So the summer is drawing to a close. Now, although I have been busy enough it has been fairly leisurely. My own fault I guess but it’ll be much easier to be motivated when I have some SERIOUS writing up to do, which this time next year I should be in a position to do having finished my fieldwork. But I like ‘leisurely’ as it’s not been the worst summer in history in terms of weather!

The Ashes distractions are now all gone and the celebrations are over!!! Was a great series and so good to see England win. Sadly the football season has started with a couple of defeats for Liverpool. But I’m looking forward to being back in Newcastle and making a visit to St James’s Park and watching some Championship football. Now they aren’t in the Premier League any more it’ll be easier for the fair-weather supporters to get a ticket and hopefully cheaper ticket prices. I’ve promised to take my Dad to a game by Christmas.

As for the PhD work, well I am busy looking ahead to the new year and the fieldwork after Christmas. I’m trying to plan and budget for my trips to Lisbon and Brussels. Which is a handy thing to do anyway, but I am doing it mainly to apply for some scholarship money which would mean that it won’t be such a struggle to do the fieldwork. It’s scary to think that I’ll be interviewing people soon and I don’t feel dangerously prepared for it at the moment!

Next week I shall be busy tidying my office and organising my paper filing, books and journals. Everything needs to ship shape etc for the start of the year! And of course working some more on this scholarship application. Another aspect of my preparations for the new academic year will be getting psyched up for the seminar teaching I’ll be doing. More thoughts on that in my next post in a couple of weeks’ time!