts pouring in from a corner door. When they were in the room alone 75% got up to raise the alarm within 5 minutes, when the room was filled with actors ignoring the situation only 10% did. Apparently self-confidence is also one of the biggest survival plus points.

So go on, next time you’re on a plane count those seat backs to the exit, in a new building know your exit route... but right now I’m off to buy myself a personal smoke hood.

Cream crackered

2009-03-07T15:14:00.003Z

Yes, ok, I'm tired now. Having worked non-stop since Christmas, and easily pulling 10 hour days and most weekends for most of February I have officially stopped now. Had a duvet day on Monday and worked from home Tuesday and Wednesday. My brain was so tired, and so full of stuff. Amazingly I haven't had a proper CFS crash, I think this may just be 'normal knackered' which is quite a relief. I am now sat in bed with a ginger cat and my laptop, with hubland is watching football downstairs. I'm browsing www.etsy.com for new jewellery (I actually don't have that much, need more earrings) and watching 'Kitchen Nightmares USA' on 4OD.

Although I've enjoyed what I've been doing at work, and learnt so much, I'm pretty hacked off at some of the Senior Management and the general lack of direction for the University I work in. We're not bad, and we're not an ex-poly (which comes with its own challenges), but we're not currently holding our own among what we'd consider our 'peer institutions'... in fact some of our alleged peers have completely transformed themselves in the last 10 years or so while we've stood still. That has finally been brought home to everyone with the joy of the RAE (google it, go on, I dare you) - the funding letters arrived on Thursday and we've lost a big chunk of our recurring research funding. Some of it isn't our fault, the new allocation formula is mad, but a lot of it is.

We don't actually have a strategy, something that tells us who we are and where we're going. We seem plagued by indecision, with Senior Manager's influenced more by an offhand comment from a fellow VC/PVC at a conference than from the advice of their professional staff... and then there is the paralysis from fear and inability to talk calculated risks. I think I'll give it another year, but then if things don't improve it may be time to move on. It can be pretty demoralising to work your arse off in a job that you've been hired to do, present great ideas, beautifully written papers, to do everything you are meant to be doing, and not get anywhere or have your ideas taken seriously when it comes down to the crunch.

I am lucky, with the internal rearrangements that took place last summer, I've got a lot more responsibility and I am glad to be able to say that the people I respect, respect me. So that's keeping me going for the moment. But my work means a lot to me and I can't stay forever in a place that doesn't let me do for it what I know needs to be done.

Lark rise to Chengdu

2009-02-11T22:56:00.001Z

I praise my ability to sleep at anytime in a bed, if only that skill could be translated to planes, trains and automobiles. We arrived in Chengdu in Western China after about 20 hours or so travelling and 27 hours awake. I’d got a bit of a kip on the internal flight from Beijing to Chengdu but not much. We did dinner, we walked around the (very shiny) streets and then went to bed. I hope my colleagues have had equally full night’s sleep.

The sun hasn’t yet risen here which threw me a little as it was still very dark when I woke up and I couldn’t tell if it was the middle of the night or, as it turned out, 10 minutes before my alarm was due to go off, which thankfully it was.

We now have two days in this city before flying home, a very long way to come, but all the time we could afford for this trip. Hopefully if all goes well we’ll be back here in the future.

So far my impressions of Chengdu have been, busy, shiny downtown (much shinier than Guangzhou), absolutely no westerners.

I’ve managed to forget my camera but I will be stealing my colleagues pics so hopefully I’ll be able to post a few on our return.

The skeletons of Beverly Hills

2009-01-27T09:46:00.001Z

No, I’m not talking about the remains of Luke Perry or Jason Priestly popping out of closets to scare the newbies of West Beverly Hills High – although that would be quite a good storyline. I’m talking about the fact that the majority of the female actors would be hard pressed to find a BMI of over 18 among them. Next to them Jennie Garth, now a high school counsellor, looks positively rubenesque in her size 8 to 10 hips.

I like American trashy series, I have to admit. Although I lean on the more quirky end – towards Gilmore Girls rather than the O.C. – but from the first episode I can’t see anything to hate about the new 90210. But I’m really not sure I’m going to be able to watch it without screaming ‘Argh, she’s so skinny she shouldn’t be allowed on TV, that’s not normal or healthy, can’t anyone see that?’ every five minutes. Somehow I think that would detract from the enjoyment.....

Revenge and forgiveness

2009-01-13T09:37:00.001Z

Another Speaking of Faith inspired post I’m afraid. I’ve been suffering from insomnia the last couple of months, so I often lie in bed in the dark, wedged between a ginger cat and a sleeping husband listening to all manner of podcasts until I realise I haven’t heard the last few sentences and it’s time to turn off the ipod. Last night’s programme was about the place of revenge and forgiveness in the fundamental make up of human psychology and society. Examples given on the operation of revenge among Japanese Macaques and the role of revenge in natural selection. Examples of forgiveness against all odds were of the father who lost his daughter in the Oklahoma City bombings visiting the father of the bomber and finding release from the anger and bitterness through compassion for a man who had lost his son. Or of the rising voice of appeals for forgiveness and reconciliation in Uganda in relation to the atrocities carried out by rebel factions.

I do think that revenge is an inherent part of human nature, a natural reaction to any perceived deliberate (and sometimes even accidental) hurt inflicted on oneself or something one cares about. But it also generally doesn’t help anyone, and just perpetuates violence and distress – with the current events in Israel and Palestine being a case in point. All of the major world religions include within their central scriptures the capacity to promote forgiveness – even Islam and Judaism – and yet forgiveness is often seen as a particularly Christian thing, and therefore taboo.

Apparently in Uganda one of the factors behind the call for forgiveness is the sheer exhaustion from the impact of the conflict. Maybe this is also part of what has happened in Northern Ireland. It is hard to keep up the momentum required to sustain anger and revenge when you’re out of energy. So let’s hope the Palestinian and Israeli peoples start suffering from collective insomnia at the atrocities committed in their names, then maybe they’ll be tired enough to forgive.

She's doing it on the train!

2009-01-06T14:14:00.001Z

Cried the very cute and very bright 2 year that is sat diagonally opposite me as I make my way to work this morning. This is my new experiment in email blogging. Blogspot allows you to have a unique email address through which you can post to your blog. This is hopefully going to allow me to post a little more regularly as it means I can type out my message on my laptop, press send, and when a log in to my work network it will fly out of my outbox and onto my blog.... well that’s the plan.

This morning is cold, cold, cold. Night time temperatures have been hitting around -8 around here and the dusting of snow that fell the previous night is still hanging around. Some of the local kids must have had an extra day off from school yesterday as there was much squealing and chattering emanating from the park up the road where tobogganing was taking place. I was at home, working, trying to keep warm while waiting for our new King size mattress to be delivered. All we need now is the bed frame and we’ll be sleeping in the lap of luxury.... or just comfort with enough room for both cats who have now made their ‘cold war’ truce to enjoy the heat of their two humans overnight.

Despite general knackeration and a rather persistent tummy bug on my part we’ve had a good winter break. Did some nice things, saw friends, saw family and spent some time together.... ooh and finally started re-tiling the kitchen (it’s been without tiles for 2 years after hubland got a bit happy with a chisel). It is rather a wrench to go back to work, but I’m determined that this term is going to be different from last term. I’m going to set some boundaries and not get involved with politics or spend my energy worrying about things that aren’t my responsibility. I’ve even drafted an email, but after taking some advice from my lovely boss, I’ve realised that I’m going to have to say it in conversation first..... wish me luck.

Broody

2008-12-09T18:32:00.002Z

Ok... not that long ago I was writing that Hubland and I had pretty much decided not to have kids... and for me it now feels like that has gone out the window. I am so damn broody its unbelievable. Two of my best friends have just had their first bambinos - a boy and a girl (they have to get married when they grow up). I have a friend at work who is pregnant. Everything around me just seems to scream baby! and then the voice in my head says 'You want one, and you want one right know'. But I can't have one.... and I also want to see if this feeling lasts. In about a years time our financial situation will be miles better and might be the time to think about getting pregnant, so if the broodiness lasts until then I think we'll probably get started.

Who'd a thought it?

Where have I been?

2008-10-20T13:16:00.002+01:00

My goodness it's been a long time since I've written, in fact I think it's probably the longest time between posts since I started this blog. But I'm not gone completely, just had the busiest couple of months that I've had since starting my job, and four different visits from family on top of that. I've had lots of posts going around my head as always, but none of them have managed to make it on to hear until now.

So where have I been? Belgium, Ireland, with my sister, with my mother, with my sister-in-law and with my mother-in-law, shopping for winter clothes and shoes, watching Party of Five re-runs on Zone Romantica and Gilmore Girls on E4, celebrating hubland's 34th birthday with a chocolate dinosaur cake, playing with Sky+, feeling broody*, making apple juice, loving Autumn, wondering when the babies will arrive.... and currently listening to Jann Arden singing 'Good Mother' and wondering why I've never heard of her before.

So where have you been?

*aaaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh

Out of my world

2008-08-25T13:00:00.005+01:00

This post has been a while in coming... and as husband has current ownership of the TV (Mighty Boosh on DVD, like it, don't love it) I thought I should get around to posting. A conversation a couple of weeks ago reminded me that some things that regular features in other's lives, just are out of my range of personal 'normality'.

Some of them are trivial, some I'd take more seriously, but all are out of my range of comprehension..... they would never stop me being friends with someone... and frankly they're none of my business... but they still make me go.... huh?

1) Drinking

I'm not a tee-totaller, and I've had a few times in my life where I've drunk too much, although I don't drink at the moment as it doesn't agree with me. Husband will have a glass of wine or a bottle of beer most evenings. That's fine. It's not going to do him any harm and it is part of the 'little pleasures' of life. I'm completely happy with the government's guidelines of a maximum 3-4 units a day for a man and 2-3 units a day for a woman. They are sensible, they don't force abstinence, and I'm sure you can play with a little and still be fine. But I regularly come across friends or acquaintances who just don't play this game by the rules. They have a bottle of wine most nights, or regular get clattered on a Friday and Saturday -downing their weekly units in one or two sittings. That is long term liver damage just waiting to happen..... not pretty.... but just not on some people's radar.

2) Smoking

Why do people still smoke? It's madness I tell you.... madness! I can cope with this in friends, but it would be make or break for a partner.

3) Reading gossip mags

Yes they can be funny, and I will flick through one at the doctors or left by a fellow passenger on a train. But to buy them? Every week? And actually pay attention to what 'celebrities' are up to? Nope, just don't get it....

4) Money

Increasingly I come across couples - either in long-term, living together relationships, married or not - who do not have joint finances i.e. they each pay 50% of the household bills (despite any difference in earnings), don't have a joint account (or do but just for bills, which they both pay into), pay separately for things like holidays, big purchases etc. I, personally, couldn't handle this. My idea of marriage/commitment does not involve such a significant form of separation. My husband and I do have separate credit cards - to allow us to buy birthday and Christmas gifts for each other without the recipient seeing the details. I'm sure this is more common than ever before but it worries me for two major reasons. Firstly, to me a big part of marriage is about coming together as a new family unit, a new person in fact. Separating out your finances this way just looks like its going to act as a wedge (or a least not a help) in keeping that relationship going. Secondly, trust (and associated honesty) is also a big deal for me in marriage. If you have separate finances because your other half is an erratic spender, then again, I think you're going to have bigger problems in your relationship in the longer term......

5) Bathrooms

Ditto for having separate bathrooms. Nice luxury... but essential/make or break for a successful marriage?... no....

As I said at the start, none of these things would stop me being friends with someone, caring for someone, but they are things 'out of my world'.... and always makes me do the puzzled head tilt...

Soundtrack

2008-08-06T11:41:00.003+01:00

Music is one of the most important pleasures in my life. I spent a good proprtion of my teenage years lying in my bedroom singing (or crying) along to all manner of music. My tastes have broadend as I've got older - with only Jazz eluding me completely.

Yesterday one of my favourite albums arrived in the post from ebay. My Dad had this album on tape, which meant I had it on tape and he never saw it again. I think I actually wore the tape out. I don't know what reminded me of it, but suddenly I had to have it and listen to it again. There was only one copy of it on ebay, so £3.26 (including P&P) later I was the proud owner of Paul Simon: Negotiations and Love Songs 1971-1986.

