Catching up

Things have moved on since the last, somewhat miserable, post.  Not many things and they haven’t moved very far but enough to make me feel an awful lot better than I did last time I wrote here. I don’t feel anywhere near as low as I did then, which I put down to clean living, exercise and the fact that I’m going on holiday in a couple of days!

When I get back - four days after I get back, in fact - I’ll have my final exam and then that’ll be it for my studies.  It feels very odd to be saying that; studying for this degree has been such a big part of my life for the last five years, I think it’s going to be quite a change.  If you factor in the courses I did before I started the degree, I can’t remember the last time I had no text-books to read or homework to do!  

Still, I don’t think I’ll be short of things to do.  I’ve got a stack of books about three-feet high that I’ve been waiting to read and I plan to spend a bit of time with them. Once the exam’s out of the way, I’ve got about 50 hours of online study to do for my final TEFL qualifications and then I’ll have some decisions to make - fairly big decisions, I suppose.

But those are for later. For now, I have to pack and then it’s Little ‘Un’s family birthday meal tomorrow, a few final bits and pieces to buy for the jollies and then settle back, watch the Grand Prix and then jump in the car to head for Heathrow.  After feeling ambivalent about the trip all week (and being worried about why I was feeling that way) as soon as I finished my last bit of work this afternoon, I started to get excited.

So, onto the iPod go a stack of podcasts that I’ve been saving up for the past couple of weeks (two dozen episodes of the Archers, plus Savage Love, Mayo and Kermode, More Mayo and the Word) and into my carry on luggage go “The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex” the latest F1 magazine and an issue of New Scientist that I’ve been wanting to get into for a few weeks.  On the iPad I’ve downloaded “A Single Man” “The Hurt Locker” “Insidious” and a couple of others that I’ve forgotten. I think that little lot will keep me busy on the flight!