Paper for Poland

I mentioned a while back that I had had a proposal for a paper at a conference in Gdansk accepted, and that was all fine and dandy but of course what that means is that sometime between acceptance and the conference itself there are one or two things to do; arrange travel, book a hotel, write the paper...

Writing the paper is obviously  the bit that takes the longest. I won't say it's the hardest because actually the hard work is done when you submit the abstract since that says in 200 words what you're actually going to take 2000 words to say on the day so basically it's a bit of fleshing out (OK by a factor of 10 - well, I think it's a factor of 10) but that's not really difficult if you can get yourself to focus. And that's a big if....

 

However it was done last week. I also did some baking, sorted out a kitchen cupboard, caught up with some admin and correspondence, read a book (a real book that had nothing to do with study) finished two pairs of socks and a jumper for Marcus, booked my travel and accommodation and eventually there was no further displacement activity I could think of and I wrote the paper. I'm quite pleased with it (which is North East England speak for Actually it's damned good and people are going to enjoy listening to it and I'm probably going to enjoy giving it)

 

The small cloud on the horizon is that my subject  supervisor is going to be there too. Actually let's not kid ourselves, that's not a small cloud, that's a huge black shadow hanging over the whole thing. Who could have known he would be going? If I had known before I put in the proposal I wouldn't have done it, but the die is cast and as I have said to a couple of friends, I'm not important enough for him to want to spend time with me anyway, which is as reassuring as it gets. There are a couple of other people I know who are going so it will be them I look at when I speak, because they will smile encouragingly and everything will be fine. I hope.

 

Anyway it is still several weeks away yet, although I note with a heavy sigh that I do have a full supervisory meeting next Tuesday and Gaelic begins again next Monday morning. So that's all a bit of a car crash to 'look forward' to next week.