Tracks:

1. Mother and child reunion

2. Me and Julio down by the school yard - makes me jig around the room

3. Something so right - chillout, slide down the sofa and so 'aaaaahhhhhhh'

4. St Judy's Comet - this has got to be my favourite lullaby

5. Loves me like a rock - a little bit of gospel-ish

6. Kodachrome - so silly, yet so right

7. Have a good time - a little bit sleazy

8. 50 ways to leave your lover - a classic

9. Still crazy after all these years - I think this should be 'our song'

10. Late in the evening

11. Slip slidin' away - my philosophy

12. Hearts and bones

13. Train in the distance

14. Rene and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war - this one makes me cry

15. Diamonds on the souls of her shoes

16. You can call me Al - again so silly, yet so right, I should really look up what is means....

The lyrics are so insightful and beautiful, the music is spot on - taking you from tears to childish dancing and back again over the course of the compilation. I love the way when you know an album so well you can anticipate the movement of the next song before it starts - and if you here them out of their 'proper order' it just feels wrong. I can't believe I've lived without this album for this long.

D-Day

2008-08-01T12:10:00.002+01:00

Today is the 1st of August, and also the 1st day of my new eating regime. I've put on a stone since I got married 2 half years ago, most of it went on in the first 6 months - due to some unfortunate drug side effects and boredom at work. It's been pretty stable since then so I must be eating the right amount of calories to maintain by weight.

So, for the month of August, I'm going to be strict with myself: no cake, no biscuits, no full-fat fizzy drinks and no dairy (I'm sure my IBS inteferes with my metabolism). I'm not a big indulger but as I'm on maintain weight mode, cutting the calorific things I do eat is the easiest way to change. I know I can lose 1-2 pounds a week by just being strict, I've done it before but now I need to stick with it, something I find really hard, so I think a month is a good initial period to aim for - also September and October are going to be mad, so if I lose weight in August my aim for those months will be to maintain.

In the long rung I'd like to be two stone lighter, but I haven't been near that since I was at school. It would be the right weight for my height though - putting me in the 'healthy' BMI range. My current BMI is 29.12. My long term target BMI is 24.5. Although that's at the top of the healthy range, I think I'd look damn strange if I was any skinnier than that. And really, I should knock off about half a stone for my boobs as they weigh a ton!

I'm also going to try and up my activity levels. I have to be rather careful with this though, as I do have a limited energy supply and my sleep is screwed at the moment leaving me more tired than usual. My tactics are going to be (when I feel up to it): walk around campus at lunchtime, walk up the hill from the station, go for walks in the evening with Ben - must dig out my pedometer. If I ever get a bathing suit that actually fits (I'm waiting for no. 3 to arrive in the post) I'll also try and add swimming - although the facilties around here are not top.

I'll let you know how it goes - hell if I lose 4 pounds I'll be happy!

The Joy of Silliness

2008-07-21T11:51:00.002+01:00

It hasn't been the best of weekends. The working week ended with a rather nasty shock regarding my role (still have a job, but possibly not the one I really wanted). And then I slept, all day Saturday, all day Sunday.

So in contrast to that, I thought I'd write about the joy of silliness, particularly silliness in films. Tonight on Film4 there is Dodgball, tomorrow Zoolander, and I've just bought Snakes on a Plane on Ebay. Let the silliness run free.

I know some people may dismiss these films, and I myself make a distinction between the "gross out" comedy of Dumb and Dumber, American Pie and the like, and films that are truly just plain silly. So if you haven't watched any of these films just by accident, or you dismissed them as "low culture" that was beneath you, I say look again, look a little lower, and be prepared to be silly and check out those mentioned above plus:

Dukes of Hazzard . Groundhog Day . The Man with Two Brains . Cry Baby . Bruce Almighty . Anchorman . Clerks & Clerks II (warning very silly, but very, very rude) . Little Nicky . Airplane . Spaceballs . Mars Attacks! . Princess Bride .... what are your favourite silly movies?

The way to end a crappy-ish day

2008-07-14T11:53:00.001+01:00

... is with “buy one book get another half price” in WH Smith. We’re at the thin end of the month but I was blue so £12 for two paperbacks didn’t seem too much of a price to pay to cheer myself up. I bought “The Last Empress” and “Becoming Madame Mao” by Anchee Min. I read “Empress Orchid” during and after my trip to China, “The Last Empress” is the sequel. At the moment I like the window into the world feeling that these books give, taking me away from myself and putting me in a world that is so different to mine. When you’ve had a crappy-ish day, it’s where you need to be.

So why crappy-ish? Well it wasn’t full blown crappy, nothing bad happened, I was declared to have normal blood pressure for the first time in 6 months by my doctor, so that wasn’t bad. I had a comedy moment in a sandwich shop where my “cheddar and cucumber” baguette somehow became just cucumber – I didn’t realise this until I had walked down the street, and the baguette was still warm, so just cucumber was okay.

The crappy-ish came this afternoon in a meeting with one of the “middle managers” of the academic type at my University. You really couldn’t get much wetter than him, I had more enthusiasm out of my mother when I told her I wanted to do a PhD on witchcraft. After about 10 minutes I was looking around for the arsenic – for him or me, I wasn’t sure. He’s been in post now for about four years, no wonder his department is withering underneath him. He isn’t a bad man, just a man who shouldn’t be within five miles of a position which requires enthusiasm and leadership skills. He typifies what is worst about my University – slightly depressed, sleepy, totally unaware of so much of what happens in the Institution and the world around him.

So that meeting depressed me, it probably depressed him poor sod. But now I have two new books, a naughty bottle of Coca Cola, and I’m sitting on the train with my laptop out so I can look important, so life is getting better.

Wish I knew...

2008-07-07T23:05:00.003+01:00

...why I'm still up at 23:06 despite having no sleep last night and feeling tired
...why I'm so scatter brain at the moment when I'm usually so organised about that sort of thing
...why I can't seem to keep my mouth shut at work
...why I just can't seem to let it lie
...why I haven't gotten around to telling anyone important that something I did at work made it into the national press (don't worry, in a good way)

Abundance

2008-06-25T19:16:00.003+01:00

Thought it was time for a garden update. This is what we have planted (read left to right/clockwise):

- Two tubs: one with young lettuce and spring onions, one carrots and parsnips
- On the bench: two troughs of lettuce
- Two tubs of dwarf French beans behind the end of the bench, one set of which lost their seed leaves in the high winds we've had, but they look like they might recover.
- In front of the bench: a pumpkin and a courgette plant
- In front of the grow house: a tomato plant, a (very small, but looks alive) blueberry bush, sunflowers
- In the grow house: chilli, small lettuce plants, delphiniums (taking ages to grow), more beans, more young lettuce, more sunflowers, basil, and the next generation of spring onions
- On the window sill: more lettuce
- In big tubs: 8 tomato plants in two tubs at the back, 3 pepper plants and 3 aubergine plants in two tubs at the front.
- By the door: rosemary and some million bell flowers.

Phew! That’s a lot of plants, and a lot of lettuce to eat! At the moment it is only the lettuce that we're harvesting (although I worked out that we will easily save about £40 by growing our own), the rest will mostly start cropping over July, August and September.

P.S. Can you spot our two new arrivals to the family sat on the gas box. My handiwork, I'm a very proud mama.

Whoops!

2008-06-21T06:54:00.002+01:00

Well I've just checked in to my Hong Kong hotel - a "Chinese boutique hotel" - in HK boutique does seem to mean small rooms, but also beautifully decorated in a modern Chinese style. Much better than a faceless euro-hotel box. And how big a bedroom do you need anyway?

As I checked in I had to give a credit card to put a deposit on the room. I looked in my wallet, and my heart dropped. My Natwest Visa card was no longer there. Trying not to panic I handed over my other card. I've just ransacked my bags and I just can't find it. I haven't used it since Wednesday so it hasn't been out of my wallet, and my wallet hasn't been out of my sight. I've never left it in my room, it's always been with me in my bag. Nothing else is missing.

So I rang the lovely "Card loss" centre and I've cancelled it - luckily no other transactions have been carried out since I last used it - so it must be lost, or stolen by someone really inept. I still feel a little stressed, as I've never had a card lost or stolen before. But it is cancelled now, so no harm done. A new one is winging its way to me in the post. Luckily I have other means of paying for things, and I intend to wander around Hong Kong rather than shop.

Time for some lunch I think and a wander, before heading up Victoria Peak.

P.S. I can read my posts (and your comments) now I'm in HK....

Boy's night out, Guangzhou style

2008-06-19T14:32:00.003+01:00

Oh am I ready for my bed! Today has gone well, but the heat is really taking it out of me. We've managed to get through the initial negotiations regarding the collaboration, so tomorrow will not be so intense.

Dinner tonight was in the brand new international convention centre. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in my life! The reception was in an atrium 3 storeys high and completely lined with marble. It would make a great ballroom dancing space.

The food was good - I am having a little trouble with being a vegetarian, mainly because they don't serve rice or noodles, as these are the "poor man's fillers". So I'm eating a lot of lovely bok choi, mushrooms and tofu, but my goodness do I crave some carbohydrate.

Our companions for the night were some university classmates of our Chinese colleague, along with other academic staff that he knows. It was lovely to see D smiling and being happy with his friends, and it was a lot more relaxed than the formal dinner last night. A great deal of Chinese red wine was consumed on their part and it got quite silly at one point. Very fun.

Tomorrow we will get to see some of Guangzhou city itself!

Sight of the day:
- Roadside knicker stand.

Bizarre realisation of the day:
- I can post to my blog, but not read it.... Chinese internet blocking in action

In a very big country

2008-06-18T14:17:00.003+01:00

Today I'm blogging from Guangzhou, a very large city in south-eastern China. This is the first time I've been anywhere near this part of the world - and despite the horrendous lack of sleep (I think I've had about 1 hr in the last 30 or so) I'm enjoying the adventure. I'm here for work - vi sting a local University - but I'm happy not to be a full blown tourist and get a chance to talk to people who actually live here.

I flew into Hong Kong and then got the high speed train to the city centre, a short taxi ride (in distance, not in time, the traffic was pretty much stationary) later I had transferred to Hung Hom station to catch the train to the mainland and Guangzhou. Through immigration (again) and then 1hr 45mins to look at the Chinese scenery.

So today on my travels I have seen.....

1) A man carrying about a dozen live chickens in a crate strapped to the back of his bicycle.
2) More 50+ storey apartment blocks than I ever thought existed. I was expecting these to cover Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, but they also stretched into the New Territories and over into Dongguan and Guangzhou.
3) Lots and lots of factories and their dormitories - a large proportion of people live where they work here. Some were in varying states of decay, some had big towers belching fumes, some were clean and tidy... but they were everywhere, wherever there weren't 50 storey apartment blocks.
4) Immobile rain... I think its a new category I've identified, somewhere between mist and rain... that hangs around (and falls at the same time) around Mount Baiyun.
5) A black cat.
6) The biggest container port I've ever seen - with containers stacked six high and cranes bigger than my office building.

Right, I'd better go before my brain collapses completely. I promise more ponderings, particularly on the nature of the social and cultural construction of reality...

Food thoughts

2008-06-04T13:18:00.005+01:00

I sat down on the train this morning and smiled with pride at my cargo. On the table in front of me were two tomato plants, just beginning to produce flower buds, which I have grown from seed. 8 of the original 12 plants are planted up in two big troughs in our garden, two have gone to live with Adventuring Jen. These two were going to be divided between two of my colleagues who have been eagerly awaiting their arrival.

On the train I decided to listen to one of the back catalogue of the Speaking of Faith podcasts which I am slowly working through on my iPod. Coincidentally (although I'm sure my subconscious had something to do with it) I chose an interview with Barbara Kingsolver about her book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" which tells the story of a year in the life of her family after they decided to truly eat local - growing or rearing most of their own food, supplemented by the local farmers market. I know of Barbara Kingsolver through her wonderful novel "The Poisonwood Bible" which I read about 8 years ago. The interview has, however, made me want to discover more of her non-fiction writing - I've already reserved a copy of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" at a book shop in town.

The podcast also made me think about the changes that my husband and I are making in our lives related to food and sustainability. Since we've owned our own home, and are settled in our life together we've become gradually more focused on the longer term pattern of our lives. A major part of our lives is the food we eat. I love cooking creatively and also enjoy baking cakes as a key means by which I de-stress.

This year I've also taken on gardening properly for the first time. Over the course of our first full year in our house we managed to clear out the big weeds and over-grown plants from our garden - so this is the first year I've actually be able to plan (well a bit) of what we might grow. We invested in a mini-greenhouse for £15 from the local garden centre and I raised 40 annual bedding plants from seed. They are now in the border, suffering a little from the excessive rainfall, but doing ok considering.

I also had the great urge to grow some plants from food. So far we've been harvesting our first "cut and come again" lettuce crops - which is truly wonderful. I don't think we'll ever buy a bag of salad again. All we do now is walk out of the door and pick it straight off the plant. Within a couple of days a new leaf has starting growing and so we get a steady supply. I've also got a very small container with carrots and parsnips as an experiment this year. The dwarf french beans are starting to germinate (planted a little late, but they'll be ok) and the basil is doing well.

