Going through my mother's photographs, etc., has revealed my first ever rejection letter!


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You know how you keep putting something off because you're too busy to do it justice right now, but putting it off makes it even more daunting, because the amount that needs to be done just keeps getting bigger, etc ( Read more... )

I've been in Valencia for a few days attending a conference, most of which was in Spanish and thus incomprehensible to me, but everyone was extremely friendly and welcoming, and somehow that didn't matter too much. Why was I there at all, you ask, since I couldn't understand the proceedings? Why, because I had been invited. My keynote went well, ( Read more... )

One more sleep till the Christmas break, and I'm hoping not to wake up to a pile of marking at the end of my bed ( Read more... )

Can it really be only a week since my colonoscopy ( Read more... )

In the unlikely event that you've been asking yourself "Where's Steepholm?" over the last couple of days, the correct answer was "Valencia". I was part of a jury for a public doctoral defence - the first such procedure I've ever taken part in. (UK-style vivas are quite a different and more private thing, though not necessarily less tense.) Very ( Read more... )

"Of course, now I want to pop over to Cirencester (it’s only 40 minutes in the car) and pose like Alice and Shino. If only I knew someone who’d be willing to be my accomplice in so silly a mission."

I wrote those prophetic words in a post from May 2015, having only recently discovered that one of the settings of Kiniro Mosaic was Cirencester High ( Read more... )

If there are any Aardman fans here, feel free to flick through my Flickr account, where you will find ample photographic evidence of my trip to Cribbs Causeway (Bristol's very own out-of-town shopping centre) last week, in part to visit the Gromit Unleashed exhibition, in which all of the Wallace, Gromit and Feathers McGraw statues previously ( Read more... )

Over the last week I've been visited by my friend Eriko Kawanashi, the anthropologist who has made a study of the beliefs and rituals of Glastonbury. We had a lot of fun, which I won't detail here (my proud boast is that, over the two days she was with me, I converted her to Marmite), but I was struck by her mentioning that, having learned a lot of ( Read more... )

Today was my last ABBA blog. I've been doing it once a month since it began in 2008, so it's a bit of a wrench. I think I've missed my monthly slot on maybe three occasions: once because I plain forgot, once for illness (that was last summer), and once because of pressure of work. Not bad, over a decade ( Read more... )