Packing frenzy

Sent from Samsung mobile

Repairing the computer

So far so good – remarkably painless, no data loss just the pain of reinstalling programs and finding activation keys…

Packing

Off to Jersey tomorrow to visit my grandmother. Only 4 days but still needs some smart clothes for me, and huge amounts of gear for no 1 son…

Back to the fray

Alun's new blog has slightly motivated me to try to get to blogging on a regular basis. I’ve been in a bit of a torpor – the demands of no 1 son are exhausting, to put it mildly! As well as trying to catch up with work – despite the recession there is lots of (unpaid) work for me to do. There is fortunately still a lot of paid work for me for the time being, even if I appear to be paying 200% tax (chiz) still i try to think of it as a compulsory saving system – I should get a lot back next January when extra money is always useful!.

Any way Aluns’ excuse is to improve writing – or at least to keep in the habit of writing. so I will try to maintain a presence, even if its just a little writing everyday.

And because I enjoy lists here is the list of things I need to di:

Carthage CBM Report

Syrian Pottery report

Introduction to Hayton

Horningsea volume proofing

Berlin workshop writeup

that should be doing for now…

preparing for syria

Wel I have my new passport and my visa, I’ve finally done last years drawings and that means its time to start packing again for Bassit

So loud noises

Off are beginning to moan about CON-DEM policies before they are even properly proposed or debated. Politics eh. Not really in their interests for any form of this coalition to work. If labour believed in its duty to protect the most vulnerable, they would have done everything in their power to cobble together a coalition, getting the smaller parties on board first and then lining up the lib dems. But no, more important for labour ministers to line up their directorships etc. And now they discover democracy. They make me sicker, than anytime sine their disgraceful illegal oil war

Commuting

I really hate the train journey from Birmingham to Leicester

Post Election Blues

Well, for me there is good news – Jerry coming unexpectedly third means that I still have employment. Although the bad news is that there is much more likely to be a double dip recession with the public spending cuts occurring this year, rather than later, on top of the massive cuts already hitting the local government sector.

 

It was very interesting watching and reading the reactions of friends to the left and the right. Hopefully we may now remember that we are a parliamentary system – and with such small majorities we can look forward to more negotiation and better thought out laws, and indeed somewhat less of the knee jerk changes in direction which so bedevilled new labour, especially with respect to the NHS and education. How much money has been loss to fruitless reorganisation?

There is now a lot of debate about how lib dems have given us a Tory government. Well they haven’t they have given us a Tory – lib dem government. not as progressive as one would like, but better than a Tory – unionist one surely? Frankly seeing how quick off the mark the political core of labour were to diss a ‘progressive alliance’ and in fact seeing that political core preferring to fight in opposition rather than in power rather reminded me what I hate most about New labour. They are more interested in their jobs than that of their core support.

discuss

Coming up for air

So now recovering from Edmund's 40th, Nice to see old faces - but its scary to think how quickly time has gone - underlined by Alex's first birthday a couple of weeks ago. The huge tidal wave of work is now receding, so am able to enjoy working rather than frantically playing catch up, although a number of reports are being stubbonly unhelpful in being somewhat difficult to write.

Tomorrow the IFA conference is southport - and then free of distractions for several months

Loiks

Well the lecturing was interesting. I think as a teaching too the act of lecturing is a lot better way of learning a subject than actually attending a lecture

Writing lectures

In many ways this is a nice easy way into giving a series of lectures - I'm giving a course spread over 9 weeks ( + 1 reading week) which is part of a wider series ( I just give term 2 lectures). I'm following the broad pattern set by someone else ( with some tweaking). Its on the Roman Economy- the big theme of my PhD, and I'm largely concentrating on the material evidence for an audience of classicists. But it sure is a daunting class (not helped by the convergence of deadlines from a number of sides...). It really is harder than it looks, needs a lot of preperation and nicely reveals the areas which are so far outside my comfort zone that they are posting my postcards.

Still that is a major reason why I took the opportunity up when it was offered ( as well as calculating that the recession should be hitting my business by now which it apparently is, and needing to add this particular arrow to my quiver.

So the good part is yes it is showing me areas I need to know more about, it is refreshing my memory on certain other aspects, its making me appreciate the other side of the lectureship coin.

I have now prepared the first weeks two lectures - an introduction piece, with something on provenance studies, dating and quantification - all firmly in my comfort zone, and probably furthest from the comfort zone of the students. That ratio will be changing!

And now a rehersal!