We've also planted two varieties of sunflowers from seeds we harvested from our first batch last year (if anybody wants some, just let me know, I'm sure its not too late). These are growing so quickly I must plan them out this weekend.

If all goes reasonably this year maybe next year we'll see if we can get one of the allotments down the road and grow many more vegetables. I love knowing exactly where what we're eating has come from, and what has (and has not) gone into growing it.

The limit

2008-05-29T14:39:00.003+01:00

So today I finally hit my coping limit at work. Things have been getting progressively shitter since Christmas - all exacerabated by the fact that I am actually quite sick but trying to carry on. We're merging with another organisation and on top of that we're being restructured. I haven't had a boss with more than 3 minutes to spare for me since January. My lovely colleague is now moving on to a new job (which is v. good for him so am glad really). So out of an office of 3 that leaves just me. I'm sat at my desk (sods law that my boss is actually in next door today) feeling pretty tearful. My colleague is on leave. I am on my own and I haven't even managed to eat lunch today. I wish I wasn't so stressed, but with feeling so desperately ill I just don't seem to be able to stop. Meep.

Lady in the Water

2008-05-20T17:27:00.003+01:00

This film pretty much sunk without trace on release in the UK at least, and reading the reviews on RottenTomatoes.com, it isn't hard to see why. Yet I'm a Shylaman fan, so damn it I'm rented it from Amazon and now I feel compelled to write about it.

So first, why did it get such a bad reception?

1) What bugs me is if things aren't perfect, or near perfect, they get slagged off as if they were 100% crap, but Shylaman's films aren't perfect, in fact they've got less perfect as he's gone along as he's pushed his boundaries further and perhaps as his ego has got rather bigger. But that is no reason not to see and enjoy Lady in the Water for the perfect things in it that are contained within its imperfection.

2) I think the trailers have a lot to answer for. Before I rented the movie I didn't know a whole lot about it, just that it was the latest Shylaman. So as Hubland* and I sat down to watch it we flicked to the special features first to watch the trailers. The full length trailer advertised a totally different film - a big budget horror movie - rather than a haunting fairytale. So if people went to see it based on that, they are going to be very confused and disappointed. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they walked out after 30 mins.

3) Not withstanding point 1) it was far from perfect - some of the scripting was pretty awkward, somehow the premise just didn't get itself across until over half way through and I still think I need to watch it again to understand it properly, basically it didn't hang together despite the great cast, the beautiful cinematography, and the quirky fairytale plot.

So why then did I like it despite its flaws?

Because I like fairytales, I like fantasy, and I particularly like when the edges bleed and disappear between fantasy and reality. Lady in the Water isn't a masterpiece like Pan's Labyrinth, but it is a worthy attempt and has some beautiful moments. Paul Giamatti and Bryce Howard are a wonderful pairing. The motley crew of neighbours that come together to form the mythical characters are charming and bizarre. And hell, it's worth seeing for the cinematography alone!

Ok this has turned into a more stream of consciousness blog than I anticipated, but I'm going to press publish now anyway, and I hope you see Lady in the Water, and let me know what you think.

*this is his new monicker as he is "the land of Husbands"

New comedy

2008-05-16T13:57:00.003+01:00

It takes a lot for me to get into a new comedy series. Most of the British comedy that is currently produced a find a bit gruesome - too extreme in one way or another - or often just not that funny and reminds me too much of the family based sit-coms of the 1980s. Most of the American series on Sky are just pretty weak comedically, or again based on gross out humour.

However, two series have started in the last month or so - one from the US and one from the UK - that have really won me over. If you haven't discovered them yet I think you should check them out when you're in need of some light relief.

I think we're on about episode seven of The Big Bang Theory over here - a sit-com about a group of super-geek friends who work together as post-doctoral researchers in a Physics lab. It stars Johnny Galecki, who I've always had a soft spot for since he played David in Roseanne. And my word, that man just doesn't age! It isn't mind-blowingly funny but there are some great moments, and some fantastic lines. I also think for a friends-based sit-com its a good new premise to base it on geek-dom. Best of all, on top of being funny, it has a theme sung written and performed by the Barenaked Ladies!

Ok, so I can't claim that The Inbetweeners doesn't have some gross out moments - it is after all about a group of boys in 6th form - but nothing too bad. All of them are, however, great character actors, and the fact that they aren't playing the 'in crowd' or the 'outcasts' means that they're antics just remind me of what the average 6th form boy was like when I was in school - trying to get served in the pub, learning to drive, trying to get their hands on your breasts etc. It's accuracy is what makes it so funny, and so disarming.

I'm sure you'll be able to find both of these on Channel4 On Demand so there is no excuse for not watching them!

Top of the list

2008-04-28T09:54:00.000+01:00

I’ve had two “No 1’s” in the last week or so – events that have topped my experience list in their respective categories. One good, one bad.

Wednesday morning I sat in what was potentially one of the most important meetings of my job so far – a grilling by an external audit panel. I was the note-taker for the session and I was also there to answer questions on my particular area of operations. Within 10 minutes I knew I was getting a headache. By the time they came to question me directly an hour later, I knew I had a migraine. I survived the meeting, answered the questions with something approaching sense, survived the de-briefing, survived finding an obscure document the audit team had requested. Then I threw up. Then I attempted to make my 90 minute journey home without throwing up again. I worked in stages, rewarding myself after every stage of the journey with the thought that I was one move close to home: to bus stop, bus journey, to platform, on train, change trains, get taxi, home....

I managed to hold out to the last part of my journey until I had to throw up again. Luckily I had a lovely taxi driver, who I had had before, and who’s son has migraine. I also managed to throw up outside of the taxi so I wasn’t that bad a passenger.

Because the migraine had by that point had about 5 hours to establish itself it meant I spent the rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday in bed. I still feel pretty spaced out on Friday – but at least I had a quiet day in the office.

So that goes down as the worse migraine of my life so far (Evan, if you’re reading this, I’m afraid that one where you drove me back from York has been knocked off the top spot, sorry it was a close call).

So on to the good “No. 1”. One of the sessions I attended at my new religions conference last week was on the experience of the Branch Davidians at Waco. We had an outline of the current state of the research into the group and its experiences, and an overview the materials held in archive which are accessible to researchers. Interesting, but didn’t blow my mind.

Then at exactly 15 years to the day and hour of the final assault on Waco we had a chance to hear from one of the survivors. He survived primarily because he was captured at the start of the siege on 28th February. His wife and mother were killed during the siege. He has spent the last 15 years in prison, some in the USA, some in the UK (he’s a British Citizen), much of it in solitary as punishment for not acknowledging what he did was wrong.

He was an ordained 7th Day Adventist minister with a degree from Manchester Metropolitan University before he joined the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the 7th Day Adventists. He spoke with great grace and faith, describing the horrors and injustice that had been inflicted on the religious settlement that he belonged to at Mount Carmel, Waco, Texas.

To the British people (and other Europeans) in the audience the story behind Waco is pretty hard to get your head around. The community made much of their income through dealing guns – legally, at gun fairs and the like across the state. They were under surveillance as they were suspected of converting semi-automatic weapons to automatic weapons. This is not illegal in Texas, but you do need to pay a fee for every weapon you convert. So essentially this was a revenue issue, not one of religion or arms. The government agents had been watching the compound for some time, and had actually been invited in to inspect, and had taken up the offer. I don’t know all the details of what happened after that but obviously something went fundamentally wrong in the approach of the government agencies involved.

The Branch Davidians do not hold a pacificist theology, on the contrary they believed that they needed defend their faith, with force if necessary. I can imagine that this might have happened if government agents forcibly entered any number of properties around the USA where people hold weapons and do not generally recognise the authority of the state. Being a religious community didn’t really make them any different in this regard – they just had a different reason for doing it.

It was a tragedy – members of the community and FBI officers lost their lives needlessly.

The survivor spoke elegantly of his own experiences at Waco, of his theology, of David Koresh’s religious experience in Jerusalem. He quoted scripture from the Old Testament to the New, focusing a great deal on the Gospel of John and Revelations. His theology was as coherent as any other Christian based theology that I have come across.

Many Christians may not agree with the Branch Davidians interpretation of the Bible, but hearing it just drove home to me again that the Bible (and other religious texts) are open to such varying interpretations – and that’s even before you start looking into the issue of translation.

You may believe in the one true God of Christianity, but if you’re reading his message, remember that you’re nearly 2000 away from when the accounts of the New Testament were written, speaking a different language, and relying on hundreds of years of translation and interpretation. So never get too stuck on a word or a phrase – far better to go one on one with your God.

Survived

2008-04-21T12:49:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post to say I survived my week of running around. The work conferences were good, the academic conference was even better. Expect to see some posts on it in the near future as it has got my head a buzzing on all things religious.

This present crapness

2008-04-14T15:08:00.003+01:00

Okay, so where have I been lately....mmm... let's see.... at work, yes I'm sure I remember being there some of the time. At home.... well I can only really remember the bedroom and being sat on by a large ginger cat. Oh that's right, we did go out for a drive yesterday but I don't remember much of that as I was feeling so nauseated.

So things aren't going well inside my body at the moment. CFS is bad, bad, bad. Blood pressure is still 150/100, and the losing weight hasn't really happened due to the amount of time spent in bed. Seeing the doctor in a fortnight, which I can imagine will end in me going on ACE inhibitors (boooo!) but at least I can now prove that my tiredness was not due to me "forgetting" to take my thyroid tablets. I've been taking them religiously again since mid-January, and I'm stil knackered. She's a nice doctor, and it was rational to blame my tiredness on my appauling "compliance percentage" but I know that the thyroid tablets have never made the slightest bit of difference to my tiredness... which is odd... because they should.

And this week, well this week is really just a joke:
Tuesday - work conference in London
Wednesday - work conference in London followed by opening plenary of academic conference
Thursday - at work for v. important meeting, followed by afternoon in London for academic conference... staying the night
Friday - academic conference in London... staying the night
Saturday - academic conference

I am going to be so dead by Saturday night. Oh and my father-in-law is staying tomorrow night. In the five years that husband and I have lived together he has never been to visit us - we go and see him at least two or three times a year (he is 6 hours away) - so I'm not really moaning about that. At least its on that night that I'll be home at a reasonable hour.

Husband does think I'm mad going to the academic conference - but it is the first big conference in the area of my proto-PhD (which I haven' t done any work on lately...) - and its quite handy in London. It will be my first chance to make some friends (I refuse to "network" for academic purposes) in the field and hear some of the cutting edge research. Really miffed that I've got to miss the Thursday morning.... but at the moment work has to come first.

Ok, I've moaned enough - do you fancy seeing some pictures of owls from the Bird of Prey Centre, the last time I left the house and didn't feel too crap? I sure do:

"Am I sleeping, or am I plotting something evil?"

I just couldn't get these guys to synchronise their head turning, so much for marital co-operation!

Do these look familiar? These are a pair of "Gonzo" owls! They had two pairs at the Centre. Husband and I are going to sponsor a pair when we have some spare cash.

Ok, so this isn't an owl... but it was a very impressive turkey in a field by the roadside on the way home!

The perfect instrument

2008-03-24T23:14:00.003Z

Not my usual blogging content today - but this was just so amusing, in a pre-pubescent humour type way, that I had to share it with the world. This is a quote from an article in the Guardian newspaper entitled 'Prized violin plays again for Moscow elite':

"I wasn't sure he would agree to play my instrument," said Viktorov. "But he took it in his hands and played for seven seconds, after which he said the last time he had that feeling was when he touched his own instrument for the first time."

Get cycling

2008-03-19T18:31:00.003Z

So I completed my first exchange through Freecycle today. I'd heard of it on and off for ages but I finally got around to registering last week. We have quite a bit of stuff hanging around the house and the loft which we really don't need - but can't quite face chucking out as it is not actually broken. So today our old digital camera D.O.B. c.2002 went to a family in a nearby village. I felt really good about it, as I got the impression that they wouldn't have been able to have been able to obtain a camera through any other means. If you haven't joined yet, and you have random stuff lying around, or are in need of random stuff, I reckon you should join - you've got nothing to lose!

The Masterpiece

2008-03-12T13:07:00.002Z

And so it is finished... after 3 months... countless trips to B&Q... more £££s spent on materials and tools than I care to remember... and some wonderful Ebay purchases.... the guest room is complete!

