Busy doing nothing..

Well not quite. In fact, whilst I'd be hard pressed to say exactly what it is I've been doing, I've definitely been busy.
I can't remember if I said, but all of my registration stuff turned up last weekend. Well half of it did - despite copious emails, and changing my address etc, some of it had gone to Bristol and I had to chase after this to be able to get hold of the log in details to access the online part of the registration. This seemed to be relatively straight forward - you log in, change your log in details, and then complete the bits of the registration information that need it. You also get bits like when to turn up for registration, who's your Advisor of Studies etc. I found that I'd been listed as being a full time student, whereas I'm technically supposed to be part time, so I had to send emails about that - they got that sorted out very quickly. I think I know who the Convener is for the MLitt, and I certainly know who's Co-ordinating it, so I've got an appointment to go and see her not too far off now, so I'm kind of hoping that when I've done this I'll be a lot more organised.

I went to meetings about the job - this research that's being done that I'm working on. I've been sending out letters to my interviewees, still haven't managed to catch any of them at home yet to actually interview, but I'm going to set too with a vengeance tomorrow and they will not escape my net! Near disaster set in when my phone gave up the ghost, but I've taken the opportunity to enhance my phone making capabilities and upgrade - I now have a bluetooth headset! This will make the interviewing easier, since I can now sit there and smoothly write everything down. But a fine time for the phone to pack up. Well ok, it didn't 'pack up'. I dropped it and no more dialling tone could be heard. That's the problem with cordless, slips out of the fingers and there's no cord to make a desperate grab for.
I've been loading stuff into the Ebay shop which is up and running - check it out, there's a link to the left of this post. Rather more excitingly, I've been browsing in the categories that I list in, and I have to say that they really aren't full of pieces that offer me a great deal of competition. This has thrown me into a bit of a conundrum, well sort of. Summer never has been Ebay hot time, lots of people are away, and lots of people don't want to buy stuff, so its sort of quiet time. But this seems to be unnaturally so - is it because people have actually stopped listing really good bits and pieces, have people stopped buying completely and utterly - it's a mystery. I certainly haven't sold anything yet, but it takes a while for listed items to work there way up to a point where casual browsers are going to see them. And in my experience, when you stop selling for a while, it's a bit like going back to the very beginning and having to start all over again. Still we'll see.

It's been raining pretty much non-stop. I'm beginning to think that the ark project is a goer! Right now it's not, and it's been dry for most of the day, but this is about the first non-raining day for the last three at least, and there are a lot of dark clouds out there, so I figure it's not long before its back. What else have I been up to? John came round for lunch - his other half is over in Edinburgh. I did pork chops with roast potato's and onions, and dug a bag of red cabbage out of the deep freeze. I admit it wasn't a good red cabbage, I had to use white sugar rather than dark brown, and you could tell the difference. Way too sweet, and sweet in a light way that wasn't too brilliant. I've got some dark brown sugar now, so I may pick up another red cabbage when I go shopping next.

So this has been the highlights of the week - dull eh? Well we can't live a life that's packed with interviews and interesting excursions all the time. Catch up with me next week and maybe it'll be a bit more vibrant!

I can't think of a title for this..

It's been a good week, this week, even if I have had a bit of a cold. Not surprising really considering it's done nothing but rain since I got here, and I then discovered I've not really the amount of shoe-age that I should have to withstand this amount of rain. This called for shoe shopping, one of my least favourite activities - I know, I know, as a woman it's letting the side down to complain about it, but if you had feet like mine, you'd hate it too.
Firstly my feet are quite small - I can get into a size 5 at a push, but 5.5, to 6 for comfort lengthwise, the width, well I'm quite large, and the old feet have spread a bit to provide me with a firm plant. The real problem is one I inherited from Dad, high insteps. Hugely high insteps since I did ballet as a kid and ever since have been curling my feet into perfect points. It's led to the development of a pair of extraordinary insteps, even if my feet have remained flexible and bunion-less during my adult life! Finding a shoe that fits this remarkable foot has become the bane of my life - I've been everywhere, I've bought on-line, I've been to the Shoe Tailor and yes, they make shoes that fit, shoes I even like, and shoes I think are a reasonable price, but are they good quality shoes? They are not. The only pair I bought were fine to start out with by by the time the uppers became really comfortable to wear, the soles had collapsed and you could see they were constructed on a sort of honeycomb cell construction - once the sole under the foot had gone, it then tried to force the sole of my foot into a network of about six square pieces! Nothing to be done with that except throw them away, and think, well I won't bother with them again. I mean you are talking £40 odd quid a pair.
That's the other thing about shoes that I really dislike, it's the cost of them. Yes, I accept you have to pay for a decent pair of shoes, but I remember paying £20 quid back in the seventies and so on, and I really really resent having to pay over say £35 for a pair. But this is what being old is all about really, it's moaning about the cost of things and how it's changed over the years.

Yes well, old is what I am now - birthday this week too. I was very chuffed with the cards and so on that I got from the family and friends. I even got a card signed by all of the people I used to work with back in Bristol, which really did chuff me no end. It's funny how you can work with people for years, really think that you're quite good friends with them and then you move on to another job and you never hear from these people again. Over the years this has happened to me, although I have to say I also had greetings from women I worked with over twenty years ago way back in the dawn of time at the Theatre in Bath. So I count myself very lucky that over the years I've worked with some great people, and I was very touched by firstly the card that turned up from Bristol, and then the texts I had from Sonia & Vanessa in Bath. Well, Brittany actually, because that's where one of them came from!
In the evening I went out for a meal, with some local friends. We went to a bistro type place on Duke Street called Tibo's, very nice it was too, particularly the starter - whisky cured salmon, fabulous. I can't tell you how pretty this was on the plate, and how delicious it was to eat! I followed this with a lamb tagine, but I have to admit that here I came a cropper with an excess of aubergine, which is not my fave veg. But the lamb was wonderful, melt in the mouth type lamb. A nice touch was that the menu listed their fish and meat suppliers, all local, which I thought was a really good idea. All restaurants should do that.
Anyhow to bring us back full circle, I did get new shoes, three pairs in fact. Well I'm a big believer that when you find some that fit, buy in bulk!