Not Quite What the Doctor Ordered - Part the First

So  I went to Glasgow. I quite enjoyed the trip down, the weather was good, the Firth was like the proverbial mill pond and all my various transport connections went really smoothly. Meeting with supervisor went about as well as expected. After various 'beverage related incidents', including the mammothly upsetting 'Great Sugar Packet Hunt' of December 2014 I have learned enough to take my own tea bag and sweeteners and although the man stumbled on the biscuit front - it was his turn to provide them and he didn't, with a pathetic excuse of how he hadn't had time to bother, I don't know where he thinks I have the time to source nice biscuits and pitch up with them and yet somehow I do!, - he did manage to find half a packet of someone else's shortbread in the departmental kitchen and offered those up as a sop. I promptly ate one, with the comment that it was a long time since breakfast. Which it was, and if he asks to meet at 12.30 then I think the least he can do is recognise the fact that that is actually most people's lunchtime and a girl needs to eat.

Anyway we batted our way back and forth through my latest offering and he said some nice things, none of which I can remember and then he said that I had all the editing and referencing skills of a lobotomised gnat, and that when the time came to prepare the final version of my thesis, if I had the money it might be as well to invest in the skills of a professional proof reader.  Now he didn't actually use the phrase 'lobotomised gnat', that is how I phrase it because I find it easier to cope with than what he actually said which was that I 'don't possess the referencing and editing skills that would normally be expected in a Ph D student'. This is not less hurtful for being totally true. It is unfortunate that referencing rules have changed massively since I did my MA in 2002, because I was right across them then and have the thesis to prove it, complete with all the things you don't use now like op.cit., ibid, and footnotes. I loved footnotes. The natural places for all those funny little things you found out that you couldn't put in the body of the text, but really were too good to leave out altogether. Anyway as I  hate getting things wrong, and as I feel that I should be able to get the hang of referencing because whatever some people may think I really am not stupid, but then always end up with cotton wool head every time I try I was quite upset and  the meeting was not the unparalleled success that some people might think it was. Like the other participant for example.

 

I brooded on my deficiencies all the way up Byres Road, I brooded over the lunch I had in a vey nice café there and then  I brooded my way into the Oxfam Bookshop which is right at the top. I stopped brooding there in favour of looking for useful or interesting books and bought four and then started brooding my way up Queen Margaret Drive and was so under par that I didn't even go into the Yarn Cake, which for those who don't know, is a small but perfectly formed combination of café and wool shop. By the time I reached Maryhill Road I was suffering rather from the weight of the books, the heat and excessive brooding so I rang Son No 2 who came down to meet me and carry my bag back to the flat.

 

And as it was overpoweringly hot the next day too,  instead of doing what we had planned which was going into Glasgow so that I could buy Son No 2 some new clothes  we stayed home with cool drinks and I read one of my new books and brooded some more. Until the OH arrived and we sent out for Dominos Pizza. I know Dominos Pizza is not everybody's idea of a Good Thing, but when you live in the back of beyond like we do you seize these exotic metropolitan treats at every opportunity.