This is the first room that husband and I tackled truly from scratch. Our previous decorating exploits in the house have been rather "make do and mend" - making the house more "us" until we can afford to do it properly with wooden floors and art nouveau fireplaces. The guest room has had the works: built in cupboard removed, damaged walls and ceiling replastered, all original woodwork stripped and repainted, new cornice installed, new carpet, new furniture and fully decorated.

So for you pleasure here is the before shot, what the room looked like before we bought the house...

And now here is the after shot:

I designed it on the Arts & Crafts style, inspired by a room at Cragside, Northumberland. A few finishing touches are needed in the form of pictures and a rug but basically we are open for business. Anyone fancy a weekend in the Cotswolds?

Belief-O-Matic

2008-03-11T14:33:00.003Z

According to Belief-O-Matic my religious/spiritual beliefs align with the following:

1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (97%)
3. Liberal Quakers (89%)
4. Neo-Pagan (80%)
5. Nontheist (74%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (70%)
7. New Age (69%)
8. Theravada Buddhism (65%)
9. Taoism (58%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (50%)

These are my top ten.... what are yours?

Wildlife on my way to work

2008-02-20T13:15:00.003Z

The last couple of days I have seen an abundance of wildlife visable from my train and bus on the way to work. I go through a beautiful section of countryside and past a number of farms so I always see something frolicking around but since Monday I've seen:

Red deer - some large herds, some groups of two or three dotted around different fields

Herons

Mallards

Tufted ducks

Song thrushes - I think they have just reseeded the playing field because there were dozens of them, and I've rarley seen more than two or three together before

Chaffinches

Bunnies

Crows

Canada Geese

Swans

Buzzards

Horses

Sheep

KLassic

2008-02-12T00:22:00.000Z

So it was a day at the prospective partner University yesterday - always interesting.... actually they're very organised and hospitable, although keeping track of all the Malay/Arabic names has been a challenge. The Chief Operating Office is very suave, and rather dishy in a short, stocky Malay kind of way - very commanding moustache!

The University is based near Little India - although driving through it I couldn't see a great deal of difference from Chinatown, except the shops were selling Sari fabric not fake Gucci handbags. Apparently there are some more Indiany bits, we just must have not seen them.

Dinner last night was in a Lebanese restaurant in a posh Mall called the Starhill - I've never seen so many branches of Hermes and Bulgari as I have seen so far in KL. Had a slight menu malfunction as I ordered what really did look like a veggie option - the menu was quite descriptive - which turned up with two great hunks of lamb on the bone next to the stuffed courgettes. We figured out something for me to eat in the end so no worries.

Then it was cocktails in the "Jazz lounge" - read "easy listening", although live and rather good. With a view over one of the main thoroughfares through the posh shopping district. All rather spontaneous and nice. Having good conversations with my colleague and her chap - although I always wonder if they think I'm mad..... personal paranoia strikes again.

Anyway, I've got to hop in the shower and then down for breakfast..... will post some more tomorrow.

KLassy

2008-02-10T11:00:00.000Z

So the adventure begins. The plane landed at KL international airport at 7am local time - 11pm UK time. As we were making our descent the dawn was breaking and suddenly all the forests of palm trees were visible below us.

We made it to the hotel with not much hassle - brand new high speed rail connection - plus teksi (taxi) from KL Sentral rail station. The hotel is definitely KLassy with a capital K and L. Not bad for £40 a night, you'd definitely be pushing £100 for anything near as good in the UK.

Then I tried to sleep. But my head was racing around with all sort of random facts. So I tried some relaxation techniques, but that didn't work. 2 hours later I dozed off. So I'm working on 3 hours sleep in the last 30 hours or so. Oh well.

Did a quick walk around the base of the Petronas towers and the KLCC park. Then headed up the Menara KL Tower - fourth largest telecommunications tower in the world don't you know. Its always the thing I like to do in a new city - get up high, and work out where the heck everything is. Then a quick dip in the pool sticking out from the fourth floor of the hotel. Will post pictures when I'm pack in the UK - forgot to pack the camera lead!

It's off to dinner with my colleague and her chap tonight. I'd like to try out one of the Rough Guide's restaurant recommendations in Chinatown - the first of many adventures. Then its back on with the work brain tomorrow negotiating with a Malay University - eek!

The panic subsides

2008-02-01T15:16:00.000Z

I had the shock of my life last week when I opened up an email from one of our academics and he asked if I minded flying to Kuala Lumpur on the 8th February.... aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... is what I said (to an empty office). Now I've travelled a bit - Europe and the US - but I've never been to East Asia before. I knew this trip was coming up but I didn't think it would be so soon. But this is part of what I'm paid to do, so now that the panic has subsided somewhat, I'm getting rather excited. Flights are nearly sorted, and so are hotels. KL looks like it has a fab public transport system - monorail mixed with other light rail - and a quite new high speed connection from the airport. I should get there early Sunday morning, so time for a kip and then a wander around in the afternoon. Meetings all day Monday and Tuesday. Then fly back to the UK Wednesday, landing late afternoon. My word am I going to be knackered. After a slight trauma I found out I probably will be travelling out with the colleague who will be coming with me, although travelling back alone as she is bringing her partner along for the trip.

I will try and do a blog from the road as I should have the work laptop with me and I will definitely have my camera!

Ok so...

2008-01-22T14:54:00.001Z

At the moment I'm either unconscious or stupidly busy - which doesn't make for good blogging. Health is still not good with added joy of having the blood pressure of an overweight octagenarian. Back to the docs again on Thursday to find out just how bad it might be. Purchase of home blood pressure monitor has caused much delight among friends and family - a new toy! Fear of blood pressure has put me on a mission to lose weight - even though I'm not that big, and that probably isn't the cause - so now also living without proper amounts of caffeine or sugar. Spare bedroom still isn't completely decorated - still a coat of paint on the ceiling, another coat of paint on the walls, one wall of wallpaper and the carpet to do.... Starting to look vaguely better though. New bed from ebay - 100 year old, solid oak, Arts & Crafts - is fabulous.
Just survived the first work event that I've organised at this place - complete with lunch. It was a sharing good practice thing, and we ran out of time (and therefore got kicked out the room), but I'm taking that as a good thing. I think I will be heading home soon as I'm completely wiped and can't imagine I'm going to do anything wonderfully productive for the rest of today. I'll be back in touch when I'm conscious again.....

A post beyond words

2008-01-10T14:22:00.000Z

Podcast ponderings

2007-12-30T01:01:00.001Z

"Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society."

Ok, I admit it, I'm becoming a podcast addict. More often than not in the mornings my brain/eyes is not up to reading, and my brain/ears is not really up for listening to music. So I listen to podcasts. The BBC do a good range - all accessible through iTunes and the BBC website - so I get my digest of Woman's Hour, Thinking Allowed and Jonathan Ross's Saturday show (I get funny look laughing out loud to that one). I am also working my way through various lectures from Princeton and Stanford through iTunesU. But recently I was trawling through the various sections trying to find some more religious studies podcasts and I came across the "Speaking of Faith" series from American Public Media. I've now downloaded the 102 back catalogue of podcasts and I'm going to work my way through them. So far I've listened to "Einstein's Ethics" and "Gay Marriage" among others.

Today as my beloved husband was driving us back down from "oop north" (6 hours), when I could bird of prey spot no more (3 buzzards, 1 buzzard/kite (looked too big to be the former), 3 Kestrels, 1 possible Hobby) I tilted the seat back, nestled into my pillow - it really is "Baby, you can sleep while I drive" - and revved up the pod. I listened to a podcast called "The New Monastics - Shane Claiborne". Anyone interested in emerging movements in Christianity should really download it and listen intently if you haven't heard of him. His book is definitely what some of my Christmas book vouchers will be spent on.

Those of you who know my given religious identification - agnostic with Pagan-Buddhist leanings (said with a rye smile) - may wonder why I still think and read so much about Christianity. Well I can give you all the superficial answers about "one of greatest social and cultural influences on human civilisation" blah blah blah etc. and I guess to a certain extent that is true. But something else fascinates me which I can never quite put my finger on... but I guess it comes down to the fact that I quite like Jesus. Biblical Jesus/myriad of historical Jesuses, I'm not fussed, I just like Jesus. I do have a soft spot for Buddha too (so don't get your hopes up guys). I'm also generally fascinated by how spiritual movements turn into religions, which then fracture, and reform and aclimatise to the many cultures that they find themselves operating in - and how would one "get back" to the essence of the spiritual movement if one wanted to operate spiritually but outside of the tradition.

Well that is what Mr Shane Claiborne and his friends seemed to be having a go at doing. Drawing on the New Testament and their own life experiences and taking the "What would Jesus do?" principle to its ultimate conclusion.

[On an aside, I really, really loathe the WWJD wrist-band thing. To me it just felt that it was just a commercialisation and commodification of an extremely deep and difficult concept into a small piece of plastic worn alongside bracelets and watches.... does wearing a band help anyone really get in touch with what living like Jesus actually might mean? I'm generally thinking not.... okay... rant over...]

So they moved away from their Churches - Protestant and Catholic - which they no longer felt were the best way to serve their God. And moved into the poorest neighbourhood in Philadelphia and basically put themselves in the way of suffering - direct, up front, face to face with the worst of 1st world poverty, homelessness and addiction. And that's where they live, and practice their faith, in a small community - of both married and single - and just do their best to live everyday the way they feel their God wants them to.

They've got involved with direct action, with wonderfully ironic causes: fighting the Catholic Church trying to kick out homeless families from an abandoned church which it had no plans to use and the criminalisation of homelessness (lie on a street to long, get arrested! Like that is really going to help).... hence the quote at the top (from Jacques Ellul courtesy of Mr Claiborne).

Anyway, that is enough random ranting and I really must go to bed as it is 1.30am... but here are some more quotes from Mr Claiborne to get you thinking....

"Not long ago, I sat and talked with some very wealthy Christians about what it means to be the church and to follow Jesus. One businessman confided, "I, too, have been thinking about following Christ and what that means … so I had this made." He pulled up his shirt-sleeve to reveal a bracelet, engraved with W.W.J.D (What Would Jesus Do?). It was custom-made of twenty-four karat gold."

"I recently surveyed people who said they were "strong followers of Jesus." Over 80 percent agreed with the statement, "Jesus spent much time with the poor." Yet only 1 percent said that they themselves spent time with the poor. We believe we are following the God of the poor — yet we never truly encounter the poor."

Yule never guess

2007-12-23T20:26:00.000Z

Yesterday Husband (reluctantly) and I attend our first pagan ritual. As I'm pretty certain now that the subject of my PhD is going to be modern paganism I thought I'd better start doing more than just reading. This is still a new and emerging religious form so there is only so much information you can get from books. No matter which approach I end up taking some kind of "participant observation" seems to be pretty likely to be involved. So I sought out a public ritual for the celebration of the Winter Solstice from one of the online networking sites. Anyone can attend but I dropped an email to the contact given and she said I was welcome to come along.

The ritual was organised by an eclectic Wiccan coven based in Surrey called the Cauldron of Cerridwen. From what I could tell their patron deities are the goddess Cerridwen and the god Cerrunos - both associated with the Celtic tradition. These fill the role of male and female deity present in mainstream Wicca.

The coven and other individuals met up at the pub in the village of Avebury. This is the location of one of England's greatest stone circles - in my mind, far more impressive than Stonehenge. It's used by a wide range for groups for varying rituals - with an official Druid "keeper of the stones".

The coven and all the bystanders - including me and Husband - formed a circle. With the leaders of the coven - male and female, not sure what they call them in this group - standing in the middle with a table laid with a black cloth, a flaming cauldron, a loaf of bread and a chalice. Words were said, and the four corners of the compass called, to establish the sacred circle. Part of the ritual was the re-enactment of the battle between the Holly King (the waning year) and the Oak King (the waxing year). Two chaps were dressed in green and did a mock fight with sticks , think Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. The Oak King won and was crowned. Then more words were said and then the circle broken. I hung around a spoke to a couple of coven members before heading back to the pub for a late lunch. As Husband commented "how English" to start and end your pagan celebration with the pub.

It was a public, light-hearted ritual and I can't say I felt any particular "spiritual energy" raised, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the point of it. I imagine that most pagan groups only really get going in private. I'm glad I went. It helped confirm that I was studying the thing I should be studying.... but also made me wonder - how on earth am I going to get to know these groups? Well that's a problem for the New Year.

Blessed be.

A reflection for doctor/woman

2007-12-15T11:13:00.000Z

One of my oldest and closest (despite the miles I hope) keeps a blog under the name doctor/woman. She is currently training to be a GP, after completing medical school and her junior doctor years. She doesn't always get to post that often, but when she does I love to hear her thoughts on her life and work... of course this is because I love and care about her... but it is also because in many ways we are very different people - not just because of our different careers - but because of our different personalities, quirks and foibles etc. We also have a lot in common, hence being good friends.

Her latest post started me writing a comment back to her, but then I realised that maybe it would require a longer reflection than would fit in that little comment box - so this post is for her (and me). I suggest if you're not familiar with doctor/woman, but are familiar with me, then you read her post first before you read this one.... otherwise this is not going to make much sense.

I believe that one of the greatest blessings of my time as an undergraduate was meeting the three wonderful women who became my friends, and were all training to be doctors. Now two are on their way to being GPs, and a third is working in gynaecology/obstetrics. I met them when they were 18. Having recently looked at some of the photographs I took of us in our first year (not many as it was before the days of digital) it makes me remember just how young we were. I feel so privileged to have been there to watch these girls become women, and to watch these students become doctors.

They are all remarkably bright, dedicated and hardworking and I admire them for so much for their tenacity and dedication to the path they chose when they were so young. But one of the things being their friend has taught me, above all else, is a lesson that I'm not sure I would have learnt had I not known them - and for that I am eternally grateful. Doctors are not superwomen/supermen. They are people, just like you and me, above all else. Medicine is the profession that holds the greatest mystique in our society. If I hadn't known these women as they grew up, and grew into their roles, then I'm not sure I would have grown to understood what it means to be a doctor.

They do know so much, and years of practice as well as education means that they do a good job and they are experts in their field. But they only have one brain, one body. Particularly those in general practice, have, by definition to be generalists not specialists. I don't go to my GP expecting her to have all the answers, but to work with me to find solutions or find someone else who might have an answer.

I so often overhear or am involved (but not contributing) to a conversation where people are dissatisfied with the medical profession. Yes, everyone, including me gets hacked off that the NHS doesn't have more money, that it has problems with organisational culture and modernisation, that we don't get enough time with our doctors when we do see them.... I have also encountered doctors who where basically arseholes, and just because they're doctors doesn't mean that that description can't apply - in fact because of their intelligence and background profile maybe there is a slightly higher proportion of arseholes in the medical profession than in the general public.... But what saddens me most is when people are criticising their doctor for not being able to solve a problem, or not knowing all the answers... I wish they'd give them a break... understand that medicine is just as much art as science.

So I have great sympathy with doctor/woman for feeling the pressure that that mystique puts on medical professionals almost unlike any other profession. I'm not sure there is much we can do about it as few people are blessed enough to have the experience I have had. But I hope she finds enough time in her "civilian" life to feel like a woman, and has enough rewarding moments from her medical life to feel like a healer.

Feeling guilty

2007-12-12T09:25:00.000Z

So it has not been a good couple of weeks. I woke up last Monday.... or rather I didn't as I spent that day and the following two pretty unconscious. I'd dragged myself home for one night at the weekend for my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary - which consisted of arrive at parent's house, nap, go to anniversary dinner, go to bed, come home, nap. But other than that I knew things were going down hill, just not how far down the hill I'd rolled.

By Thursday and Friday I was actually able to check my emails, catch up on the essential things that I had to be done. But a couple of hours concentration in a day was all I could muster. The weekend was similar. Helped Husband take a radiator off a wall (why did we find that so exciting?) and stripped a bit of paint from old skirting boards. Then it was back to work.

I started feeling achy, but I thought it was just the stripping having a delayed reaction - it was rather awkward to do. Then it got worse. Woke up this morning after a very crap night, feeling like a horses have been driven over my bed to pummel me in the night. So another email to my boss, saying was it ok if I worked from home today?..... why do I feel so damn guilty! He is very understanding - but as someone who is very fit and healthy how do you explain without sounding whiny? You try and describe how the brain fog feels - yesterday I came up with the lack of concentration/stamina is like when you're trying to watch a TV show when you really should be in bed and you find yourself drifting off....

I'm there and I'm paid to do a job. I have achieved a lot in 6 months - rewritten policy, built relationships, got to know the university and handled an insane Bulgarian academic on more than one occasion. So I know I have achieved something, and I don't think there has really been anything that I haven't done because I've either been off sick or not been up to my best. And yet the guilt still seeps in.... because I'm not being "normal" and I need "understanding".

I think it is probably best if I wheel out the spoon theory and maybe a few things from Action for M.E.'s publication catalogue. Even though I know he is trying his best to understand, sometimes I think that hearing how other people describe the illness might be easy to process.

Meep.

Up close and personal

2007-11-25T19:40:00.000Z

Last night Husband and I went to see Josh Ritter. He was playing in a venue which we hadn't been too before so we had no idea what it would be like. It turned out to be a run down old church on the edge of the city centre which, too all intents and purposes, looked like a very neglected youth club. The car park was made of mud, but was free, and the tour bus just fitted into the back.

I guess there must have been around 200 people there. I used to go and see local, or up and coming bands in venues like this. I did not expect Josh Ritter to turn up there. He is obviously not as well known in the UK as I thought he went. It was his last gig in England before heading home via Cork, Ireland and he was grinning like a fool he was so happy.

The performance was amazing.... the energy in the up beat numbers had me dancing up a storm in my new cowboy boots. The tenderness in delivery of the slow numbers - some near the end that he sang un-miked with the audience joining in - was just overwhelming.

At the moment, and for the last few years, really great live music is my religious experience. It's the thing that takes me out of myself and lifts me up like nothing else. Last night certainly took me there.

Adulthood

2007-11-16T09:49:00.000Z

This is something about which I ponder on a regular basis. Not what makes a person an adult, but what makes me feel like I have achieved that status inside. Something has changed these last few years. Life has moved on, I have: a husband, two cats, a mortgage and I'm working in my 2nd 'proper' job... but to me its the smaller things in life that keep popping up and prompting me to think about my adulthood:

1) Having three types of towel: guest, old (for dirty jobs) and everyday nice.

2) Commuting: in one of my previous workplaces, many moons ago, I was surprised at someone commuting 25 miles/45 minutes to work. For why would they do that? I know commute 70 miles/90 minutes, and I know why I do it.

3) Friends to visit: we quite regularly have friends to stay over night or for Sunday lunch. I love entertaining and cooking so will put on a spread. Then we'll go and do something: a concert, a walk in the woods - last weekend it was a trip to Stonehenge.

4) Stability: for me this is what has made all the adult-y-type changes possible. After so many ups and downs my life has settled down, and in a way that is rather pleasant most of the time. A friend that I hadn't seen for 3 years recently commented on how happy I seemed. And I guess that, despite the CFS, the commuting and the last remaining student debt - things are good.

5) Bon Jovi: my iPod pick for the last 10 minutes of my commute home last night, after I'd finished the Princeton University podcast on the history of sin. I'm a sucker for music as holders of emotional memories . Cheesy big-haired Bon Jovi remind me of when I wasn't an adult a reflection which makes me realise I am one.

6) Understanding pubs: There are almost no pubs where I come from, it just doesn't seem to be the tradition. And anyway, my parents wouldn't have frequented them if we did. It wasn't really until I started dating my husband that I grew to understand pub etiquette; an essential part of being an adult in the UK.

What makes you feel like an adult? If you do that is...

I am good

2007-11-09T12:31:00.000Z

Ok, that negative post has stayed at the top of this blog for far too long so lets move on to something more positive.

I've been at my job for 5 months now and things are going well. It is a challenging position, there is so much to do and so much to think - my grey cells are certainly getting a work out. In mid-October I had my first papers go for consideration at the high-up committee. They went down well. I've just finished writing a new paper to go to the high-up committee in a couple of weeks. And, if I do say so myself, it is damn good. Myself and a far more senior person were tasked with researching and writing it. We had a chat, I pulled together all my evidence, he told me what he knew about it, I wrote it, he added about a dozen words and ta da! it was done. So I must be doing something right, as my work generally doesn't get edited heavily - in fact hardly at all. I'm proud of my paper as it dealt with concepts that are pretty difficult to explain in any ordered way, and I think it makes good sense. It's got practical recommendations for now and for the future.

So today I say....

Ok.. so that wasn't so subtle

2007-11-03T20:15:00.001Z

I have just been chastised for my facebook status message. Ok, it wasn't that funny (or clever) in hindsight. I'm normally quite reserved at passing public judgment but when a member of my extended family gets arrested for doing something so utterly stupid that I honestly don't quite know what to say it just slipped out. And it did not reveal any body's identity, not to anyone who didn't already know. But I admit it wasn't the wisest thing I've ever done. I have now been suitably told off, but still feel slightly indignant.... but I've changed it.

Another technology post

2007-11-02T22:56:00.000Z

Ok, I know I ranted about last.fm recently, but I couldn't help sharing with you my latest discovery in the land of Web 2.0.....

I'm seriously thinking about where I want to go in my (as yet to begin) academic career. I love my job in higher education, it interests me, it challenges me, but I'm not sure if I want to pursue it much further academically. I still enjoying reading about HE but I'm just not sure I can see a PhD in it for me. I am, however, considering returning to my Undergrad roots of Religious Studies. I'm not sure exactly where I want to direct my studies, a massive list of theoretical disciplines are whirring around my head - social anthropology of religion, sociology of religion, cultural studies - along with areas of study - secularisation/resacralisation, wicca, witchcraft, feminist spirituality, paganism, cult, myth and many more.....

Anyway, this means I'm going to have to start reading properly... anything I can get my hands on that interests me... and enjoy what was always one of my favourite past-times: 6 degrees of academic separation. This involves reading an interesting book or article, scouring the bibliography and picking what you want to read next from there, and then repeating the process ad infinitum. I find it the best way to circumnavigate an idea - backwards and forwards in time, and around the circumference of the literature.

So this leads to my technological discovery after I started hunting around for some free/cheap reference management software to help me keep track of what I'll be reading. I know EndNote/Reference Manager/ProCite are all used in academia, but I don't want to shell out £100 on one of those. Then I came across Zetero. It's free. Developed by academics for academics and students. And better than that, it is an add on to Firefox, not a separate programme, just a little logo in Firefox's lower right hand corner which when you magically click it, it opens up your library. You can automatically capture data from any kind of web page: library catalogue, amazon etc. and manually add anything else. You can sort and tag, have multiple "collections" for different projects, and export beautiful bibliographies.

I'm sure the pay-for programmes can probably do a lot more, but I like this one, it's small, simple, fits with my favourite browser and free, free, free.... yippee!

Hungry cat

2007-10-25T21:55:00.001+01:00

Make sure you have your speakers turned on - the soundtrack is half the fun....

The randomness of physicality

2007-10-23T10:50:00.000+01:00

Just as I thought I was getting better from the nastiness of last weeks bug it comes back to bite me on the ass... or the ribcage as it seems to be. A trip to the Doctor's yesterday has diagnosed me with Tietze's syndrome, an inflammation of the cartilage in the ribcage. It has a number of possible causes, one of them being some kind of after affect of a recent viral infection... taa dah!

So I decided not to sit for 60mins on a train, then 20 mins on a bus to haul myself into work today. But now I've had about 2 and a half hours working at the computer at home and I'm starting to seriously hurt. I think a cup of tea and a hot bath are in order.

On other news it's been a weekend of visiting parents. My Mum and Dad made the trek over for the first time in a year. I admit I had done a bit of emotional blackmailing to get them here as I was a little miffed at hearing of all their holiday excursions but not actually receiving a visit from them since just after we moved into the house. It's just nice to spend "normal time" with Mum and Dad. Things were so strained in the couple of years before Husband and I got married, as Gran took more and more of Mum's time and the rest of us were pushed out. Rebuilding relationships through normality seems a good way to go.

More family arriving for a pit stop tonight as my cousin and his new girlfriend arrive for a night's stay on their way from south-west to north. M has changed so much in the last few years - he's "returned from orbit" as my Aunt puts it. He was always a nice chap but I think had a hard time growing up the kid of an incredibly ~~geeky~~ wholesome couple. I guess you have to learn to accept who your parents are just as they need to learn to accept who you turn out to be. Anyway, M has now grown up into a mature, caring, gainfully employed individual who would make any parent proud. The last time I saw him was my Gran's funeral so it will be nice to meet up under happier circumstances. I think some chocolate chip banana muffins may be in order.

Lurgy

2007-10-13T18:33:00.000+01:00

And so it struck, as it does occasionally, but it always comes as a surprise. I thought I was getting a cold. Nasty as they are, I can cope with colds. But after a couple of days of sniffing and coughing but still coping with daily life.... the lurgy hit. I spent yesterday with a cracking headache and throwing up. Due to the throwing up I couldn't keep any painkillers down to lower my temperature and take the edge of the headache. Today I've just got the headache and slight queaziness, so the worst has passed. But it was a horrible day. I suffer with my CFS but I'm so glad I don't get days like that as part of it. Blurgh!

Re-freshment

2007-10-03T16:00:00.000+01:00

And so the annual cycle of renewal and re-invigoration has begun - the freshers are upon us. It has now been eight years since I was one of those wide-eyed bright and perky (or scowly and greasy) young people trying to make sense of this strange new thing called "University". Actually, I don't remember very much of my fresher's week... no.... I wasn't too drunk to remember.... I think it was all too much for my little brain to take in. I remember endless pamphlets, booklets and flyers thrust into my hands, 90% went unread. Trying to find my way around this enormous campus and living in this tiny little room. Oh, and queuing, endless queuing.....

I thank the great green blob in the sky that I had the fortune to meet a few good people that week - we banded together and survived the experience. Many of them are still my friends today, and I'm even more grateful for that.

My University do seem pretty organised with endless volunteers in fluorescent orange jackets giving directions and a band of returning students recruited as "Fresher's angels". So far I've heard that one Junior Year Abroad student has turned around and gone home, but I hope the rest of them manage to stick around. There is also plenty of "Re-freshers" events to offer some help and opportunities to returning students.

Our trip to the USA is helping me do a little more thinking about my future educational goals.... another Master's anyone? So maybe I'll be a fresher again before long....

She's back

2007-09-27T15:10:00.000+01:00

Touched down at London Gatwick at 8.40am yesterday morning having been awake nearly 24 hours. The holiday was amazing - great to see our good friends in Texas and what life is like there, amazing to see New England in all its glory. I'm in hiding today. I hadn't booked today as annual leave but when I woke up this morning I regretted it so I decided to take the day to sleep and chill - wise move. The cats are very, very pleased to see us. I can't sit or lie down without one of them moving in for a perch and a pat. Mr Lyle is currently staring at me intent on licking my chin.

Just heard that the job that Husband had applied for through an agency managed to send him an email about an interview to his work while we were away - after telling them we were on holiday and to use his personal email! The interviews were today so that's a great opportunity down the pan. He's fairly fed up with work, as despite the comraderie the conditions are worse than the NHS in many ways and he works such long hours he'll never be able to finish his studies.

Anyway, it's back to work for me tomorrow - although judging from the "out of offices" I received when I sent my email this morning it may be just me. Got friends staying tomorrow night and tickets to a folk concert.... life carries on....

P.S. Will post more about the trip, including my visit to a mid-western college campus, but for now let me just tell you this may have been a life changing experience.... anybody fancy visiting us after we emigrate to New England?

The last 10 minutes of Oprah

2007-09-11T11:02:00.000+01:00

I'm working at home today so I can get the last bits of work done before heading off to the airport tonight, whilst still doing washing and taking the cats to the cattery. Fancying a coffee and a 10 minute break I flicked on the TV and came across the last 10 minutes of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Now I admire Oprah, and I watched an awful lot of her whilst I spent my 5 years horizontal and comatase as a teenager with CFS. The show is no longer broadcast on terrestrial TV in the UK so I only ever catch the odd little bit on a satellite channel, and what I've seen recently makes me worry for her sanity. 9 times out of 10 she seems to be interviewing the author of the latest "spiritual" book which has revolutionised her life, the content of most of which seems to contradict her Christian spirituality.... anyway... today was different, and even more painful.

Oprah was interviewing a NBA Basketball player who decided to address the problem of kids being beaten up or even killed for their expensive sneakers, not by helping people understand that its who you are not what you wear that matters, but by bringing out his own cut price range of shoes. Now I'm all for helping everyone have the opportunity to play sports and so making sports shoes and equipment affordable is generally a good thing. But I didn't get even the slightest impression that the reason why he had produced these shoes was to help kids play sports, but simply to provide a "premium brand" that everyone could afford.

His shoes were priced at $14.98..... so that's about £7.50 - and they were allegedly similar in technical performance to normal sports shoes. But dear god, what hell hole in the Phillipines did a 6 year old child have to slave in to produce a sports shoe for that price? Did he think of "fair trade" or "trade justice" when he ~~was approached to endorse~~ commissioned these shoes? Now I know things are not necessarily different for a pair of Nikes that cost £100, but would it ever be possible to produce a pair of high-tech sports shoes fairly for that price?

Anyway.... I've be distracted from my major point. Why should someone who has made a brand "more affordable" be congratulated as if he had done a major piece of charity work? Oprah stated that Sarah Jessica Parker had been "inspired" by him to produce her own cut price line of branded clothes. Woo Hoo SJP! You're surely on your way to sainthood now. This is not something that should be celebrated as a higher good as it just supports the whole brand conscious consumer madness.

I will give someone a slap on the back when they make something that is "unbranded", affordable, produced fairly to all those in the production chain, and has a minimal impact on the environment. That is something worth talking to Oprah about.

At Last.fm

2007-08-27T14:06:00.001+01:00

Ok, I admit it, I'm generally no where near the forefront of technological discovery - but I don't think I'm at the rear either. This week's discovery is already changing my life. I'd heard about it last year but just took it as another "social networking" site and therefore something I didn't really need. Ok it had something to do with music but so what? Then an article in the Guardian newspaper made it sound a little more than that so I thought I'd check it out. Now, god damn it, I'm hooked.

How do you describe last.fm? Personalised radio? Music spider-web? Aural world organiser? I don't know - all I know is that I don't think I'll ever listen to music in the same way again. So let's get down to the practicalities - it's legal, it's not a file sharing service (hence the legality) but it gives you access to 1000s of music tracks whenever you want by choosing a "radio station" based on an artist's "similar artists" or a genre. I'm currently listening to "artists similar to The Hold Steady" (as recommended by darling Rand) and so far I've had a Bournemouth band called Art Brut and an American band called Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. I haven't heard of either of the them before, but so far I'm liking both of them.

Friday night Husband and I were sitting out on the front patio, drinking a little and enjoying the first summer night where we could enjoy the great outdoors (how crap is that) and had the "british folk" station playing through the window. On came Kate Rusby, June Tabor, Fairport Convention, Billy Bragg, Maddy Prior- things we'd heard, things we hadn't but like the sound of. A perfect soundtrack chosen for us by some wonderful algorithm beyond our comprehension. And do you know what? It's already learning what I like and making recommendations!

Go on, click the big red button.... and come into my magical musical land....

Oh no... they didn't

2007-08-24T13:45:00.000+01:00

On sale at your local B&Q now for the bargain price of £89.99 - "Water butts":

Note from our postman

2007-08-22T19:45:00.000+01:00

Scrawled on junk mail for previous owners:

"Can you please get a box or container to put your packets in as you are never in and I then have to carry them for quite a few miles. Thank you. Postie Joe"

But I thought delivering parcels was your job? We're "never in" because we both work full time. You can leave parcels (today a paperback book in padded enveloped) with our neighbour, but not in a box (or on our step as today) as it is not secure. Or you can just leave them at the depot and leave us a card. But then that would kinda defeat the point of having a postal service, which is paid for by the sender, which then employs you Postie Joe.

COME BACK SEXY SHORT WEARING IN WINTER SURFER DUDE POSTMAN - WE MISS YOU (even Husband)!

3 weeks to go

2007-08-20T11:29:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow it will be three weeks until husband and I are off on our American adventure - and it can't come around soon enough. It's been 18 months since our honeymoon and our last proper holiday (i.e. longer than a long weekend), and I think we are both in desperate need of it. We booked the last thing we needed to book last night (I say "we" loosely as I've sorted it all as I'm the one who's good at that in our marriage, I just wanted him to choose the car - he went for a "Dodge Stratus" from Dollar) and now all we can do is wait. We've got machine readable passports so don't need visas, the travel insurance is sorted (with plenty of medical and legal cover, you know those crazy Americans), and the itinerary ("just in case") is nearly ready to go to our respective parental units.

Despite the fact that my job title starts with the word "international", I haven't really travelled very much. This will be my first trip to the States and also the first to that side of the Atlantic. I guess I am only 27, and with kids looking a less likely prospect, Hubbie and I should still have plenty of time to travel before we really do run out of oil and have to go back to pedalo crossings of the Atlantic.

We're off to Austin, Texas first for the City Limits festival and to stay with some University friends of mine. Then a couple of nights in Houston - Husband is being sent to the Johnson space centre while I pop on a work day trip to Oklahoma City. Then six nights in New England - spread between mid New Hampshire, Boston and Cape Cod. Expect lots and lots of pictures on our return

BBFC, what's happened?

2007-08-13T11:18:00.001+01:00

I've been to the movies twice in the last couple of weeks after a long hiatus. Our Amazon DVD rental subscription normally puts me off paying the £6.20 to see a movie (so £12.40 for me and husband), but since our big TV broke and we're down to a 14 in portable until we decide to splash out on a new TV, some things just have to be seen on the big screen. Both films were aimed at young audiences, both also appealing to adults - Transformers and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Both films were rated 12A - i.e. if your under 12, you need to be accompanied by an adult.

I left the cinema on both occasions thinking, good film (surprisingly good for Transformers) but has the British Board of Film Classification lost its mind? I sat through Harry Potter with six and seven year olds crying behind me through the scary bits. It was a later evening showing of Transformers so I was spared a repeat performance but goodness knows what the afternoon showings have been like.

Transformers opens with an attack by an evil autobot on a US airbase in Qatar - the scene is like a cross between Starship Troopers and Jarhead - both of which received a 15 rating from the BBFC. The rest of the film is filled with a great deal of violence. I understand it is classed as "fantasy violence" but it still involves people being blown up and lots and lots of shooting! Many scenes made me jump, and I'm not squeamish. Harry Potter had less "violence" but was psychologically far more scary.

12A was originally applied in 2002 (to The Bourne Identity, dear God who would want under 12s to see that (excellent) film); replacing the 12 rating that had been brought in in 1989. Apparently it had been under consideration for a while but was prompted into use by Spiderman, as parents were complaining that their kids were desperate to see it but a 12 rating would mean they couldn't. So 12 was scrapped and 12A came in. But despite the fact that the BBFC policy for 12A indicates that this rating means that they think it is suitable for 12 and over only, but they leave it up to parental discretion to judge whether under-12s should see it I don't think this message gets across at all..... I guess the problem comes down to the fact that these films are made for and heavily marketed at kids.... and they don't include much sex or swearing or gritty person-on-person violence but that doesn't mean that 12A is a good idea as it sends a mixed message, and leaves parents open to pester power.... "No, I won't get scared Mum!"

In the words of a senior examiner from the BBFC when asked if she ever feels she has made a mistake in an interview in The Guardian, "I think every examiner goes home and thinks that....With me it was The Others." The Nicole Kidman horror film was passed uncut as a 12-certificate. Later, during one of the board's public consultations, Bates discovered that the film had scared the wits out of its younger viewers. "The problem with that film was that there was nothing onscreen; everything was implied. So within the letter of the guidelines I got it right. But it bothers me to this day."

I think the same is true for some fantasy films like Harry Potter, it is the viewer's imagination that helps make the film really scary or not - but for Transformers... how more "on screen" can you get! I'm generally not in favour of censorship for adult films - no matter how horrible I think it is, if it doesn't commit a crime in showing it, then it should get an 18 or an 18R if necessary. But come on BBFC, give the parents a break and help them look after their kids!

Not a flamin' 'gain

2007-07-27T12:56:00.000+01:00

Right... I'm annoyed now - damn it I'm ill again. After a few months of feeling well, normal, for a while (not bouncing normal, but coping normally normal) I feel like crap again. Had a nasty bug which started about 2 weeks ago and just didn't shift - never quite became flu or a cold, but has left me totally wiped out.

I'm hoping a few days of 12-14 hours sleep and having a ginger cat permanently attached to my stomach will help. This had better not last long, the cat might get bored.

Anyway.... every down-turn seems to produce its own new language of lowness, so my new expression to describe how I feel is "like curdled milk" - warm and fuzzy, in a "gone off" kind of way. The irony is I'm DAIRY INTOLERANT!

Of Biblical proportions

2007-07-23T15:06:00.000+01:00

"For thou didst cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas, And the flood was round about me; All thy waves and thy billows passed over me." (Jonah 2:3).

And so the rains certainly did come. I was working from home/feeling ill on Friday so I managed to avoid the trauma that trying to travel home would have been. Decided to stay at home and work today rather than risk getting trapped anywhere. Husband's work is without power, water or road access as it sits right next to the river that is about to overwhelm flood defences as the water travels downstream. He is currently watching the cricket.

For those of you who aren't familiar with what has been happening in my home county of Gloucestershire, UK just log on for all the gory details.

Luckily our house is snug and dry - most of the way up a hill and just beyond the area affected by water and power cuts. But the damage is astounding, I'm amazed that the area hasn't been declared a disaster zone - or do we not do that in the UK?

Quality

2007-07-17T10:02:00.000+01:00

Despite feeling like curdled milk (flu/cold/high temperature thing that won't go away), I am also feeling rather warm and fuzzy, in a good way, today. Had a lovely night out last night with my former colleagues as we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the organisation. In the time I'd been there we hadn't had a proper "big do" so it was so nice to have everyone dressed up to the nines - evening dresses, tuxedos and all that jazz - all in the wonderful setting of a restaurant made out of an art deco cinema.

I got to catch with all of the people that I miss having my daily natters with - over coffee, or when I need to stretch my legs. Had a good table - friends and interesting people who I didn’t know so well. Great food. Nice music. Very funny after dinner speaker – the gregarious Laurie Taylor. I even forced my dashing friend in his white tuxedo to dance with me.

Yes it was quite frustrating working there a lot of the time, but I met some damn nice people. I hope I'll be able to keep up with them even though I'm not there anymore. Had a good chat with my old boss - one of the people I do miss the most - I'm sure our paths will keep crossing in the future, although he'll be retiring at some point in the next few years.

Soundtrack

2007-07-09T09:49:00.001+01:00

Partly inspired by my train journey this morning and partly by Mark's post, today I was thinking, as I often do, how important music is to me. I'm not a very highbrow classical music scholar nor a low brow "just pop" listener. I'm an eclecticist.

Americana. Folk. Country. Indie. Alternative. Rock. Grunge. Soul. R n B. Pop. Acoustic. Singer-songwriter. Even a little Dance.

My album collection spans them all. Blues and jazz are absent, but probably due to ignorance rather than dislike.

The soundtrack to my morning was an old, familiar album from the early 90s, from one of the artists who helped me to discover the "new women of country" - Mary Chapin Carpenter. For any of you who like songs that tell stories that are based on acoustic music, and don't know MCC yet, let me know and I'll send some off to you.

"Come on, Come on" was released in 1992 and contains the first country song that spoke to me with its honesty. "He thinks he'll keep her" is a classic woman's country song - a downtrodden wife finds her voice and her feet. The title reflects a throwaway comment in a bar by her husband on the merits of his wife - "I'll think I'll keep her".

Speaking to me today was "The Hard Way". You can listen to it here and the lyrics are below. It is just a sweet little song, nothing mind blowing, but reminded me that the best things in life often coming from doing things the hard way.

Show a little inspiration, show a little spark
And show the things that drew me to you and stole my heart
And tell me something I don't know instead of everything I do
And look at me as if I mean something to you
Our hearts are beating while we sleep, but while we're wide awake
You know the world won't stop, and actions speak louder
Listen to your heart, and what your heart might say
Everything we got, we got the hard way

Show a little passion, baby, show a little style
And show the knack for knowing when and the gift for knowing how
And have a little trust in us when fear obscures the path
You know we got this far, darling, not by luck, but by never turning back
Some will call on destiny, but I just call on faith
That the world won't stop, and actions speak louder
Listen to your heart, to what your heart might say
Everything we got, we got the hard way

Caught up in our little lives, there's not a lot left over
I see what's missing in your eyes; you're searching for that field of clover
So show a little inspiration, show a little spark
Show the world a little light when you show it your heart
We've got two lives, one we're given and the other one we make
And the world won't stop, and actions speak louder
Listen to your heart, and your heart might say
Everything we got, we got the hard (everything we got, we got the hard way)
Everything we got, we got the hard way
(Because the world won't stop) hang on, baby...

Graduation

2007-07-06T19:43:00.001+01:00

I graduated four times in the last two days... ok, well I didn't actually graduate, but I led student processions into the Great Hall and stood next to them while they went up to shake the Chancellor's hand, so it felt like graduating.

Although I've been absolutely shattered this week, and I really could have done with a day at home today, it was still a really nice feeling to see all these young people so happy. It was also an excuse to get the old academic gown on again (although I swear the fabric was different than I remember) and wander around with a mortar board on. Free lunch as well (although not entirely edible as I was feeling fussy).

Mergers and acquisitions

2007-06-29T10:35:00.000+01:00

And the day has finally come when I've finally merged my Book blog and Film blog archives into this blog. I was an over ambitious blogger when I started these things nearly a year ago.... as I think many of us are when we start on this blogging journey. So I thought it was time to rationalise my blog universe and transfer all my posts into the archive of this blog. I'm hoping this will reinvigorate my desire to rant about films and books, as doing so certainly helps me remember what I've watched and read.

I seem to have hit a mental road block where it comes to fiction. At the moment I'm happily ploughing through all my work related reading but cannot seem to get into any of the stack of novels I have sitting on by my bed. I also have £50 of book vouchers burning a hole into the top of my computer cabinet - my lovely and very generous leaving present from my last job. I also now have access to an academic library for the first time in a few years so some of the more obscure books from my amazon wish list are no longer inaccessible. So what am I going to spend my vouchers on? I have a great urge to buy two books on Judaism, which I lent to a fellow student at Uni and never saw again.... not perhaps the most useful things to clutter my house up with, but they were so lovely....

When I was 26....

2007-06-22T23:18:00.001+01:00

As it was my birthday last Sunday, I'm going to steal doctor/woman's post idea and think about all the new experiences that I've had this year:

.... bought my first house

.... owned pets

.... traveled to Denmark, Belgium, Austria and Ireland

.... had my writing published

.... had my writing cited for the first time

.... bought an Mp3 player (and then another, damn you Windows Vista)

.... grown something (successfully) from seed

.... had heatstroke

.... made friends with someone who has a child

.... started a blog

.... peppermint tea

.... started a new job

I'm sure there are more but its getting late...

Inspired by Jen

2007-06-15T10:21:00.000+01:00

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

The shock of the old

2007-06-14T13:10:00.000+01:00

Now firstly, don't get me wrong, my new job is looking like it was definitely the right move - lots to get my teeth into, a friendly team and a bearable commute. But let's just say it hadn't really occurred to me just how different some of the little things would be.

I've worked at a couple of universities before and I knew that things were unlikely to be as shiny, new and well resourced as working for a government funded organisation. However I thought I'd share my observations on the little differences so far.... (so be prepared for pointless bitching):

1. No kichen on our floor. I don't know how many people work on mh floor - it is all little separate offices - but I reckon at least 50. The fridge is in the head of service's PA's office, mugs are washed in the disabled toilet down the hall and water is boiled and tea making equipment stored on a rickety trolley in the corner of my office.

2. No central IT purchasing/renewal. Where I used to work we had a replacement cycle of 3 years (4 at a push), we had access to new technology: smart phones, smart boards, big LCD monitors etc. At my new work if you want a new computer, your office has to buy it, spec it, and install it. I currently have a beige (that says it all) quite early Pentium 4. I just got rid of my middle years Pentium 4 at home. It has at most a 14 inch screen with appauling resolution. I work from home at least 1 day a week and commute about 3 hours a day so... I need a laptop, with docking station and a decent sized monitor on my desk to work at my best. It has been moote but I don't want to push it as even my boss has the same crappy PC as me.

3. Library facilities are at least 20 years out of date. Book selection as far as I can tell is ok but IT resources are non-existent and the lighting and layout are horrible. Worst of all it is half the size of the library of where I did my MA but we have nearly twice as many students.

Yes, I know I'm moaning.... I feel like it god damn it! I probably shouldn't be, after all it looks as though I'm going to be happy here. They are upgrading some of the facilities - new sports centre, new (but rather small) student's union. But no library renewal, no IT upgrades for staff - admin or academic. I work in a fairly prestigious institution, well attended, brings in enough research money, good reputation... but they seem so behind in so many ways. At least they have ducks.

Anchors

2007-06-05T20:21:00.000+01:00

Two things in the last 24 hours have made me think again about parental relationships - something I pondered quite a bit last year after reading "Mother, Missing" by Joyce Carol Oates - and what the absence of a parent can mean.

On the news yesterday was a piece about a deal that the NHS has made with the manufacturer of a drug for the treatment of bone cancer. I think as cancers go this is one that is pretty impossible to cure outright, but it is possible to use treatment to extend survival time, and this new drug can improve that further by 6-12 months. A good friend of mine's mother was diagnosed with bone cancer this time last year. She's had surgery and radiotherapy I think, and is back at work part-time - but she is definitely not cured.... As the GP who let the phrase "Let's try and make your remaining time more comfortable" slip indicated.

My friend is permanently estranged from her father and not particularly close to her sibling, who lives several hundred miles away. If her Mum dies, actually that should be when her Mum dies, that will be it for her close family.

A flash-forward example of a young woman who had lost her Mum and didn't know her father was on a dreadful C4 documentary last night, entitled "Animal Au Pair". It followed the fortunes of a woman farm-owner come reindeer breeder (?) and her search for an au pair both for her son and her animals. It became clear quite quickly that she was the least tolerant and sympathetic woman possible - basically wanting a live in farm-hand and nanny (two full time jobs) who she could pay a pittance to and order around.

The girl who lasted the longest (7 weeks) was from Zimbabwe, she looked bout 19. Her mother had died of lung cancer at the age of 49. She had some family in Zim, but wanted to come back to England, where she was born, and as it developed, find her long lost father. She was a beautiful young woman, still obviously reeling from her mother's death, living with this nightmare woman. Luckily, she found her father, and he seemed to want to know her again - so hopefully she will have a new "home".

I can't imagine losing - in whatever way - both parents as a child or young adult. To not have a "home" to visit and people who were there everyday when you were growing up. Now that I'm building my own family, my husband provides that safe haven more than my parents, but that is only a recent development.

To me, my parents are my anchors, we don't speak as often as we should or I'd like; and with an ocean between us (even only a little one), it has been nearly a year since I've seen them. I must fix that this summer. But they are still there, a repository of memories, a place to retreat for comfort if something bad were to happen. They are the 2nd people I call, after my husband, when I have big news like a new job, or even silly things like having re-decorated the hallway.

They're both in their late 50s so I guess they could well be around for another 20 years or so in them yet, but then there might not be. I'll miss them so much when they are gone.

That moment

2007-05-29T00:11:00.000+01:00

I'm on my week off between jobs and despite first fears that Husband was going to have to work all week it looks like he is only going to have to work a few hours tomorrow morning - so we have started our "holiday at home".

Today, on a whim, I dragged us to Buscot Park - a stately home and gardens owned by the National Trust in Oxfordshire. It's about a 40 minute drive from where we live. I had an particular motive for wanting to visit.... but I didn't tell my Husband until we got there - not that he would mind.

I have a fondness for some of the art movements that spanned the late 19th and early 20th century - particularly Arts and crafts, Art nouveau and Art deco. More recently I've been exploring the pre-raphaelites, the artists that often went hand in hand with the artisans of the Arts and Crafts movement. Luckily for me, Oxfordshire has many connections with Arts and Crafts and the Pre-Raphaelites - Kelmscott Manor, the country home of William Morris is also close by.

Anyway... Buscot Park is home to the Faringdon Collection - a large collection of artworks put together by the 2nd Lord Faringdon in the early 20th century. It features artworks from 500 years of western and oriental art. But most importantly, it contains one of the most stunning pieces of Pre-Raphaelite art by the artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones, a series of 4 paintings and 10 joining panels entitled "The Legend of the Briar Rose" - now all built into a room in the house. The main panels are snapshots of the story of Sleeping Beauty.

I walked into the room and felt a tingle down my spine. The paintings glow, the colours blend - so soft that they almost look like pastels even though the image is rendered in oil. The world is sleeping and from the palace guards, to the king on his throne, the handmaidens and sleeping beauty herself the whole world is dreaming. Entwined around all the figures is the briar rose that has grown and twisted around as the figures slept.

I am a romantic at heart. I love arthurian legends, fairytales, true love and promises that are never broken. It's been a long time since I've been affected by a work of art as much as I was today and it made me feel so peaceful.

Mad kids

2007-05-18T09:14:00.001+01:00

Oooh... I've had a bit of a blog hiatus haven't I? I must be more efficient at turning my night-time mind blog posts in actual post the next day.

I've got rather bad insomnia at the moment and so other than late night Wikipedia editing, I've been devouring my copy of New Scientist magazine as soon as it lands on my door mat. It is the source of many a night time mind blog post but this time I'm managed to hold on to my rant and I'm actually going to get it down on electronic paper.

First of all a caveat. I take mental illness very seriously, it is real, extremely distressing condition that deserves as much, if not more attention and support as physical illness. I also believe that children can suffer from mental illness - although I believe the approach to treatment, particularly with medication, should be approached even more cautiously than it is in adults.

Both the editorial and an article were concerned with the massive increase in diagnosis rates for bi-polar disorder (manic depression) in children in the US. In 1996, 13 out of every 100,000 children were diagnosed as having bi-polar disorder, in 2004 that rate was 74 out of ever 100,000 - a more than five fold rise. In 1994 the DSM-IV official psychiatric manual definition of bi-polar disorder was significantly widened to include three new forms of the disease - including one that is "bi-polar not otherwise specified" i.e. doesn't fit into the other definitions but we still think its bi-polar.

The article tells the story of Rebecca Riley, diagnosed at 2 with ADHD, at 3 bipolar disorder and by 4 she was dead - from an overdose of prescribed clonidine. She was also taking valproate and quetiapine fumarate.

I get the sense that western societies are increasingly medicalising their way out of newly perceived "problems" with our children. I don't see any other explanation for the massive rise in diagnoses of bi-polar disorder in the US, and of I get the increasing sense that generally western societies are increasingly trying to medicalise with ADHD, autistic-spectrum disorders etc. in the US and around the world. I went to school with a kid with Aspergers, he had it bad enough that it was very obvious and most likely needed a lot of support. My cousin-in-law was diagnosed with Aspergers a couple of years ago, and although he may tick some of the diagnostic boxes, does this label actually help him? He is shy, only eats chips, and can flip his lid sometimes. But he is also perfectly able to have a decent conversation, has friends and is living in a very unusual and stressful household - so I can see why any person would flip their lid occasionally, and for God's sake, he's a teenager after all. A generation ago he wouldn't have been labelled as anything except a bit quiet.

How can you diagnose bi-polar disorder in a 3 year old? They haven't even got a lot of their sense of identity or how they relate to the world around them fixed yet. And even if you think something may be wrong - should we medicate them with serious drugs which have all sorts of side effects and can severely shorten life span? I think not - could we just not support the parents and the child instead?

I am a big fan of the BBC programme "House of Tiny Tearaways". It is a purpose built house where families come to spend a week with their kids and a clinical psychologist. They deal with the whole range of behavioural problems by helping the parents see how they can change their child's behaviour by changing their own behaviour. They have started the week with some real terrors and some terrible problems, but with the intensive support and guidance in almost all cases they've made amazing progress by the end of the week. In other circumstances, in other countries I'm sure some of these kids would have been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and medicated - but shouldn't this be the absolutely last resort?

Kids will be kids, and some will act a lot stranger and be far more unruly than others, but they are only part formed and we should help them develop, not label them and medicate them.

Change

2007-05-05T17:25:00.000+01:00

A lot of stuff has happened over the last few weeks that has caused some deeper self-reflection than I have been indulging in of late. A couple of things have also happened in the last couple of days which really got my head delving inwards; mainly the re-appearance of an old friend and meeting my new boss (why does he have to be distractingly attractive?).

After chatting with my new boss I have been totally hyper-actively happy. I am finally starting to calm down now a full 48-hours after our meeting, but moving into a rather spaced state of mind as a consequence. After finding out more of what I'm going to be doing it finally struck me that 5 years post graduation this is it, the first job where I'm going to have direct responsibility for setting and helping achieve an organisation's strategic objectives. I'm going to be allowed to get fully out and about, build networks and make contacts on my own merits. I don't think 5 years is bad, and my current job has allowed me to jump about 2 levels in the system in which I work, something which I will be eternally grateful for - as I'm not very good at being patient enough to "work through the grades". I know its going to be a lot of hard work, but I am so much happier when I have a lot to do. My boss seems like a pretty genuine guy, who likes his job and the majority of people he has to work with and there is support from the really senior staff for what we're going to be doing.

The re-appearance of an old friend has put who I am now compared with who I was when I graduated in clearer perspective. After a very close 5 years or so of friendship things became a struggle between us, for reasons which I am still not entirely clear about. Anyway, she has got back in contact and given me her take on events. I feel one of the things that has changed about me since Uni is a greater capacity to put myself in other people's shoes - I guess that is a big part of maturity. Not that I always manage it in the moment, but with a bit of time I try and see where someone else is coming from. So, although my perceptions of events were fairly different, to me that really doesn't matter now. I don't want to re-hash the whos, what, wheres and hows...

If we can be friends again, then of course I want to be friends again. A lot of that depends on who we both are now I guess. And who exactly am I now? For me the biggest changes in my self identity have been since Uni, not when I was a teenager. Getting into work, living in the "real world" (not the student one), working through all sorts of stuff with Husband, buying houses, re-locating far away from family and friends.... all of these things have shaped me more than I realised at the time. I hope I'm more tolerant generally, but a little more selfish than I used to be with my time and who I choose to spend it with (a good thing for me, believe me). I have a clearer sense of my own political and moral standpoints and I'm more willing to argue on behalf of them when it matters, and more likely to leave them drop when it doesn't.

One of the things I value most are "old friends" - which I guess why this re-appearance has focused my reflections. I don't have friends from secondary school - for a number of reasons - but my Uni friendships are coming up to 8 years now... and the ones that have lasted, even if I no longer see the individuals as often as I'd like, are really precious to me. The comfort and peace of spending time with old friends is a real treasure - no expectations, no harsh judgements, just support and laughter. I find these friendships feel pretty much effortless now, to me (and I hope to them) it doesn't matter if we don't see each other for weeks or months - it we're still "us". For those "old friends" who read this blog, you mean the world to me still.

Asking only workman’s wages…

2007-04-30T10:33:00.000+01:00

This may turn out to be a boring post but I need a place to boast. The last few weeks Husband and I have been giving our little garden an overhaul. Including the patio (or the “slab ‘o concrete” as we like to call it) I guess is about 12m by 3m with a garage at the end – confusingly our “front” garden is also our “back garden” – come and visit, then you’ll understand.

Unfortunately the garden had been rather neglected by our house’s previous owners and as spring has most definitely sprung it was in desperate need of attention. So far we have cut and scarified the lawn (twice). Not much grass was actually left so yesterday we overseeded it and then top dressed with compost.

We have also cleared all the weeds (and some shrubs that were too unruly to save) from the borders and attempted to bring the lavender that runs along the left hand border under control. We’ve weed-killed the path we share with our neighbour and dug up everything that was left in it, and then realised that we had even less intact path than we thought we did.

This weekend’s largest task has been the sanding, priming and painting of our gate, our neighbour’s gate and our gate posts (two gates, one path, go figure); and the sanding and painting of all of the gate ironwork. All is now resplendent in a wonderful national trust green and the gates will by dry enough to hang tonight. I purchased from eBay some wonderful new chrome house numbers to adorn our gates – which will be a surprise for our lovely neighbour.

For the next couple of weeks as the grass germinates we can’t do a great deal as we must not walk on it. Then it will be digging compost into the borders and getting planting. I want some ferns behind the tree at the bottom of the garden and some hostas in front. I think we’ll sow some annual flowers down the side for this year. And I haven’t decided what to do with the rest of the main bed.

Ok, you can now declare me officially middle aged!

Chuckle of the day

2007-04-24T14:46:00.000+01:00

Found this on one of my favourite "business blogs" - Change and Internal Communication. A conversation between the bloggers two kids:

"If you eat too much sugar it is bad for your heart. It explodes," says daughter, aged 7, with conviction.

Son, aged 4: "Oh! Does that kill the baby Jesus?"

(Pause.)

Me: "Ahem. Um, what?"

Son: "Well, I have the baby Jesus in my heart, don't I?"

I would have been happy with one!

2007-04-22T22:07:00.000+01:00

I think one of the oddest things I had to get my head around when I got married was that I was actually going to be part of a new family. Actually, as husband's are long divorced I've married into two, very different, families.

This weekend it was a trip up north to celebrate a big birthday with new family no. 1 - father-in-law and tribe. It was all very civilised, a select gathering, private fully panelled dining room at very posh country hotel/restaurant, silver service... it was all rather beyond the level of luxury that I've experienced before.

We sat near the birthday Auntie and opposite father-in-law and partner. Also sat next to cousin (one of three "boys" of Auntie-in-law). The three boys, now all in their 20s, aren't exactly the most average of cousins-in-law. All intelligent, all had every opportunity they could possibly want, all pretty much drop outs. One at least now seems to have found a long term partner (who didn't say a word, and wasn't introduced to us). The other I think is currently working in a local pub and pretending to write a sit com. Husband and I were sat next to cousin number three.

M fulfils the much missed role of family mad person. I'd always considered him a little eccentric - in the camp, childlike way. Now, having spent an evening sat next to him I realise that he is totally barking mad - luckily in the pleasant way, not the stab you in your sleep way. He spent most of the night making no sense, did not follow any social conventions (like waiting for everyone to be served before eating)... until I checked with Husband that he is always like this I thought he was totally stoned. Apparently he has been like this since childhood - so the great British eccentric (now read nutter) is still alive and well. M is currently doing an MA in Acting at a drama school in Essex.

Anyway, it was a lovely celebration and I feel I have a little more insight into new family no. 1 - what strange beasts families are!

10 things I don't understand about my man

2007-04-14T11:43:00.000+01:00

Buying an Easter Egg (or any other chocolate) and then not eating it for weeks.
Professing to be obsessed with cleaning only to not agree that cleaning involves a duster (apparently hoover clean is husband clean).
Molesting me in my (and his) sleep.
Liking doing destructive DIY but then giving up when it comes to the construction.
Obsession with steam trains and football (and getting disappointed when I don't do more than nod and look confused).
Pretending the cat is a guitar.
Putting vacuum packed baguettes in the freezer (ok that was just once).
Moaning about not doing anything interesting without a) sorting out something to do or b) wanting to get up off his arse when we do have something interesting to do (although he always enjoys it in the end).
His collection of Cathy Dennis, Betty Boo and other CDs no straight/sane man should own.
His liking of Guinness.

The joy of recruitment

2007-04-04T12:19:00.000+01:00

Well, after a small amount of nagging I have finally received my contract for my new job (10 days after the offer). Unfortunately the offer letter (which is the same as what I had been told verbally) and the contract do not match. It looks like they've grabbed the old contract template from before their pay scales changed so it makes no sense - wrong spine point number, wrong salary - although 30 days annual leave and get to stay with the same pension scheme, woo hoo!. So back that will go to HR. Also had a bit of a battle to get them to send me a form to claim my interview expenses - which should have come with my interview invitation. Think I may have pissed off a high-up's PA, but I was very, very polite. Oh well.

Getting very excited about new job and very happy and chilled out about the current one. I guess now that I know I'm leaving, I find it easy to forget about the long term lack of change frustrations and just focus on what I need to achieve in the next 2 months. Quite a few people have been rather shocked that I'm leaving, but then I was on a fixed term contract, so its easy to explain it away. There are lots of people I'm going to miss - I'm arranging lunch dates like they're going out of style - and I hope I'll managed to keep in contact with most of them, as they are my 'people' base here in the South. They are a couple of people I really wish I could take with me as they are pretty unhappy and frustrated at work - so fingers crossed they'll move on soon. A job is never worth wrecking your mental health over.

Zing, zing zing! Went my heartstrings!

2007-03-26T16:37:00.000+01:00

Twang, twang, twang! Went my neck! My neck has well and truly twanged. Something went on Saturday morning and it has just got worse since then. I barely got any sleep last night because of the pain and this morning I've just been horizontal and medicated. I've managed to get an appointment to see my physiotherapist tomorrow morning so hopefully the twanging will be put to an end.
Feeling like a very middle aged woman which has not been helped by my attempt to try on a tankini (I'm spa-ing this weekend with a friend from work) which made me realise that I really must shift this extra 15lbs. And my arse is that top from Next a 36F!

On a good news front, I've been offered the job at the University. Having not heard anything before the weekend I had talked myself out of it, not wanting to be disappointed... so I wasn't too revved up when I got the call. Also means I will be about £200 a month worse off as the travel is so expensive, even with the raise it doesn't cover it. But it is a permanent job, and one I really, really want to do, so I think Husband and I will just have to bite that bullet. The pay will go up through increments over the next few years anyway. And since when have I been all about the money?

I haven't officially accepted it yet and they've sent me an email with all the details that I can then reply to. The other thing is I haven't talked to anyone there about my CFS. It is good in a way, means they really do 'appoint blind' (even though I declared my disability openly), but just means I need to check that they are prepared to be flexible in the way I need it. Just checked out their policies online and it looks like the medical clearance form I would fill in would prompt occupational health to recommend reasonable adjustments, so I'll just have to be clear (but positive) about what I need on that form. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhh! I can't believe I'm going to have to start a new job, I was just getting used to this one!